Come on. Will I plug this is George G and the time is right welcome today’s guest strong and powerful Kathy caprino. Kathy, are you ready to do this?

Kathy Caprino 0:19
I am so ready George, thank you for having me.

george grombacher 0:22
excited to have you on let’s let’s let’s go Kathy is finding brave career and leadership coach. She is the author of the most powerful you. She’s international speaker and trainer, senior Forbes, contributor, host of the finding brave podcast, she’s helping women build rewarding and impactful careers of significance. Kathy, tell us a little about your personal life some more about your work and why you do what you do.

Kathy Caprino 0:47
All right, personal life. What a question. I love it. Stamford, Connecticut. I’m a mom of two amazing adults are so happy. I’m a singer on the side, which we were chatting about. I’m a tennis player, I’m a dog lover. And, and that’s it, really. And frankly, my work is become really my life, which is it’s fun. For me, my work is like going to a movie. I mean, it’s work. But the work is as we were talking about last 16 years, I have focused on career coaching for both men and women. But my sweet spot is mid to high level professional women. I would say I think this is kind of an important piece. Before that I was a marriage and family therapist. And before that, I was a corporate person for 18 years. And the reason I’m so passionate about this work is that I had a very successful corporate career on the outside, but on the inside George it was it was a mess. So many bumps that turned into true crises. You know, sexual harassment, gender bias, toxic, narcissistic colleagues and bosses, chronic illness infection of the trachea, every three months of who’s ever heard of it tracheitis you know, where I couldn’t speak and it was really serious, but I didn’t know how to get out of it. And frankly, there weren’t a lot of people back then that knew how to help with careers. So that’s why I’m so passionate about helping other people who know something has to change. But for a lot of reasons they can’t do it themselves. So they can’t figure it out. That’s that’s my world.

george grombacher 2:22
For sure it up tracheitis What a horrible affliction for a singer to have.

Kathy Caprino 2:28
It was so horrible. And what would happen was I would it would burn I would be so sick and then nothing would come out of my mouth. I remember looking at my little children then. And I couldn’t speak and I don’t know if anyone listening knows about energy and chakras and but what is the throat it’s the seed of your personal expression. It’s who you are how you communicate in the world. So I didn’t believe in this at the time, but a few people said go to an energy healer and I went to two and they both without me saying anything. They said, Wow, what do you do for a living? Because it’s making you sick? I didn’t want to believe that because I made good money. And I was 40 and I didn’t want to change everything. And this is why we stay stuck

george grombacher 3:15
though that that was what I was curious about and it’s not a glib thing it’s a really want to know was it psychological that you were in this terrible situation with all those I don’t want to say terrible people just terrible situation with terrible people around you potentially that you weren’t able to express yourself or speak up for yourself reluctant to you know, all that I imagine that that’s the things that you help people with now

Kathy Caprino 3:44
it’s exactly what I help people with now and I’m interested in your question, you know, having been a therapist, when you say was it psychological? You mean the loss of voice Yeah. No one’s ever put it quite like that. Um I think I would reframe that and say, when we don’t feel safe to express who we are often you know, a lot of people have said this even in an emergency room doctor who I’ve interviewed, your body says what your lips cannot I would put it that way. meaning you’re going to get an affliction of some kind so many people come to me who have chronic illness and you know, there’s a wonderful book by Louise Hay who’s now passed away at you can heal your life about kind of the spiritual under or emotional underpinnings of illness. I don’t mean you shouldn’t go to a doctor, you know, I go to the doctor, believe in eastern and western medicine, but your body does give you signs. And often they’re metaphoric. Like if your back is killing you, sometimes it’s how were you not supporting yourself? How were you afraid? It’s It’s incredible. So Yeah, I’d say that my body was giving me a sign that things are really bad here.

george grombacher 5:06
So I what was for lack of a better term, sort of the breaking point or the lightbulb moment that said, okay, I’ve done a couple of these things. And I’m just recognizing that it’s not just me, there’s these massive problems that so many other people are having. I’m in a position to be able to have an impact.

Kathy Caprino 5:25
Well, it went the big breaking point was I had so I’m in this two year toxic position, very senior. And one of the leaders said we were going to look for another house and the leader said, buy the biggest house you can, because you have a long career here. And my husband, we’re divorced now, but very amicable. He. He’s a renowned jazz percussionist. So I kind of saw myself as the moneybags, we bought the biggest house we could afford and one month later was 911. And one month later, I was laid off and it was that layoff and I’m sure people listening really understand. You know, I wrote my first book is break down, break through, you have a breakdown. That was the breakdown moment, I felt betrayed, the way it went down was so horrible for me so hard Look, I get choked up, even talking about it. And it was, you know, back after 911, good grief. It was just so hard. And I felt so betrayed that I snapped George. And I said, I cannot return to this life. I can’t do it. But my kids were little then what was I going to do? And I’ll just say this, because sometimes the conversation one conversation literally changes your life. I was having therapy over why I hated my work so much. And I’m in his office, my therapist crying a week after this layoff and he said to me, Kathy, I know that this looks like the worst crisis you’ve ever faced. From where I sit, it’s the first moment you can choose who you want to be in the world. Now, who do you want to be? Now people listening probably will understand that if I knew the answer to that I probably wouldn’t have been in the mess I was. So I went, I don’t know I want to be you. And he we laughed. I like that just blurted out because what does that mean to you? And I said, I want to help people, not hurt people and be hurt. And he said, You know, I’ve known you a little while I think you’d make a great therapist, blah, blah, blah. I researched it. I said, Oh my gosh, this is what I want the Masters in, you know, a lot of people I worked with had MBAs and I said to myself, I don’t I don’t care about an MBA, but in studying Marriage and Family Therapy Wow. It was the answer to everything why we’re why we develop the way we do you know, all of it. But as I did it, and I dealt with rape, incest, pedophilia, suicidality, drug addiction, Georgia, it was, it was hard. I had a client call me a few years into it and say, I’m going to kill myself now. I’m going to wrap my car around a tree. And I remember thinking, one, I don’t feel equipped to Help. Help. Number two, this is so dark. I’m not sure this is the right place for me. We did get her help she, she in the end did quite well. But then I found coaching. And so that was a long story to it. But often, we are pushed to our knees before we’ll do anything. And what I try to help people do is don’t wait to your push to your knees. Don’t wait till the break down happens because then then it’s a mess. Then you’re dealing with I’m out of a job I I said to my boss FSU. And now what do I do? I got fired, you know, it never goes as well. When you wait till that moment do it before.

george grombacher 8:44
Yeah, that’s that’s hard for us humans, right?

Kathy Caprino 8:48
We don’t like change. We don’t like change. And we’re, you know, I was talking to I run a few courses in masterminds. That, you know, it sounds like a cliche, but the thing that keeps us so stuck is fear. But this the, the difficult thing is fear has many tentacles. It’s fear of failure. It’s fear of success. It’s fear of humiliation. It’s fear of what people will say when I set started to tell people I was going to be a therapist, you wouldn’t believe what people said, Really? Why do you think you have to do that, and you’re going to be broke and burnt out, you know, a litany of things really Thanks a lot. We’re afraid of so much. And I think when we can get to the root of our particular failure, fear of failure, or a particular fear, I’m sorry. And usually I have to say this we are what our childhood taught us to be. Usually it comes from something we learned in childhood. You can’t ask for help. You can’t look weak. Women should be this men should be that really One of the first places to start is look at what your childhood taught you to be and who you had to be. To get love and acceptance. That was a Tony Robbins question in his documentary, I’m not your guru. He said, Who did you crave love most from? When you were a child, and who did you have to be to get it? And for me, I knew in a minute, brilliant for my dad, because he was brilliant, and obedient for my mother. Well, if you think you have to be brilliant, every minute of the day, and if you are trying to be obedient, you’re going to have a breakdown.

george grombacher 10:38
Yeah, that’s no doubt about that. So being this is this is accessible for for all of us. The the answer to these questions, it’s not that far away. It’s just, is it just that I’ve never actually sat down and really thought about it?

Kathy Caprino 11:03
Well, I would say, I’d like it to be not that far away. But it is far away for a lot of people. But let me give you an example. I have something called a career path assessment, which I can give everybody the link, it’s free. It’s 11 pages of questions. I wish someone had asked me, you know, 40 years ago, 3040 years ago, and if I’d answered these questions more correctly, and thoroughly, I wouldn’t have made the mistakes I made. But for instance, let’s start here. There’s, there’s questions about every job you ever had, what you loved what you hated? What were your greatest accomplishments were? What you took away from it. It’s incredible to me, there’s a question on, you know, what are you particularly talented at? What what are your special talents? So many people, particularly women, and there’s reasons for this, which I can get into? leave it blank? I don’t know. Or they’re put some platitude. I don’t know, I think I’m good at listening. Or, you know, and I will look at what they just said they did their epidemiologists, they’re at the UN, they’re, you know, award winning authors. And I say to myself, they don’t understand how they’re talented. So when you don’t have access to that, how am I talented? or How can I speak up? And yes, you tell me, I should ask for what I want. I don’t know how to do that. It isn’t. You know, coaching, training, coaching, training tells you, the individual has all the resources they need internally, that’s not actually true. Sometimes we need training, sometimes we need revising. So with me, for instance, my mom is 97. And and God over COVID, still alive. And my biggest my biggest supporter, but I couldn’t challenge my mother’s Greek. You don’t challenge your grief, mom doesn’t go well. And when I started writing about this, I said, Mom, are you going to be okay, and then I’m going to say that, and She hesitated and said, Yeah, I could see how you would think you have to be obedient. That’s how I was raised in that. But the point is, if you think you can’t speak up, it’s not just gonna happen. You need help. You need mentorship, you need coaching, you need someone sitting there in the corner with you. So you know, you mentioned I think the the seven damaging power gaps. That’s my latest book, the most powerful you, I looked at what is missing from all these people who are coming for help? What is it no matter what level No matter how much I’m talking, some make millions? Some make nothing. Somewhere in India summer, why is it there? They’re bringing the same challenges. So I pulled the viewfinder back. And what I saw was, they’re missing two things, and particularly women bravery, to look, you know, head on, face it head on what isn’t working. But bravery isn’t enough. You have to have power, internal and external power. That is what is going to change. Change you. And you don’t get that necessarily by wishing for it. So there we go. Did that that was a long answer to your question. No,

george grombacher 14:20
and I’m grateful. I’m always grateful when people say, well, you’re you’re you’re you’re not correct on that, George, because I think that that’s an I think that you’re spot on. And right. I think that we do have a lot of the answers inside of us. But that doesn’t mean we know where they are. Right? We need help.

Kathy Caprino 14:41
You’re right. Like in this mastermind last night, someone was working through what they should do, and it was very complex. And they said, I don’t understand why I’m so confused about what to do. And so you know, you ask In your prep questions, what’s the first thing a person should do? They should get incredibly clear about what they want. Start there, but we were so afraid to even ask that because of the repercussions. Oh, but if I do that people won’t like me or I’ll get blacklisted in my field, or I’ll lose my house. Or my spouse will say, What? You’re going to quit your corporate job. What about that we cut ourselves off off at the knees, we don’t even get clear about what it is we really want. So when we do that, when we start with what is it my soul My heart wants, you can get to clarity a little quicker, but we’re, where it’s masked from us. It’s so far away. Now, I do want to say this, George, if I can, I don’t know yet the makeup of your listeners. But I do want to say people say, Well, why do women struggle with all this more, and I want to say this, this is not to bash men. But we live in a patriarchal society, right. And especially in the working world, its leadership is dominated by men. So in any kind of system, where there’s a dominant culture, the non dominant culture goes underground a little bit or needs to pretend they’re more like the dominant culture. But what happens is in a patriarchal world, you split, we split ourselves in half, and we know what this means. There’s the masculine and the feminine, the masculine is strong, gets it done, not emotional, not connective, and you know, not vulnerable, what is the feminine, soft, pleasing, malleable, puts other people first you can even hear it in my voice. And the difficult thing is in a patriarchal world, everybody shuns the feminine, not just women, you know, not just men, we shun it because and, you know, I interviewed the amazing Mark Greene about man box culture and how men are, you know, connection, and vulnerability is beaten out of men from age, you know, to on. So men have it hard to but in this kind of culture, women are taught not to be assertive, we’re taught not to communicate with strength and confidence. I mean, a lot of women listening will know what I mean, you know, I was called a beyotch. For doing the same thing, my colleague, my male colleague was doing and getting promoted. Right? One boss called me a buzzsaw. And I said, I don’t even know what that means. Is that a good thing? You know? And he goes, Yeah, get it done. Oh, call the man, Director abass. On never. So all of these power gaps, while 90% of the men I’ve studied, have them. 98% of women have at least one of these gaps. And on average, they have three. If you have these paragraphs, you can’t thrive. You can’t thrive in your relationships, you can’t thrive in your work. That’s that,

george grombacher 18:12
that that? Is that it? Yeah, I mean, you’re talking about people that are wildly successful, and they have these gaps. That just means that your potential is exponentially more than where you’re at right now. So your achievement level is off the charts. It’s amazing.

Kathy Caprino 18:31
It’s amazing what you can do. But I want to say I do work with people that are not amazingly successful. You know, they’ve been fired three times, or they keep getting passed over. Or they were betrayed by their narcissistic or toxic colleague. Um, so no, I don’t I make it a point not to work just with wealthy people or just with Hoover successful people. Because to your point, it’s those people that have a passion to do something but feel thwarted, can’t figure it out, can’t get out of the gate. That’s the that’s the population I’d love to help. Because, you know, in being in the long arc of people’s lives, it’s amazing what they can accomplish. It’s utterly astounding.

george grombacher 19:16
Amen. Like that. That’s really well said, Yeah, and the last thing I met to sort of in suggest that is, is that you’re only working with really really people that are just killing it because we and that’s the same thing that that I talked about my work is you know, people that are financially successful doesn’t mean that you’re doing the right things with money. And that’s that they’re outwardly that appears that they’re successful to other people doesn’t mean that they’re doing the right things

Kathy Caprino 19:46
just like that true. And a lot of people appear to be financially successful who are so Are not

you know, there’s a little bit of you know what I’m saying? You’ve talked about it a lot, I’m sure Any project

george grombacher 20:03
that strikes me Kathy that you’ve tackled marriage and relationships now you’re helping people with careers and at some point in the future you’re going to be helping people with with money as well, because you might as well really handle the three most important things. Wow,

Kathy Caprino 20:17
I can’t wait. Your mouth to universe is yours. I gotta get my situation a little. I’m working on scaling. That’s, that’s for my business that a little bit of a challenge, because I’m really good one on one. You know, I wish I’m on Canva a lot. Do you ever use Canva? Sure. And I’ve interviewed the founder. What a brilliant scalable idea. You know that? People need design help. Why don’t we create templates? I’m trying to do that. Let me figure that out. And then Okay, then the money will

george grombacher 20:52
come first things first. First things first, hello. Okay, the people right? If your difference making tip, what do you have for them?

Kathy Caprino 21:00
The tip, best difference making tip. All right, this sip people, I want you to understand, and this is fact, because I’ve worked with 1000s of people, you are like your thumbprint. There is no one like you in the world. You have to recognize that and you have to understand that the world needs you. I don’t say this in some platitude, no way. We need your skills and your talents and your passions. So if you are hiding or scared or think you can’t, I can’t stand it. This is a long tip. When people say don’t follow your passion, you’re gonna go broke. Anyone who says that hasn’t been able to follow their passions. It’s just now you got to do it smart. But I want you to be listening here and understand that we need you. But now it’s time to get going here. Now it’s time to read about these power gaps, take my power gap survey, figure out which ones you have and close those gaps. Because when you do, that’s when you really shine your light and we need you to

george grombacher 21:59
Well, I think that that is great stuff that definitely gets a Come on. Come on. Love it. Kathy, thank you so much for coming out. Where can people learn more about you? Where can they where can they access the assessment? Where can they take advantage of the seven day challenge?

Kathy Caprino 22:17
Okay, so Kathy caprino.com, you can go to my assessments page and free training page. It’s all there. Most Powerful use comm is my course, which is a digital companion to the book. And finding brave finding brave.org is my podcast and I interview amazing folks at Georgia gotta come on. And it really can be transformational just to get one idea that gets you unlocked and get you out of the gate. So that’s where I send folks

george grombacher 22:46
love it. Well if you enjoyed this as much as I did show Kathy your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas, go to Kathy caprino.com. That’s khycapino.com go to the assessments tab. And check out all the great resources that we’ve been talking about today. Go to most powerful u.com and pick up a copy of the book and then find her podcast finding brave.org Thanks again, Kathy.

Kathy Caprino 23:16
Thank you so much George.

george grombacher 23:17
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.