So what I found is people. It happens in men, it happens in male's late forties, it happens in certainly in fifties. But people at a certain age start to wonder about their purpose. Let's say you've made some money. You know where you are in your career, like your kids are getting older. You're not needed for every costume or drop off or pick up or bath or whatever stage the kids are at. But like let's say they're teens, then you start to think about what is your purpose.
It's not that easy to fill every hour in a day. Like you could be somebody who goes and works out a lot. Okay, is that an hour's at two hours a day? You shop a lot, you do some charity, you work, let's say you work eight hours a day. But like you're getting older and you're in your fifties, and you're wondering, like, is this it is? This is my big thing? This is my life, like my kids were my life. But now I'm going to be an
empty nester soon. So I'm finding and also in the same way that a woman every time she gets her period, she gets PMS and she's miserable, and she like thinks it's the first time it's ever happened, and she thinks she's the only one going through it. In the same way, this purposeless feeling that people get in their forties and fifties, it's like adjacent to a midlife crisis. It's something that people don't recognize as what it is because it's sort
of like we don't recognize our age. We might still look at someone twenty years younger than us, like a man or something, and think that they are so attractive and they could be our type. When they're twenty years younger than us, we're not there anymore. We're in our fifties now. The same way that you know, you still have the same eyeballs. We still think that, like we're supposed to have the same drive and hunger and passion and value and relevance and all that stuff in the workforce.
And the truth is we're older, we're not expired. But it's just not the same. Not everyone is working until they're ninety, and not everyone's reinventing themselves like Martha Stewart at eighty, you know, And and it's a thing that
has to be resolved. It's difficult to find purpose I find that it's a thing that many people are looking for, and it's like some people they don't want to just check the boxes, like Okay, I'm going over there and I'm doing charity, but like I don't feel like I'm really like digging into it or I'm investing in different things. And yes, I'm making money, but I don't feel like
I'm responsible for it. I'm not building something. And every really successful wealthy person that I've ever had on this podcast is not doing what they're doing or wasn't doing what they're doing, like Cheryl Samberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, like really successful people Mark Cuban, Gary Vee, Dana White. They don't do it for the money grant cardone. They're doing it
because it's who they are. It's like imprinted in them in their DNA, Like they want to build something, they love the idea, they want to create something, they want to add value to something, and that's who I am. Money is a great scorecard, you know, titles for some people are a great scorecard, promotions, being the best salesperson of the year, whatever it is. But like people who are true success stories, they do it because of the passion and the drive, and that's the thing that happens
when people are in their forties and fifties. It's that purpose. It's that like every day somebody needs you for something. You are integral to some process. You are the hub, the centerpiece of whatever this thing is, and you have to try to find it and back to authenticity, which I talk about all the time. It really has to be authentic. So I had left Reality TV, was getting paid several million dollars for a couple of months of work. It was not fun. I didn't like it. It was toxic,
but I mean it was some fun. I laughed a little, but I left and I sold my apartment in the city for a lot of money. And I thought like, yeah, I make money, I have money, I have a podcast, I do well, I do appearances, et cetera. But something in my body, probably I just was working towards something else and I didn't look for anything. I didn't say I have to find something. I walked away from HSN, which was also a lot of money. I walked away from a deal with Mark Burnett, which was also a
lot of money. I was kind of like, I was kind of like clearing out my closet. I didn't do it intentionally, but I had known that I had become successful on some level and that I was going to start to do things only that I really liked. It wasn't like a mantra yet, it was sort of just like happening, like this doesn't feel good, doesn't feel good to be on the housewise, it doesn't feel good to be on HSN, it doesn't feel good to be in this partnership with Mark Burnett's team, like it just didn't
feel good. So I would slowly chip away at it and walk away from different things for my own reasons. And an apparel deal with a big, big, like you know, almost billionaire apparel guy like just I kept doing that, and that seemed like, Okay, I'm gonna have to scale back. I'm gonna have to do less, buy less, travel less, like you know, have fewer homes whatever, because I was
being true to myself. But what ended up happening was I sat down in front of my phone, screwing around with makeup and just playing and talking about things that are actually interesting to me because I had the creative freedom, because I wasn't obligated and tethered to things that I didn't want to be doing, and so my best creative ideas always come when I'm rested, when I'm free. The best ideas don't come when you're in a grind in
a think tank stressing out. The best ideas come when you allow, when you are free, when you're walking, when you're breathing, when you're sleeping, when you are free, because that's when your brain is not so crowded. And so I just was playing around and my current social media business and my mingle mocktails business, which is a result of my social media business, and my points business point me, which is a business that allows you to utilize your points.
And my salad dressings and my popcorn and my coffee and my shapewear, all of these things are and my Forever Young Wine are way way more lucrative than my top day when I was doing Skinny Girl and when
I was on the Housewives, making millions of dollars. But it's because I just I didn't want to just do nothing, and I was being authentic and true to myself and this podcast it's become more and more successful because I also stopped having on guests that I just thought would be like big ticket items that would quote unquote rate versus like me just talking about whatever I want to talk about to you, whatever's on my mind. So like
the freedom of being true to yourself. Just talking to Chris Appleton and asking him a question that I did not know was a question no one had ever asked him about being a gay man who's in a marriage to a woman, Like I'm just being more true to myself. And as we get to an age where we're looking for purpose, you can't really do it from the outside in. And as you try to create businesses and ideas, you can't do it from the outside in. It's got to
be from the inside out. Like everything comes from the inside out. It's not. And every bad idea I've ever had, or bad business I've ever entered into is from the outside And you're supposed to want to do a talk show. It's what everybody wants, you know, it's what the big money is, and you're gonna make this kind of money, and this so much Allen's making, and this how much Rachel Ray's making. But in my body, I didn't want to do it. I didn't like the way it feels.
I don't like a lot of traffic. I don't like a lot of people. I don't like having to get in a car and go somewhere and be in hair and makeup with two hundred employees. I don't like infrastructure like that, So that makes sense that that didn't work.
Or when I wanted to do a certain beverage and my partner said, my partner, Arizona Beverage said, you have to wait a year or two to do what you want to do, but this is what we think you should do because the market tells us that Sparkling Ice beverage is making so much money that we need to have our own version of it, skinny Girl Sparklers. And
I'm like, but that's already there. Sparkling Ice is there, and by the time we get ours to market, it's going to be too late, which is exact exactly what happened. And like listening to them, listening to the outside or going and selling skinny raw cocktails and then be my people who bought me telling me that like Target wants every single flavor, they want twenty skews and pina colada and pumping out innovation when the inside of me knows
that you always go one thing at a time. Because when I was making all this money doing pesh minas years ago, you know, the market told me we gotta do pannchas, we gotta do pajamas, and I made no money on all that. It actually pulled the main thing down. Just stick to the shawls, even if you're making a lot less money on them, because they've become a lot less popular. You're not pulling yourself down by all of those other things that everyone else is telling you you'd
need to do. Ahsn. Everyone wants to do eight percent. Everybody wants that amazing coveted spot they're giving you two times a day where you could sell millions of dollars in merchandise. But every time I would get in front of the camera on the lights no disrespect to HSCN, I felt my soul crushing. I don't like hi, and let's sell this today. And it's too much being forced to sell for two hours and like you're supposed to pretend that every single thing is the Second Coming when
you can't be like this sort of sucks. It's fine, you know. And the most authentic thing I ever did on HSM was one day refused to sell the bathing suits because they were trash and my partners were like forcing me to sell them or like they're trash. I'm not selling these people trash. So somehow I found my way into being able to talk about what I want
to talk about authentically. That Chanell fucking dissed me that the four seasons sold me a disgusting stir fry that as a matter of fact, the four season should be crediting back the money that we paid for that stuffry. But anyway, you know, like being able to just be honest. Years ago, I moved to LA and I wanted to be an actress because I thought I wanted to be an actress because it seemed like what I was supposed to want. But every time I'd go on an audition,
I'd be like, I feel so trapped. I have to be somebody else. How could I be myself? This was like when was this was in the eighties in the nineties, Like, how could I be myself? How can I make money being myself? It's not a host because that's it's also scripted. There was no reality TV like there is now, so like I was foreshadowing what my life would be. I was like, I what I feel inside is that I want to be myself. How do I be myself? I'm entertaining,
I'm funny. How do I just be myself? The road met me where I was at because acting was not being myself. Acting was acting, but it seemed like being yourself because your mouth is moving and words are coming out. So I guess what I'm saying is you find your purpose from your passion and what's going on on the inside out. And I think we have to be really true to ourselves and give ourselves grace and give ourselves patience. And if you're in the wrong thing, something that feels
soul crushing, it's like being in the wrong relationship. Won't you won't find the right thing because your bandwidth is crowded with the wrong thing. And it takes courage to walk away from multiple millions of dollars from HSN, from a television show, and from a podcast. And it takes courage to walk away from a job where you were four one k. These things take courage. It takes courage
to walk out of a relationship that isn't bad. It just maybe like little by little crushing your soul every day, or maybe like you don't know yes, so it's no. And that's how it's been with these businesses, and that's what happens with purpose. You've got to clear the decks for the good to come in. You don't realize it.
I was in a relationship that was very good, but it wasn't the right relationship for me, and I felt it because I didn't know yes, I didn't know no. But I just I've done this many times, and maybe maybe that means I'm never supposed to be in a relationship. It doesn't, but I'm not going to be in a relationship that's wrong. Just as a seat filler, we do
it or we don't. So if you're in something that feels bad and you can afford to walk away from it, you probably should walk away from it because you will jump, and you will fly, most person to the after, most to the asper