372: Joanna Hardis—”Just Do Nothing: A Paradoxical Guide To Getting Out Of Your Way”

Learn how to let go of worry and fear by learning new habits

Today I bring you Joanna Hardis, a beautiful woman whom you’re going to love listening to. Joanna is focused on helping people with anxiety-related issues and obsessive compulsive disorders, so this is a person you really might like to know more about if that’s something that is in your life. She can give you strategies to help you break through the barriers that are holding you back and learn to let feelings be, which is what she talks about in her new book, Just Do Nothing: A Paradoxical Guide to Getting Out of Your Way. Like me, Joanna preaches that change is hard but we can do it, we really can change and have a happier, more fulfilling life. Listen in and enjoy.

Watch and listen to our conversation here

Change your thinking, change your behavior

Joanna teaches us that when your brain wants to go to the “worry story,” that state of mind that’s causing you to be anxious, that is when you can learn specific skills to say, “Nope, I’m going to let that story be.” It’s really about doing nothing with those thoughts, letting the thoughts be, letting the feelings be there. She says that you may feel worried, but you’re not going to engage in those feelings, you’re going to let them be, instead of trying to get rid of them which actually makes the worry and the fear stronger. This really is quite fascinating and as she says, paradoxical.

How to reach Joanna

You can connect with Joanna on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and her website. Her email is joanna@joannahardis.com.

Want to learn more about how to find more joy? Try these:

• Podcast: Paula Guilfoyle—How Do You Manage Your Emotions To Build Better Conversations For Exceptional Results?
• Podcast: Meg Nocero—Can You Feel Joy As You Rethink Your Life?
• Blog: You Can Find Joy And Happiness In Turbulent Times!

Additional resources for you

Read the transcript of our podcast here

Andi Simon: Hi and welcome to On the Brink With Andi Simon. I’m Andi Simon, and as you know, I’m your host and your guide. And I love to find people to bring to you who can help you see, feel and think in new ways so that you can get off the brink. I want you to soar. But sometimes we don’t really know how to do that. We want to. We may even visualize what life could be like if it wasn’t so…and fill in that blank. But how do I do that?

So today, Sarah Wilson, who I love, brought me Joanna Hardis, who is a beautiful woman who you’re going to love listening to. Let me tell you about her and then she’ll tell you about her own journey because she has a new book. And we’ll talk a little bit about the book today. It’s called Just Do Nothing: A Paradoxical Guide to Getting Out of Your Way.

So here’s Joanna’s background. She’s a licensed independent social worker, a therapist and an executive coach in Ohio, and that’s her main business. She’s committed to helping people overcome complex challenges. And I know some people who watching this podcast are going to say, That’s me, I got it and it’s okay. So they can lead high quality lives. Her expertise lies in cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT, which you may know about, an exposure and response prevention for adults, children and adolescents. You can find her on LinkedIn and learn a lot more about her.

A couple of things I just want to highlight. She really is focused on helping people in the face of anxiety-related issues and obsessive compulsive disorders. So this is a person you really might like to know more about if that’s something that is disturbing you and she can identify what’s holding you back and give you strategies to help move you forward. And today, the things that I think we’re going to talk about as we talk about doing nothing, it’s called empower you to understand, break through the barriers that are holding you back, create your own sliding scale of distress, and learn to let feelings be instead of letting them go. We’ll come back to these, and I’m sure Joanna is going to tell you a whole lot more about them. Please, thank you for joining us.

Joanna Hardis: Thank you for that lovely introduction, Andi. Appreciate that.

Andi Simon: Well, I appreciate having you. Our audience will as well. I’m curious about both your background, your journey, the origin of this great book, and then what our listeners will learn from our podcast today about this complex world that we’re in and the anxiety that often arises. And life is too short. We have to find better ways to live it. Your story.

Joanna Hardis: Yes. So how I got here. I imagine, well, I never intended to be a therapist. I sort of just happened to get here. I went to college, pre-med, not really even wanting to be pre-med. I wanted a fellowship in high school to do independent study and had a real interest in working with people with HIV. So I was in high school in the 80s when HIV was really emerging on the scene. I don’t know how it emerged, but I had an interest in working with people with HIV and AIDS.

So a friend and I got a fellowship to do independent study and worked with physicians at a local hospital working with people with HIV and AIDS. So I went to college, went to Cornell and had this real interest in having a career in HIV and AIDS, and was told at Cornell like, Oh, then you’re pre-med. And I was not a very savvy student, despite being at Cornell. So I was in a pre-med track and realized quickly that it was not for me. And went to my advisor who said, What do you like? And I said, I really like people. And so the advisor said, Okay, well, maybe you’re a social worker and not someone who at that time was very savvy.

Again, I said, Okay, well let me give this a shot. Let me give this social work thing a shot. And I got to do an internship. So I went to Costa Rica and lived and worked. And I thought that was incredibly cool. So I kind of found my way into social work, never thinking about other career paths like psychology or counseling, but really found my way into social work by happenstance. I started my career in HIV. I spent about a decade in HIV, still hold it very near and dear to my heart, but really fell in love with working with people and have a real interest in what makes people click and the brain and helping people move forward.

So my career started in HIV and AIDS and I got trained in cognitive behavioral therapy and have really always had this interest in helping people who are in very complicated situations, working collaboratively to move them forward. And so I have been able to partner with people throughout my career, and I’m in my 27th year as a cognitive behavioral therapist. I do that and really work with people in different areas of life.

So I’ve been with people with HIV and AIDS. I’ve worked in an eating disorder treatment center, which is unbelievably challenging. I’ve worked with young entrepreneurs. I have volunteered during the pandemic with therapy aides, just giving, volunteering with frontline workers to now having my own private practice where I have really committed to working with people with anxiety disorders because it just makes so much sense to me. Anxiety disorders and obsessive compulsive disorder.

Andi Simon: And there is an abundance. There’s an epidemic of this.

Joanna Hardis: Yes.

Andi Simon: And so it’s not as if you’re looking at a needle in a haystack. It is the haystack.

Joanna Hardis: It is. It is. And, you know, we know from data that parents who struggle, it has an impact on children. So I find it incredibly rewarding. I stopped seeing kids and adolescents during Covid because I had to move virtually. And so now my practice is adult. But I do work a lot with parents to change their behavior because we know that that can help children. We need a different way in which to help people that are struggling.

Andi Simon: And before we get into the book, which I’d like to know more about as to why you wrote it and what the listener can benefit from. But give us some context here for the audience, around where does anxiety come from? And the context, because what you’re talking about is that it becomes contagious. What’s going on with the parents? It gets picked up as normal by the children, who then spread it among other children who think we should all be anxious instead of we should all be happy. But I’m making that up. You help me help you, What is it like and how can we better identify it?

Joanna Hardis: Sure. And there is a difference between an anxiety disorder and anxiety, which is just a normal state and a normal reaction, for instance, to fear. So it exists on a continuum. So let’s walk it back a little bit to the difference between fear and worry, because oftentimes we confuse fear and worry. Fear is a response to a threat. So someone cuts you off on the highway and you get that fear. You get that flood of adrenaline in your whole body, you get the whoosh, the flood of adrenaline. That’s fear. It is a response to a biological threat, an external threat. Well, what if that happens again? What if someone cuts me off again? And what if that car is too close and oh my gosh, what if I need to go really slowly? That cognitive process to fear is what we call worry.

Andi Simon: Good. Great distinction.

Joanna Hardis: Right. And if you’re still feeling the physical sensations, we would say, I am feeling anxious.

Andi Simon: Gotcha. This is perfect, I know exactly who’s listening today. And that is exactly what they have gone through. And an initial fear of something that is now turned into anticipatory worry about it. Right. And it makes them anxious and unable to make good decisions.

Joanna Hardis: Yes. Now, and we may say that anxiety, perhaps that ride, you may feel anxious. But if that worry or that anxiety persists and the person every single time they get in the car or they think about getting in the car, they are worrying and they’re feeling anxious and it is starting to impair and it could impair their life because every time they’re thinking about it, they are worrying. Then we are starting to cross the line. And we may say that it could be crossing over if it happens for long enough. Yeah, it could cross over into an anxiety disorder. Or we may say it’s excessive worrying.

Andi Simon: Yeah. Those are great words because it’s difficult to know whether the situation requires a suitable amount of fear reaction or anticipating it. You’re worrying about something that may never, ever happen again and impairs your life. You’re smiling at me, but I really understand that for some situations, people are so anxious that they can’t take a step forward, they get locked in their own fear.

Joanna Hardis: Exactly. And then you know what? You have nailed it, Andi. And what people don’t recognize, they wouldn’t because they don’t know this stuff, is that the more time someone spends worrying about it, it is training their brain that this is important and that this is dangerous and that this fear that they have is actually relevant in the absence of any data that says it’s relevant. So the brain gets trained and then the brain is going to say, oh my gosh, we need to be extra vigilant.

Andi Simon: Yep. And they can’t articulate what the crisis will be because it has nothing to do with the facts of what’s going on. It has to do with their worry factor.

Joanna Hardis: Yes. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And so learning how to stay out of the story, the worry story, because there’s nothing in their direct experience that speaks to that. This is what is happening right now.

Andi Simon: It is. But it’s also very interesting about the connection between something that might have happened as opposed to not knowing why I’m here. And I have a hunch that sort of leads to our discussion about what you do and what this book is intended to do. Because once you see that progress and the dead end and the only way you can revert people back to seeing the world in a positive way is to back it up somehow and rethink it somehow or restructure it somehow. Help me help them.

Joanna Hardis: Unfortunately, the brain can’t unlearn.

Andi Simon: Yes.

Joanna Hardis: So the brain cannot unlearn that. You had that frightening experience. But what we can do is we can create new learning.

Andi Simon: Yes.

Joanna Hardis: And so that’s what the person needs to focus on, is that in this direct moment, in this present moment when their brain wants to go to the worry story, that is when they need to learn the skills to say, Nope, whatever it is that I want to go into the worry story, I need to learn how to let that story be. It’s really doing nothing with those thoughts, letting the thoughts be, letting my feelings be there. I may feel worried, but I’m not going to engage in them, letting that stuff be. And the focus is on the action that’s important. So getting in the car and driving and not paying attention to, oh my gosh, well, what if this happens? What if I get cut off? What if someone drives too close? It’s doing what we know in the moment is in the behavior. And letting the other stuff be. 

Andi Simon: So I am curious about the book because I love this idea of when these things arrive, you’ve got to learn new thinking processes and new behaviors, so you become consciously competent about how to change what I’m thinking and feeling. So I begin to do it and practice it so I can become good at it. Right? It’s like a game. We don’t think of it as a game, but it is, to learn new habits.

Joanna Hardis: Correct. And it’s paradoxical. So the title, you know, the catchy title is Just Do Nothing. But then the subtitle, which is The Paradoxical Guide for Getting Out of Your Way. The paradox is that, and I suspect people that listen to you can relate. People are used to doing more. Yeah. And when people are feeling a lot and feeling more, they’re used to doing more to get rid of it. So they think more. They ruminate more, they worry more.

Andi Simon: And they write long, long, long, long, long things about it that you can’t figure out what it’s all about. Right? 

Joanna Hardis: Yes. Well, exactly. And so it’s doing more to try to get rid of it that makes the worry and the fear stronger. So what we want to do is to learn how to get the skills, to do less with how we’re feeling and the thoughts that are so troublesome. And so that’s what the book helps people learn: the skills to practice in very small ways that build on each other to do that. And then they do it in gradually more stressful situations.

Andi Simon: So Joanna, talk to us about where this book came from, this is your first book.

Joanna Hardis: This is my first.

Andi Simon: My first book took me four years, my second book, only two, my last one, a year. I mean, we begin to figure out how to write a book and why it’s important, but this is an important book. Where did the idea come from and how did it develop?

Joanna Hardis: It was interesting. People have always suggested I write a book and I always said I’d never had anything to write a book about. So I didn’t really have an intention. And then I had been doing workshops with a colleague that I met who also is interested in anxiety work, and we had been doing them on helping people change their relationship with distress and discomfort. So I had been working professionally in this space in addition to my practice.

And then a year ago I had a curveball in my own life. I was dating, someone got ghosted, and it was my own personal explosion of distress. And it was someone I’ve been divorced from for ten years, but it was someone that I really thought that I could go someplace and was ghosted out of nowhere. And I had to really work on what I had been talking about in a way that I hadn’t in a long time.

And so it was a confluence of professional interest and then personal experience. And from that, I and the ghosting story, is literally the first page of the book. The book came out of that intersection and I had a fire in my belly and it took me less than a year to write the book.

Andi Simon: Yes. Exciting. Well, but it was there to cleanse yourself. Writing is a great way to take the mind and what it’s thinking about and push it out. All the things that you’re talking about, to learn new ways to build a new story.

Joanna Hardis: Yes. And what’s interesting is my work is focused on anxiety in my professional life. But what I talk about is distress, because what is under the umbrella of distress is anxiety, is stress, is shame, is embarrassment, is boredom. All these feelings that people really don’t like to feel. And so it broadens the umbrella for people because what trips people up, whether it’s what gets in people’s way, whether it’s not going to the gym, overeating, not asking for a raise. It may not always be anxiety. It may be shame, it may be embarrassment, it may be boredom. And so people need a process for all of those feelings. 

Andi Simon: And you just said the word so well, because we decide with the heart and how things feel, then the brain gets engaged. And I also always preach that we live the story in our mind. And that story is an illusion of what your reality is, and you live it. And then something like your situation arises and now you have to rewrite that story to give it a positive experience for you so you can wake up every morning and say, Hey, this is a good day, as opposed to, Oh crud, do I have to get out of bed? But that’s really important. So talk to us about the book itself and then the kinds of things about the solution: just do nothing.

Joanna Hardis: Okay, so the book is structured in two parts. The first part is really frontloaded with education to help people understand why change is hard. Because I wrote the book for people, because I’m assuming that people who pick this up have tried to change their feelings. Stuck. They may have tried lots of things before and for many people, they’re coming in with a perception that there may be skepticism. They may think that their perception may be that they can’t change. So I want people to understand and this is all evidence-based work. So it is not just Joanna’s thoughts about life. It’s all evidence-based.

Why change is hard. Why? You know how we need to think about the thoughts in our head? You know, facts about feelings that are helpful for people, why we shouldn’t take them so seriously, that they only last 90 seconds. And in the first part, everything has exercises. So at the end of every chapter, there are exercises to practice. So you can read the book any number of ways. You can do each chapter and then do the exercises. You can read the whole book through and then go back through and do the exercises.

The second part of the book is Everything that Could Go Wrong. As you set about to make a change in your life, what could go wrong and how to course correct? So the first part is really to help people change their relationship with distress and discomfort. So it is really explaining why we need a new way, why things that you have may have tried don’t necessarily work. And then I lay out how we’re going to do it differently.

So instead of trying to get rid of feelings that we don’t like, we’re going to allow them and then we’re going to learn to do nothing with them and we’re going to focus on behavior that is meaningful to us and how we’re going to create a scale breakdown. What you want to change into little baby parts, and how when you start to feel the discomfort, you know how to move through it and you’ll have exercises to practice going from something with very low discomfort, with a process to move through higher discomfort. And then in the second half, as I said, it’s everything that could go wrong, including that when something gets hard and you feel like you failed, how to reframe your relationship with setbacks.

Andi Simon: Love this. You have no idea how timely this is for different people in my life who have gone through something traumatic or that they think is traumatic or are anticipating something traumatic. It’s so interesting to listen to the categories in my mind of the folks who you are describing without describing them as types.

Joanna Hardis: Yes. Interesting.

Andi Simon: It is. One is a young woman at a university that had somebody come in and shoot a professor.

Joanna Hardis: Oh, gosh, yes.

Andi Simon: And when you talk about the distress, the fear, the worry, and how do parents manage that in a way which doesn’t deny that there’s anxiety or anxiousness or concern to the point where the young woman said, I can’t even take a walk without feeling unsafe. And that is that car story where I’m not going to get in the car to drive because somebody almost hit me. And that becomes one kind of situation and another situation, that I know of where the act of doing something is going to be potentially dangerous, and so I’m not going to.

Well, but maybe you’ll miss a whole opportunity because it could be dangerous. And so there’s the disappointing one. But I think that what you’re describing is exactly what we know when we work. I mean, I have positioned myself as a corporate anthropologist who helps companies change. And for my listeners, I always preach that change is pain. Because once you got a story in your mind, that’s the way you live and you don’t realize that these other things could change that story. Or if you want to change what you’re doing, you’re going to have to change the story. There is no reality. There’s only this mythical story in your mind. And it’s not doing good things for you. Your book sets out a path to change it. Am I correct?

Joanna Hardis: Yes.

Andi Simon: Oh, my gosh. You and I have a lot in common. 

Joanna Hardis: Yes. Because in my field, we talk about what distress intolerance is, and distress intolerance is someone’s perception that they can’t handle. We call it negative internal states. So I can’t handle feeling anxious about taking a walk. So I’m going to stay home. So it’s getting locked into the story and then avoiding it.

Andi Simon: Yes. And that becomes my view of the world as if it’s real, not imagined, but everything is imagined. And so if I’m going to get past that and trust, I’m going to have to figure out how to take a step outside and begin to break the resistance to my fear and worry.

Joanna Hardis: Yes, exactly. And that’s what I’m talking about. Exactly. And we go about it because we have to get the behavior. We change thinking by changing behavior.

Andi Simon: I love it because that’s just what I preach. Because to change, you can’t do your strategy and be abstract. You have to change the behaviors, the habits so that things are actionable and then the brain comes and justifies. It doesn’t get better.

Joanna Hardis: We’re saying the same thing, but different. 

Andi Simon: But it is so exciting. It is. Now, this has come out of your work, but it isn’t your work. So in some ways, you want to reach beyond the folks in Ohio that are in therapy with you.

Joanna Hardis: So, yes.

Andi Simon: How do you do some online seminars, workshops, or things that people could come to you for?

Joanna Hardis: So my colleague and I are doing online seminars, workshops, and we’re retooling it now. We are retooling it. And we’re going to be doing a course, interestingly, for anxious parents.

Andi Simon: Oh, great.

Joanna Hardis: Yes.

Andi Simon: And do they have to be just in Ohio or could they be anywhere?

Joanna Hardis: It can be anybody. It can. When we do these, it can be for anybody. But we are focusing on parents because right now there is so much nationally about parents that are anxious and are having a really hard time tolerating not only their children’s distress.

And so that makes it really hard for parents to parent the way they know they want to be parenting or need to be parenting. And parents have a really hard time tolerating their own distress. So they give in to their kids or they’re constantly nagging or they’re doing the work for their kids and they’re not allowing their kids the independence and the autonomy that we know kids need.

Andi Simon: This is so powerful because it is going to create a different world for the generation that’s coming. And I’ll blame it on the pandemic for the moment. But it is a time of transformation without clarity about how do I, on the one hand, cope with my anxiousness or my distress, my fear, and then also make sure that the next generation grows up strong, happy and able to solve complex problems with creative thinking, all the things that kids learn by playing outside on the street together and making a game together. Right?

Joanna Hardis: Yes. Yes. So that’s in the works. We’re in the final stages of putting the course together. And, you know, who knows? I mean, I may develop a course from the book. I have to see. It’s only been out a month. So I think if there’s interest, I may put something together.

Andi Simon: I think that you have a mission that I think is transformational for our culture and society that’s far bigger than that. If I hear you right, you mean you want to take the next generation of parents and kids and make them happy because it isn’t that the world is bad, it’s that they see it that way. You know, that letting a child walk to school, it’s not going to be they’re not going to get kidnapped. They might, but they’re not.

I rode my bike to school growing up and I went outside and we played kickball or stickball or whatever, on the street. We didn’t have organized stuff to the degree they have now. And so we were free to be kids. And I and some of my neighbors, we still stay in touch when we remember the joy of pulling the sled. I mean, it was freedom. 

So now it’s become very constrained. And I’m not going to blame and complain. But I do think that if we don’t transform, the next generation is going to see the world through a very different lens and they’re not going to want to do anything.

Joanna Hardis: Yes. No, I agree with you. And I saw recently in The Wall Street Journal that parents, when kids are at summer camp, which used to be a time away from parents, parents are now obsessively looking over kids’ photos. So I guess camps are now posting photos of their kids at camp and parents are obsessively looking over the camp photos to make sure that the kids look happy, and they’re contacting the camps. And parents are really invested in the photos and taking action.

Andi Simon: And the photos have no reality. They’re just photos you’re imposing on them. Meaning…? But that photo may be at a moment where they were dealing with something or struggling with something or happily doing it. You have no idea what the meaning was at that moment. But you are certain that that photo says my son or daughter isn’t happy.

Joanna Hardis: And has no friends. Right. And then intervening in a child’s experience and parents are getting…I mean, there is so much wrong with that.

Andi Simon: So much wrong with it.

Joanna Hardis: We could do a whole podcast on what’s wrong with that, that I think that there is a need to really intervene. And I don’t blame parents. I think it’s the culture. The pendulum has swung in the other direction.

Andi Simon: You might almost team up with all those camp owners and say, You might want to educate your parents before they start their kids in camp. That’s a whole audience who, I mean, when I went off to camp, my husband and I started at young ages and it was our free time. The last thing I ever wanted my parents to do is show up. Right?

Joanna Hardis: Right.

Andi Simon: They don’t have to know anything about my sneaking out the back door of the bunk in the middle of the night to meet a guy down by the basketball. That was not what they were supposed to know.

Joanna Hardis: Right, Exactly. Can you imagine? 

Andi Simon: Right. And the camp directors have gotten caught into this because now the world is all social. And so there’s a reality there. That’s one last thought. And then we will wrap up because I’m having too much fun. But there’s been a whole lot of discussion about the merger of virtual and reality.

And I have some friends who are teachers in elementary schools, and the kids are coming in unable to separate out social real from virtual real. And they can’t have conversations with other kids. They don’t know how to socialize with them. I’ll blame the pandemic for that. But also what we’ve done is replaced people with virtual and now they think that they’re almost the same and they like being the avatar in a virtual game rather than having a game with real kids. They don’t even know how to play in the schoolyard. Your thoughts?

Joanna Hardis: Well, I mean, I can only speak to what it does when I see it, when it turns into an anxiety disorder. I work so hard with people to use real data. It is so easy for people to get lost in possibility. And the more that someone is living online, living virtually, they are living in the ‘what if’ and living in possibilities and living in this comparison mode. They are comparing and it is just so hard for them to use their real sense data and it makes it much harder to treat. 

Andi Simon: Especially real life experience vs. iimagined. Oh my goodness, welcome to the world that we’re moving into, that we haven’t even talked about.

Joanna Hardis: I was just thinking that. 

Andi Simon: Because then I don’t know what’s real. This has truly been a pleasure. I usually like to ask my speakers 2 or 3 things you want the listeners to remember and then where they can get your book. But first, what should we let them remember the most?

Joanna Hardis: A feeling only lasts 90 seconds. That is so important. From the moment it is released in the brain to when it is out of the body. So people will always say, my feelings last hours and hours. That is because we are re-triggering the circuit by our behavior. That is essential to remember. Another thing to remember is that just because we think it or feel it doesn’t mean that it’s true.

Andi Simon: Just because we think it doesn’t mean it’s true.

Joanna Hardis: It doesn’t mean it’s true. And we always want to go with behavior, behavior that moves us toward what’s important to us or what we need to be doing.

Andi Simon: This has been truly wonderful.

Joanna Hardis: It has been. I’ve enjoyed it so much.

Andi Simon: I have enjoyed it as well. And that’s why I do podcasts, because I get pleasure at meeting new people and sharing ideas in ways that are difficult otherwise.

And for my listener, it is a time of change, and change is painful, and we are trying to figure out as we are coming out of the pandemic period what is “normal or certain.” And there is no normal and there is no certain. So now you need new skills, the correct skills that Joanna’s been talking about, is to begin to think about behavioral change. And because if you begin to do it differently, then you’ll think it differently. I‘ve learned a lot about what I needed to know today, which was a perfect day for this. So I want to thank you and the name of the book and where they can get it, please.

Joanna Hardis: The book is Just Do Nothing: A Paradoxical Guide to Getting Out of Your Way. They can get it anywhere they want: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, bookshop.org or go to my website: Joannahardis.com.

Andi Simon: It is a lovely website and you’ll learn more about her. So thank you. And so for all of you who come and are my fans and you keep bringing me more fans, which I love, and more people to speak on the show. Thank you. Our new book, Women Mean Business is now available. Yesterday was our launch day, September 26th, and today is a wonderful day for you to buy it. Just like Joanna, any place that sells great books and enjoy it, it is 500+ wisdoms coming from 102 amazing women who are successful entrepreneurs and philanthropists in finance, in all kinds of ways, including in the C-suite and in senior positions in major firms. But they are leaders and thought leaders. And these women want to inspire you.

One of the things we keep saying is, As we rise, we lift others. And that’s our hope, because as you read it, you’re going to say, Oh, I can do that. Lilly Ledbetter is quoted. She says, believe it, do it, and believe in yourself and it will happen. But she has some marvelous quotes. I think that everyone in the book is there to help us do better. So thank you for coming today. And Joanna, thank you for being here.

Joanna Hardis: Thank you so much for allowing me to be here. It was so fun. Wonderful.

Andi Simon: Bye bye now. Everybody have a great day. Bye.

WOMEN MEAN BUSINESS ® is a registered trademark of the National Association of Women Business Owners®  (NAWBO).