What we talked about
Joan Perry is an international bestselling author, keynote speaker, and host of The Heroine’s Journey podcast. In this powerful episode, Joan joins us to share her deeply personal and transformative framework: a 13-step roadmap designed to help women reclaim their voice, rebuild self-worth, and live with authenticity and purpose.
Show notes
Joan Perry started the first female investment banking firm in the country, climbed to the top of her field:and then realized, as she puts it, that the ladder was in the wrong building. Her book The Heroine’s Journey came out of a conviction that women are handed a map designed for men and then blamed for getting lost.
What we covered
- Perry draws a sharp contrast between the hero’s journey and the heroine’s journey. The hero’s journey:the structural backbone of Star Wars and The Hobbit:is an external quest: go out, conquer, bring back the prize. The heroine’s journey, Perry argues, is internal: claim your self-worth and your voice, because without those, nothing external will hold.
- The catalyst for writing the book was a Joseph Campbell quote. When asked whether women have a journey analogous to the hero’s, Campbell responded on Oprah’s stage: “No, they stay home and cry.” Perry had already drafted much of the book when she found a second, later Campbell quote in which he admitted he genuinely did not understand a woman’s path and said a woman would have to be the one to describe it.
- Perry tells the story of a woman whose husband turned to her on a romantic anniversary trip in Mexico:rose petals in the room, champagne, sea crashing on the rocks below:and said he wanted a divorce. He had been having an affair. Perry uses this as the archetype of the heroine’s crisis moment: the woman can look down at the rocks, or she can put her wings on and fly. Low self-worth, Perry says, means you only see the rocks.
- The four wheels of the cart:Perry’s core stability framework:are financial, physical, relationships, and beliefs. All four have to be rolling for a woman to move her gifts to market. Perry describes a client who was an Army nurse: she thought her problem was money, but it was actually that she had become so much the warrior that she had driven her husband away. One of the first changes Perry made with her was redecorating her home to reflect her femininity, and her happiness increased substantially.
- Perry is specific about the sequence: create your stability first, then awaken your authenticity, then light up your expression, then make your contribution. She argues you cannot move to the next stage without grounding yourself in the prior one:trying to express your gifts while financially unstable, for example, is a form of inauthenticity that undermines the whole project.
- Perry pushes back on what she calls the “girl boss” misreading of women’s empowerment. Going out and fighting lions, tigers, and bears, she says, doesn’t get a woman off the cliff:it just creates a bigger, more painful argument. The strength that moves a woman forward is internal, not combative. She also notes that a woman with strong self-worth becomes more attractive, not less, to partners who want an equal.
About Joan Perry
Joan Perry is an international bestselling author, keynote speaker, and host of The Heroine’s Journey podcast. She is the author of The Heroine’s Journey and an earlier book, A Girl Needs Cash, and has worked for decades on helping women build financial and personal self-worth. Her book is available at heroinesbook.com.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-joan-perry
- Website: https://www.walkthejourney.com
Episode 28 of the PreVetted Podcast.
Full transcript
Federico Ramallo (00:01.824) Welcome back to the Prevetted Podcast, where we spotlight extraordinary people and remarkable talent reshaping our world. On our episode today, we have Joan Perry. She’s an international bestselling author, keynote speaker and host of the Herring’s Journey podcast. The Herring’s Journey podcast is a transformative roadmap that guides women through 13 powerful steps to reclaim their stories and live
with intention and purpose. Hello Joan how are doing today?
Joan Perry (00:35.835) great thanks so much for having me it’s gonna be fun
Federico Ramallo (00:40.462) Yes, yes, thank you for being here. I really appreciate it. Tell me a little bit what inspired you to create the Herons journey.
Joan Perry (00:53.265) Rico, first of all, I have to ask you why as a guy, you asked me to come to your podcast and talk about the heroine’s journey. We have to start there. You know, mostly guys don’t invite me on their podcast. Mostly it’s women. So what intrigues you to understand a different point of view? Because thankfully it is a different point of view.
Federico Ramallo (01:18.594) Yes, that’s a very interesting question. Happy to answer it. I, where do I start? So, okay. So, so we’ve been hiring hundreds of people throughout the 10 years of my company, density labs and now we’re launching prevent it. so we’re hiring, you know, multiple people. at one and my.
co-founder, partner, wife, and CFO of the company. So she’s a very important person in my life and we work together. So it’s been an interesting challenge to figure out how to do all that together, right? So that’s kind of how I…
Joan Perry (02:11.205) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (02:16.856) I’m interested on hearing your perspective, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Joan Perry (02:19.601) Yes. And first of all, I want to say thank you for that because it does take hearing because our culture has conditioned us so much from the male point of view to see things that as I talk about the heroine’s journey, it is a different frame. So thank you for your interest.
Federico Ramallo (02:40.876) Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Happy, happy to hear your thoughts. So yeah, I mean, one component is, you know, because I work along with my wife and the other component is because we had hired people for our company. And, and we’ve been, I’ve been trying to give more opportunities to women to get into the tech industry. And, and what I have done is,
At one point I tried to do quotas, know, to do 50 % women, 50 % men. I realized that wouldn’t work because there is 3 % of women in the tech industry. So if I tried to do 50%, it wouldn’t work. I would be hiring less competent people for the job, right? Following the math, right?
So I said, okay, what can I do to do that better? Right. And I learned that, you know, when we have a job opening, women would apply only if they had a hundred percent of the requirements. Men would apply if they had only 50 % or 60 or whatever. I don’t remember the exact number, right. So we tried to change the wording to make it more inclusive. But what we didn’t want to do is like lower the bar.
for very similar requirements. So what we ended up doing is we created a community called IT Girls, where we find women with, by we I mean, I’m encouraging my wife to own that more, but the idea is we find women that have experience in the industry and we invite them to share their experience.
and encourage other women to, know, basically we try to tell them, you can do it, you know, it’s possible, see, you know, this experience, this experience, this experience, So we try to show her that there is a path and try to encourage them to follow.
Federico Ramallo (05:01.44) Awesome, awesome.
Joan Perry (05:03.697) So you asked me why I wrote The Heroine’s Journey? Is that? You asked me why I wrote The Heroine’s Journey? Yes? So, two things. Gosh, 10 things, but let’s start with one or two. You know, I think we’re doing women such a disservice when it comes to working and when it comes to our culture.
Federico Ramallo (05:07.017) no. There you go. Can you repeat that again? Yes.
Federico Ramallo (05:14.178) Yes.
Joan Perry (05:32.719) And the reason why that is, is that, just let me give you an example. I went to college, and when I graduated from college, I poked my head out of the sand and I said, so what is the path for success? And I looked around and there were guys trotting off into the workforce. They were gonna make money. And that said to me, that’s the path for success. But I honestly think what’s happening right now,
is women are getting to midlife and realizing that they were sent on a hero’s journey, and I’ll explain that, when they’re actually can’t deny their femininity and our path is a heroine’s path, which is a different path.
So, and I’ve tested this so many times, I did really well in my career. I got to the top of the ladder. I started the first female investment banking firm in the country. But I got to the top of the ladder, but the ladder was in the wrong building.
Federico Ramallo (06:40.066) Hahaha!
Joan Perry (06:42.949) And what I mean by that is I was not using my own innate gifts, talents, perspective that would actually create something out of my own authenticity.
I was in fact trying to shift shape myself into a man and play in that sandbox, play that game.
Federico Ramallo (07:09.26) Right.
Joan Perry (07:11.567) And you might ask me, well, Joan, what’s the difference? So we know that the hero’s journey classically, which is the underlying plot line in The Hobbit, Star Wars, it’s the journey that a man takes to maturity. And those set of steps have become very fundamental in understanding a man’s path as he matures.
And that path, and you know this all too well, is go out, fight the lions, tigers, and bears, and bring back the bacon.
Federico Ramallo (07:49.686) Yes, men are more hunters. That’s our… Yeah.
Joan Perry (07:53.467) That’s an exceptional journey. And it’s a journey of conquering. And so you graduate from a good college, you go out into the corporate world, you make a lot of money, and you bring some of that money back to your school.
Federico Ramallo (08:11.939) Right.
Joan Perry (08:12.071) That’s the journey of a man and in that process he matures, he gets challenged, his character develops, he comes to know who he is. By contrast, the heroine’s journey is an internal journey.
For a woman, the journey is not about that external set of steps. It’s an internal journey with a set of steps that says, claim yourself worth and your voice.
Joan Perry (08:47.995) Because until a woman claims her self worth, she can’t speak up authentically and with her own voice.
Federico Ramallo (08:57.332) Right, right. It’s aligned with what I’ve seen, you know, when people apply to, when women apply to jobs, right? That they have to have every dot and everything perfect to apply for the job, And my concern was we are missing people that don’t apply.
That we never had the chance to even interview them, right?
Joan Perry (09:31.567) all about self-worth. It starts with self-worth and they won’t, without self-worth they won’t apply for the job. But let’s unpack that for a minute. The reason it’s an internal journey for a woman is that our biggest confrontation is the male culture. There’s so much in the culture and it doesn’t matter
Federico Ramallo (09:40.876) Right.
Joan Perry (09:58.469) what culture, United States, Chinese, whatever. The culture tells women you’re not skinny enough, have debt and credit cards, you need to buy new things in order to be beautiful, your value is in your beauty, your external. There’s so much that is out there that diminishes a woman’s self-worth.
Joan Perry (10:32.868) That’s generally, that’s a different story for a guy. know, a guy, well let me ask you this. When you see statues that they’ve built, are they generally men or women?
Federico Ramallo (10:52.526) Actually, I have a very interesting story about that. So I went to Argentina last month. I’m from Argentina, so I went to Buenos Aires to spend a few weeks with her. She had to go through an open heart surgery, I accompanied her. And we were in Buenos Aires downtown.
The pink house is the white house equivalent, right? So there is a statue from Juana Surduy. She’s a female. She’s a woman fighting. She fought… I don’t remember the whole story, but she was a fierce fighter, basically. She decided to… She had a…
She had a made-up life, right? Like she chose to fight, right? And anyway, she’s the statue’s position in a way that it’s looking at the pink house, right? And she’s fighting, you know. There’s a lot of people behind her, you know.
It’s a very interesting… anyway, have a picture of that. And it caught my eye because, as you said, most of the statues are of men.
Joan Perry (12:31.409) So did she have a weapon in her hand?
Federico Ramallo (12:37.718) Yes, I believe she had a long weapon.
Joan Perry (12:43.015) because most of the statue of men they have weapons but most of the the statue or most of the strength of a woman is internal
Joan Perry (12:58.777) man fights with external strength, a woman fights with internal strength.
Federico Ramallo (12:59.192) She has-
Federico Ramallo (13:05.814) Yes, yes, I agree. I mean the
Women are biologically more inclined to focus on people and men are more inclined to focus on things.
and women are more inclined to protect because the newborn needs a lot of protection otherwise it dies. So I think that’s why the inclination is more towards people.
Joan Perry (13:44.623) Yeah, it’s the work that a woman needs to do in her maturity and what I describe in the 13 steps. They have everything to do with an internal development.
Federico Ramallo (14:00.91) Right, And the, and herself worth, right.
Joan Perry (14:07.397) Yes. So can I tell you a funny story?
Federico Ramallo (14:11.501) Yes.
Joan Perry (14:13.351) So the creator of the hero’s journey is a man named Joseph Campbell. Do know that?
Federico Ramallo (14:21.052) I don’t know about him.
Joan Perry (14:23.323) He’s an American. He created the steps of the hero’s journey. And it later became apparent that movies like Star Wars and The Hobbit, they were built on the structure of the steps of the hero’s journey.
So a famous writer in America asked Joseph Campbell, do women have a similar path to maturity as a man? And Joseph Campbell said, quote to her on Oprah’s stage, no they don’t, they stay home and cry.
Federico Ramallo (15:02.66) Okay
Joan Perry (15:06.501) That’s what catapulted me into going, wait a minute, let’s stop here. How come you would say such a thing about a woman who’s resourceful? Are you telling me we have no heroines as women?
know Amelia Earhart’s or Oprah’s or you know grounded strong internally strong women who have represented the ups and downs of life and who have come out stronger more efficient more creative more capable are you telling me we don’t have any of those
Well, in essence he was, because he was saying, we don’t mature, we just sit on the couch and cry.
Federico Ramallo (16:00.258) Right.
Joan Perry (16:01.275) Now that should blow you away.
Federico Ramallo (16:06.35) Yeah, mean the society has been setting roles to both men and women, right? Where the women has to stay at home and the men has to go out, right? And do the work. And I think that…
that
Simplification is wrong. Right?
Joan Perry (16:41.703) Well, what I learned from that was Joseph Campbell was right in one way and wrong in another. He was right that women don’t have hero’s journeys. Because that’s not how we’re crafted, made up, delivered here on this planet. You’re a guy, I’m a woman, there’s a reason for that, and it’s our different perspectives.
He was wrong that we don’t have a hero, that we don’t have a journey. We do, it’s called the heroine’s journey. And right before, days before my book was published, we loved the cover, we?
Federico Ramallo (17:14.178) Right.
Federico Ramallo (17:24.11) It’s beautiful cover, I was talking about that before the recording.
Joan Perry (17:30.395) Days before my book was published, found someone sent me another quote from Joseph Campbell that said, honestly, I don’t know if women have a journey in life. Honestly, if a woman’s really being a woman, that’s not something I understand because I’m a man. And what’s going to have to happen is a woman’s going to have to tell us what that journey is.
Federico Ramallo (18:00.909) Right.
Joan Perry (18:04.273) So while his first comment was insulting, he learned something in between.
And his second comment was reflective and exactly in the direction that I went with my book, which is to say, you know, that for us to reach joy, prosperity, and freedom, there’s a different path. Going out and fighting the lions, tigers, and bears does not bring me joy, happiness, and freedom. In fact, the latter was in the wrong building.
Federico Ramallo (18:37.614) Right, right. I mean, what I understand is that the most successful professionals, anybody that pursues a career, whether it’s in finance, whether it’s, you know, it doesn’t matter, right, but all of them end up, you know, both men and women end up working 50, 80 hours a week, right, 12 hours a day, right.
That means that they are hyper-focused on their work and they prioritize work over everything else and they don’t have time to raise a family, right? And that’s…
Joan Perry (19:23.591) That was true for me. I felt like I had to make a choice because I worked on Wall Street for God’s sakes and I And also destroyed my relationships because I was trying to be the warrior man and Being the warrior man didn’t work well in my personal relationships
Federico Ramallo (19:47.808) Right, right. I had to learn something similar because I am my wife’s boss. So I have to, we have to be able to learn to separate when I’m the boss saying something about the business or whatever. And those meetings become intense, right? With the loving husband, right? And it took us both a lot of time to, to…
a lot of time for her to verbalize it and a lot of time to me to figure out how to do that better.
Joan Perry (20:23.089) Yes, yes. Because a woman needs to grow in her own way or eventually she will reach a point in life where she’s saying, I’m just not happy.
Federico Ramallo (20:24.814) Thank
Joan Perry (20:37.639) I’m not happy in this relationship. I’m not happy with what I’m doing. I’m not happy with what I’ve achieved. That usually happens around age 50 or 45 or 40 or something because the path’s been the wrong path.
The worst part is that about that time because your own innate being wants you to be your true self oftentimes a major crisis occurs in life and That major crisis will probably be in one of four areas. It’ll either be financial Relationships such as you know, what is the divorce rate now 70 % or 60 % or something?
Federico Ramallo (21:24.526) I think it’s 90 but yeah. It’s high, yeah, it’s big.
Joan Perry (21:26.183) Yeah, it’s big. It’s big enough to tell you that you need your own path. So it’ll be in financial, it’ll be people in people relationship, it’ll be in health, or it’ll be a collapse of self-esteem.
And you know, when you hit those points in, or I hit those points, or a woman hits those points in your life, you’re oftentimes thought, you know, triggered into saying, my gosh, that’s a disaster. As you can look back at it some years out, what it actually was was a reset.
Joan Perry (22:09.575) It was an excuse to step back and say, how am I seeing life? Is this working?
You know it dismantles your beliefs it dismantles your judgments it dismantles your confidence frankly It dismantles often your self-worth But it is when you can when you can look at it constructively And I know this is hard if you’re and if you any of your listeners are actually in this stage And I’m saying this is a gift. They’re like no. It’s not a gift but
Federico Ramallo (22:45.582) Ha
Joan Perry (22:47.073) But somewhere down the road, it’s a reset. excuse me.
What?
Joan Perry (23:02.447) And it’s an opportunity to go on in a new way from a new point of view.
Federico Ramallo (23:09.12) Interesting, interesting.
Joan Perry (23:16.455) Sorry.
Federico Ramallo (23:20.856) Yeah, no worries.
Have you heard about the story of Shulamit Firestone?
Okay, so she was a radical feminist back in the 70s. She died in 2012. And when she died, she was found one month or two months later.
So she was a part of the early development of the radical feminism and the second wave feminism, right? But she was found dead one month later because she was alone, right? So she was alone, she was strange for, she didn’t have any friends, right? And I’m paraphrasing here, probably missing a lot of details, but…
Bye.
Federico Ramallo (24:35.84) my criticism to the current feminism movement is that it sells this idea of the corpos, right? You go, you know, be…
be entitled, be demanding, be… And I think that that leads to a path of loneliness, right?
Joan Perry (25:04.057) and be unloved and unappreciated and whatever because it’s what happens, Frederico, is that when a woman’s like that, it doesn’t feel authentic.
Federico Ramallo (25:19.926) Right. Right.
Joan Perry (25:23.747) And the heroine’s journey is not saying don’t be your best self. Don’t, you know, don’t not go achieve. The heroine’s journey is simply saying be your best self. Not go fight the lions, tigers, and bears. Be your best self so that your authentic self is expressed.
Federico Ramallo (25:45.74) Right, right. Then on the other hand saying, well, your role is to be in the house and raising kids and that’s all you’re going to be in life. I think that’s wrong as well, right? So, between these two extremes, there has to be a better way to pursue happiness, right?
Joan Perry (25:59.247) And the heroine’s journey is done.
This is.
Joan Perry (26:08.519) The heroine’s journey is not saying anything about what role you take in life. The heroine’s journey is simply how important it is to claim your self-worth. And I just described to you the first two steps on the heroine’s journey. You’re sitting at home, everything seems to be fine. Then all of a sudden one day a crisis or a challenge pops up.
And everything that used to work doesn’t work anymore. Everything you thought you knew, you’re thrown into this place of like, my gosh. And the beauty of that is that now you’re asked to ask the big questions. And the big questions are questions like, who am I?
You know, and when you’re thrown into that spot, maybe that pursuit that you had, you know, to go out and you’re like the woman you’re describing, maybe that’s when you challenge it and say, is that really me? Or maybe if you’ve been staying home with kids for 20 years, you say, is that really all there is in me? Because, you know,
What wants to be expressed is the gifts and talents that we came to this world with. So either way, if you feel like you’re not actually living your true self, it’s going to be a moment of discomfort for you.
Federico Ramallo (27:42.786) Yes, and I think that’s the adventure, right? Going out to the symbolically woods, right? Like you go out there to a dangerous place, out of your comfort zone, to pursue a risky endeavor, to do a quest, right? What you’re describing is that the woman quest starts from within.
Joan Perry (28:10.695) Exactly. Can I tell you a story?
Joan Perry (28:18.097) Can I tell you a story?
Federico Ramallo (28:20.076) Yes, of course.
Joan Perry (28:21.925) So this story absolutely sent me on a mission to write this book. I was down in Mexico at a woman’s retreat and we were sitting on a beautiful beach around a campfire. It was just lovely. The stars out, you know, it was cool. So a woman that I knew rather well came and sat down next to me by the fireside.
And was very surprised to see her because I didn’t expect that she would be there. I had known her and her circumstances for some time. And when she sat down next to me, I knew there was something off. She just was not her joyful self. As her story unfolded, this is what she told me. She and her husband got on a plane in Vancouver.
and flew down to Mexico for a fantastically romantic wedding anniversary.
I think it was like she had four kids at the time. I think it was like 20 or 18. You know, it was a pretty big one. So they check into the hotel. They check into the room. There are rose petals everywhere. Very romantic. Champagne glasses. You know, they’re right on the ocean. It’s a beautiful spot. And she’s been planning and looking forward to this for some time. So their plan for the evening was to go to this restaurant for dinner.
So they change their clothes and they walk down the hill and there’s a robot at the bottom of the hill and they climb in. And the robot takes them around the cove because the restaurant’s high on top and in another cove.
Joan Perry (30:09.197) So they pull in, they climb up the top. When they get to the top, there’s this fence kind of in front of them, a low fence that they’re standing in front of. They look up and there’s this beautiful blue sky above and there’s sea crashing on the rocks below. Beautiful! And she’s full of butterflies in her head because this is a very special occasion.
Federico Ramallo (30:27.715) nice.
Joan Perry (30:37.541) He turns to her in that moment and says, I want a divorce.
Federico Ramallo (30:45.048) He said… He said I want a divorce.
Joan Perry (30:55.759) Now that is the crisis and challenge we’re talking about. That is the kind of challenge. Now the heroine has or a woman in that situation has two choices. She can be, her self-worth can be so low that she falls headlong following her nose and crashes on the rocks below because she simply, her self-worth simply can’t take it.
Federico Ramallo (31:26.2) Right.
Joan Perry (31:27.143) or standing on top of that cliff she can raise her gaze up look at that beautiful sky and say to herself I’m going to put my wings on and fly.
Joan Perry (31:42.433) It’s the classic choice and quite frankly all women come to that choice. It may be bigger or smaller but it is about claiming yourself in the moment.
Federico Ramallo (32:01.4) Right. Right.
Joan Perry (32:04.543) And fortunately, as I knew her, she was a strong woman and she said, I’m gonna own this and I’m gonna put my wings on and fly. Now, that’s all well and good, but then you need some skills and tools to know how to do that. And that’s what my book is about. It’s about when you face that, what do you do next?
Federico Ramallo (32:32.692) Right. It’s on one hand building up the self-worth and then after that is how do you grow from there.
Joan Perry (32:49.605) And I can tell you right now, Frederico, if anybody attacks my sell forth, I’m on it right away. Because it’s my most treasured asset.
Joan Perry (33:06.019) I know that I need my self-worth to negotiate, to navigate, and at those times when it gets really crucial to be able to make right choices for myself. I don’t want to go crashing on the rocks below.
Joan Perry (33:26.149) The problem is if you have low self-worth, you don’t see options.
Federico Ramallo (33:36.738) Right. You only see the rocks as the only option.
Joan Perry (33:45.831) Exactly, and if you’re focused on the rocks guess where you’re gonna end up
Federico Ramallo (33:52.974) Can I tell you a story about that? when you’re driving, right? When you’re driving a car, you know, you see middle of nowhere, right? There is one pole, you know, for cables. And then you see the car in a curve loses control and it hits the pole, right? And this is usually what happens, right? And you see around there are no other obstacles, right? Why, you know, why did they hit the pole?
Joan Perry (33:55.675) Yes. I love stories.
Federico Ramallo (34:22.882) Well, it’s because when we have that situation that we lose control of the car, instinctively we say, there’s a post. I don’t want to hit the post. So we look at the post, and then we go towards the post. So it’s similar to what you were saying. If you keep looking at the rocks and you keep looking at the rocks, whether metaphorical or real rocks.
you’re going to go towards that. It’s a spiral that takes you towards that dark place.
Joan Perry (34:59.633) That’s right. And the only thing that will get you out of it is to lift your eyes to the sky and ask for flight.
And once you get up in the flight, you have so much more perspective about what’s going on in your life.
Federico Ramallo (35:22.486) Right. I…
I think that the concept that you’re describing, I was talking about this concept of the girl boss, right? Or the bossy girl, right? But I think it’s a misinterpretation of the concept that you’re describing, right? Where if I have, in order to be myself worth, I have to be obnoxious to everybody else, right? And I think that’s the wrong interpretation, right?
Joan Perry (35:59.623) In fact, if you’re standing on that cliff, if you just go out and try to fight the lions, tigers, and bears, that’s not going to get you out of it. What’s going to get you out of it is to do the internal work.
Federico Ramallo (36:13.069) Right.
Federico Ramallo (36:19.927) Right.
Joan Perry (36:24.719) I mean she wasn’t going to be able to fight her husband standing there. All she was going to be able to do was create a bigger, fatter, more painful argument.
Federico Ramallo (36:36.526) Yes, that’s correct.
Joan Perry (36:38.725) Because let’s be truthful, he was having an affair with another woman.
Federico Ramallo (36:44.286) Joan Perry (36:46.435) And we know in that moment that, you know, he’s thinking with the wrong head.
Federico Ramallo (36:54.126) you
Joan Perry (36:56.84) And at that moment she has to take care of herself.
and that’s an internal journey because he’s not going to help her to fly at that moment he might even push her over the cliff just to you know move on to the next thing
Federico Ramallo (37:03.875) Right.
Joan Perry (37:20.411) So she has to get very independent at that moment, feel her own strength, put her own wings on, and that’s whole description of what that means to do that, and soar in her own life. Now maybe later she’ll meet another love who treats her better than that one did, but in the meantime the only thing she can do is fly out of it.
Joan Perry (37:54.031) because what he’s doing is he’s actively damaging her self-worth.
Federico Ramallo (37:54.391) Ahem.
Joan Perry (38:02.487) And that’s where it all starts. That’s a prescription for falling on the rocks below.
Federico Ramallo (38:13.42) Yes, yes, I am personally looking for a partner, equal partner in a relationship and I’m not looking for a,
Federico Ramallo (38:25.911) a shadow of what she was. Right.
Joan Perry (38:29.595) Yeah, and a woman becomes a shadow of who she is if she loses her self-worth.
Joan Perry (38:37.957) because there’s nothing stronger than a woman who has strong self-worth. And that woman can still be loved.
She can still have relationship. She can still be nurturing. And she can be creative and resourceful and productive.
Federico Ramallo (38:49.356) Yes.
Federico Ramallo (39:10.094) Yes, but she can put limits before, if she has a self worth, she can put her own limits of what she wants, what she doesn’t want and express it in a clearly but determined way.
Joan Perry (39:29.319) So none of this is what we learn in our culture. It’s not even something I learned from my mother or my girlfriends or my sister. It’s so funny that these are secrets. That in general, our culture, all of our cultures, it doesn’t want us to be strong, capable women.
Federico Ramallo (39:35.298) Right.
Joan Perry (39:59.111) So we have to take this on ourselves to determine our own inner strength. Because so much of the world will try to change that because if you don’t have internal strength then people can manipulate you and they love to manipulate you.
Federico Ramallo (40:10.21) Right.
Federico Ramallo (40:23.5) Right, and you know, if you don’t have a self-worth, then you let people manipulate you or push you around.
Joan Perry (40:35.365) because self-worth goes hand in hand with some boundaries.
Federico Ramallo (40:39.692) Right. Right. And that creates a more, if you set boundaries, you can have a much more meaningful relationship with friends, partners, family, everything.
Joan Perry (40:55.687) So I think learning to be the heroine of your own life is like one of the most critical things we can do. And I really hope to inspire more more conversations where women ask, what does this look like? What’s a heroine? You know, she’s not a warrior and she’s not a wuss.
Federico Ramallo (41:19.062) Right. Right.
Joan Perry (41:21.615) You know? So exactly what does that middle ground look like?
Federico Ramallo (41:28.353) I like it.
Joan Perry (41:30.075) Who does she show up to be? And you get more, I’m more more sensitive now. If somebody is harming my self worth, I’m very quick to say, no, no, no, you’re not gonna do that. No.
Joan Perry (41:47.559) That’s just not going to happen because I treasure myself for it.
Federico Ramallo (41:56.59) I recent go ahead. Yeah, I was going to share with you a story of a Woman that I interviewed recently. Her name is Veronica. I hope I pronounce this correctly Veronica Rosan and She was able to have a successful executive career while also raising two boys, right and
Joan Perry (41:59.601) So let me take, go ahead, you’ll go.
Federico Ramallo (42:26.242) And we talked about that, that there was a choice that she made and that affected a little bit her career growth, right? But she chose to have the two boys and then continue her career, right? Being able to build agreements with her partner to be able to raise the boys together while
she was able to pursue her career.
Joan Perry (42:59.569) Yeah, and if she was strictly a warrior she wouldn’t have been able to find those compromises because she’d be demanding what she wants without being what women so well are which is able to see what the other guy needs too. So for us just to be warriors, there’s a place for a man to be a warrior. We need men to be warriors.
Federico Ramallo (43:18.893) Right.
Joan Perry (43:28.743) Part of their job is to protect. And at the same time, if a woman takes strictly on that role, she loses the other half of her, which is the femininity part.
Federico Ramallo (43:43.33) Right. And I think that’s a good balance because the way that I see it is that I understand forcing people to be in these traditional roles is…
Federico Ramallo (44:03.854) I know what the word is, but I will go with wrong. But I think that choosing to be in these roles, these traditional roles, but also being able to do more without the limitations of the role, I think that’s a good balance, right? Without losing, you know, without losing femininity, right? Without, you know, becoming a warrior, right? Because a warrior is traditionally more of a
of a masculine role, right? And that…
Joan Perry (44:37.903) And a role is just a role, it’s not everything that you are.
Federico Ramallo (44:42.262) Right. Right.
Joan Perry (44:44.675) It’s just something you choose for a while and you can change it.
Federico Ramallo (44:50.317) Right.
Joan Perry (44:54.193) So let me take you in a little bit different direction because one question you might want to ask or your listeners might want to ask is, so how do I build my self worth?
Joan Perry (45:07.647) And those are the later steps in the heroine’s journey is how to build your self-worth. Because the heroine’s journey is about creating your stability, awakening your authenticity, lighting up your expression, and making your contribution. That’s the path of the heroine’s journey.
So let’s take that apart for a minute. Create your stability is the first part. If you don’t create your stability, and we’ll ask what that means, if you’re not stable, meaning you spend more than what’s in your checking account, that’s going to harm your self-worth.
Federico Ramallo (45:35.992) Yes.
Joan Perry (45:54.713) And you can’t go to the next step which is awaken your authenticity until you’re stable. Because if your authenticity wants to express itself, but you are prostituting in yourself in some way that’s not authentic, it’s a problem. It’s just a problem. So you’ve to start back there and create your stability. And we’ll talk about that.
Then the next part is awaken your authenticity. What that means is be who you really are in full form and blossom, so that you can speak your truth. And you have to have self-worth to do that. And then the next step is light up your expression. That means use your gifts, your talents, your skills. Well, you can’t do that if you’re not authentic.
If you’re trying to use something inauthentic, if you’re trying to teach, you know, borrow from somebody else who that’s not really who you are, well, you can’t light up your expression like that.
So each one of these steps you have to ground yourself in to move on to the next one. And then the fourth one is make your contribution. And that’s the happiest place in life to live where you’re making your contribution, you’re giving of yourself, and your life is a life you own.
Federico Ramallo (47:27.542) Live in your own terms, on your own terms.
Joan Perry (47:29.307) Yeah, right, that’s where your joy, prosperity, and freedom really lights up. So those are the steps of the heroine’s journey that you go through.
in order to become the woman. And we can take some examples. I mean, I mostly will give you examples from America, but I should come up with some international ones, by the way. Maybe you can help me with that. But we’ve been watching in America Drew Barrymore go through a classic heroine’s journey.
or Kelly Clarkson who got totally railed by her husband, surprised, know, thrown off balance. She gained a whole bunch of weight. So part of her problem was physical and has made major transformation as she’s come forward into a new blossoming beautiful being.
So there are real life people around us who are heroines. And part of the fun of all this and starting to think like a heroine is waking up to see, my gosh, look at that person. Look what they overcome. And look how what they had to struggle with and deal with has inspired them to become a new, better version of themselves.
Federico Ramallo (48:59.651) right.
Joan Perry (49:01.903) We don’t want the old Kelly Clarkson, we want the new Kelly Clarkson.
Federico Ramallo (49:09.986) I remember Drew Barrymore on ET and then I read that because she started so young, she got into drugs, substance abuse. And yeah, I think it’s because she wasn’t worth working herself, right?
Joan Perry (49:29.655) Exactly, and she had to deal with all of that and find her place in being before she could go on.
Federico Ramallo (49:38.957) Right.
And then you see her on other movies like what it 50 that 50 first dates I think is one one where she’s and She makes an amazing role there, right? But you can see Her at peace with herself right at the time
Joan Perry (50:00.955) Yes, or another way to say that is that her self-esteem, her self-worth got strengthened.
Federico Ramallo (50:08.502) Right. Right. And that glow, I don’t know if glow is the right word, you know, that it’s very appealing. It’s very, you know, attractive.
Joan Perry (50:14.375) No, I like it.
Joan Perry (50:22.769) Yes. It’s sexy.
Federico Ramallo (50:28.182) Yes, it’s sexy.
Joan Perry (50:30.599) You know because in the first in the first part of life Women I love this word shift shape shift shape And what that means is we try to contour ourselves to fit in if that means looking like a man So you can work in the man’s world you do it because you want the paycheck But in the second half of life when the first half of life you’re doing everything to create security and safety
Federico Ramallo (50:32.747) You
Joan Perry (51:00.121) And then you realize it’s really an illusion. it’s not something you can actually create. Drew Barrymore learned that. Kelly Clarkson learned that. Oprah learned that. Eleanor Roosevelt learned that. Heroines learned that. And then they say, OK, trying to make myself perfect for the outside world isn’t working,
then maybe I should completely try something different. And that’s when a woman realizes, it’s about creating the inside of me.
Federico Ramallo (51:40.064) Right.
Federico Ramallo (51:43.726) Yeah, that appealing that we were talking about, that attractiveness, we as men perceive it, right?
Joan Perry (51:45.68) And that’s.
Joan Perry (52:00.167) that’s interesting. Tell me more about that.
Federico Ramallo (52:04.354) Yeah, I I don’t know how to put it in words, to be honest, but, you know, I, as I, as I sit in Drew Barrymore, right, I also see it in my wife, right. And, and that, that is one of the components that make our relationship closer, right. You know, if, if, if the relationship grows apart,
then the cheating, the divorce happens. I’m not trying to shift blame. I’m saying both parties are involved. But if that relationship grows apart, then that situation is more likely to happen. Because they were separated before they were divorced.
But there are some men that could have a close relationship and still cheat, right? But I think that it is less likely, right? Most men are looking for that closeness and that personal relationship, right? Once they find it, usually they’re not looking for anything else, right?
But if that research grows apart, then they start looking elsewhere, right?
Joan Perry (53:39.149) is why you want to be a heroine because it’s the heroine who can have strong self-worth and be in the relationship as a partner, an equal partner, but not try to compete or be the warrior or overtake the male’s role.
Federico Ramallo (53:58.262) Right, right. Yeah, I think it’s like dancing, know, one leads the other one, you know, follows, right? But that dynamic doesn’t necessarily mean subjugation, right? But if both try to lead, then it doesn’t work, right? Yeah.
Joan Perry (54:23.697) So the heroine’s journey is about creating yourself, creating your stability, awakening your authenticity, your true self.
lighting up your expression, which is the gifts and talents you came naturally into the world to use, and then making a contribution that comes through stability, authenticity, your own true expression to your own unique contribution.
And in the book, I talk at great length about what does it mean to create your stability. Because as I look at the world, most women don’t have stability.
Federico Ramallo (54:56.547) Right.
Federico Ramallo (55:09.998) Right. When you mean stability, you mean emotional stability, right? Or are you talking also about financial stability?
Joan Perry (55:17.711) Can I give you an example? Let’s assume your life is a cart and it has four wheels. Okay? And you’re driving your cart down the road and it’s that pretty kind of flower cart, you know, the wooden patinaed sides and in the bed of the truck you’ve loaded all these magnificent flowers, okay? They’re your gifts, your skills, your talents. These are your flowers.
Federico Ramallo (55:19.746) Of course, yes.
Joan Perry (55:45.317) And you’re trying to get your cart to market because you want to monetize your flowers. You want other people to enjoy them. But you’re driving down the road, down this dirt road, and all of a sudden you look over your shoulder and you’re like, my gosh, that wheel’s loose. And then you’re like, what’s that about? And then you look over this shoulder and you’re like, that wheel just fell off. And pretty soon, your butt is dragging on the ground.
Federico Ramallo (56:14.795) right.
Joan Perry (56:15.833) And now you’re saying to yourself, how am going to get my flowers to market? I really need to go. But I get out of my cart. I try to pull it. Can’t pull it. I try to push it. Can’t push it because the wheels are off the cart.
Okay, so what are your four wheels? Your four wheels are financial, that’s spending more than you earn. They are physical, that’s mistreating or not sourcing your life force energy. They are relationship, that’s surrounding yourself with people who sabotage you.
and beliefs, which is what you’re saying to yourself about who you are.
Federico Ramallo (57:12.277) interesting.
Joan Perry (57:15.697) So, in my case, the wheel that came off my cart as I encountered the heroine’s journey was relationship. Now, usually when one wheel falls off, more than one wheel can fall off.
Federico Ramallo (57:32.162) Yes, yes, because you’re adding more stress to the other wheels
Joan Perry (57:36.607) Exactly right. Yes. So first you have to say how are all my wheels doing? And if some are loose you have to tighten them back up because the only way you’re going to roll down the road, which means get to more and better and joy and freedom and happiness is if your cart can roll down the road.
because those four wheels have everything to do with your self worth.
Federico Ramallo (58:16.718) Right, right, one feet the other.
Joan Perry (58:21.119) Exactly exactly and we talk at length in the heroines journey book about your wheels there it is again You can find a book at heroines book.com That’s heroines book.com and you’ll find your free plus shipping copy of the book Because I go into great detail about each one of the Financial physical
Federico Ramallo (58:30.68) There you go.
Joan Perry (58:51.023) relationship and beliefs. so much, Frederico, even now in my own life, if something, if I’m like, my life is not working, why is it not working? I review each one of those wheels and say, what about this isn’t in line? What about that isn’t in line?
So for instance, on the people wheel recently, I was trying to be friends with someone who wasn’t reciprocating. And finally, I said to her, you know what, we’re not really friends. We can stop pretending.
And it’s only because my self worth is strong enough to say, you know, my standards are higher than this. And we don’t have to make this look like it’s working when it’s not. Now, she was very offended that I would say that. But, yeah. But I was very happy because I want my relationships to be, I want to feel them in my heart.
Federico Ramallo (59:53.825) really?
Joan Perry (01:00:07.727) and I wasn’t feeling her in my heart. It looked good, but it didn’t give me juice. So better that I should walk away or I should tighten that wheel and go find some friends that give me the joy and the juice. And that’s what I did.
Federico Ramallo (01:00:32.334) And you need courage to say that. It’s hard, yes.
Joan Perry (01:00:32.4) So.
Joan Perry (01:00:36.517) Yes, yes, that’s hot. Yes, because a woman, a heroine has to develop her courage and her strength.
Federico Ramallo (01:00:47.918) Can you share us a story of somebody that reached out to you saying the herring’s journey changed her life significantly?
Joan Perry (01:01:08.367) Yes, there are so many stories like that because I’ve been, you my first book was A Girl Needs Cash. So I’ve been writing on this theme for a long time. It’s just that it’s developed with The Hero’s Journey because The Hero’s Journey puts it all together because before I would say to a woman, you need to take care of your financial life. And she would look at me like, what? Why?
You know, it’s because I was only talking to her about one part of her life. You can talk to a man like that, but you can’t talk to a woman like that.
Federico Ramallo (01:01:48.142) Hahaha
Joan Perry (01:01:50.471) Her first questions in her head are like, how’s this going to help my whole life? Am I smart enough to understand this? Do I really need to know this?
Joan Perry (01:02:02.107) So in the heroine’s journey, I help women see that they need all four wheels on their cart. It’s not just the money piece. In fact, if women had enough money to feel secure and safe, that’s all they care about.
It’s just not the relationship piece. It’s all four wheels. And so what I help women do is to see, first of all, which wheel is off your cart. Maybe it rolled into the gutter. And we have to go get it and put it back on.
Joan Perry (01:02:44.635) Maybe, you know, and I kind of, it’s a filter that I have in my brain where I meet a woman and I think, honey, all four wheels are off your cart. You know, and I can just see the look of frustration on her face. Because she can’t pull or push. So.
Once I help a woman identify which wheel is off her cart, and usually one leads to another, but sometimes the one she thinks is the one that’s not working the best is not necessarily the one that’s not working the best. So it’s kind of tricky.
I’m thinking of a woman who’s a nurse in the Army and she thought it was money. It wasn’t. It was relationship because she was being the warrior and she drove her husband away.
And because she was in the army, she was thinking everything in her life had to be like, it couldn’t be frilly or pretty or whatever. And so one of the first things we did is we changed the decor in her house to reflect that she had some femininity and it wasn’t all about being a striving warrior.
Federico Ramallo (01:03:42.85) Right.
Federico Ramallo (01:04:07.852) Right, right, because on the army it’s all about uniformity and, you know, right.
Joan Perry (01:04:13.831) back.
Joan Perry (01:04:17.467) But in order for her whole nature, her whole being to blossom, she had to also welcome in that part. And she got tremendously happier when she did.
Federico Ramallo (01:04:25.581) interesting.
Joan Perry (01:04:32.528) So I use that model of the four wheels of the cart to help people understand because women don’t take, they don’t isolate things. They don’t just want to say, let’s go work on my money life.
because it’s all integrated. You need all four wheels to drive the car.
Federico Ramallo (01:04:59.608) Can I add a little bit more to your analogy? So when you have a car.
the pressure on the wheels right if you over pressure the wheels right then when you’re rolling that wheel could could explode right if you if you have lower pressure than you should you’re adding additional wear and tear to the wheel right if you are running a wheel with a flat tire the wheel doesn’t doesn’t necessarily have come off right but
But if you have lower pressure on your wheel, that’s dragging you down a little bit, right?
Joan Perry (01:05:44.423) Your wheel’s going thump thump, thump thump, thump thump.
Federico Ramallo (01:05:48.716) right right and and if you keep running with with a flat tire you basically if you stop right there it’s easy to fit i mean you can change it and it’s you can recover the wheel but if you keep running if you keep rolling with the wheel like that you’re going to destroy it and it’s going to be a full replacement right it’s going to be more expensive right
Joan Perry (01:06:11.515) Yes. And you’ll damage other wheels.
Federico Ramallo (01:06:16.182) Yes. Yes.
Joan Perry (01:06:18.253) I thought when my relationship was bad before I got divorced, which was the beginning of my heroine’s journey, I thought I could just fix it. I thought I could just stay there long enough. thought I could just, what happened is he diminished and diminished and diminished my self-worth to the point that all four wheels of my cart were in trouble.
Federico Ramallo (01:06:39.554) Right.
Joan Perry (01:06:45.679) A heroine doesn’t have to ask, should I stay or should I go? That’s not the question. A heroine asks, how’s myself worth doing?
Federico Ramallo (01:06:45.795) Ahem.
Federico Ramallo (01:07:00.941) Right.
Joan Perry (01:07:04.023) And is this a me problem or a them problem? Like how do I have to correct this?
Federico Ramallo (01:07:15.639) Interesting.
Joan Perry (01:07:17.265) Yeah. Yeah. Very, very different than the way men think.
Federico Ramallo (01:07:25.228) Yes, yes.
Joan Perry (01:07:26.727) A man can just go punch somebody in the face and go, okay, I’m the victor.
Federico Ramallo (01:07:32.974) Yeah, I mean, for men, usually the social regulator is physical violence. Yes.
Joan Perry (01:07:45.095) Yes, not so for a woman.
Joan Perry (01:07:54.171) So I hope we’ve covered some perspective of the heroine’s journey in a way that, and thank you for being willing to see it from a woman’s point of view and to understand that we see the world so differently. Let’s just use your last example. Like you were saying, the equalizer’s physical violence for a man. It’s not for a woman. For a woman, it’s self-worth.
And a woman can stand up to anything if she builds that scaffolding inside of herself.
So I really encourage, go get my book, The Heroine’s Journey. It’s a labor of love for me. I’ve worked on it for 10 years. I want this to become a really big conversation with women so that we start to create ourselves in our own image, in our own being. And that can be tough and shrewd, but it’s also a tough shrewd heroine. It’s not a tough shrewd warrior.
It’s not a rollover, you know, for whatever woman who doesn’t stake her claim. It is being the heroine of your own life. So it’s a conversation. Thank you so much for having me because I want to spread this conversation far and wide.
and for us to have conversations with our girlfriends and our mothers. I want us to identify the heroines in our lives and see how they show us the way forward as women and understand that we have role models. So thanks so much for having me.
Federico Ramallo (01:09:40.238) Thank you very much for being here, for joining us today. We’ll share the links of your book on the description of the episode so people can go and buy the book. A great deal for a significant other. And I’m looking forward to continue a conversation and hear about your success with the book.
Joan Perry (01:10:08.933) Invite me back, I’d love it.
Federico Ramallo (01:10:11.372) Yes, yes. Thank you very much, Let me see if I can… I lost it. My UI, my interface kind of got wonky. So I lost the record button, but I’ll delete this part. Yeah, that was amazing. Yeah, I think it was a great episode. Yeah, I went a little bit longer. You know, we were talking and yeah. Yeah, great.
Joan Perry (01:10:32.049) Yeah. Good.
Federico Ramallo (01:10:41.704) I shared this episode with my wife. I think she would appreciate it. Yes, yes. Great.
Joan Perry (01:10:42.022) I hope.
Joan Perry (01:10:45.445) Wonderful. Wonderful. Where will you publish it?
Federico Ramallo (01:10:50.318) I’ll send you the date soon, but I think it’s going to be in September. Yeah. Do you need it to be published earlier? I can arrange that.
Joan Perry (01:10:55.419) Okay, would you send me a…
Joan Perry (01:11:01.925) No, no, just if you can send me a copy when you do it. That would be what.
Federico Ramallo (01:11:07.298) Yes, after I edit it, I’ll send you a preview with Riverside so you can review it. And you can download it there if you want. What we’re going to do with that video is we’re going to publish the whole video on the podcast. And then we’re going to do short clips. We’re going to put it on LinkedIn, on the social networks, and whatnot, so people can… Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joan Perry (01:11:31.343) And if you could send me some shorts too, that would be great. Do you have somebody who does that for you?
Federico Ramallo (01:11:36.514) Yes, yes, I’ll you the shorts as well.
Federico Ramallo (01:11:42.157) Yes.
Joan Perry (01:11:44.039) I’m looking for somebody like that.
Federico Ramallo (01:11:49.911) Okay.
Federico Ramallo (01:11:53.868) Yeah, right now I have a senior designer that is doing this. And I had a person in marketing that was doing this. He has a major on music editing, music creation. So he can help you on that and I can connect you with him. His name is Joel. He was working with me full time but…
I had lower revenues, I had to let him go, which I, you know, it was a sadness, but, but he’s, he’s great, very dedicated, very, you know, very professional. Yes. He’s in Mexico. Yeah. But he speaks English, so you’re going to be fine. Yeah. Yeah. And let me know, let me know if you need me to, to arrange anything, you know, any, any other thing for that. Happy to help. Yeah. But I’ll, I’ll connect you to. Yeah.
Joan Perry (01:12:39.099) Well, thank you.
Federico Ramallo (01:12:54.508) Yes, thank you. Thank you very much.
Federico Ramallo (01:13:04.116) I don’t remember how I found you. Yeah, I apologize. Yeah, I don’t remember. I apologize.
But I’ll let you know where I found you because I look it up but I don’t know by heart.
Joan Perry (01:13:26.715) Thank you!
Federico Ramallo (01:13:28.302) Thank you, Joan. Have a nice day.
Joan Perry (01:13:31.129) Invite me back again.
Federico Ramallo (01:13:33.26) Yes, yes, I will do that. And I’ll remind you to send me your SVG so I can work on the frame.
Joan Perry (01:13:42.907) that’s right. Okay, for sure I’ll do that.
Federico Ramallo (01:13:44.47) Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you send me your address and then I’ll ship you the frame. Yeah. And I hope my frame is, my piece of art is worth to put on your wall.
Joan Perry (01:13:57.031) course. Are you sure? Thank you. We’ll talk again soon.
Federico Ramallo (01:14:05.43) Awesome. Bye-bye.