After Losing My Husband to Covid, I Had to Reinvent Myself & My Career — Here’s the 8-Step Process I Followed
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During the pandemic, I desperately tried to keep my company, my family, and my husband alive and healthy, and while we more than doubled our business at a time when most agencies were laying off and furloughing workers, I lost my husband and business partner of almost 40 years to Covid. A radical reinvention is how I kept myself and my company alive. I went on a deep journey of rediscovery that was hard and it was radical, but I believe my story can help many people who are struggling with the same need to reimagine, reinvent, and transform their lives and careers.
I am no stranger to reinvention. As a former editor of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and on-air TV host and founder/chairman of a communications agency, I’ve had to do it multiple times throughout my life. First, there was the shift from editorial, working at two of the most well-known publications in the world, to starting my own PR agency, Lippe Taylor. I started Lippe Taylor almost 30 years ago, and it’s been a deeply rewarding and very successful adventure. I’ve been able to have the financial and emotional independence that I wanted because I always knew that I could take care of myself and my family if I had to. It’s been a great ride and I have colleagues that have been with me for more than 20 years, and they’re still at their peak because they’re still learning as we keep evolving and reinventing our company.
I’ve been blessed throughout my life, despite the sudden death of my husband. However, this loss and loneliness were brutal, shocking, and so unexpected. The combination of loss and the need to transform my company for the brave new post-Covid world was the impetus to keep a daily journal that turned into my book, Radical Reinvention: Reimagine, Reset, Reinvent in a Disruptive World. The book became my therapy and lifeline to my outside world. I detail how I managed to reset my life and reclaim my identity following an 8-Step Reinvention Toolkit which I personally tried and tested. When I lost my husband, I realized that the book I was going to do on reinvention was now really radical because I had to totally reimagine myself and open my heart and my hurt to write this deeply personal memoir, love story, and business leadership book. I wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t for the passing of my husband because it was heartbreaking, painful, and a totally new journey I was starting. I had to reinvent myself first and then continue to reinvent and transform the company leading with empathy and caring.
The following contains excerpts from Lippe’s new book, Radical Reinvention: Reimagine, Reset, Reinvent in a Disruptive World.
Amazon
Review
In order to reimagine, you need a full review of what’s going on in your life first. You need to realistically know where you are in the moment. And, you need to have the courage to reassess your life journey to discover how to transform your future from one of disappointment into an opportunity for progress and personal transformation. For me, that review happened after my personal loss. I had to embrace my fears, faults, and uncertainties. I had to confront the painful truths before I could begin to find the courage and confidence to heal and lead a more secure, meaningful life. And be sure, pain is part of the process. I disintegrated at first. I was exhausted and drained. I came to the realization that I had to reinvent myself, and only a Radical Reinvention would save me from the fear, trauma, and deep loneliness I was experiencing.
It wasn’t easy. I had a rude awakening when I went to the doctor’s office and still checked “married,” but I used that moment as inspiration. I had to accept that I lost a life partner, a love partner, a family partner, and even a business partner. As the serial re-inventor, instinctually, I knew I had to grow through my sorrow, not just accept it. I needed to make the last chapters of my life filled with purpose, service, and ever so meaningful for me and for others.
Recover
Recovery is very individual. I personally need to be with family and friends as much as possible. I need to stay busy and keep moving. I also need to keep working and feeling connected. That’s my therapy. Going to work every week and being with my colleagues was my lifeline and my salvation.
My steps to recovery
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- HELP: Enlist in therapy, professional support.
- APPRECIATION: Express gratitude.
- PASSION: Find your passion/career/volunteer.
- PEOPLE: Spend the “right” amount of time with
people who aren’t toxic. - INDEPENDENCE: Gain financial and mental
independence for yourself. - NATURE: Get out in nature.
- EXERCISE: Get moving.
- SLEEP: Optimize your wake/sleep cycles.
- SEX: Get your physical needs met.
A period of reflection and restoration will help you better reinvent because you can think more clearly. At this stage, you feel and reflect, but you can’t stay stuck in ruminating. Here, you’ll get past your denial of the events that transpired and rocked your world into needing to reinvent. Use your experience to appreciate how far you’ve come and reimagine what you want to do next. ‘Bravely living and ready to recover’ was my mantra. Suffering was not an option. You must test your courage and rise to be magnificent YOU.
Reawaken
When I was 11 years old, I moved from New York City to New Jersey. This was a period of discovery. I went to one of the best schools in the country and became a voracious reader and an excellent student in comparison to my previous school. Mr. Ross, my English teacher, and early mentor, gave me the curiosity, exploration, and joy of reading and learning. It was thrilling. I had renewed confidence. My life was dramatically changed moving to this school in this town at this time in my life. Fast forward a few years and I finished college, dead-set on getting a job at Vogue or Time magazine, which I eventually did. But I started my career with failure. All Vogue asked me to do as a prerequisite for getting in the door was to pass a typing test, and I failed. I did not panic or cave. I jumped up and shouted, ‘I will be back!’” I actually went to secretarial school for six months and learned how to type ferociously, and when I came back for a second interview, they couldn’t believe I had the tenacity to go to typing school to get a job at Vogue. I knew they couldn’t turn me down. They saw the fearlessness and resilience to succeed and work at Vogue. I was hired!
The experience was transformational and a total reinvention. As a twenty-year-old walking into that building, I remember the sensations I felt like it was yesterday. I went to the ladies’ room and saw editors I knew from studying the magazines. I was always pinching myself. You cannot put a price on passion, imagination, and enchantment in the workplace. That’s a high bar, but it exists. You also can’t put a price on the opportunities it afforded me for the rest of my life. After almost a year of interning at all the big magazines published by Condé Nast, I got the position I wanted in the fashion department of Vogue, and a few years later, I would (at that time) become the youngest woman on the Vogue masthead as an editor. It was thrilling.
Remember
In the process of aligning with my truth and doing the inner work when my husband passed, I had to get clear on my values again. Values cannot be challenged. They have to be embedded in your heart and your head. We are tested every day. Before we go any further, this is a good time to consider your values. What values do you hold closest? This can be anything from joy and inclusion to dignity and family. Family for me was the value I cherished and respected the most for my entire life.
As many studies can attest, your family of origin helps to shape your worldview, determines how you relate to and interact with others, and has a big effect on your mental and even physical health. That’s why it’s often helpful to consider your family of origin if you’re working through trauma, mental health concerns, or similar issues that may weaken, wreck, or even improve your reinvention. Remember, Radical Reinvention is also a return to parts of ourselves. Not everything has to be redesigned.
Reimagine
When I started Lippe Taylor, I had a baby and realized that if I didn’t jump off and do my own thing, I would be turning my back on my deep desire to be a successful entrepreneur. I would never know what it takes to develop a start-up business and I wouldn’t have the financial security to afford the ‘Bond Girl’ lifestyle I so coveted, but done my way. What I truly wanted was to be emotionally and financially independent even though I was married to the love of my life who was a very successful publisher. I never wanted to be dependent on anyone but myself.
I always worked as a young girl in high school and paid for all my new clothes for college. I didn’t have to, but it was authentically me. I can take care of myself. And I was an entrepreneur at heart who knew her value and worth and who wasn’t going to compromise despite not having a real business plan at the beginning of my business…or financing. I held tight to my values, my truth, and my vision of what I reimagined life could be as an entrepreneur on my own starting a new business. I could have easily gone back to the magazine world, but that was a past version and vision of me. Honestly, I was motivated by making money and that would encourage me to start my own company.
Reach
Every day in the US, women start about 849 new businesses. Forty percent of US businesses are women-owned. Sixty-four percent of new women-owned businesses were started by women of color last year. And over the past twenty years, the number of women-owned firms increased by 114 percent. You could herald these developments as signs that the world of American entrepreneurship is, finally, becoming more open to women. But the statistics obscure a more troubling trend. For many women business owners, starting a company is a way to escape the often-unmeetable demands of corporate life. More women becoming business owners isn’t necessarily trending well for the economy—or for the women themselves. They often start businesses out of necessity. Are they reaching for their dreams or survival?
I had a very successful editorial career at the height of the media hysteria. Talk about comfort zone. To leave and do something different took guts and was risky, but I love living on the edge. Men owned most of the ad and PR agencies out there when I started, and women-owned businesses were dropping like flies from the dreadfully slow tipping scales…I’ve had my share of failures. But failure can be transformational, so this mindset simply doesn’t work for reinvention! A “growth mindset,” on the other hand, thrives on challenge and casts failure not as evidence of unintelligence but as a prompt for growth and for stretching our existing abilities.
Replenish
During COVID-19 when our workplaces were turned upside down and we were all trying to stay connected, I thought about our younger staff in tiny New York City apartments, alone and without their family members. I was worried day and night about their health, isolation, and mental wellness and would try to stay connected to as many as possible each day. We set up sessions with therapists for anyone who needed counseling. Their mental wellness was more important than their professional wellness. If they are falling apart at home, living with fear and loneliness, we have to take care of them.
We must be all those things for our highly valued people. This is our community. A calm, caring, healthy, and stable environment is imperative. Putting our lives back together takes time. It’s hard and sometimes messy, but so worth the struggles and emotional connections. As they say in the military, “Embrace the suck!” I feel this is a big part of my purpose to encourage and listen to our people and preserve our culture so we can engage and move forward together in change and move forward in this new and complicated world.
Rebrand
I’ve been reinventing brands for over thirty years. With all this vast experience, I’ve learned that so much wisdom transfers from the personal brand to rich, renowned corporate brands, which then is reinforced through representation—presence, leadership, empathy, communications, and culture. There are common denominators in all branding. Our Radical Re-Inventors who tell their personal and tragic stories in the book, all turned into powerful brands. You are a brand. I am my own brand of many re-inventions, starting as a New York City kid moving to the suburbs of New Jersey and then returning to the big city the first chance I got. And I’m still there. That’s who I am: a New York City girl. It cannot be understated that everyone must learn how to sell themselves, even when they’re just teenagers.
Whether you deliberately hone sales skills or not, you are always selling. Call it whatever you want but know it’s sales. Women have great instinctual gifts, but we must use them and trust them. They don’t necessarily require an address book of accolades to build trust or show capability. Always be mindful that you are always selling your personal brand and frequently—even when you least expect it. If you feel more comfortable with phrases like “making a great impression,” “influencing,” or “resonating,” own it, but always be aware there is a buyer, or numerous buyers, in your peripheral checking you out and your personal brand. Just be aware and explore the full spectrum of your potential.
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