A conversation with Andrea Simon, the CEO of Simon Associates Management Consultants ("SAMC"). She is a corporate anthropologist, culture change expert, futurist, speaker, podcaster and author.
Andrea Simon is a corporate anthropologist, culture change expert, and an explorer at heart. According to Andi, whether you are a company or an individual adapting to fast-changing times, your story transitions with you. The future is yours to envision.
Andrea shares about growing up in her family's retail business in Manhattan, on the corner of 110th Street and Broadway. She noted that the women in her family, both her grandmother and her mother, were forces in that business.
Andi was encouraged by her father to explore when she went off to college and so she did, discovering her interest in anthropology, an interest that she ultimately pursued as her profession. She was driven not by financial considerations but by her intellectual curiosity, knowing as she did that an academic career would not be a big money maker.
Anthropology filled Andi's curiosity about, as she puts it, the unknowns, and her passion to figure them out. One thing about anthropology that she learned early is: people don't really know what they're doing or why they're doing it! As Andi was crafting her own story, she became fascinated with the opportunity she had to study how people change.
"You already know how to do what you're doing. Now the question is, what are you not doing? Because that's where your growth is from. I've crafted an approach really grounded in observational research that helps (them) see things through a fresh lens." Andrea Simon.
Key takeaways:
- Keep showing up, since you never know where your next opportunity will come from. Andrea was already a tenured anthropology academic, when a chance meeting at a cocktail party brought her interest in studying change to a new career path consulting with the financial industry which was learning to adapt to the changing environment brought on by deregulation.
It was another chance meeting that brought her expertise to bear in the healthcare industry that went through its own changes as managed care was introduced.
- Know that listening is an important leadership skill. As a trained anthropologist, Andi is a keen observer and listener. She learned that the best way to understand and motivate people to change was to listen to them, observe them and to help them see what was happening.
- Feel open, as opposed to challenged. Rather than obsessing about her next move, Andrea retains, as she put it, a curiosity about how to have an interesting life and continuing to fill it with cool stuff.
About the guest:
Andrea J. Simon, Ph.D. (“Andi”) is an international leader in the growing field of corporate anthropology, an Axiom bronze Best Business Book of 2017 winning author of On the Brink: A fresh lens to take your business to new heights, and the founder and CEO of Simon Associates Management Consultants (SAMC). Andi’s second book, Rethink: Smashing the Myths of Women in Business, is a 2022 Axiom bronze Best Business Book in the Women in Business category. Rethink shows how women today are challenging the expected norms of business and crashing through with extraordinary creative business, legal and professional solutions.
Linkedin:- http://linkedin.com/in/andisimon
Website:- http://www.simonassociates.net
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[00:00:00] Andrea Simon: You already know how to do what you're doing. Now the question is what are you not doing? Because that's where your growth is from. So I've crafted an approach really grounded in observational research that helps them see things through a fresh lens.
Welcome to Making Change With Your Money, a podcast that highlights the stories and strategies of women who experienced a big life transition and overcame challenges as they redefined financial success for themselves. Now, here's your host, certified financial planner, Laura Rotter.
[00:00:36] Laura Rotter: I am so excited to have as my guest today, Andrea Simon.
Andy is a self-described corporate anthropologist,
a culture change expert and a futurist. She's also a speaker, a podcaster, and an author specializing in helping people and companies change and in expanding women's empowerment. Andy, you yourself have experienced changes in your career and you address in your second book, Rethink.
Smashing the myths of women in business tools and a framework that you provide for other women to challenge their thinking, and to smash any preconceived notions that may be holding them back. So you are such a perfect guest for this podcast. I'm so excited for our conversation.
[00:01:30] Andrea Simon: I thank you so much, Laura.
It's so absolutely exciting for you to have launched this podcast, and what a great topic. So it's real interesting, as I was reflecting back over my book and some of the stories of women in there, there are several who have had interesting life changes in their journeys, all reflecting on their financial acumen and opportunities that came along with it.
So this is really a great topic for us to talk about as we think about 2023 and the changes that are coming all over. So for your listeners, I'm delighted to be here. Thank you.
[00:02:05] Laura Rotter: Thank you. So I'd love to start with same first question for all my guests, and that question is, what was money like in your family growing up, Andy?
[00:02:18] Andrea Simon: What a great question because I grew up in a family firm and I vividly remember it was a retail business. In Manhattan on the corner of a hundred 10th Street in Broadway, near Columbia University, and it was a third generation. It was supposed to be mine. And I bowed out of that when I discovered anthropology, but I remember vividly watching my grandmother cash check count the cash upstairs on the third floor office, literally counting the cash.
And I vividly remember. Not only counting it, but reflecting on it. And it was a store and every sale had meaning. I remember going out, off and tell the story. We went into the market. I was being trained. Little did I know to become part of the merchandising team, and I said to my grandmother, how do you know what to buy?
He said Andrea, one third's going to sell full. One third is going to sell on sale, and one third is going to walk out the door. And while we might laugh when you're in the retail business, I vividly remember people shoplifting. Money though was an integral part of our conversation at dinner at night.
And it was both the, what the prices of goods were, what the margins were how they were going to manipulate the old, the old way of doing things is you had seasons where full price and then you had seasons with things on sale. And I remember watching them move the stock around trying to encourage people at which points.
So there was a very immediate awareness of how the work we did turned into the money that was made and how we then could capitalize on it. But it wasn't casual. And I remember working as a child in the basement putting clothes on hangers with Leo, the gentleman who hung all the clothes on hangers.
And then put them up on the racks. And I was, four or five. But, I remember how much fun it was on the one hand, how I was little. It was like a game, but it was also a training period. And unless people have an early internship of some kind or are sitting there in their dad or mom's office now, I said to you, my grandmother, my mother, and my grandmother were forces in this business.
My father was as well. Sometimes the conversations got a little testing, but the women weren't sitting at home, and my grandmother was truly the matriarch who in her mind understood what this business was. And from her mind it was location, location, location. But my father doubled the business, doubled it again,
bought the building. And then when they finally retired, my grandmother turned 80. It was time they sold the whole property. First, they opened Dino's Supermarket and that burnt to the ground, and then they sold the property to Columbia. But as I tell you this, the value of everything wasn't, it was an intrinsically connected to dollars and cents.
Investments and assets, savings and returns what you were paying taxes on or not. And it was it was a learning period for me, a very vivid one that I remember. I remember my grandmother, I almost wanted to call my book what I learned at my grandmother's knee. Cause part of the time I was sitting there right next to her watching her count the cash.
So that's my early introduction and I have a hundred others have different ones, but for me that was pretty.
[00:05:34] Laura Rotter: Which is so interesting. Thank you for sharing that. How you really learned not just people's messages, not just parents' messages. A dollar saved a dollar earned as a dollar saved, but that you learned margins and inventory and how to run a business and that the women in your family were an integral part.
Were, as you put it, a force in the business and what a wonderful message for you to take in as you describe it. Was it difficult? What do you remember of separating from that family business and perhaps from expectations that you would take on a role within the family business?
[00:06:21] Andrea Simon: Sometimes we do things without really understanding the meaning of what we're doing.
So I went off to college. My father said, Hey, so last time you can be irresponsible. Go explore. And little did I know I was by nature and explorer, I was curious and I found anthropology by chance, but I wasn't taking any business classes and I wasn't taking anything that would set me into a finance or an economics role.
I was just taking humanities and literature and I'm just exploring. He was right. There are things that speak to you in ways that are intangible. It's not Looking for a social science to get into. But the professor was truly mind expanding and in some ways I think anthropologists are looking for their culture and I didn't have a strong bond to any particular religious or social community.
I was pretty much raised to be a soloist. My mother used to say to me, I don't really care what your friends are thinking or doing. I care what you're doing, which is, sounds nice, but it was a very hard life to figure out what should I be doing and who should I be doing it with, and how could I be a good daughter as well as a happy person.
So college was a great experience. I was president of my sorority, ran for student government, and I was exploring all kinds of things, but anthropology caught my imagination. And I also met my husband and I was 19. He was a little bit older than that, but not much. And I moved I was able at Penn State to go back to New York, to Columbia to take my last 18 months at Columbia and still have a degree without having to transfer everything.
So I took him my anthropology at Columbia, which at the time was among the best of the. . And so the folks who I met there were stellar ethnographers and linguists and just, and some of them were opening up new fields and applied anthropology. And so I was happier than you can imagine.
And I was just literally up the street from my father's store. And then one day I came back and I said, I'm going to become an anthropologist. And my father, What's that and how are you going to apply it in the business? I said, I'm not going into the business. I don't have any interest in the business. I said, it's your business.
It's moms, it's grandma's. But my, I have discovered an academic field that I think I want to pursue now financially. I didn't expect anything. Because, teaching assistants were making not much money if they made seven or $8,000. It was a highly paid teaching assistant at that time. And my husband and I both knew that if we pursued, I pursued an academic career.
I could do very nicely as a professor maybe even administrator. But it wasn't money driven. It was intellectual stimulation. Curiosity and I, when I met him and I, we got married, I then went off to Greece to do my research and he stayed here and we had letters. I stopped all my letters, but we were on a journey and I think the joy, he said, I met a fellow who's totally embraced my journey.
And in the process, the two of us have both journeyed along sometimes experimenting with things that didn't work and sometimes experimenting with stuff that really took off. And we've done well financially all through a married 54 years now. And so we've had a fabulous time. He was a serial entrepreneur and when I say some work, some didn't.
So what move on an entrepreneur's joy is building. And so some of his adventures have turned out very well and some of them just closed down. Moved away from sold off, did not. That's an anthropologist joy because you don't really know what's happening. You're just observing and reflecting on it. I've actually written an article about him for James Wiley.
I think about what it's like living with a serial entrepreneur now. I taught entrepreneurship at Washington University and I was a visiting.
[00:10:08] Laura Rotter: When did you do that? I have you moving from Penn State. To finish your degree at Columbia, did you meet your husband? And I love the fact that his name is also Andy.
Did you meet him at Penn State?
[00:10:20] Andrea Simon: No, actually, I met him at summer camp on Schroon Lake. If I could take you all the dots. He was up there between jobs. He was a friend of the owners of the camp, and I was a camp director, and it was at the bar the first weekend there, July 4th. There was a fight in the bar and then the next day we met, and he said, hi, I'm Andy and I said, hi, I'm Andy and we were married a long time.
[00:10:43] Laura Rotter: And I do want to give props to your parents, Andy.
So first of all,
it couldn't have been easy for you to say that you are not going to go into the family business. And frankly, look the environment and the economy has changed, but our ability. To have parents that said, just explore, learn for learning's sake. You know how many articles I read now about what's the ROI in a college education and how much should you spend and how much to have the freedom from parents who say, this is your chance to just try anything you want is such a gift.
And just to recognize that you had that and then you met a partner for life who carried that and enabled you to get married and then go to Greece.
[00:11:28] Andrea Simon: And you know the most interesting part is that when Andy and I were on the beach at Schroon Lake, he said, what do you want to be when you grow up?
And I said, oh, I want to be either an attorney or an Anthropologist. He said, oh, don't be an attorney. Be an anthropologist and I'll be here for you, and he has been. So, I'm, you on that note, you couldn't go back. I didn't really want to be an attorney. I found law interesting, but I thought anthropology filled my curiosity.
about the unknowns and trying to figure them out. And I'm, at the end of the day, a really curious person looking to figure out things. And the one thing about anthropology that you learned early is that people don't really know what they're doing or why. And humans are meaning makers. We make meaning out of things.
And if you look across the globe, whether it's marriage or earning a living, it all has different meaning in different roles. But we're all men and women and families. And how many different ways can you have families and why are they all different and yet they're similar? And how do we make sense out of businesses that all are.
Similar but different, the mergers and acquisition world are filled with the trauma of two businesses coming together who shouldn't love each other and can't stand each other. And what is it, Sue? But in any event to go back to your thread, because I think it's a beautiful one. I have, I was joyfully on my way and not really as sensitive or realizing what.
Pushing away in terms of that business. Because it never dawned on me that I was supposed to go into the business. It never dawned on me that they didn't have a succession plan if I didn't. And so, when I think these days about people's succession plan and family firms, 80% of America family firms, and they're all struggling with an aging boomer parent. and they all need succession plans. And I look back and I say, I guess I was their succession plan. I didn't do so well at it.
[00:13:21] Laura Rotter: What was your thought when you graduated? Of, how you would use this anthropology degree, and I love how it's morphed. So, if you could describe it to our listeners.
[00:13:33] Andrea Simon: Being a classical anthropologist, a cultural anthropologist I had a wonderful mentor and Ernest Ernestine Friel, Ernie Friedel had done her work in VA in. And the Mediterranean at the time was a very interesting hot place for anthropologist and she said, oh, why don't you go to Greece?
And I said, okay. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to Greece for, but I was going to be an anthropologist. So, I went to Greece to find something to study. Without knowing it, I was really exposing myself to how people were changing, to adapt to changing times, because that's what was happening there. A tremendous amount of rural urban migration.
A lot of building up in Athens and a lot of people who were buying taxi cabs and other things in Athens so that their sons or daughters could move to Athens and have a job or a career or something there. And the villages were finding their succession diminished and the folks who stayed there were interested on among themselves.
And that sort of carried me back to New York where there was a large creek population of, I. And in return migration. So, you can begin to see a big rubber band going with people leaving the farms, coming into the city and then coming to America. And it was a beautiful time for people to do the American Dream within their own community.
And so, the interesting question for me was how did they adapt, reimagine what was being Greek in. And how, what did they keep and what did they shed? And so, it was a perfect time for me to study Greeks in the Story of Queens, which is not far from me. And it was a great community who embraced you, brought you in, and wanted to help you do your work.
And I was already teaching at Queens College that I got a teaching position at Hunter College. The funnel led you up there, people who said, oh, you should, and then you. And then from there I got a position at Ramapo College in New Jersey, which interestingly enough was a brand-new university being designed as part of the New Jersey system to be an interdisciplinary one.
And their students, about half of which were Vietnam War vets coming back from the Vietnam War. And so being interdisciplinary on one hand and having a large returning vet population on the other, What's a wonderful environment for me to figure out how do you tell her this to an audience, a student body who are very career oriented, job focused, and yet want to be able to understand the interdisciplinarity of learning and, it's, nothing is easy, but it was a very interesting time for me to apply.
What I was learning among Greeks and how I was learning among Vietnam non-vet in a university that was emerging. And I was so slowly crafting my own story and we live our stories, but I was really quite fascinated by the opportunity I had to study how people change.
[00:16:30] Laura Rotter: Okay. And so then where did that lead to? We could have a whole other discussion of, bringing this, what is academic work into, Into business.
[00:16:39] Andrea Simon: First I got my tenure, and I got a postdoc and I was studying American culture with a gentleman down at the University of Pennsylvania and I had two daughters who were little ones, and I took them back to Greece with me to spend several months on a Greek island on deep per rose to study Greek.
So, I was doing the anthropology thing and I was doing the academic thing, and I was doing it well. And so, I got my tenure and I could see myself being there for a long time, but I like change. And so, I'm at a cocktail party with my husband Andy, who was an executive at Citibank, which was changing. And some of the folks there, some of the execs said to me, why don't you come help us change now?
Clearly, I was already crafting a story about my interest in understanding how people. And my research about how people change, and I didn't realize I was doing such an interesting job on myself. In a sense. I was defining who I was and where I stood in this world of academics, often who were studying the past or stability.
And I was interested in vacuums where people had to fill it. I was hired to come help them adapt to the deregulated environment. And deregulation was crafting a whole new story for banking. So if you can think about it, I was living in a state of change and they had, I don't know, 20,000 employees, all of whom came to work from nine to 12 and one to three.
And if they didn't steal, they had a job for life. And they said to me, how do we change them so they don't just arrive and attend, but now they have deliverables and they have to deliver good customer service. They have to cross sell products. They have to see themselves as serving customers differently.
And needless to say, that is difficult to do. Cause what you did was hire people who are obedient and they didn't hire entrepreneurs or salespeople. And wasn't going to be easy changing the culture, but that's what I got hired to help do. And I did for a year. And then I got inside Citibank and stayed around for a couple of years.
I launched direct access bank by personal computer that we take for granted now, but it was a new beam. And I had people say to me, I really love this. Can you help me install my computer so I can do it ? And the modems you plugged into the electric outlet and they were very slow. I think at the time we bought our first Lisa
And this was early times for transformation. And then I got recruited to Poughkeepsie Savings Bank and I became a savings bank, svp. To help them change. Bought their first computers, their first we launched their first ATMs. We bought banks down in the south. We were a, we were the bank of F D R, so you can imagine their story.
And now it was becoming a modern bank. It was two hours out of Manhattan, but it could have been a hundred thousand miles away. It was just fascinating. And then, By chance, I had a friend from Citibank Days who was recruiting for Montefiore Medical Center, and then she wanted to recruit somebody to set up their branding and marketing, and so I began to develop techniques for helping organizations change.
[00:19:43] Laura Rotter: So thank you for that succinct summary. Andy I do have a question. It's
very clear that having been trained and have great interest as an anthropologist, you have an interest. In helping people change, and you've come and you've had these roles to do it. You've always seen through a lens of the fact that we create meaning through our stories, but if you look since you were a child, what are the actual skills that you feel like are inherent to you and that you've grown, that you bring to this work? Because working with people and helping them change is very different than identifying the change that needs to take place.
[00:20:27] Andrea Simon: That's a wonderful question and I compliment your Honor, because most people aren't that curious. It's a great question. The approach that I've learned that I bring is to be an observer and I assume nothing. When I come into an organization, they tell me things about what they would like to see happen, but they can't concretize it in some fashion.
And they want to see things, they want to stop, but they don't know exactly what do they mean. So they create an illusion or a mystery, or fiction. And so I just sit and watch, and I don't care whether it's a hospital where I'm sitting in the lobby watching what people are doing, or I'm sitting in a hospital and I'm trying to figure out why the infection rates for one doctor are so high, but I am or if I'm in banking you don't have to leave the bank floor for very long to understand what's working and what's not working.
But don't ask them because they tell you what they think you want to hear and until you videotape them and show them what's actually going on, you realize they don't know what there's, what's going on. So my training is to be an observer, a listen. My leadership style is to be very heavily as a listener.
Meetings were bringing together people and you'd hadn't, you tried not to open your mouth before everyone else in the room had time to give you their thoughts. And I say you tried because it's hard when you're supposed to be an s SVP and you have an EVP and you've got a whole team of people looking for leader.
And they think that means you're going to direct them in some fashion, but you want them to be thinkers and to come with opinions. And I capitalized on that sometimes. I blamed it and I learned that the best way to understand and motivate people was to listen to them. Observe them and then help them see what's happening.
I often would take clients, particularly new clients out at doing anthropology with me. I'd take them to their clients and I said, we're going to go inside your client and spend a day in their life. Me and anthropologist with me play, and we would spend a day and then we would listen and we would watch and we'd walk out and we'd write down everything we had seen, and then we would compare notes.
And it was as if we were in two different places. They're looking to see how their view fits into their business model, what they make, how they make it, what they sold, how they sold it, and mine were all the gaps. I'm looking for all the opportunities there are unfulfilled and really ways to be a value innovator instead of simply more of what you're doing now.
You already know how to do what you're doing. The question is what are you not doing? Because that's where your growth is from. So I've crafted a, an approach. Really grounded in observational research that helps them see things through a fresh lens. And if they can see it both personally and professionally, man, you can see them open.
All of a sudden. I don't have to do anything. I just steer. They have an epiphany. The brain goes, oh, that's what you've been talking about. I said, no, that's what your customers have talking about. That's. And that's what's going on in this world. And Laura I've developed a career that has served me well, but I think that part of the reason it has is because my joy is in helping others do well.
And so part of it is helping them understand human minds and the experience. So now you and I were going to talk about though, on money and finance, and I've been talking a lot about Andy Simon and anthropology in my career. How do I best help your listeners?
[00:23:53] Laura Rotter: First of all, thank you for the question. I would like to just reflect
back to you some things that resonated with me. I too, people come to me for help with money and think that I'm a frontal teacher. I'm the parent. I'm going to tell them, and I'm a guide. I'm a guide and a listener, and I very much resonate when you said that you.
Sometimes people are looking to you to be the expert, and the most important thing you could do is to listen and reflect back what you're hearing. I'd also like to share that in my own life, the biggest changes, as you've said, have not come from these big radical things, but I sometimes feel like it's just like shifting the tilt of your head where you go. It's just that reframing that can make such a difference. So thank you for explaining it that way. What I've heard as you've gone through your life journey, what I heard was a lot of synchronicities as you talked about, people you met at parties or is that how you experienced it? As you look back on how this trajectory took place, do you feel like it was self-directed or a mixture of kismet, if you will.
[00:25:05] Andrea Simon: Oh, I think that's a real good aha because most of our lives are full of serendipity and I don't care whether it's meeting my husband at the bar at a camp, and nowhere, discovering the anthropology professor by chance.
And not really having a path going somewhere, going out for cocktails, and talking to people. I love talking to people and listening and you never know what they're going to, what it's going to lead to. And I've met people on airplanes who've hired me. It's the most. Bizarre thing. You sit down, what do you do and how do you do?
You might be Ricard and then you get a call and I really like meeting you. Can you help us? A woman, Renee Mauborgne, who wrote Blue Ocean Strategy, and I'm a Blue Ocean strategist, and Renee was coming to speak about her new book at the Harvard Club and I had a client, Monte for Medical Center was my client.
And they thought it was a fabulous book. Shouldn't we go? So we went and we went to hear her. I'm in the elevator with her by. And I said, I love your book. It's very anthropological. And Renee says, you should be a Blue Ocean strategist. And I said to her, and what's that? I have no idea. Let's make it up.
And I laughed and I said, you're right up my alley. So I became a trained practitioner on something we made up. But it's she reviewed my last book and sometimes she brings me clients but that's the way life goes. Keep showing up and
recognizing that takes. A certain way of looking at the world.
Yes. And feeling open as opposed to challenged. My third book is just at the publishers and it's called Women Mean Business. And I'm very excited about, it's a great book. It's got a hundred women in there sharing their wisdom. But as I sent it to her, I paused for a moment. I said to my husband, so what's next?
And he said, you'll figure it out. I'm not worried. And I do think I have this kind of curiosity about how do you build an interesting life and keep filling it with cool stuff?
[00:26:57] Laura Rotter: So our listeners or many women who are in the midst of a challenging life transition, I certainly demographic you focus on.
What recommendations would you have for resources they can use or for support or for growth?
[00:27:14] Andrea Simon: The first thing, Is that the pain of change has got to be accepted and understood. I think that when you're talking about people, women in particular, who have made a bold leap to do something, even if it's not that clear, your brain creates chemistry, cortisol, when it's unfamiliar with things it.
And consequently, your amygdala is hijacking every good idea you have, and it's saying, no, don't do that. No, that's not good idea. I don't know how to do that. And I don't care if you're inside a company changing your job or you're going to look for a new one. So understand that your brain is a problem and an opportunity because it can learn new things, but you're going to have to manage your brain.
So every time you say, no, that's not the way it's done, or That's not who I am, say that's a good idea. And if you start to say, that's a good idea, write it down in a little black book, and all of a sudden you're begin to see all the ideas that are coming at you that you are ignoring because your brain is putting you into a funnel and on a pipeline that says, oh, don't do that. So just understand your brain's part. The second thing is that you formed a story in the past about who you were and what you did that became an illusion of your reality, and it's an illusion. You live it and you live every day seeing the stuff that conforms to it, but all this other stuff out there that's coming at you, meeting someone in an elevator or talking to someone in a bar, all that other stuff you still need because it's painful to learn new things.
Your brain gets real frustrated when it has to meet somebody new and figure them out. Turn it around and begin to say, ah, the opportunities are around me. But I've got to begin to shed the story that holds me stuck and begin to free it up into a new story and begin to frame it. Write a diary at the end of the day and start.
Diaries are wonderful. They are great notebooks. You don't start to begin to pull your new story together and literally as story, because until you begin to understand it and see it. You could draw pictures about it, but the only one who can manage your transition is you. Which leads me to my third thing.
Don't let others define. You're making this choice because of you where you are. And up until now, it's quite possible. Others have defined you. They've put you into jobs, they've moved you along a career path. They have told you not to go into jobs. If you are going to do something now, to change your own story, you are going to have to be in control of it.
And that means you're going to have to take, and you're going to have to say quite clearly, That's a very nice idea, but that's not what I want to do. And I've worked with a bunch of women who have gone through it. One woman was fired by her therapist. She said I had to find a new way of helping me because I wasn't doing it.
And so, we worked through this process that we use, and slowly we began to rewrite her story. It was all there. She just needed a story writer to help her. So my job is I listened to her begin to frame the story, and then I said, so it sounds and then sometimes she'd say, absolutely. How'd you hear that?
Or, no, that's not really what I said or meant. And that echo back was a way of seeing in the mirror. Who was emerging. And next thing you know, even during the pandemic, things came together in strange ways. She was approaching retirement, she was an accountant and somehow the partners came together and said, isn't a time that all of our almost 65 year olds begin to plan for their retirement?
And she said, oh, that's up perfect. And then a friend of hers said, I'm forming a law firm for elder care. Would you like to be the. Person on it as you begin to prepare for your, she said, I was thinking about doing just that. My favorite clients are some of those old and slow. Slowly, she began to let the dots come in and the anger go away.
And I share that with the listener because she was in control and she could easily be unhappy or she can begin to build the new future, which leads to visualize it, begin to. Your kids and don't let them say, oh mom, don't do that. That's don't tell them. You're going to have to tell me. That's a great idea because it's my idea and that's where I'm going.
And find a community who will be your. Peer, friends, family, and reinforcers of it. Because they can undermine you quickly and if you're getting undermined and find some other folks to help you because you need some others to be your partners in this journey of yours. And it's only your journey and it's only once maybe it comes back.
But I think we're going to take this one as a face value and say, this is a very important journey for us, isn't it?
[00:32:03] Laura Rotter: It is, and so beautifully said, Andy, especially the need for community of cheerleaders and supporters. We are often our own worst enemy of telling ourselves what we are and aren't capable of doing.
Women especially. And we need to surround ourselves with people who can see us clearly and we get messages. From the television, from our culture,
from our parents, of who we should be.
And it's very hard to let go. And I love the way you keep referring to stories. We are meaning making machines. And there's a lot of confirmation bias in what we choose to see out there.
And when you reframe, as you said so eloquently, different things. So as we come to this, the end of our time together, I'd love to know. If you can name perhaps how your definition of success, financial success has shifted as you've matured?
[00:33:09] Andrea Simon: Big question. To end this. Financial success is an interesting concept.
There were times when my husband was an entrepreneur starting up businesses, and I had a very high paying job as an. So I was a breadwinner. There were other times where I was starting my business and he was developing his and I was making no money and he was doing really well. And then he sold his last business to a t s and did extremely well with it.
And we don't have to worry about money or finances now, although I still work and I love to make money. And I say that because I. Sometimes we don't think that's a good thing to do, and I think it's a really good thing to do and having the comfort that comes with that and being able to share with my family or with charities, the benefits that come.
But I also know that none of it has been easier without some challenges along the way. I also think that I'm personally indulgent and I like to buy. That give me some pleasure at times, more often for my kids than for myself or my grandkids. But I think you need to know who you are and rather than judge it.
Just be who you are and then make sure you can afford to be who you are to. I go back to the time when I was in the retail business, my family's firm, and I can go into the store and pick out anything I wanted. That was a very bad way to be raised. Because you can't go into any store and pick out anything you want, but that habit sticks around and at times I feel like it's just the store, but it's not, anyway, I feel quite blessed.
We have our health, we have great kids, grandkids, and my husband and I have a good time together. And I do wish that for all of your listeners as well. A good partner is a real good companion. We have great conversations and we have fun.
[00:34:59] Laura Rotter: Yes, and you're pointing out how abundance comes in many forms.
And of course we all want to be resourced. We want to be resourced financially, but we also want to be resourced in our relationships and in. Other areas of wealth in our lives. So Andy, how can people find you? What's the best way to reach out if they're interested in learning more about your work?
[00:35:23] Andrea Simon: Great question. Our new website was launched just two months ago and it looks really cool. It's called Simon associates.net. Dot net and you can find out everything about what we do there. My books and my programs are at andisimon.com, but they're connected, but it's A N D I simon.com and you can find out more there.
And the contact pages on both come right to us and we love to talk to people, even if you're just curious. The kind of work we do with clients. I've got three leadership academies going, I have had several clients for retainers for several. That we worked with on helping them change, and I have, I'm an executive coach.
I'm a John Mattone executive coach, and I have three, four clients now that I'm doing executive coaching with as they're going through some of the same challenges that you're talking about. I love my leadership academies. One place I'm in my fourth year, another place in my fifth year. Leadership academies are much in need because very few companies are developing their leaders now, and they do them sort of ad hoc instead of consistently.
And I get great pleasure helping organizations change and do it by developing their talent. And you can learn all about that. Watch my videos and have some fun.
[00:36:37] Laura Rotter: Great. I will put all of this in the show notes. Andy, thank you so much for being my guest. I really appreciate it. It's been wonderful learning about your journey.
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Andrea Simon of Simon Associates Management Consultants. Some takeaways from our conversation are keep showing. Since you never know where your next opportunity will come from. Andrea was already a tenured anthropology academic when a chance meeting at a cocktail party brought her interest in studying change to a new career path, consulting with the financial industry.
which was adapting to the changing environment brought on by deregulation, and it was another chance meeting that brought her expertise to bear in the healthcare industry that also went through its own changes as managed care was introduced.
Takeaway number two, know that listening is an important leadership.
As a trained anthropologist, Andy is a keen observer and listener, and she learned that the best way to understand and motivate people to change was to listen.
to them, to observe them, and to help them see what was happening.
And finally, as you experience your life, feel open as opposed to challenged,
rather than obsessing about what comes next. Andrea Retains, as she puts it, a curiosity about how to have an interesting life and how to continue to fill it with cool stuff.
Are you enjoying this podcast? Please don't forget to subscribe so that you won't miss next week's episode. And if you love the show, a rating and a review would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for listening to Making Change with your Money Certified Financial planner, Laura Rotter specializes in helping people just like you organize, clarify, and invest their money. In order to support a life of purpose and meaning, go to www.trueabundanceadvisors.com/workbook for a free resource to help you with your journey.
Disclaimer, please remember that the information shared by this podcast does not constitute accounting, legal, tax, investment, or financial advice. It's for information purposes only. You should seek appropriate professional advice for your specific information.