Bridget Grimes: Corner Office Choices - The Executive Woman's Guide to Financial Freedom

Transcript

[0:00:14] CH: Author Hour is about answering one question. How can you get the best ideas from great books without spending so much time reading? Every week, we take you behind the scenes with a new author, about the most important points in their book. If you love to learn while you're on the go, you’re in the right place. All of our book summaries are 100% free and we do more than a hundred episodes every year. Please subscribe to and review Author Hour on iTunes. Today’s episode is with Bridget Grimes, author of Corner Office Choices - The Executive Woman’s Guide to Financial Freedom. If you’re a woman executive, you want it all, you want a high powered career and a fulfilling life. But, even when you work harder, smarter and better. There are still unique issues that you face as a woman in business. In order to get you where you want to go, both personally and financially, you need to know the roadblocks that could derail your goals and how to blast through them with poise, passion and purpose. That’s where Bridget comes in. In this episode, she offers her holistic approach to financial career and personal planning that give you the tools to build your ideal life. Bridget is the founder and president of WealthChoice, a firm that’s focused on helping women, turn their professional success into financial success. Bridget has more than a decade of experience advising top earning female executives, business owners and attorneys and helping them create custom financial solutions to achieve the life that they dream of. By the end of this episode, you’ll know how to bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be. Now, here is our conversation with Bridget Grimes.

[0:02:36] Bridget Grimes: The book and actually, my whole business started with an event so to speak, when I was getting divorced. It was kind of an interesting time, you know, I’ve been with my ex-husband for almost 20 years, we had two little kids, we worked during the thick of life and it became apparent that this wasn’t going to work. You know, I found myself in the middle of a divorce like lots of other women and other people. With two little kids, I just worked all the time and you know, as we started to dig into separating our lives, I realized that I had, we had debt and we were living this awesome life by the way. You know, mini country clubs, the whole deal but I realized that it was funded by debt. What’s really interesting is I was in finance, right? I mean, my entire - since I got out of college, I went right to Wall Street, you know, worked for hedge funds, traded stocks, my whole life was around finance but when I was married, I had chosen, like many women, to not engage with my finances because I was just too busy. Between work and life and everything else. It wasn’t until I was in the middle of a divorce when this became apparent and I thought, man, I totally didn’t know that this was our taste, shame on me for never choosing to be engaged, but I was too busy and interestingly enough, at the same time, two of my closest friends were also going through a divorce. You know, both really successful women professionally with kids and really busy. And it became apparent to me that there was no one out there, there was no one who could help people like us, right? That we were so busy and we were not prepared to take care of our own future, we didn’t even know what we were dealing with ourselves, we didn’t have the time to worry about it. And I realized that there was a whole ton of folks just like me. Now, it may not be like you have a divorce but just, I found that women professionals like myself, just were not, there was no time to worry about our own future and our own life and that was a problem. It wasn’t ‘till that divorce where I just thought, man, there has to be a better way. If it hadn’t been for that, I probably wouldn’t be where I am now. Then right after my divorce, our house burned down in San Diego.

[0:04:46] CH: Literally burned down?

[0:04:48] Bridget Grimes: Totally burned down.

[0:04:49] CH: Wow, how?

[0:04:51] Bridget Grimes: 2003, wild fires in San Diego were exceptionally crummy, my whole neighborhood went down and so you know, you step back and you’re literally, we’re in the middle of splitting things up and it’s just one more thing and you say, “God, how am I going to do this?” I have these two little kids, six and eight. I have this job, I don’t have time for this. I didn’t even know what I’m going to do. It really made me look hard at my life and how could this be different and how do all of these awesome women around me, how do we get it together? When there is no time to think about this. That was the trigger and after that, I actually launched my business.

[0:05:31] CH: Wow, that’s a rough journey. To kind of paint the picture a little bit more, do you mind if I ask, how much debt were you staring down?

[0:05:40] Bridget Grimes: It was about a little less than a hundred grand which for me was a lot. I mean, any debt was a lot, you know? I didn’t even know that we had debt because I didn’t ply the bills

[0:05:51] CH: Right. How did you feel once that number was staring you in the face?

[0:05:55] Bridget Grimes: Well, I was pretty disappointed to know that that was the case because you know, you split everything and you get to split debt and just like assets. I just thought, you know, we were living beyond our means and that was totally not okay. Who knew, right? I mean, if you don’t engage, you don’t know.

[0:06:12] CH: That’s a lot of people.

[0:06:13] Bridget Grimes: That’s a lot of people. But that was my fault, right? I actually made sure that that was never ever going to happen to me again and I was going to get myself – I was going to figure out my own financial situation but I think what was really amazing to me was that it was so common. I was anxious, I was stressed. I thought “Okay, how am I going to do this, how am I going to make sure that -“ you know, it was easy to take care of that to be fair, there were enough assets. I could come out of that and I was going to be okay. But the realization was that we shouldn’t have been in that place anyway. It was incredibly surprising, it was pretty disappointing and stressful and I just made sure that I was never going to be there again.

[0:06:58] CH: Yeah. You work with a lot of women executives. How common is this scenario with them where they, on the surface, I’d imagine everybody saying, “Wow, they’re just doing phenomenally well,” and then when you look at the real numbers or the reality, they’re like man, I don’t know what I’m doing.

[0:07:20] Bridget Grimes: I have to tell you, it’s far more common that people would think. One of the things that I find, I guess, disheartening for so many women out there is that they think that they’re the only ones, you know, people don’t show you the bad side or the failure side of life or whatever you want to call it, they just show you the stuff that they want you to see. You know, it’s like going on Facebook, nobody posts the crap, they always post how awesome their life is and it is so much more common and so, you know, when I sit down with someone for the first item and we talk about, you know, their dreams and their wishes and then we get down to the down and dirty with analyzing, okay, where are you right now? It’s often very eye opening and it is really common, it doesn’t matter how much money people make. If that doesn’t mean that they are financially okay. Because there are an awful lot of folks who either don’t know where their money goes or they know where it goes and they can justify it all day long.

[0:08:16] CH: Right, yeah. I imagine dealing with the shame and feelings of guilt around it too is just feeling, “Even though I’ve done so well professionally, I still don’t know what I’m doing with this thing that I deal with every single day.”

[0:08:32] Bridget Grimes: Yeah, that’s what I really try to – I try to convince these folks or you know, at least, educate them that they are by far not alone in this. That’s okay, you know, wherever you are, that’s fine, let’s just know where we start and then let’s make the plan and take the steps to get you to where you want to be, right? What’s it going to make you feel better about your situation and what’s actually going to get you on the path? What are the steps we need to take so that you know, in a couple of years, you can say, “You know what? I actually feel okay. I feel like I’m on my way or I’m in a better place,” and we’ve taken a couple of steps but I would just say to most women, you are not alone, there is so much anxiety and shame around money. A lot of it is not even justified, you know, you don’t know where other folks are financially. You really don’t know and they’re not necessarily where you think they are.

[0:09:23] CH: Right, yeah. Ain’t that the truth. I mean, I was just talking with my wife and her friend this past weekend about somebody we know that on the surface, on Instagram and Facebook, they just have this really incredible life. They live in this amazing home and everything and she was asking to split a meal three ways at a restaurant because she confessed that she and her husband were in a lot of debt and all this stuff. There’s no shame around any of it but yet, we feel it because we feel foolish. I mean, I myself and my wife have dealt with debt and the frustration of going to get groceries and checking out and not having enough money in your account to get all the groceries that you just came up was this – you get this sinking feeling, it’s this continual reminder though. Man, we got to dig ourselves out of this hole. I’m so glad you’re doing this book and before we dive into Corner Office Choices a bit more and beginning that journey, I’m curious if there’s a particular moment that stood out to you as like “Wow.” Was there maybe one of those staring at your bedroom ceiling moments that the lowest low you felt. Not from like a voyeuristic standpoint of I want to hear about your lowest low but just because I want women listening to this to really relate to you because we kind of went through quickly, your journey but you went through the hard stuff. Bring us back to a moment that stands out?

[0:11:02] Bridget Grimes: I would say, it was after the house burned down and you know, I knew my marriage had fallen apart and we were just going through the last parts of ending it. We weren’t even dealing with the financial part, we were just ending our relationship part, we were going to deal with the finances later. After that house burned down - that morning, when we got to watch our house burn on TV and you just thought, holy crap. I have to tell you, I didn’t know, you know, what’s going to happen next, right? I mean, how is this going to work out? We had it just moved into this house six months prior, we hadn’t even unpacked stuff. It was the most overwhelming thing where you just, you know, I knew I had wanted to start on a new path but then, it just got completely complicated and then the question is, where do you live, right? You have to make choices right away and it was pretty overwhelming.

[0:11:56] CH: Yeah. Where did you go live?

[0:12:00] Bridget Grimes: Because we were not alone, in fact, in my neighborhood, I think 1,900 houses burned down.

[0:12:04] CH: My gosh.

[0:12:05] Bridget Grimes: It wasn’t like, yeah, San Diego was, there were thousands of houses. We weren’t alone. But fortunately, San Diego is this wonderful tiny community, believe it or not and people just wanted to help you. We had offers from so many people to stay in their houses and their condos. We actually wound up staying in a – somebody’s condo down in Delmar on the water which is crazy, right? But we went as a family and we had some time to get it together and to think through next steps. But, we were pushed into doing things much quicker than we would have been if we hadn’t been thrown in the situation. It was pretty intense and just to have to quickly figure out, okay, what are my next steps? I would say, that’s probably was the most depressing part where you just didn’t know how it could possibly get to where you wanted to be.

[0:12:56] CH: Yeah, yet you got there. Let’s dive in with beginning your journey. How did you start to get a better outlook on building up your financial security and living the life that you wanted without being financiallyReckless is the right word, but at least, having more of an awareness?

[0:13:21] Bridget Grimes: I actually, when we finally split up and it was very clear. I was not going to rebuild our house. My ex-husband wanted to rebuild our house and he bought me out and I bought a little house in the same community and we raised our kids in the same community in two different places. I bought a tiny little house that I could afford, You know, I don’t think I said this before but when our marriage split up, I didn’t want any money. It wasn’t about that, it was just, having a relationship that worked and that happens and that’s okay, you know? As long as we can co-parent and you know, he’s a good guy but just things don’t work out. I just wanted to be able to go off and build this life where it was, you know. I was a good mom, I was a good professional, everything was okay. I didn’t have huge expectations, I just wanted it to be a good life. I managed to, you know, I got a small house and I had a strong community of friends and you know, you just soldier on and you just, it’s not easy. Especially if you have kids, it’s like a nightmare but it’s – you know, I just made sure I knew how much I made, it wasn’t as much as I would have liked but you know, because now you’ve got all these expenses times two and I have to tell you, it was when I talked to my girlfriends and I had been out of finance for a couple of years, I had gone into corporate sales jobs and I left Wall Street. I realized then that I really wanted to make an impact, I wanted to help women like myself. Honestly, I mean, it was truly about, how do I help women like myself who, whether it’s a divorce or a fire, whatever, just have time to think about their own future and we’re all working so hard and I just did find that you know, I was in the thick of it and it was many years before I even gave myself the time to do my own plan even when I had WealthChoice and my business. There was a time for me. There wasn’t time and I didn’t have a plan or was helping me but I wanted to make sure that folks like myself could actually have a decent quality of life and that’s, honestly, that was really my motivation, it was kind of like this eye opening thing, “Okay, lucky me, I get to - ,” the lightbulb goes off and you say, this just is not great and there has to be a better way and you know, we are smart people but why are we in this place? That’s when I found that I would get great personal satisfaction out of helping other people.

[0:15:47] CH: Let’s talk a bit about the people that you helped. Women executives, I know a few myself and they do kind of have a different life. In some cases, dramatically different from what we think. Can you kind of paint the portrait of what a woman executive, her life is like and her relationship with money.

[0:16:11] Bridget Grimes: Sure, a lot of the women I know are pretty good at what they do, you know, they’ve worked really hard, they’re smart, driven women. Many of them make good money and what I found that’s a really common thing is that they’re so involved in their careers and their business and that’s their whole life. Often times, these folks, while they make good money, they have nothing to show for it. I cannot tell you how many women I’ve sat down with who want help and direction and we don’t have a whole lot to work with right then. That’s going to change. But you know, one of the reasons –

[0:16:44] CH: When you say they don’t have much to show for it or a lot to work with, are you speaking in terms of their finances specifically or everything, like relationships?

[0:16:56] Bridget Grimes: It could be both. Specifically, I was referring right there to assets. It could be you know, not a whole lot in your 401(k) plan because you just haven’t saved for that. There’s not any savings, there may not be an emergency fund, there’s really no assets to show for it, they may still be renting a house. Assets are one thing but I have to tell you, you bring up a really good point with the relationship part because quite a few of my clients wind up single. If they weren’t already. They may be single because the job comes first or they may wind up single because the job wound up coming first. My clients, these women execs, they tend to be the bread winners in their family. Often, there is a spouse or a partner but my folks are the ones who are bringing in the money and they’re working really hard and so one of the things that’s pretty common is you have folks who work very hard, they make good money, they feel absolutely justified in spending that money because they worked so hard for it. These are women who have been drawn to industries and careers because that’s supposed to give them this quality of life that they really want. They’re smart, you know, maybe they were attracted to law because they thought law was interesting. But often times, it’s also because this career that they chose is supposed to give them this quality of life, they’re willing to work hard for that and in exchange, they want this quality of life but what we find is that you’re on this treadmill and you’re in this high powered jobs and you wind up working a lot. Because they work a lot, they want to be able to spend that money they earn. But what happens is, the wind up in this - it is really a treadmill where they’re not necessarily fulfilled. You know, most people spend more of their waking time at their job than anything else. We find that with these women execs, they’re working so often, so much of their life, they’re not necessarily fulfilled, there’s not a lot of personal time, they’re not taking care of their health, you know? Mentally, physically and so as the money comes in, they wind up spending it and what’s terrible about that is that you can never get off that treadmill. I have many women who wind up saying, “God, how do I change this? Because I’m not fulfilled and I can’t even get off this treadmill because I don’t have anything saved.” You know, retirement becomes an interesting conversation because you can’t stop that work and maintain that quality of life if you haven’t prepared for it. That becomes a big conversation with a lot of women. Other women just say, “You know, look, I don’t want this as a career. I can’t change, how do I possibly change if my lifestyle now relies on this kind of an income?” Then we have a lot of conversations around, “Okay, what would your ideal job look like? What would your ideal life look like?” A lot of these women have not allowed themselves the time to think about that because there is no time.

[0:19:49] CH: Yeah. What kind of answers do you typically hear from your clients when you ask them, “What is your ideal life look like?” I mean, how often do they say, “I’m living it right now.” I’d imagine none of them, right? What kind of answers do you hear?

[0:20:08] Bridget Grimes: It’s what, we have actually, we have a worksheet that honestly I found that I needed to prompt folks to allow themselves to think these things through because they don’t typically take the time to think – they don’t allow themselves the opportunity to think about what would a different life look like because they’re in the thick of it. For many women, it’s hard to, unless they’ve really been pushed into allocating time to think about that, they really can’t answer that question, you know? Life would be sometimes folks will come in and they’ll say, you know, man, I’d like to take off a month a year and just do whatever I want to do and you know, they’ll list all these things that are absolutely unattainable where we are right now because there’s just no way to fund it. Other folks just haven’t given themselves the time to think about it, you know? Really interesting anecdote, I have these speakers come in to this women’s group I host on all different topics and there was a woman who came in a couple of years ago and she is a coach, she’s a business coach but she’s more like a career coach where folks go to her when they know that they’re not fulfilled in their career but they don’t know what they want to do. She helps them figure out, well what are their passions and what are different things that they could pursue. One of the things she’ll do with a group is she’ll walk you through these questions. You know, really introspective questions and one of the questions which really resonated with me was what do you do for fun? This was a room of attorney –

[0:21:35] CH: I’m laughing because that is always what I ask people. You know what’s funny, I ask that to a couple recently and several months ago actually. That question, unbenownst to me, I felt terrible but they broke up because of that question because she realized they weren’t doing anything fun together.

[0:21:56] Bridget Grimes: Okay, well that’s a really good realization.

[0:21:58] CH: My gosh, I’m so sorry but it ended up being a good thing but anyway, sorry sidetrack but that’s such a great question.

[0:22:02] Bridget Grimes: It’s such a great question. What I thought was amazing is I could not answer that question because myself, I just worked because that’s what I do. I work because I have to take care of people and bills and I run a business. I had a girlfriend in there who is an accomplished attorney and she said, “Bridget, I can’t answer that question,” and so it started a whole conversation about okay, that’s not good. Because that shouldn’t be, you know, I mean, I’m not advocating that all we do is fun all day long but man you should be able to say, “Hey, you know, I carve that time for myself or for things that are important to me,” because we know that quality of life is what this is all about, isn’t it? Or that’s what I believe it is. I have to tell you, it was eye opening for myself and I made some changes, personally after that. Those are the kind of questions - What changes did you make? Believe it or not, I joined a gym, I hadn’t belonged to a gym in a long time because I could justify million reasons why I should be doing something else instead of going to a gym. This one friend of mine, the attorney said, you know, I just started to go to a gym because it makes me feel really good about myself. I was a competitive athlete for a long time and then I got too busy and it went away. For my head, that’s a really good thing. I actually joined a gym after that and it was kind of like the selfish indulgence where I would actually leave work at four and I would go and I would work out and – because I would have to carve out a time, make sure I did it. It was awesome. If it had not been for that conversation and I gave myself the permission to do this thing a couple of times a week and it’s really made a difference. I added social life - I mean, this sound like such basic things, right? If you are in the thick of it and you just feel like you’re supposed to be working and you’re supposed to be taking care of other people and you have a lot on your plate, then you don ‘t really necessarily give yourself the permission to do these things because you could always fill your time with more work. I had also reads a really interesting article that this palliative care person wrote.

[0:24:10] CH: Top Five Regrets?

[0:24:11] Bridget Grimes: Yes. No one ever has ever regretted that they hadn’t worked more. I thought, you know, this is me and this is you know, where I come from, we come from hard working people and there’s nothing wrong with working hard but it was, it actually made me upset that this was how I was going through my life. It was a brilliant article.

[0:24:36] CH: Yeah. It’s one of the classics for people curious about that, it’s this palliative nurse asked people at their bedside before they died, what are their regrets and the top five regrets of the dying - I used to have that as my screensaver on my cellphone. I can’t remember all five but it’s like, I wish I hadn’t worked so hard, I wish I’d let myself be happy, I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends, I wish I had the courage to express how I felt, those sorts of things. It’s a life changer when you read it.

[0:25:06] Bridget Grimes: It is and it is actually quoted in the book because there is a part of our book and the end of the book that really talks about quality of life and it was so impactful for me and it’s awesome. So anyway, we reference it in the book too but for so many of these women they haven’t allowed themselves to think about what would this life really be if they could even have, if they could even choose to change it and that is where we start everything.

[0:25:32] CH: I love it, yeah. It’s funny how we fall in love with our work or at the very least, we end up getting caught up in having it dominate our time and then all of these essential parts of ourselves like our social lives, our friends, they kind of fall by the wayside as an adult not because you don’t want them but because there is no strong incentive pushing you to nurture those things really. You’ve got to make a living and then you just let them go by the wayside. But bringing them back in changes your life for the better in so many ways. I went through a similar journey where I started doing improv lessons and it just completely transformed my life in so many ways and made me feel human again. So I hear you on signing up for the gym and going to exercise, that’s great. So part two of your book you talk about actually building your best life and we’re touching upon this now but you have an interesting subtitle in this part of the book which is “Solutions for Overcoming the Major Derailers”. So what are the major derailers?

[0:26:49] Bridget Grimes: So that is the entire premise behind the book. What I have found over years of working with women execs was that these four things kept coming up as the biggest issues for them not living life on their terms whatever that is. So these four things and I truly feel that my entire industry is missing this. So the first thing is really spending time around the goals and we touched on that. You know, what do you want that ideal life to look like? Let yourself really be open and free to think about what would your ideal look like personally, professionally and financially and I prompt them to think through okay, what would be great in one year, three year, five years, where do you see yourself and really get down into the nitty-gritty about what those things are. You know, “Man I would love to have a job where I could flexibly work and maybe I could be on an island somewhere,” you know whatever it is. So to start to crystalize what is important to you and it’s not just about when are you going to retire and what’s that life going to look like in the future, it’s what do you want your life to be now because I have to tell you the older I get I realize that we have to live - it’s the journey now, we have to live a meaningful life now not just save for this future time and hope that it is all going to work out. So I prompt folks to think about what would it look like now and how could we change that. Do we need to change that? So we spend time with really, what do you want your life now and the future to look like and we detail that out and then we talk about cash flow. So one of the two biggest derailers out of these four is where you spend your money and how you do that and I found that as we said earlier, there’s a lot of folks making good money and then it just goes away every month and they wind up saving nothing and they can never make a change to a different career or retire with the same quality of life. So we really get our hands around okay, where is the money going that you’re earning and is it being spent in places that are most important to you? And we do budgeting and we track their money and then we make choices. You know, “Hey if you really want to do X or you want to earn less money because this other job is going to give you more fulfillment, well so where can we cut in your life so we can afford to do that?” So we work together on cash flow management which is absolutely a critical way to live life on your terms and the next derailer is –

[0:29:26] CH: I just want to pause you there and point out how important that is, of are you spending on areas you care about? And this is so huge and we went through this quickly but I mean it is everything. It’s how you’re spending your life, it’s your vote on a daily basis on this is what I value and this is how I am going to live and of course, you have to have the cash flow for certain things that may cost more but man, I mean your money is a direct reflection of your values and your beliefs about how life should be lived. So I think that’s a wonderful question to ask.

[0:30:12] Bridget Grimes: And it’s all about choice, right? It really is all about choice. So if you have X amount of income at the beginning of the month, we go through, “Okay, where does the money have to be spent? What are your fixed expenses?” And then everything after that is discretionary and you get to choose where that goes and that’s where we spend our time. You know, “What is it that you said would really be important for you to have a decent quality of life? What are those things?” And so we figure out, “Okay, well how much does that goal cost and how much every month are we able to take from this discretionary money and put toward that quality of life?” and maybe that’s a travel budget, maybe it’s paying for one of your kids to go to private school. Whatever that goal is that’s important to you, we carve out the money and it’s absolutely doable as long as you have control over where you know where that money is going and you get to choose differently. So it is something that traditionally, financial planning doesn’t spend a whole lot of time on. It’s really more about, “Okay how are we going to fund your retirement?” But this is like right now. This is real life and what is important to you and how are we going to make that happen. So you know I have to tell you, like you said it is all about awareness and it’s so much easier than people think and it is really not awful and I have a client who we did this last year and she makes good money. She is a single mom and has two children, she is in the Pacific Northwest and even though she was making good money she was really living paycheck to paycheck and she could not get to where she wanted to be and so it was just by tracking where the money went for a couple of months and we could say, “Okay, well here’s where it went and what do you think about that and what are you willing to do, where are you willing to cut, what changes are you willing to make?” “Because these other things that you shared with me, those are more important to you.” And so over time we made changes and shifts and she watched it and we watched it together and we would say some months would be crummy and we’d get off the rails and we’d say, “Okay, hey what are we going to do now? And how are we going to change it and maybe that was too much for a budget for groceries. That’s okay.” So it’s this give and take but I can tell you where we are now, this woman has been able to make major changes in her life and it’s pretty cool and it was all her.

[0:32:26] CH: Yeah, it sounds like you really give your clients awareness and more importantly intention, where something they may have sort of been unconsciously running on autopilot they now are much more aware and much more intentional where things are going.

[0:32:45] Bridget Grimes: Yes, so I am a huge fan of cash flow and then the next derailer which is just as important if not more so is business and career management and that is one of the derailers that I have found that you know look, if our career as women execs is how we make our money and where we spend our time then let’s manage it as best as we can and that’s not only from a compensation perspective and there are a whole host of challenges that women have due to gender disparity. I mean it is not just that we’re not paid as much as men are, but there are all sorts of issues, gender related with respect to leadership roles and moving up the food chain and having the role you really want. So –

[0:33:26] CH: Can we pause on this point because I don’t think a lot of and maybe not all men are listening to this of course, this is primarily for women ,this podcast but as a man myself, I like to be reminded of what the reality is for women because I don’t experience it day to day and you know I need to hear this as a reminder of these are the invisible obstacles that women even in positions of power have to deal with.

[0:33:56] Bridget Grimes: Sure, so there are a lot of unique challenges for women execs and they’re not just that we are paid less than men. Because so many leadership roles are held by men, those men tend to be sponsors to men behind them and so when you are more junior and you are working at companies and you are trying to move up into a more leadership roles and more management roles, you really need somebody that is going to be an advocate for you and that is a sponsor at that company. And because there are more men leaders, they tend to wind up being sponsors for men behind them and without sponsors, women are not getting the exposure to these roles and companies and they are not getting noticed and there is no advocate for them and so what we find is there are fewer and fewer women at the top of these companies. You know whether it is a law firm or stem firm, pretty much any industry. The challenge is by not having more women at the top, we have fewer women that get pulled up to the top. And so what happens is women wind up in these positions where they’re not leadership positions. They don’t make as much as they could, there is no one to advocate for them for the raises that they really should have. There are no advocates and I haven’t –

[0:35:13] CH: You know an additional point beyond that is this is to the detriment of a lot of companies because there’s been clear data showing that women are better at managing people. I mean you look at the banks for instance, the only ones that didn’t fail, I believe it was in Europe were run by women because they made more practical decisions that help the business whereas men tend to be more aggressive. I mean these are generalities that I am speaking in. But it’s to the detriment of our companies, our businesses that we don’t have more women in power. It is not just the individual women, who deserve to progress in life although that is definitely totally valid argument. But as a society, we benefit more when we have more of an equilibrium.

[0:36:13] Bridget Grimes: So you bring up a good point and you know, statistics show that when you have women on corporate boards those companies are more profitable. Without a doubt. It is not even close and so you would think that even if companies didn’t really care about the gender - it wasn’t really about inclusion, you would think that they would be focused on the fact that it’s in their best interest from a revenue perspective to have a board, right?

[0:36:35] CH: Exactly. Exactly like satisfy any other argument and this is purely for capitalism’s sake, let’s do the best that we can.

[0:36:46] Bridget Grimes: Let’s just focus on the money part and then at least, yeah right there would make sense but no, you are absolutely right and so it is the compensation part, it is the leadership part, it actually just makes sense to have more women out there. So the challenge is that women just are they have these issues in business and there’s one of the statistics in my book when we talk about the stem companies. We talk about Silicon Valley and the amazing disparity up there. I mean there is like a no girls rule in some of those companies for their boards. There are no women on some of these major boards.

[0:37:17] CH: Oh yeah, it’s ridiculous. Yeah which is horrifying because these are the companies that tend to make the biggest impact the quickest and so if you have, Uber is a wonderful example of horribly toxic culture driven completely by men. So yeah, I am with you.

[0:37:40] Bridget Grimes: And what I guess I find most discouraging about this is many of those companies are run by young men, right? So this is not the old established, older white guy is the challenge that we have to overcome. Unfortunately it’s our culture and these are younger folks who are working in the same way with respect to women as the older leader. So it is something we have to be cognizant of when we are working with women and when we are working with someone who needs to really leverage that career, we need to be cognizant of these challenges and so we need a plan. The way I approach this is, I am not out there to change the playing field. I am not going to be able to change the systemic issues. But if we know what these challenges are for these women execs then let us have a plan around those and if you are at a company and you want to get to a different leadership role and you need a sponsor then let’s get a sponsor or maybe we get a business coach for whatever the challenges are that you really need to overcome to get you to where you want to be. So it is being mindful of what is that women exec need to be successful in her field whatever her definition of success is and for some women that I work with that definition is, “Hey, I want to actually completely change my career, I don’t want to be an attorney anymore. I want to be a business coach.” Or something completely different or “I actually want to work in a non-profit and I don’t want to make 400 grand a year. I just want to dial back my life.” So it is having a strategy around that business or career and what it’s going to do for you not just financially but for quality of life and so we have to spend a lot of time on what is it that you want, where are you now, what are those gaps that we see and how are we going to change that so that you can say, “You know man, I am really happy with this and I am getting the fulfillment that I want out of this career or job or business that I run not just from a financial perspective.”

[0:39:37] CH: Yeah, absolutely and your book has a ton of other really valuable information stuff like investing strategies, tax strategies, how to chart your course and have the roadmap for your best life and what I’d like to talk about now is some of the transformations you’ve seen with the people that you’ve worked with, some of your client transformations. Can you tell us about maybe your favorite success story of someone who has gotten the most out of your ideas?

[0:40:14] Bridget Grimes: Sure, so there has been a lot and I start the book with one particular story that I really love and this is a client of mine, Sophie, and we worked together for a long time and when we first engaged it was after I was hosting this women’s group and we brought in a bunch of speakers. It was an audience of women attorneys and the panel was a bunch of men talking about what are some of the challenges that they saw for women in business and what were some of the things steps that women could take to help them as attorneys in business. Because we want to hear the male perspective right? All of this, this entire conversation we have about business and career for women has to include the men because they’re in a lot of the leadership roles.

[0:41:00] CH: Right and a side note about that, that’s why I always felt like I understand a lot of anger that women feel towards men. It’s understandable but that anger has to be let go in order for progress to be made because men don’t want to get crucified in the process of trying to help. So yeah, bring them to the table.

[0:41:23] Bridget Grimes: Absolutely and so we’re not those people. I think that things are the way they are so let’s work together to change them and there has to be at that table it’s not just women at the table, it’s men at the table and it is us working together because this is a benefit for everybody. You know, the more happy productive people out there, everybody benefits, right? So I absolutely agree with you and so in the case of Sophie, we started to talk after this seminar. And she said, “Hey, can I talk to you? Can we get together? I am just really miserable.” And this is woman who is a partner in a law firm and she had a very successful career and we started to talk about what she would really like ideally and we started to work together and I have to tell you, she did not engage. She shared what was her life then, it was not a good life. It didn’t matter that she was making money hand over fist but she was really miserable. I think as I am saying this, I don’t want it to sound so shallow like here’s all these women making all this money and they’re unfulfilled and ungrateful but I think life is far bigger than that and the money doesn’t make you happy and I think in our culture there’s this misguided feeling that the harder you work and the more you make the happier you’re going to be and I don’t think that that’s the case and so this woman knew something wasn’t right. And we talked about it over years and eventually she said to me, “Okay I am actually ready to do something about this because I am at this critical point where I just can’t keep doing this.” And this woman would start work at five in the morning. She worked seven days a week, I mean law is brutal and it’s what she knew and so she had said to me, we sat down and she said, “Bridget this is my vision. In a perfect world I would like to…” “You know I travelled to Europe with my husband and I would love to have a house there.” And she has a house in Colorado that they would go to part of the time and she lives in Southern California and she said, “In a perfect world, I would actually love to stop working this hard in five years and I would love to be able to have a house in Europe.” And she outlined everything that was important to her and she said, “Okay I am ready to do this. How do we take the steps to get there?” And so over a period of years, we put together a plan of what was important to her, what had to happen, where she was right now and by the way, when we started to work she had very little money saved even though she made a lot of money. She was like many other clients, many other women where she worked hard and she felt justified in spending that money and that’s what she did because there was always going to be more money coming in. And man, if she is going to work seven days a week, when she goes on vacation she is going all in and so we had to start with, “Okay well let’s see where the money is going that you’re earning. Let’s carve it out for some of these things that you said are important to you and let us put a timeline together and we are going to chip away at this things.” And she’s really busy so we are going to intermittently choose how we attack this and we had a written plan. And so, we just started to implement that plan and I have to tell you what is so cool is that a year and a half ago, she quit that job just the way she wanted and we were on time and she had built this house in Europe that was important to her and she actually works and runs a business remotely and she dialed back her work just the way we had hoped to would do. You know in her case, she said, “Okay I want to dial back the number of hours. I want to be in a place where I can flexibly work.” And I needed her to make X amount of income so she could cover her expenses and she’s making more than that because she is actually excited about work and she can work on her terms and she is still productive and she still loves to work but it’s way different because it is the way she wanted it to be and we were able to accomplish this about a year and a half ago and it is probably the coolest thing to see somebody living a life on their terms. You know she’s got a better relationship with her husband. She spends more time with him and she did it all, it’s all her. I just showed her how to do this.

[0:45:33] CH: That’s amazing. It’s got to be so fulfilling to help women really own their life and create the life that they really want and a couple more questions for you Bridget, how can our listeners connect with you, follow you, potentially work with you?

[0:45:51] Bridget Grimes: Sure, so we have a newsletter that comes out every month and on our website, you can opt in to get the newsletter and we share all sorts of cool information. And on our website, we also have a blog that we try to make meaningful whether it is about the quality of life or it’s usually, rarely about finances because I found that quality of life is just so important to these women execs. But we also have a place on the site where it says work with us. And if you are interested in learning more about how we work with clients, you can click on that link and tell us a little bit about what you are trying to accomplish and we can have a conversation on that. So you can also connect with me on LinkedIn.

[0:46:27] CH: Perfect. So let’s wrap up this interview with a challenge. What is one thing that women listening to this can do from your book to change their life?

[0:46:41] Bridget Grimes: So that is the fourth derailer that we didn’t talk about and that is a written plan and you know, you don’t have to go through all of the detailed steps that we go through with clients but if you just write down some steps that you are willing to take, what’s important to you and a couple incremental steps that you are willing to take and you put pen to paper. Statistics show that your chance of actually fulfilling those goals is exponentially greater. And I find it one of the most valuable things we do for people, we actually have this one page document in all of the stuff that we do is distilled into one page where it says, “Here is what you told us you wanted to do and here is our action steps.” And if you could do that one thing, your chances of reaching any of the goals that are important to you are so much greater and I would challenge anybody to do that. Just one piece of paper, you keep it by you in a place that maybe it’s on your desk at work. Maybe it’s near your computer at home and you look at that once or twice a month and you remind yourself about what’s important to you and a step or two that you are going to take and that can make all the difference.

[0:47:51] CH: The book is Corner Office Choices: The Executive Women’s Guide to Financial Freedom. Bridget thank you so much for being on the show.

[0:48:01] Bridget Grimes: Oh thanks for having me.

[0:48:04] CH: Many thanks to Bridget Grimes for being on the show. You can buy her book, Corner Office Choices, on amazon.com. Thanks for tuning in on today’s show. If you like what you heard, here is what I want you to do next. Open up the podcast app on your phone or iTunes on your computer and search for “Author Hour with Charlie Hoehn” and then click “ratings and reviews”. Take 10 seconds to rate this show or leave a review. It is a small favor but it’s really the best way to show your support and give me feedback and if you know someone else who’d love Author Hour, take another three seconds to text them a link to this episode. We’ll see you next time.