 That's kind of when I was like, okay, I kind of like this IP stuff. Like this is a way that I can sort of meld my science background with legal. So welcome to the podcast, Izzy. Thank you so much for having me, Kyle. I'm so happy to be here. So I have to say, because I think it really plays into our story that this is like the third or fourth time we've tried to record because we are busy. We are busy. Yeah. Yeah. And you've been going through like a big move, which obviously consumes a lot of time. Yes, absolutely. So speaking of business, being business women, business owners, all of this stuff. Would you tell us about your business, which is called legally bliss? I'd love to. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about it. So legally bliss is a community for female attorneys who want to be better self advocates with the support of other female lawyers. One thing I've learned kind of through my own podcast and speaking with a lot of female lawyers is that while we're amazing advocates for other people, we are not really super great advocates for ourselves. And that includes kind of taking care of our own mental health and prioritizing ourselves. So that that's legally blissed. And again, it's primarily a community of female lawyers. OK, so what was it that inspired you to create legally bliss? I mean, I heard you say it's a community for women, but what exactly sparked the idea for you to create it? So I have wanted to create a community for a while now. I didn't really know what that would look like. So I created my podcast first. Legally blissed conversations and really just wanted to. I mean, kind of what you're doing. Like I wanted to create conversations with female attorneys and kind of hear their struggles and their wins, of course. And, you know, again, it was that theme that I kept seeing like there was kind of that common story with a lot of these women that, you know, they were they were very successful, but sometimes they were not so great at advocating for themselves. And what I did was I was like, you know what? I want to start this community. And really, I want the initial members to be women that were on my podcast. Because, I mean, at the end of the day, a lot of these women, like even though they've had their own kind of trials and tribulations as female lawyers, they are living their lives as successful women in ways that they define it. And that's sort of another thing that I've learned a lot is that, you know, we have been taught by society to be successful, like in a certain like success is supposed to look a certain way, right? Like, right, we're supposed to, like, want that corner office and we need to have 2.4 children and a dog and the and the dog. And, you know, we need to drive a certain kind of car and then we need to have trophy spouse, like all of these things. And, you know, the women that have, you know, that have been on my podcast and the women in my community, like, they don't always meet that definition of success. And when I've asked them, you know, do you consider yourself successful now? 100% of the women that I've spoken with have said, yeah, like, according to my definition of success, I think it's really important that we really take a step back and think about how the goals that we're creating for ourselves and our values, it really aligns with what we really want. Because at the end of the day, everything that we are outputting in life is a result of what we intake, right? Like, we are malleable and kind of form ourselves to social norms and social constructs, and we need to question that. We need to question that and ask ourselves, does this make sense? Like, is this really what I want? Do I really want that corner office and the leather bound books? You know, like, all of it, you know, many of us when we take a step back and we think about it, we don't really might not really want that. Yeah. No, I believe in that 100%. I spoke to someone maybe last week. I was actually being interviewed and I was like, you know, if anyone had told me that all I needed to do was earn enough money to pay for my bills, I would have laughed. I was like, no, I'm supposed to obtain all of this. I'm supposed to have the title, the office, the car, the respect, the people who work for me, all the trappings. I mean, you get it and you have no time for yourself. So I love that you created society has taught us that we should want all of the things like we should want the material wealth. And I mean, we can kind of do a lot of we can do self-reflection and ask, well, is that like an ego thing that's pushing us towards that? Like, where is that drive really coming from? Does it make sense for what I really want? And I think that, you know, for a lot of people, when they take some time to just kind of set with themselves about it, like they may learn that that is not really aligned with their values. But that kind of goes back to like sitting down and thinking about like, what are your values? Yep. So is defining your values and defining success for yourself something that you teach in the legally bliss community? Yes, we talk about defining your values before creating your goals, which I think is really, really important because there are a lot of ways to kind of go after your goals, right? Like we all know smart, right? The smart goal structure, but we I do talk a lot about the importance of of defining your values. I have some content within the community about defining your values. And regarding success, I don't really have content around that. I mean, it's something that I could think about doing, but you know, kind of like I talked about like success is such a personal thing. But it doesn't mean that maybe some kind of workshop around that wouldn't wouldn't be helpful, right? Like kind of really helping people just if anything, do some mindset work around success and like what that really means to them. Yeah, absolutely. And to everyone that's watching, thank you for watching. I do put up these videos on YouTube, but also you keep seeing me looking down and I'm taking tons of notes. So I'm not texting. I am writing notes. And if you can't see me, go to the YouTube channel. Take a look. I'm here. Susie's here. She's wearing green. We both look great. Check us out. OK, so Susie, we jumped straight into your business, but I do want to get a little bit of background on you. You mentioned that if you were not a lawyer, you would be a pediatrician. Give me some details about that because I feel like those two are so different. OK, so I'm child-free, but I do love children. I think that they're different, right? Like you can love children and it's still style free lifestyle. But I really thought for years that I would go to medical school. Like I look back and I was a biology major in college, which is kind of random to go to law school, college. It was pretty much a given for me. I was going to go to higher education beyond college, right? So I really thought for years that I would go to medical school and go into pediatrics. Like I don't know that was just kind of where I saw myself. I mean, I'm kind of a caretaker, nurture kind of, you know, that whole MCAT thing. I was like, you know, I don't think I'm going to be able to get into med school. Like that was just the truth of it. I really struggled in organic chemistry, too. Math was hard, you know, the joke about, you know, Laws don't math. And I'm kind of one of those. Like I really struggled in that. So even though I was a biology major, you know, a science major, I was very fearful of higher education in for medical school. I just didn't see it really happening for me. OK, so it's so interesting that you say that, especially the organic kind of organic chemistry piece, because I'm going to tell a little bit of my story. Yeah, I wanted to be a pharmacist because I always wanted to create my own nail polish line, my own lipstick line. Those are the only two things I wear. I didn't know where you were going to go with that. Yeah, create your own thing. Well, you know why? Because you don't go to school for pharmacy to get into that. I should have done like chemical engineering or something, right? But I'm sitting in class as a freshman taking organic chemistry. And I was like, what the heck is this? I was like, absolutely not. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. So the reason why I bring that up because of your story and how you wanted to be a doctor, but then MCAT and all of that. It just goes into the fact that deciding you want to do something does not have to be the thing you do for the rest of your life. 100, you can change, evolve, right? And it's OK to say you want to do a thing and later on change your mind. And that even applies to when we are out of school, we practice law for 10 years, right? If you don't want to do it anymore, do something different. Don't don't fall into that sunk cost fallacy. If people do that all the time, need being one of them. I mean, because it's hard for us not to because we're like, we put so much time and energy into this. And the reason why I was so surprised that you wanted to be a pediatrician is because you don't even practice family law. Like I would have thought that that would have been a natural vein, but it doesn't have to be. Yeah, no, it doesn't have to be. You know, it's interesting because I when I was in law school, I wasn't really exposed to family law. Like I feel like a lot of people who are like exposed to family law, maybe like while they're in law school. Yeah, they're working. They kind of go into that like it was never on my radar once I was in law school, which is kind of interesting. I have to mention this and I hope it's not a bad thing, but I love your accent. I'm here in the low Kentucky playing. So would you tell everybody a little bit about where you're from, where you are now? Yeah, so I was actually born in Colorado. And it's funny because when we moved from Colorado to Kentucky, people were like she has such an accent, but it's like you have an accent. But yeah, it's like you have an accent, right? But, you know, of course, like after living here and really growing up here, of course, I have incerted an accent. Yeah, I went to college in Kentucky. I went to center college and then I went to the University of Kentucky for law school and I worked in Louisville for about eight years and then moved to California and lived there for a couple of years. Never lost the accent because once I was, you know, in Kentucky after having moved from Colorado as a child, of course, I kind of developed a more southern accent. You know, they say never, like never say never, you know, I when I was a teenager, I was like, oh, when I grow up, I'm never going to live in my hometown again. You know, I'm going to live in New York or whatever. We we say all these things, right? But I actually live in the small town that I grew up in. Yeah, very cool. Our middle of nowhere. So, Susie, you are barred to practice law. I say that. But even as I said, it's kind of weird. You are licensed to practice law in Kentucky and also the patent bar, which means that you've passed both of those bar examinations. What was that like? And what kind of law do you practice now? I mean, I kind of went to law school, like really not knowing what I was going to do. Like I'm envious a little bit of people who are like, you know, I wanted to get into social justice, like all of these like things, you know, but I was like, can we extend this college thing for four years because I don't know what I'm doing yet. OK. That's why I went to law school, which is not like, you know, the I don't know, everyone has their reason to see us. But it was a loss when it was not like an undergrad because going from a science major to law was very different for me, you know. And even though I kind of sucked at math and organic chemistry was, you know, a lot, I I did well in like inorganic chemistry, but, you know, it was it was still different, right? Going into into the into the wall. And so I was very like kind of floating around like, what am I going to do? I have no idea. Like even one summer, I instead of working, I studied abroad air quotes in. What does that mean? Why the air quotes? It's more like the air, like I feel like there's a lot more abroad than study. OK, party to broad. Well, exactly. And it was it was in Munich, Germany, which is a beautiful city and European intellectual property. And that's kind of when I was like, OK, I kind of like this IP stuff. Like this is a way that I can sort of meld my science background with legal. And I still wasn't really sure what was where I was going to go with that. But the spring of my third year law school, I took and passed the patent bar. And so at that point, it was fairly. Easy to get a job as a patent attorney, like a patent attorney. There just weren't a lot of patent lawyers, people that had passed the patent bar. So that's when I started working in Louisville, and I started out doing pretty boring patent prosecution. I worked on like light fixture designs, for example, and really a lot of the work that that firm was doing wasn't so much science. Like you would think that maybe she would do farm of patents or something like that. But it was more mechanical engineering type stuff, which didn't mesh with the science background. Not a big deal. I ended up getting a taste of trademark work, you know, another kind of subset of intellectual property. And I was like, OK, I like this. You know, I get to look at pictures and logos all day and work with people in marketing who are, you know, fun and exciting and sometimes a little eccentric, right, which were like a little bit different than, you know, the dorky engineers. Sorry to all of our engineers out there. But I mean, it's true. It's true. Engineers are geeks and lawyers are nerds and it's different. Yeah, that's a good point. And it was fine. It's just I did find that the trademark work was a much better kind of match. So I mean, I look back and like, well, I didn't really use like my science background, you know, but it doesn't take away from the fact that I love science. Right. I still love science and and biology and, you know, even if you don't necessarily implement what you study in a college, doesn't mean you can't be a kind of amateur student of in whatever way that you see that. Yeah, definitely, because I feel like everything from our backgrounds, we always bring with us to the next step. Yeah. Yeah. Like that's part of why I call the podcast. You are lawyer podcast, because it's like, even if you're doing something else, you're a CEO, you're running a law firm, you're doing this. You always will have that experience, the legal knowledge. All of it comes along with you. So one of the percent. And I think that's why we have to be really careful about that sunk cost policy, right? That we have that even if we are CEO, like we have from our legal background that that is going to help us as a CEO or whatever it is you're doing. Absolutely, definitely. So I have one last question here for you, which is what would you say to a new graduate like less than three years or five years out of school who is working in patent law or something else and they are miserable? What would you say to them about what else they can do in their career? So life is too short to be miserable, right? Like and the value of our time is almost immeasurable. And you don't even start realizing that. Yeah, until you get older and you realize like every hour of my life, like I can make another five hundred bucks, but I can never get that time back. Right. So if you are like legitimately miserable, there's a few things that that I think are going on there. It could be the firm you're at. It could be the type of patent work you're doing, right? Maybe maybe you're doing mechanical, but like maybe you want to do more farm or chemical related, right? You have to look at the different factors to see, you know, rather than just like taking a jump and just being like, I'm going to change all variables at once. Yeah, it's got to be really careful with that, right? Because I'm going to just go backpacking through Central America. I am not going to tell anyone to not do that. OK. Yeah. If you want to go backpacking through Central America, as long as you're safe, I am like, you go do your thing because and even if you are like dirt bagging it and you're sleeping on people's couches, like you only have really one like one chance in your life that you're going to do want to do that before you have a partner, before you have children, you know, all of the things. So I have to say, like I'm such a mental health care advocates, especially for lawyers, like we have to take care of our mental health. And if they come if you need to hit that reset button, you're miserable, like take the time off and figure out what it is you want. I do, you know, want to say, though, like if you're really miserable in a particular position and you think something seems completely like the grass is greener on the other side, it isn't necessarily because a lot of this does kind of come down to mindset stuff, right? And I don't love advocating, completely changing your circumstances, you know, until you kind of address those different variables. Maybe it's the mentor you work for, you know what I mean? So I always think it's you look at other stuff as well. Yeah, exactly. And you know what, Kyla, like if you need to go back packing for six months to a year, I have found, I mean, personally, that just taking some time off can do wonders for you mentally. And it's a great way to hit your reset button. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Suzy. I think the audience is going to absolutely love this. And I want everyone to check out the legally bliss podcast and legally bliss community. Thank you so much for having me, Kyla. And I can't wait to see you on my podcast in a few weeks. Yes, absolutely. So thank you, Kyla. All right, bye.