How to Find Yourself Again: Boundaries, Change & Second Rodeos with Martha Hoover

[00:03:14] Martha: I feel so comfortable talking with you. I think we could always talk for days.

[00:03:20] Danielle: Yes. Martha, welcome to Don’t Cut Your Own Bangs. I just wanna start off by sharing a personal side note before we kick off. I started this podcast over five years ago, and when I started it, I made a list of 10 people that I would love to interview, and I think you probably can guess where this is going, but one of those names.

[00:03:43] So Neil deGrasse Tyson’s on my list, I wanna talk to someone about outer space. I wanna talk to Oprah and, one of the other people I really wanted to talk to was you and Oh my

[00:03:53] Martha: gosh. Yeah. So thank you.

[00:03:56] Danielle: You’re on, you were on my top 10 list of dream guests when I first started this podcast.

[00:04:01] And I love that life led us here. This is just such a gift already. But I’m really excited to talk to you because as much as I’ve enjoyed the interactions that we’ve had over the last few years, getting to research you is, has been really interesting too. ’cause you’ve done a lot of media, you’ve been interviewed a lot.

[00:04:20] With your permission, I’d love to dive into that. Is that okay?

[00:04:23] Martha: It’s totally fine. And thank you so much that flattery means a lot to me. It, thank you to be on your top 10 list is a big deal. So Thank you.

[00:04:33] Danielle: Oh, it’s true. And just to give you a little bit more context too almost 11 years ago to the day, I’m approaching my 11th wedding anniversary with my husband David, who you know, and our rehearsal dinner was at your River Crossing restaurant location.

[00:04:48] Martha: Oh my gosh, I remember that. Mm-hmm. I so remember. And I remember actually the first time I met you, and I’m so fortunate that our lives get to intersect so frequently.

[00:05:02] Danielle: I feel the same. I feel the same. And I remember the fir. So wait, what was your first memory?

[00:05:06] Martha: I met you before you were married and David was new to , a longer table.

[00:05:14] I’m not even sure he was a board member yet. I think he was at the, a fundraiser or some type of a meet and greet at these very offices where I’m, where the recording is happening. And he was with his mother and you. And I had never met his mother either. And I had actually, I’d never met any of you.

[00:05:38] Mm-hmm. And, I was just so taken by the whole, the trio, the all three of you.

[00:05:45] Danielle: Thank you. Gosh. Okay. I think you have probably a keener memory than I do. I, my memory now, maybe not the first time I met you, but the first time we had an actual conversation, I really started to understand a superpower that I now see that you have.

[00:05:59] It was at the it was at the petitio. Location in Broadville. And there was it was after a meeting and there were board members there. So this must have been a couple years or maybe a year after the memory that you have. But what I remember, there was a documentary film crew also there, but you and I, we were grabbing a martini, I think at the same time.

[00:06:24] And you shocker, right? Yeah. We were, our hands reached at the same time. And it was a meet. Cute. But, what I remember was you were surrounded by a room full of people that knew you, wanted your attention and wanted to talk to you. And you were also being filmed by a film crew.

[00:06:40] But you made me feel like for that five to 10 minute conversation, however long it was, there was nowhere else you wanted to be. You weren’t in a hurry, you weren’t scanning the room. I think in a lot of social networking or i’ll say big, important places filled with big, important people.

[00:06:58] There’s usually this invisible hierarchical scan that happens behind the eyes where people are looking for who has status, who is important, and what can I get in front of, or what can I say to impress? There’s all of this social positioning happening, and you made me feel so comfortable because you just seem so embodied and not rushed.

[00:07:24] And what I felt in that moment, but what I’ve observed you do since then dozens and dozens of times, is you make everyone feel that way. And, um,

[00:07:34] Martha: well, thank you. I, it, I don’t think it is a power play or a manipulative. Talent or whatever the right word is. I think that, I, my roots are in hospitality and to me hospitality is.

[00:07:51] Really welcoming people. It’s beyond just making people feel welcome. It is welcoming people in your sacred spaces. And for me, when I owned restaurants, my restaurants always were an extension of my home and my, there is no more sacred space for me than my home and by extension my cafes. So I think that is just something that people who come from hospitality are particularly good at without having to really work at it.

[00:08:26] Yeah. I, I didn’t realize until you said something that it might be seen as a special talent or a superpower. There was nothing fake about it. I think that I think it is just the hospitality aspect of how I look at people in spaces.

[00:08:44] Danielle: When I say it, describe it as a superpower. I don’t mean affected or practiced.

[00:08:49] I, what I mean is it seems thanked. I, it seems embodied because I think over time I’ve just observed how consistent it is and there, there doesn’t appear to be efforting behind it. But that is what I think makes it so super is Well, thank

[00:09:02] Martha: you.

[00:09:03] Danielle: Yeah.

[00:09:03] I’m gonna quote you to you, if that’s okay. I’m gonna quote back something that you said in an interview. Oh my God.

[00:09:08] Martha: Am I going to be mortified as to what I said? Okay,

[00:09:12] Danielle: go ahead. No, and if you are mortified, I will edit this out. The, I want to celebrate you. I don’t want to catch you in anything. Okay. I wanna read this back to you.

[00:09:21] Because I was really interested in this. When I opened my first restaurant, a woman couldn’t get a loan or credit card without her husband co-signing. I experienced sexism, gender discrimination in the industry, from vendors, landlords, potential business partners, and media. After more than three decades of being in business, we’ve experienced recessions, political turmoil, a global pandemic, and just about anything else you could imagine that might impact or cause swings in consumer behavior.

[00:09:45] I wanna start here because I think it’s so easy to look at your highlights and recite your highlights and just want to zero in on your wins without taking into context, the timeline of what was happening in the world as you were growing and evolving as a business owner. So

[00:10:08] can you color in and shade in more of that context of what

[00:10:12] Martha: Yeah. I think you’re hitting a point that’s so vital. Nothing happens in a vacuum. So when I created the cafe, there wasn’t, the, you’re absolutely right. There was so much going on, not just in my life, but in the world and all those intersections really mattered.

[00:10:35] I opened up my first restaurant not knowing I was pregnant with my third child. I opened up a restaurant having never worked in a restaurant. I opened up my first restaurant having never worked in a for-profit business. I had all these things. That truthfully were were gamed against me.

[00:10:58] And at the same time, I had a husband who also was in his career building years, and it was 1989. The political climate I had to have my husband co-sign a note before I could even open a restaurant. I’ll never forget, the bank officer looked at my husband across from his desk and said to him, ignoring me, totally said to him, are you sure you want to do this?

[00:11:29] As if he was being coerced. And then also there are other things in the ether then, local restaurants were not a thing. The food scene was not a thing. Food Network hadn’t even come out yet. That development food network, whenever that happened. Yeah. Really was a huge influencer for people across the nation.

[00:11:54] And really helped spur restaurant growth and in. Interest in food and food culture. There was really none of that. And there was not really a movement yet towards healthy eating that was not stereotyped as health nuts. They used to call people like me health nuts, um, as a, just because we were interested in eating whole, eating organically.

[00:12:20] Martha Stewart was new to her entertaining, creating this entertaining empire. So there wasn’t even a, an aesthetic associated with quality scratch made, food made in local environments from local ingredients. But it’s not as though what I did was in, to your point, was in some strange vacuum where I just did it on my own without all these other things interfering.

[00:12:55] Danielle: There’s an element of. You knew your vision. This is, some of the pieces I think are starting to get clear. You knew in the way that people talk about taste makers. You knew your taste and you wanted to, you’re like, I can’t be the only one who, no,

[00:13:10] Martha: that precisely, that literally is, I think, key to the success that I’ve had, that I had in my restaurant years.

[00:13:19] Mm-hmm. I never thought I was unique. In fact, I think it’s dangerous to believe that you are unique. I realize that if the things I wanted, the things I valued, the aesthetics, the quality, the whatever the space was, that if I wanted those things, I was pretty sure that there were other people like me who also wanted them.

[00:13:45] And my thing was always I’m not unique. If I want this and I believe that other people also want this, why don’t I just go about and give it a try? And that’s precisely what I did.

[00:13:58] Danielle: I wanna offer maybe just one slight adjustment to that. Sure. You are unique in how you created what you want.

[00:14:03] Now, granted, everyone who was created an undeniable product. Saw so clearly a gap and wanted to fill that gap. And to them it made utter sense. But for so many of us who are consuming whatever it is, it’s like, how did we live life without this thing?

[00:14:19] And I, so there is a zone of genius of, oh, if this is something that makes so much sense to me, let me just continue to make it.

[00:14:26] Martha: Can I add something here that gives a little context? Yes, please.

[00:14:30] And again, nothing just happens on its own accidentally. I really believe that. Although I also buy into the randomness of nature. But I grew up in a household with a father who was the lead member of the, would’ve, should’ve, could’ve club and. I think understanding that as a young observer mm-hmm.

[00:14:56] As a young person, that this was a person who always in hindsight knew what he should have done, but never did. And I was determined to not live my life so wedded to a past that boy, I could have his very famous line that really. Attached to my brain at an early age was he was every time we would open up a bottle of Coca-Cola, something, I haven’t had a soda in over 20 years, but back in the day, I’m soda sober in my seventies, we grew up drinking Coke and Pepsi and Dr.

[00:15:35] Pepper. Every time, time he opened up a bottle, not even a can of Coke, he would say, you know, I could have bought Coca-Cola stock when it was 10 cent a chair. It just taught me that you do not wait for perfect opportunity. You do not want to live with that mindset of what you could have as opposed to what you did do.

[00:15:59] He was not a doer. I’m a doer as a result.

[00:16:03] Danielle: Regret is one of the heaviest emotions to carry and live with. Regret is. Regret and shame. Those are the, the double whammy that drive a lot of unhealthy behavior. And so acting in spite of or in resistance to that, that’s a good fuel.

[00:16:21] That is a really good fuel. So speaking of change, accepting change as the only constant has allowed us to evolve and be successful, there’s been a lot of change, like looking over, if we just looked at highlight, career shift, career move, adding a restaurant, adding a location change is a very clear and, evident element to the path your life has taken professionally. And I’m imagining personally too, I don’t know if you know, but I used to teach ballroom dance and I was a theater actor and a commercial actor since I was 13. I, in my own way have from afar what’s what felt very intuitive in my own experience, maybe looked like these big leaps in, in other ways.

[00:17:05] But one thing I have really experienced, whether it was teaching people how to dance or the work I do in therapy, is that people are often incredibly resistant to change. Most are incredibly resistant to change, even when that change is in pursuit of something they really, really want. Because change is uncomfortable.

[00:17:25] But you talk about change as it is the only constant, it is the only thing you can rest your head on or guarantee that something will change. And so I wanna know. What your relationship has been with change as you’ve been facing that fork in the road of, do I add another location or do I not, do I make this shift or I not, so not so much the choices you made, but when you were in the position of making the decision, how did you lean into evolution or changing when change is hard?

[00:18:00] Martha: Change is hard. But I think it’s more difficult when you resist change to not want to evolve, whether it’s personally or to have your business evolve, your relationships evolve, I think is very unnatural and very unhealthy. And the sooner I understood that, the earlier I understood that fighting change would create a real negative drag on what was something that could really help, so I never looked at change in a negative fashion. In fact, I always think, and to this day, I still think that people in particular who are closed off to changing are really, they’re stuck. Mm-hmm. Um, and they’re stuck with the status quo of who they are and what they are. And it’s a sad person to me who so identifies with what they were, that they are unwilling to become something else as a result.

[00:19:03] When you create your own business, you have the opportunity, the utmost opportunity to put your fingerprints on something, unless you want it to be like everybody else’s version. I never had that desire to have. In this case, a restaurant that was like everyone else’s version of a restaurant.

[00:19:26] I’ve always thought, why do that if you can’t bring something to the table, pardon the pun, but if you can’t bring something to the table that offers some distinction, why do it? I naturally enjoy. Understanding my own evolution and realizing, and I do realize that most people really a poor change.

[00:19:52] They see it as disruptive. I see it as something that is remarkably positive. Even the disruption is remarkably positive. And the thing about change that I have never feared is if for whatever reason it doesn’t work out, if it becomes a drag or a negative, creates derailing, whatever it is that’s negative, guess what?

[00:20:18] You’ve learned something from it and you can change again. And I’m okay with that process.

[00:20:23] ​

[00:21:39] Danielle: Okay okay. I learned something and I can change again. There’s another theme that I’m starting to become more clear on with you is you seem to hold space between what do I have to work with and what is the most I can do, what I have to work with.

[00:21:57] So when you talked about your former career, your former life as a sex crimes prosecutor, one of the things, I’m not sure if I read it or if I overheard you say it, but you went into sex crimes because that was the field where no one else really wanted to be. No one was really doing it. And there, certainly, the men in that industry at the time weren’t really leaning into that.

[00:22:18] And you’re like, okay, if this is available work for me to do, I’m gonna do it. And a parallel that I made hearing you talk last evening about opening your first restaurant and being a mother of three, or rather, you were a mother of two, not knowing you were about to be a mother of three when you opened your first restaurant,

[00:22:34] you said, I picked a cafe a breakfast and lunch restaurant because I wanted to be there for the drop off pickup line. Another time where you’re like, what are the ingredients I have to work with and how can I make those best work for me? And then you take what you’re given and you run with it.

[00:22:50] Did that come up in other places in life? Is that something else that you, you learned growing up? I’m really curious about that. ’cause it doesn’t seem like you’re crying about what you’re missing. I don’t hear you talk about oh, if only I could have had a steakhouse.

[00:23:01] You’re like, no, this, these are the hours I wanted to work and this is how I wanted to operate. And then I’m just gonna take that and run with it. Oh, you don’t wanna do sex crimes? Fine, I’ll take it and run with it.

[00:23:10] Martha: Yeah. You know, it’s funny that you mention that I did not open up a nighttime restaurant until, and I did this very intentionally.

[00:23:20] I did not open a nighttime restaurant until my youngest of three was heading off to college.

[00:23:26] One thing that worked towards my advantage, but I didn’t realize it at the time, I only realized it as I was zooming back. I loved zooming back. And I love zooming forward. I think it’s the only way to really understand a timeline of opportunity.

[00:23:45] Mm. Um, but when I zoomed back, I realized that one of the biggest gifts that was given to me by the universe was a fact that I opened up my first restaurant at the same time I had my third child. And why that even matters is I treated David my third child and my restaurant almost like they were twins.

[00:24:13] And what I noticed was that they each progressed along a similar timeline. They really did. I always laugh. I say the terrible twos. I didn’t know which was more difficult when he was a rambunctious. Two and 3-year-old little boy.

[00:24:31] Or when I went from having one to two to three kids. One to two to three restaurants. It was the same shift in my mind. And then as David aged and matured, my relationship with my business and my business aged and matured, and they were on a very similar path. There were the terrible twos, those teen years that were kind of ugly, early adult years.

[00:25:01] And then right now. You know where I am with exiting. I mean, at some point every flies the coop, and you do let go of things and you move on to a new identity. But understanding that my career path and my path as a mother they were meshed together.

[00:25:21] And I think it’s important to understand that all these relationships have a lifespan. All these businesses have a lifespan. Just as your relationship with your children, has moments of greatness, moments of growth, moments of change, that’s what you want.

[00:25:41] Danielle: That metaphor of your business and your child coming up as twins that one that speaks so. Right to the heart of the stage of life I’m in right now with a 4-year-old and 2-year-old and trying to get this podcast off the ground. You have no idea what a balm, how soothing that was to hear.

[00:25:58] ’cause I can really wrap my head around that. But the other thing I’m wondering, and I don’t know if I’m projecting my own experience or not, but having kids. So one of the main currents that drives anxiety, not just for me but for anybody experiencing anxiety, is the factor of time. So usually anxiety.

[00:26:16] There’s getting caught between a rock and a hard place. Not doing enough, not being enough, running out of time. This chasing of a timeline. And there is something about I experienced this in grief and loss, but then I also experienced this in having children. Was that because there is just less of you to give, you become.

[00:26:36] When you’re not in the fog of postpartum depression laser focused with the time and energy you do have because you have to work within that time. And so I wanna talk to you a little bit about how you budget your energy, because I think a lot of people talk about their schedule in terms of time.

[00:26:54] But I think all of our interactions, right there are deposits and withdrawals. I feel in so many ways, like I’m getting a deposit with this experience and there, but there are other appointments and other places you show up in the world that are withdrawals, right?

[00:27:07] I am giving maybe more than I’m getting and that’s just the exchange of life. But I’m trying to look at the appointments that I commit to. How much energy is it gonna require of me to show up? What energy am I gonna get back? As opposed to this is a two hour block of time, this is a three hour block of time.

[00:27:24] For you I would imagine there are constant requests for you to show up, to donate, to say this, to be this, to do that just like you’re doing here for me. And I’m just curious how you budget your time and what maybe has become too expensive for you to invest your time in?

[00:27:41] Martha: You know, I think that is the way to look at time. It is a commodity. It’s the one commodity we have no control over in one way. Mm-hmm. I realize where I am on the runway of life, as somebody who was in her early seventies, I think I’ve told you this before, when I was turning 70, I was having a crisis of identity.

[00:28:04] I had just sold my company, the company that really identified me for 37 years, and I sold the majority of the company expecting to have a voice in the new company. And when that didn’t happen, on top of turning 70, I was like, what is going on in my life? I think it’s critical to understand that one of the things that I benefited from back then, back in the early days.

[00:28:38] And today was understanding the power of saying no and understanding what I was going to say yes to. And I also, I had the benefit of having a partner, my husband, who was extraordinarily supportive in every way, but also understand, again, life doesn’t happen in a vacuum. In the early days, he was also in the early days of his career building.

[00:29:09] We also were learning how to be. Parents together, we had no experience with that at all. No experience as two working parents. We literally just talked a lot about what our needs were, and they were never really considered selfish needs. They were considered to be needs for the entire family.

[00:29:33] I learned to say no to anything that was not a good use of my time. Now, that does not mean that I said no to something because it didn’t, I couldn’t monetize it. That’s not how I defined something. That was a good use of my time. Good use of my time. Had to be something that was strong enough.

[00:29:57] Valuable enough that it justified me being away from my home, away from my family, or away from my business. That’s literally how I did it. And I’m also one of these people, quite honestly, I love work. I love doing things. I love not just being busy. I love being busy with a purpose.

[00:30:22] Audio Only – All Participants: Mm-hmm. It’s

[00:30:23] Martha: just really, IM important for me. I managed it by knowing when to say yes and when to say no.

[00:30:30] I need, and one thing. I had I, I’ve always believed in therapy. And it’s probably why you and I get along so well, because you, as a therapist you bring a therapist perspective and I to these conversations, which I really appreciate. Mm-hmm. So I had a therapist it when I was a young mother with young children.

[00:30:53] And I remember saying to her, I need a really neat home. I don’t need a pristine home. I don’t mind my house being lived in, but I need a sense of order in my home. And everyone around me is telling me that I need to let that go. That I need to just say to my kids, go at it, in 10 or 15 years I’ll come back to this and I’ll be able to get order then.

[00:31:20] And she looked at me and she said, you don’t need to subjugate what’s important for you, for them. And that was, this was, by the way, 30 years ago. Yeah. I mean that what a good therapist, right? Yeah. 30 some years ago for a therapist to say, advocate for yourself and what you need, this is what you need.

[00:31:43] So set that boundary for your family. And I did, and I think that helped me a great deal

[00:31:52] Danielle: that message is so needed right now that I have too many thoughts running through my head at once, but the first to think about the way that you, talked about the needs of your family system, because I do think that family systems are their own organism.

[00:32:08] And you are the individual within a system. And it’s not about balance. I do think that balance is. It’s become an extension of perfectionism, which is always rooted in not being enough because it’s never gonna all be imbalanced.

[00:32:23] I love talking to women in particular that I work with about their needs because it usually gets construed as either being needy or to the TOO.

[00:32:31] You have too many needs, but I like to compare that to a plant. I can’t buy an orchid, put it in a shady corner, forget to water it and be pissed that it’s not a fucking cactus. True. That’s, that’s true. That is the plant that I bought. To own your needs as this is what the organism of me, this is the amount of sunlight I need, the amount of affection I need, the amount of freedom I need, and being able to communicate those clearly and safely allows your partner to either say, yes I can, or no I can’t.

[00:33:02] Martha: I think we’re saying the same thing. Mm-hmm. I knew what my non-negotiables were. Yeah. And I really believe that everyone, I don’t care if it’s for your business or for your personal relationships, everyone needs to understand what their non-negotiables are. And not only. Do I understand my non-negotiables, I was willing to write them down.

[00:33:29] Yeah. I was willing to codify them. And once you codify something in writing, you can communicate it. And once something is communicated, there’s no availability for someone in line with what you’re saying. To not to be able to say that they didn’t understand that, I’m telling you.

[00:33:51] As a partner, a friend, a vendor, a customer, an employee, a child. I’m telling you what I need. But here’s the thing with non-negotiables. Here’s the thing with telling people what is important, I also am able to really say to people, this is what I expect in a relationship, but this is what you can expect from me.

[00:34:17] Exactly. ’cause expectations go both ways.

[00:34:20] Danielle: They can’t want to meet your needs more than you are willing. So what your non-negotiables are. Another way of talking about boundaries yes, you know this, I will not allow myself to betray myself. Now if you do it, then I have a decision to make.

[00:34:34] But,

[00:34:34] Martha: and probably what happens also, when you betray whatever your internal non-negotiables are, you get angry, you get bitter, you get, embarrassed, you’re filled with shame, what over all these negative emotions are, you beat yourself up when it would’ve been so much easier. And so much healthier to save from.

[00:34:56] Get go. I, you know what, this is not, this doesn’t feel right and I can’t do this, or this isn’t on the list of priorities right now. It’s okay to learn to master the word no. And it’s okay to understand that when you do say yes, do it with full commitment because you’re the one who said yes.

[00:35:17] Danielle: Yeah., And I also wanna acknowledge too, something that you’ve said multiple times, but that it didn’t happen in a vacuum. I think a lot of times people think they’re going to leave somewhere, go work on themselves, and then show up perfectly to either enter a relationship or a new job, you actually, you cultivate all the things we’re talking about in relationship with a business, in relationship with a partner.

[00:35:39] ’cause a lot of times you don’t even realize where the boundary lines are until they get crossed. Which leads me to something I would love to, if you’re all right with it, talk a little bit about your, daughter Sarah wrote a book called, yeah. Called The Mother Load that is about to be released in paperback pretty soon, which is,

[00:35:55] Martha: I’m very proud of her for that.

[00:35:57] Danielle: Congratulations. I’ve never met you, Sarah, but congratulations. That’s incredible. And I could talk about the book itself ’cause I’m really enjoying listening to it. I also recommend it to anybody listening, and if you haven’t picked it up already, get the audio book because Sarah reads it and she’s an incredible narrator of her own story.

[00:36:14] But you helped her come up with the title. I did. Yeah. Can you just tell me a little bit more about that? I mean, the title that’s like a big, that’s a big, big decision to make.

[00:36:23] Can you tell me a little bit more about that, how you helped her with that?

[00:36:26] Martha: People are very confused by the book. I think it’s brilliant. So thank you for agreeing. I also, I read it and I listened to it, and there are certain books in my mind that are a better listen than a read. And I think hers I thought it was because it was my daughter and her voice and the way she tells her story was so powerful listening to her.

[00:36:55] And I have a lot of conflicting feelings about what she’s talking about in her book. As a mother. She talks about me very openly in the book. Mm-hmm. I see it as a love story, a love letter to me, to her husband, to her child. I think it is incredible. I think it was the ultimate act of vulnerability.

[00:37:23] Yeah. Doing what she did. You know what truthfully, the title Mother Load, I was a, for one semester in college, I was a geology major. And I’ll tell you what, it make me, when my kids were little and we would do like hikes, it made me the mother of all mothers because I could tell them every stone that they picked up, what it was or describe formations and why they happened and all that.

[00:37:53] But I was a geology major for the dumbest reason in the world, and it’s seriously an embarrassing reason.

[00:38:00] Which I’ll tell you about over a martini that we

[00:38:04] Danielle: Sure, of course. That’s, yeah, that sounds great. That sounds great.

[00:38:06] Martha: But you know, the entire idea of the mother load is this vein of. Power this vein of something that is so rich with assets, whatever those assets are.

[00:38:23] And what she was doing in this book was like she was erupting this vein and telling her story, I thought it was so powerful. And the minute she literally said, Hey, I’d love to talk to you about some working titles I had read an early version of the manuscript. Because also she very thoughtfully said, if you disagree with this, if this offends you, if this hurts your feelings, I need to know.

[00:38:55] Danielle: And I was going to ask you about that specifically because you, I remember you sharing that with me that she opened that up for you and her husband. Hey, you’re in this, I wrote this for me in my healing and gave you both permission to say, Hey, if this is gonna be disruptive or harmful or hurtful, I won’t.

[00:39:11] And I was one, I thought that spoke a lot to her character. But the other thing that I was just, it also spoke a lot to the level of trust and safety that you have in your relationship with her. But you seem to have, and not only, in just this one example with Sarah’s book, but in, she’s telling her story from her point of view.

[00:39:32] And one of the things I think she did just to. Plug that book for a moment. The more free we become we can acknowledge the complexity, the hypocrisy, the confusion, how dual things can be happening in any given moment. And one isn’t more true than another, that she loved her son and was also deeply lost in postpartum depression, that she wanted help but didn’t know how to ask for it, that she was drowning, but didn’t know how to say.

[00:39:54] All of those things were happening at the same time. And that is more true than any one thing separate in a vacuum. But you seem to have this really incredible relationship between whether it’s in, in business, which is part of what we’ve been talking about, but you are uncautious about how people perceive you, and yet you also seem to move through the world with care like.

[00:40:24] Your restaurants are an extension of your home. It’s a, it’s not that you like a narcissist, you don’t care. Although narcissists are the most codependent people in the world. ’cause they need to control how everybody sees them. So that may not be a great example, you seem to have this relationship that you’re uncautious about how people are perceived, and yet you also deeply care about people.

[00:40:42] So you’re like her per her version of that part of her life with you. You are like shared. It’s your story.

[00:40:49] Martha: I have said this to each of my children, and I will say this to anyone who will listen, especially when people bring up the fact that my daughter wrote so openly and sometimes harshly.

[00:41:02] Mm-hmm. But most, mostly I think with deep love of our relationship. I want to make this perfectly clear, I truly believe that memory is not a data bank. And I think the goal of my life is not to correct people’s memory of me. It is to show up as this sounds trite, but as authentically as I possibly can.

[00:41:28] Mm-hmm. You had mentioned this a little bit earlier, this cult of perfectionism Yes. I think is really dangerous. Mm-hmm. And, before Instagram was a thing I subscribed to, I don’t know, 20, I’m probably exaggerating, 10 interior design magazines. And every month, because that’s what we did back then, every month I would get

[00:41:56] uh, architectural Digest, l Decor, whatever. I would get all these interior design and all these food magazines, gourmet food and wine, Bon Appetit, and I would devour them like they were Shakespeare. Mm-hmm. And I realized at some point that they were not serving my purpose. Everything looked perfect.

[00:42:20] Even if I didn’t like the interior design, the aesthetic, it still, I acknowledged that it looked so remarkably perfect and I thought that it’s set a, an ideal up for me and the way I wanted to live that I could not meet. I understand. I am a very flawed person, and it’s in the flaws that I think.

[00:42:46] Comes the beauty. Yes. And the, and the Room for evolution. The room for inspection and Interspection. And I’m okay with that. I, you know what? I love the fact that I have always seen myself as a work in progress. I have never seen myself as a done project and I, I think that it’s really critically important to get away from this lion.

[00:43:16] We lionize as a culture. Perfection. We lionize a certain type of beauty. We lionize this life that looks enviable, and I’m like, really? That sets up such impossible standards, not just for other people, but for me. My life is messy. I try as much as possible. To keep those messes at bay. One of my daughters, not Sarah, , Rachel once said to me and my children teach me so much, and you’re going to find this too.

[00:43:51] Mm-hmm. You’re learning what, the more open you are as a parent to understanding that you will learn more from your children if you allow it. Yeah. Then you will teach them. That is a vital lesson, and that took me far the minute I understood that I didn’t know how to be a parent. My children taught me how to be a parent.

[00:44:16] Mm-hmm. I didn’t know how to be a restaurateur. My customers and my community and my staff taught me how to be a restaurateur. Yeah. I might have had a seed of an idea, but I needed other people to implement things and if the, if my goal was perfection. I mean, let’s face it, perfection never exists.

[00:44:40] It just doesn’t. And to chase something that is not obtainable seems like a real waste of time to me.

[00:44:48] I really believed that my children look adore, love, worship. Cannot imagine life without the richness that they have provided me. And that richness by the way, includes all the happiness and all the misery.

[00:45:07] It’s a lot dealing with other people. It’s fragile.

[00:45:11] Danielle: God, other people, if God, my life would be so much less stressful if it weren’t for other people.

[00:45:16] Martha: Truly, I get exhausted sometimes hearing about how perfect everyone else’s lives are, their families, their homes. I’m happy for them. I think this is where it started for me, Martha Stewart and I.

[00:45:35] Kind of started our companies at the same time. Now obviously she’s much more successful, like multiples that I couldn’t even count. A household name everything from inspiration for people to a meme. I mean, this woman is incredible and she’s still on fire and I have nothing but respect for

[00:45:57] but she pushed perfection. And I thought that level of achievement was something that I just never thought I needed to feel like I was contributing something to the world. Yeah. I’d rather be able to do something and not be perfect, than not do something because I was afraid that it wouldn’t be perfect.

[00:46:24] Danielle: I think you allowed all the parts of you that existed to be true,

[00:46:27] and that’s something I can really resonate and connect with. And I think when people betray a part of who they are in the pursuit of who they think they should be or who culture says they should be, that is when people find themselves probably.

[00:46:43] In conversation with someone like me talking to a therapist. And one of the gifts I’ve had doing the work that I do is I when you hear people’s pain and deeper struggles. On a very regular basis, you just realize how similar they all sound.

[00:46:54] And the thing, the things that we fear, the things that we want, the things that we crave, the doubts that we carry it’s just that who we’re comparing against, and what we might be, the measuring stick we might be using that might be different, but the mechanisms are the same.

[00:47:09] Martha: You know, can I interrupt here and tell you a story? Please do. I, when, I, my story is I had two daughters and my baby was my son. And as you and I have discussed there, uh, at least in my home there were tremendous gender differences in my children. And I remember always saying , my son would come home after basketball practice and he often would say, oh, this is before he drove. He would say I left my book pack at school and we would have to drive back to school so he could go in at 10 o’clock at night and grab his book bag.

[00:47:48] And at some moment I said to him, I got angry. And I said, David, I said, oh my God, I never even had to tell your sisters to do their homework, and yet I am having to ask you where your book bag is. And I’ll never forget he was. 15. He wasn’t driving yet. And he said, you do know comparison is the thief of joy.

[00:48:12] Now this happened, he 20 years ago. He’s 35. And I remember having, and I’m sure you have had these moments too, and you will have them, you’ll have them with people who are dear to you, but your children will give you these moments where you stopping your track. Yeah. And you literally go, oh, that is a light bulb moment of recognition.

[00:48:38] This is something I need to absorb and embed and understand. And when he said that, it obviously was not his original thought. Mm-hmm. But when he said it, I had never heard it put to me like that.

[00:48:55] And I just started looking at him and my daughters in a complete different light.

[00:49:01] Danielle: It even, I’m an only child and so the sibling dynamic was new to me when I went from having my daughter to then my daughter and my son, and every stage of development, I feel like I’m playing this internal game of peekaboo with myself, or there’s this part of my brain that goes dumb and then remembers like, oh, they’re totally different.

[00:49:20] Oh their interests are different. Their milestones are different. And, but I forget and remember constantly, and I, every time I relearn it, it’s like I wanna start espousing it to people. Like, did you guys know that your kids are different people? And everyone’s like, well, no shit. Yeah. But I just, I, and

[00:49:37] Martha: not only are they different people, you’re a different parent.

[00:49:40] Danielle: Yes. You’re in a complete different mindset, a different stage. Even though it’s just what? Thir two and a half, three years. Mm-hmm. Difference. You are completely different. Your relationship with David is different. Yeah. So I, I think that, again, things just don’t happen in this weird vacuum, do they?

[00:50:00] Oh, no. God, no. They don’t. Gosh, yeah. So I do wanna lean into, you shared a video with me that your son-in-law Tom created Yes. With Hurley , it was entitled, learning How to Surf. And I’ll admit, when I started watching it, I was like, why am I watching this? Like when Martha recommended it? So I’ll start watching it.

[00:50:17] But once I started getting into it, I realized this is a blueprint on how to learn really anything. It’s not just about learning to serve. And I’ll link the video in the show notes, so it’s anybody after we reference this, if you’re curious about it, you can watch it. It’s a little less than 30 minutes long, but I wanna go through, there’s 10 bullets.

[00:50:35] I’m learning how to serve, and I’m curious for you and for as we’re nearing the end of our conversation about the last three, but it’s eight is Fail with joy. Nine, get hurt. A sacrifice for competence. And 10 persistence. So fail with joy, get hurt and persistence. You have sort of teased it in this conversation, but we haven’t really talked about the fact that you built a restaurant movement in Indianapolis and then you sold it to private equity, and you are in a new chapter of life.

[00:51:09] You’re not done, but you’re in a new chapter, and so failing with joy, getting hurt, a sacrifice for competence and persistent where do you see these popping up in the experiences you’re having now as you’ve closed a chapter and are beginning a new one?

[00:51:25] Martha: This idea that, and I think it hits women more than it hits men.

[00:51:31] Mm-hmm. And I think it, people as you age, ageism is, ageism exists and it impacts women more than it impacts men. But generally society when it comes to business, society values founders who create something, scale something and sell something. Our holy grail is built around the creating, the scaling and the selling as if that is the mic drop moment for everybody.

[00:52:05] And you are allowed in this world kind of one identity, one, one chapter. And. The prevalent reaction that I got from selling my business from everybody was this assumption that it was remarkably celebratory, and that I now could go away. And here’s the bottom line.

[00:52:33] I don’t want to go away. as I mentioned earlier, I enjoy purpose and I enjoy work. I en I enjoy doing things that matter to me, and hopefully those things matter to a greater community as well. I don’t think that is an answer to your question. Yeah. But understanding that

[00:52:56] everything happens. I’m not going to say something. So tried as to everything happens for a reason, because I do believe sometimes things just happen because there’s a randomness to life,

[00:53:10] Danielle: but you can make meaning out of the things that happen, you

[00:53:12] Martha: can make meaning mm-hmm. Out of things. Including all your failures and your betrayals.

[00:53:19] And in everything, in every venture. Every adventure there is the potential for failure and the potential for betrayal and, the potential for grief, remorse, and regret. There’s also the potential for remarkable success, however you define success. Most people define it by these exteriors, the money, the car you drive, the jewelry you wear, all that kind of stuff.

[00:53:48] At an early age, somebody told me out of when I was in my early twenties that I needed to make my PAC with money. Mm-hmm. And the earlier I made my PAC with money, the happier I would be. And in that moment. I read that, I interpreted that as I did not need to be so wedded to what culture was telling me was important, that having the most amount of something would make me the happiest person in the world and that having the most would be the most important thing for me.

[00:54:28] I just was able to detach myself from that. Now that being said. Money is important. Success is valued by money. I built something that was profitable. I built something that had a value attached to it, and I then sold the majority of it. And in that shift between being the majority owner, the founder, the director, into kind of being pushed off a cliff and not knowing where I was landing when I was landing.

[00:55:04] What I would land into, whether it would be sand or hard, rock or water. I always understood that there would be another side of this and that nothing is ever as good as it seems in the moment. And nothing is ever even at the worst. You’re going to in a year have a completely different perspective. And that perspective is what you learn from it.

[00:55:31] Danielle: What a stoic, right? Because, but that is living in that range. Like God, we chase the highs and then we so desperately try to run from the lows. But keeping that emotional cushion of it is never as bad as you think. And when you’re riding the high, enjoy it while you’re here, but don’t live and die by this high.

[00:55:50] That is such a, that’s a really safe zone emotionally, I think actually to live in, because failing with joy is. So granted, I don’t think, the intention in the video was to make it sound easy, but in the context of our conversation, it sounds easy to say. But

[00:56:08] Martha: well, I think failing with joy means embrace what you learn from failing.

[00:56:14] Yeah. And so many people are afraid to try something including surfing.

[00:56:20] Audio Only – All Participants: Yeah.

[00:56:20] Martha: Because they are just sure they can’t do it. Mm-hmm.

[00:56:23] Audio Only – All Participants: And I

[00:56:24] Martha: think the point of the video and what I took from it is, it’s okay if you aren’t a master at everything. Mm-hmm. It’s okay just to try something and figure out what it brings to your, the richness that it brings your life.

[00:56:40] It doesn’t have to mean that you become the number one surfer in the world, but you’ve tried something and you’re gonna be better off for trying than you were for saying no.

[00:56:52] Danielle: Well, you got off the wave of your businesses in I did. You’re now trying to catch a new one. I’m curious if you were writing your own memoir, what would the name of this chapter be?

[00:57:02] Martha: Second rodeo.

[00:57:03] Danielle: Second rodeo. Yeehaw.

[00:57:05] Martha: Boom. Boom. Yeah. I actually created a new company. I know you didn’t mean this to be a plug, and you don’t even know about this, but you teased it out

[00:57:16] Danielle: last night a little bit. I think

[00:57:17] Martha: I did. Did I? Mm-hmm.

[00:57:18] Danielle: I think you did. You said second rodeo, but I was like, huh, what?

[00:57:22] This, this, so please tell us.

[00:57:24] Martha: This idea that I only had one shot at doing something that that had an impact on my life or other people’s lives is ridiculously confining. I don’t like to be confined by cultural norms that I think don’t make sense. And one of the cultural norms that right now I’m really trying to fight against is this idea that you hit a certain age and you therefore lose any influence over your world that you become irrelevant.

[00:57:59] And I think when someone retires, they kind of. Take on this air of irrelevancy and I don’t like that. And I’ll tell you why I don’t like that. I’m still at 71 a student and I’m still a teacher. And I love the student part way more than I love the teacher part. Yeah, I think at all ages, at all phases, I have the opportunity to learn more deeply, and to learn more broadly.

[00:58:29] And I also think at every stage you have the ability to share wisdom. And just because you’re young doesn’t mean you don’t have wisdom and you can’t teach and because society also says young people need to be mentored because they are only learning. They do not have knowledge themselves.

[00:58:52] That’s not true, and I don’t think it’s right to say that you reach a certain age and you’re done learning. At some point your teaching is no longer relevant. Mm-hmm. I like the idea of starting anew, starting fresh. And this truly is my second rodeo and I’m really excited, about being productive, moving forward, using my creativity building teams.

[00:59:20] I’m working with a new team that I absolutely love. They’re young talent, and I get as much from them as they are getting from me, and it’s very symbiotic and very, very, very gratifying to be busy like this, even though I don’t need to, and even I’m above a certain age.

[00:59:45] Danielle: You know, when we were talking about balance, how I was mentioning how it’s an extension of perfectionism, there is, I think a misunderstanding about when we try to name in the mental health space, we really like labeling things like, oh, depression, anxiety, label, label, label.

[01:00:02] And what I have found is often the case is identifying what is wrong doesn’t inherently provide the solution. Knowing what you don’t want doesn’t always clarify what you want. Sometimes knowing not this is a place to start, but the energy that creates the solution is not the same one that identifies the problem.

[01:00:21] And when you were talking about. I still want to make, I still want to collaborate. A lot of times, when clients work with me on, I’ll say just big, hard, heavy feelings, they think what they want to feel is calm. But the opposite of anxiety is not calm. It’s actually creativity. So when the creative centers of your brain light up, they cannot be, lit at the same time that your anxious brain is running.

[01:00:47] So when people are trying to wrestle their feelings to the ground with meditation, and I’m very pro meditation, I’m pro yoga, I wrote a journal, I drink the Kool-Aid too. I do all the things, sure, sure, sure. And the quickest way. To bring all that head trash down is to start making something.

[01:01:08] And you can make a mess. You can redecorate, it doesn’t, you don’t have to make something profound or even be a paid artist, but like for you, your creativity sounds like it’s in business. I want to keep making you know, I have

[01:01:20] Martha: always, and I, I think you’re like this too. I have never minded taking the first step to doing something differently or to the first step, whether it’s physical, emotional, or mental, intellectual, whatever. Mm-hmm. I think that you always have to be willing to make a step to doing something a little differently, to keep pushing, to keep learning , to keep growing.

[01:01:47] Danielle: I could keep going, but for respect of your time, I want to queue up the final question of our conversation for today, which is the Don’t cut your own bang moment. I would love to hear Martha Hoover’s. Don’t cut your own bang moment.

[01:02:00] Martha: Well, you do know there was a true moment where I did cut my own bangs and I cut my hair truthfully.

[01:02:08] Yeah. After a breakup, I was like, course, of course was devastated. And I said, you know what would help me right now in this moment is cutting my hair. Yep. By the way, I had the improper scissors and zero training and what it taught me truthfully was this too shall pass hair does grow back.

[01:02:32] And it taught me not just to never do it again, but it taught me a great deal of humor about , every time I looked in the mirror, I, instead of like crying over a haircut, I laughed about what I was trying to do. Mm-hmm. And what a failure it was. But that’s not my moment. I think there is not a decade in my life where I’ve not.

[01:02:59] Done something in the vein of what you’re talking about, about cutting my own bangs. Mm-hmm. But I am somebody who does not mind taking the first step, and usually my first step is to dive into the deep end of the pool. Mm-hmm. I get fully committed on something. Yeah. And I think that being fully committed has really helped me.

[01:03:24] It also, I’m okay taking the first step towards recognizing that whatever I did didn’t work, and that I needed a strong pivot. A complete reversal. I’m okay with all of that stuff.

[01:03:40] Danielle: When you went full, when you went all in with the same level of confidence of, oh, I just, I’m just gonna give myself bangs and that’ll fix it.

[01:03:45] Martha: That is so true. Yeah, it is unbelievable. I had a moment where the first car I got, I graduated from college and the big.

[01:03:57] Promise in our house was if you graduate from college, you get a car. Hmm. And that was quite an incentive back then. But what my father didn’t tell us was that it would be the cheapest car that he could find, and that you were just stuck with it. And in, in this case, in my case, he bought me a Volkswagen Rabbit.

[01:04:22] I don’t even know if they make them anymore. That was a stick. It was not an automatic, no, I had never, ever Right. Driven a stick in my life. And when I went to pick up the car mm-hmm. The salesperson, it was a salesman set, showed me the car and handed me the keys. And I’m like, I have no idea how to drive this.

[01:04:45] And he literally showed me, he goes, well, you go this way, this way, this way, and this way. And he showed me with his hands, not even in the car, and he basically said, you’ll figure it out. And I started the car and by the time I got home, I had figured out I was fully committed to driving a stick shift. And I, that is just one of those moments where I’m like, I have no choice. This is the car I have. Mm-hmm. This is what I’m doing. I will figure this out.

[01:05:18] Danielle: And sometimes I mean, you mentioned how you jump in the deep end. Sometimes you have to get thrown in the pool and just not drown to learn how to swim. I’m not saying that’s the way that I’m gonna teach my 2-year-old how to swim, but sometimes I think in life just jumping in and figuring out how am I gonna get home?

[01:05:31] Okay, let’s do this.

[01:05:33] Martha: I am a total jump into the deep end of the pool, commit to something fully. And part of it truthfully, is if you don’t commit, if you always have a plan B and a plan C. At the first challenge, everything we’re doing will have challenges. And at the first red flag, the first challenge, the first hiccup, the first snag, you will automatically default to plan B.

[01:06:02] And if plan A is meaningful enough, there should not be a plan B and a plan C.

[01:06:10] Danielle: Wow, that I got full body chills with that one.

[01:06:13] Martha: Oh really?

[01:06:14] Danielle: Yeah. That’s a really, really powerful takeaway. I what a strong, that’s a really strong truth and a great lesson. And I don’t think we can top that.

[01:06:25] I’m gonna wind us down to a close and just say thank you. Thank you so much. I know it took us a little bit longer with the tech in the beginning to get us off the ground and rolling. This was all so great.

[01:06:35] But thank you. Thank you so much.

[01:06:37] Martha: Can I thank you for what you’re doing? I think your podcast is really impactful. I think you really are changing lives with these conversations, and I feel remarkably grateful in the deepest sense of the word that you, , invited me to be a guest. So thank you very much.

[01:06:57] ​

[01:06:57] ​