Shownotes
The Hidden Struggle of Stay-at-Home Moms: "I was giving all of myself to my children, but there was nothing left for me. And my very creative, active brain had no outlet. Right? I had no intellectual stimulation outside of my children, and I suffered, I think, because of that and I think a lot of women, you know, do too." - Ashley Jordan
Julie Smith and Glenn Harper are joined by the insightful and relatable Ashley Jordan. An attorney, public speaker, journalist, and author of "Unhappy Achiever," Ashley shares her journey from a small rural town in Marengo, Illinois, to becoming a full-time writer and advocate for women's empowerment.
Ashley’s story is one of resilience, self-discovery, and relentless pursuit of passion. Raised in a working-class family and inspired by strong female role models like Gloria Steinem, she initially followed a conventional path by attending law school, despite knowing it wasn't her true calling. Her experience as an assistant district attorney revealed the emotional toll it took, prompting her to pivot towards her real passion—storytelling.
Ashley discusses her superpower: the ability to connect and inspire through her authentic voice and storytelling. You'll hear about her journey, her book "Unhappy Achiever," and her dedication to mentoring women and aspiring writers. Ashley also opens up about the challenges of balancing creative pursuits with family life, the loneliness she faced, and how writing became her sanctuary.
This is a candid and heartfelt conversation that underscores the importance of pursuing a career that feeds your soul and the incredible impact of sharing your story. Whether you're a working mom, an aspiring entrepreneur, or simply looking for inspiration, Ashley Jordan’s journey will resonate and empower you to follow your own path.
Empowering Moments
04:51 Passion for empowering women through advocacy.
07:38 Passion for justice began in early school.
10:33 Making family proud dictated educational choices.
14:14 Chose law due to outside influences, unhappy.
18:15 Innate gift in writing; developed legal skills.
21:45 Brenda Quoddy inspired through dedication and passion.
25:01 Motherhood led to isolation, sparking creative blogging.
29:52 Fitting writing into daily life, inspired by mother.
32:44 Pursuing a career eased her profound loneliness.
38:36 Loneliness overcome by supportive circle of friends.
40:36 Mentoring women to inspire, share, and support.
44:32 Show up for your passion and yourself.
50:12 Empowering others to pursue fulfilling career paths.
51:46 Honoring strong family legacy through uncertain paths.
54:54 Storytelling to inspire and serve women purposefully.
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Empowering Takeaways
Embrace Your Superpowers: Ashley Jordan underscores the importance of recognizing and leveraging your unique skills, such as storytelling and authenticity, to inspire and create impact.
Pursue Passion Over Expectations: Ashley's journey reveals the importance of pursuing careers and endeavors that nourish your soul, even if it means going against external expectations or traditional paths.
The Role of Mentors: Having strong mentors like Brenda Quoddy can be pivotal in shaping your career and inspiring you to follow your passions, even in challenging fields.
Balancing Family and Career: Successfully balancing family responsibilities with personal goals is possible through dedication, time management, and supportive relationships.
Importance of Authenticity: Sharing genuine and personal stories can be both empowering for the storyteller and inspiring for the audience, creating a ripple effect of empowerment.
Leveraging Adversity for Growth: Ashley's journey through law school and challenging jobs taught her valuable skills and brought clarity on what she truly wanted to pursue.
Writing as a Meditative Practice: Dedicating time to creative pursuits like writing can provide emotional and intellectual fulfillment, serving as a crucial outlet, especially during lonely or challenging times.
Support Networks: No large community is necessary; a small network of wise, supportive individuals can provide crucial mentorship and encouragement, helping you reach your true potential.
Continual Self-Reinvention: Ashley exemplifies that it's never too late to pivot career paths and that finding joy in what you do, even if it means starting anew, is essential for long-term fulfillment.
Small Steps Lead to Big Achievements: The significance of taking small, consistent steps towards your goals is highlighted by Ashley's ability to fit writing into her busy life, illustrating that persistence and time management can lead to success.
Ashley Jordan, J.D., is an author and speaker. Ashley has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, Woman’s Day, Teen Vogue, and more. A former attorney, she lives in Milwaukee with her three children.
www.MsAshJordan.com
www.unhappyachiever.com
Instagram: @msashjordan
Twitter: @msashjordan
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Glenn Harper, CPA, is the Owner and Managing Partner of Harper & Company CPAs Plus, a top 10 Managing Partner in the country (Accounting Today's 2022 MP Elite). His firm won the 2021 Luca Award for Firm of the Year.
An entrepreneur and speaker, Glenn transformed his firm into an advisory-focused practice, doubling revenue and profit in two years. He teaches entrepreneurs to build financial and operational excellence, speaks nationwide to CPA firm owners about running their businesses like entrepreneurs, and consults with firms across the country. Glenn enjoys golfing, fishing, hiking, cooking, and spending time with his family.
Julie Smith, MBA, is a serial entrepreneur in the public accounting space. She is the Founder of EmpowerCPA™, Founder of PureTax, LLC, COO for Harper & Company CPAs Plus, and Co-host of the Empowering Entrepreneurs podcast.
Named CPA.com's 2021 Innovative Practitioner of Year, Julie led Harper & Company's transition to an advisory-focused firm, doubling revenue and profit in two years. She now empowers other CPA firm owners nationwide through consulting and speaking, teaching them how to run their businesses like entrepreneurs. Julie lives in Columbus, OH with her family and enjoys travel, coaching basketball, sporting events, and the occasional shopping spree.
Copyright 2026 Glenn Harper
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/
Transcripts
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another edition of the Empowering Entrepreneurs podcast. I'm Glenn Harper.
Julie Smith [:Julie Smith.
Glenn Harper [:What's going on, Julie?
Julie Smith [:You know, it's snowing here today for the first time this season, and I just I don't think I like it.
Glenn Harper [:Oh, it's gonna be awesome. Unfortunately, we don't get enough snow to make it white all the time. It's just
Julie Smith [:Well, that's the thing. I either want a blizzard or I want it to be 75 and sunny, and I have no idea.
Glenn Harper [:We're not gonna get that. Not at all. Gonna happen till after Christmas, which is always pretty normal. Well, we've got a great show for you lined up today. We've got a great guest. I'd like to do my little bio here and see if this I
Julie Smith [:can see how your stalking skills were this time.
Glenn Harper [:Alright. I'd like to introduce Ashley Jordan. She's an attorney, public speaker, and published journalist, and is the author of Unhappy Achiever. Just when you think you're too busy, Ashley says hold my wine and continues to exploit opportunities and share her message to all who engage her advice. Ashley's life is relatable, which makes her story and her wisdom so impactful. From assistant state attorney to partner abuse intervention program facilitator, Ashley's journey has caused her to want to get the message out to the masses. This includes authoring books, publications, and new newspapers, magazines, and speaking gigs. Her message resonates not only with working moms, but all entrepreneurs as they struggle to find harmony in their personal professional endeavors.
Glenn Harper [:Ash is like all of us. Things happen to you, and you have and you do things. But at some point, one must face the past and script the future that everyone deserves. Her skill set has helped many people achieve their voice and confidence to face everyday challenges with a zest and panache to make their journey meaningful. A true success story, and we are still looking forward to delving into her journey. Thank you, Ashley, for being on our show.
Ashley Jordan [:Thank you, Glenn. That was beautiful. Better than I could have said it.
Glenn Harper [:I I
Julie Smith [:That's why we keep him on the podcast.
Glenn Harper [:Yeah. He
Ashley Jordan [:is a keeper. That's for sure.
Glenn Harper [:I have one skill set. That's it. No. Well, we're glad that you made it made it made it to some time for us today. The the first thing we like to do and we like to get with our guests is just find out a little bit where they're from and, you know, how that all turned out. So where were you
Julie Smith [:Is it snowing where you're at?
Ashley Jordan [:It is. It is also the first snow here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. So, yes, I I am a Midwestern girl. I grew up in Northern Illinois near Rockford, Illinois in a small town that most people have never heard of called Moringo, farming community. So I have lived in the Midwest most of my life, and here I am in this snowy frozen tundra with you today.
Glenn Harper [:I tell you, the We need to get out. Yeah. That that Rockford. I'm you know, Columbus, Ohio, I have driven, my daughter up for a soccer tournaments in Rockford, which has been insane.
Julie Smith [:But Didn't we get stuck on an airplane one time too?
Glenn Harper [:Overnight, diverted from Chicago in Rockford
Ashley Jordan [:right now.
Julie Smith [:In the FedEx airport or whatever is there.
Ashley Jordan [:Very well. Yeah. So so you know you know exactly. You you know exactly where I come from. Good stock over here.
Glenn Harper [:So small farm town. Were you actually in the, quote, suburbs of the farm town, or are you out actually on a farm?
Ashley Jordan [:Well, you know, Glenn, I I used to like to tell people that I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, but that was not true at all. We are Marengo, Illinois is not a suburb of Chicago. It is within driving distance. I don't know if it could be considered a suburb at all. It is a small, rural hometown in, the Midwest. And so, yeah, I am a I'm a small town girl over here.
Glenn Harper [:How many kids were in the graduating class?
Ashley Jordan [:Oh my goodness. Maybe. I I would just say it was, like, a 120.
Glenn Harper [:Well, that's big compared to mine.
Julie Smith [:Well, for you.
Glenn Harper [:Yeah. I had 3. I was 73. But, so growing up there, what did your parents do for a living?
Ashley Jordan [:So my mom worked, in a dental office for basically my entire life and, she started out as a dental assistant and she worked full time and went back to school and got her degree in business management and then she became sort of the business manager business manager of a small dental office. And my father, worked for a garbage company. He started throwing trash and, then he became, a roll off driver and he just retired a few years ago from that and now he is a caregiver for the elderly, which is super lovely.
Glenn Harper [:How crazy is that? And and the reason we like to ask about what the parents and everything did is because we're trying to figure out where you got this little spark to be an entrepreneur. Like, did you
Julie Smith [:But wait, my question comes from, like, what did you do growing up in small town? Like, did you probably didn't have a paper route, but, you know, did you do anything entrepreneurial that, you know, maybe would have sparked that early on?
Ashley Jordan [:Sure. That's a great question, Julie. And I don't know if I can characterize this as entrepreneurial, but it certainly relates to what I'm doing today. You know, growing up in the Midwest, I idolized Gloria Steinem in the nineties, which really was abnormal, but for me what she represented was, you know, a belief in that everyone should be treated fairly and and a passion for women and empowering women. And from, I would say, this the 6th grade or so on, I just felt this fire, this desire to be a voice and an advocate for women and I don't know where it came from but it was just a part of me and so it sort of manifested for me in athletics and playing basketball and girls sports and and I just always knew that I was supposed to do something to serve and support women on their journey. I did not know what that was for a long time, but it certainly has always been sort of a fire inside of me that has led me here today with you and and to create this book.
Julie Smith [:So you have to so we kinda grew up in the same era, I'm guessing. I'm really bad with ages, so forgive me if I'm wrong. But so, Cheryl Swoop, Mia Hamm, all those had to be, you know, really big, influences to you.
Ashley Jordan [:Absolutely. Oh my gosh. Absolutely. I had, you know, the w the early WNBA. Right? The basketball and the the cover of Sports Illustrated with Cheryl Swoops on it. And I think for me, women's sports was really, it was it was an outlet for me, but it was also sort of my first foray into, you know, what what everybody getting a fair chance to play and to participate. Right? And regardless of of gender and so for me, it sort of helped ignite that fire of, making sure that I advocated for everybody's right to participate, to play, right, to to have an experience in the public sector that is equal regardless of gender orientation.
Glenn Harper [:Did you did you feel, like, when you were growing up, did you feel like there was an inequity on that? Did you feel like the people weren't getting both sides weren't getting an equal shot, or is this something you're like, well, it's probably not happening here, but it's probably happening somewhere. How did you like, that passion, you had to have witnessed something or be part of something where you felt excluded. How did that start?
Ashley Jordan [:Well, you know what, Glenn? I'll I'll say it this way. It I I can't tell you where it came from. I just know that it was a part of me and it was a passion for me very early on. But I will say this, the first memory I have of really feeling the strong sense of injustice and that I needed to sort of speak up was in junior high school and I believe I was in about the 7th or 8th grade and we were in class and somehow the issue of whether girls should be able to play football came up. And so we were having a class discussion about it and a boy in my class said, well, girls shouldn't be able to play football because there's no way a girl can take down a 200 pound lineman. And I just remember my hand shooting up and the teacher looked at me and he called my name and I sat and I looked at the boy who had said it, his name was Tyler, and I said, well, Tyler, the day that you can take down a 200 pound lineman, we'll talk, but in the meantime, girls should be allowed to play. And my teacher just smiled, and the discussion ended. So, yeah, it it the point wasn't whether every girl in the class could take down a 200 pound lineman.
Ashley Jordan [:The point was that most of the boys in the class at that age couldn't take down a 200 pound lineman, and everybody should get a chance. So
Glenn Harper [:How about that? Yeah. It's always tough to the the differences between men and women, that's what makes them unique. Right? And Mhmm. And that's where usually that that passion comes from some sort of thing that happens to somebody that has that spark, you know, and you never know what that is. And it that same spark happens, like, if you're, you know, if you're female and a female person tells you can't do something or if you're a dude and the dude tells you can't do something, like, watch this. I got it. Right? And so that's where the like, what like you said, whatever it happens, something happened and you're like, oh, I gotta be an advocate for this. And so at that point in time, you're you're doing your thing.
Glenn Harper [:Do you have any siblings?
Ashley Jordan [:I do. I have a sister who is, 8 years younger than me, actually.
Glenn Harper [:What's she do for a living?
Ashley Jordan [:She is a social worker. There you have it. Yes.
Glenn Harper [:Well, so all of a sudden, you're sitting here, you're doing this, and you're going to school, you're athletic, you're achieving, obviously, accolades because you must obviously, you're good what you're doing if you're in all those sports. We know people that do athletics and they have a different personality type. Right? You're very driven. And then all of a sudden, you decided that, you know, I think I'm gonna go to, North Central College in Naperville and do a degree in political silence. Was that to advocate for the cause that you had, or was that something, well, that's just a generic degree I can get in and I can decide what I wanna do next, or do you always know you're gonna be this lawyer that you end up getting at, Northern Illinois?
Ashley Jordan [:So for me, it was less about what I wanted looking back and more about what would make my family proud. Right? And, you know, coming from a very working class family, I was the first woman for the most part in my family to, go to college before getting married or having children And so, I think that I felt a big responsibility with that and I really wanted to make my parents and my grandparents proud and I only knew at that age two ways to do that. I could be a doctor or I could be a lawyer and I knew that being a doctor wasn't an option because math and science weren't my strong suits, but writing and speaking were. So, I was like okay, well I'm gonna go to law school, but I never really thought about it much beyond that and I never gave myself the opportunity to really say, what do I love? What lights me up? What do I want to be?
Glenn Harper [:Isn't that interesting? Yes.
Ashley Jordan [:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Glenn Harper [:So so you were thinking, I don't mean to interrupt, but, like, so you you wanted to be an attorney. You just and and that was the path there, but you didn't you just thought that would be the best one to make your parents proud. That's that's that's good stuff.
Ashley Jordan [:Mhmm. Exactly. It was all about, you know, it was all about everyone outside of me. I didn't actually know to look inside of me, to ask what lights me up, what where does my passion lie, where would my gifts, what would be the best outlet for me professionally for my gifts and what drives me, right, what motivates me? Instead, it was what will make everybody happy and proud, what will meet everyone's expectations and make people think more of me. Right?
Glenn Harper [:That's tough.
Julie Smith [:Do you think by this is where my mind went. Do you think by doing that that you paved the way for your younger sister? Like, 8 being 8 years younger, did you take kind of that pressure off of her and she was able to kinda navigate that for her and not anybody else?
Ashley Jordan [:You know, Julie, that's a that's an interesting question and I don't know if I can answer that for my sister. What I will say is, you know, we are different generations and so I I hope this was true in the past and I certainly hope it's true now that she is able to learn from some of my mistakes since I'm about a decade ahead of her and that it's, you know, that that some of the things that I have had to learn on my path to get here, she won't have to, and that I can set an example for her that will save her some some life lessons.
Glenn Harper [:We should call her and see what she would say.
Julie Smith [:I feel like you need that lifeline. Like, hey. We're just period.
Ashley Jordan [:Lifeline. Taylor, jump on here.
Glenn Harper [:Perfect. Good. Well, so, you know, it's when I was, again, you don't have a lot of content out there. It's very sparse, and, and I don't know how to use Instagram. But, anyway, as I was looking through them things, you know, it your work experience, you're like, okay. I'm gonna go work, you know, and and do the the public office and and do it, you know, the prosecuting side. And then all of a sudden, you're like, wait. I don't wanna do that very long.
Glenn Harper [:Like, that must not you must have got into being doing lawyer stuff and go, this is not me. Right? Is that what happened, or was it just like a bad work environment? What made you say this is this I went to school for this, but I don't like this at all.
Ashley Jordan [:Well, Glenn, I I talk a lot about tapping into our knowing, right, and looking inside of us to know what's right and true for us instead of outside of us. I ended up at law school in the first place because I was looking outside of me for what I should do instead of inside of me. And because of that, from day 1, the moment that I stepped foot in a law classroom, I was miserable. I hated it. Oh. Hated it. I I literally drove from my parents' home in Moringa, Illinois commuting to law school every day that 1st year and thought, what would happen if I just turn the car around? I I knew it wasn't a fit for me, but I had worked so hard to get there. I was on a full scholarship to law school, people were counting on me, right, I had made this commitment and and reached this goal that I had been working toward for years and so, you know, unhappy achiever, my book title, I was like well you finish what you started.
Ashley Jordan [:You're gonna see it through. And I did, and I don't regret that, but I knew law wasn't a fit for me from the first day.
Glenn Harper [:Normally, people go into accounting class and say they wanna be an accountant, but it's very rare you hear somebody goes into law school that doesn't, like, like it. So that's
Julie Smith [:But as you're going through law school, are there different things that are peaking your passion that are like, oh, I kinda like that. Like, you know, maybe it's maybe the family side of it. Maybe it's the corporates. You know what I mean? Like, you you do learn a lot of different things in law school. So as you're going through that, did you try to find the silver lining in trying to find, like like, I do enjoy when I do go here, I enjoy talking about learning about this.
Ashley Jordan [:So I I will say despite that, I don't regret my law degree not one bit, because to your point, you know, it it taught me a very different way of thinking. Right? It teaches you a very analytical way of thinking and that's, you know, a tool you can apply to anything. It's it's a it's a wonderful skill set to have, and it's a really great backup plan to have a lot of places. So
Glenn Harper [:Instant street cred. Right? You're like you're in
Ashley Jordan [:the Exactly. You can
Glenn Harper [:you can fight your way out of anything with that.
Ashley Jordan [:Exactly. And it is. It really is instant street cred. Right? So so I don't regret it, and, of course, I met wonderful people, mentors, friends. But what I did do also in law school is, unsurprisingly I took every chance to take classes that related to gender and women and the law and I became a, teaching assistant in the women's studies program at the university on campus. So I was still finding an outlet for that passion for serving and supporting women, even while I was doing something that maybe didn't, you know, the the profession itself didn't feel like a fit. I was still trying to find ways to explore my passions at the same time and and again my life. My journey.
Ashley Jordan [:Yeah. Exactly.
Glenn Harper [:Well So
Julie Smith [:you will so hold on. So you go through law school. You you get this silver lining. You committed to achieving it. You achieve it. Check the box. But then like Glenn said, you still go into instead of like, okay. I got it, but now I'm gonna do what I wanna do or I'm going to, you know, do that.
Julie Smith [:Like, you still go
Glenn Harper [:There's one more piece.
Julie Smith [:Okay.
Glenn Harper [:Did you learn it before that? Did you develop the writing skills? Because law is all about, you you know, the pros. Did you already have that skill or did you learn that in law school?
Ashley Jordan [:So we all oh, abs so we, you know, I believe and I know, we all have gifts. We all have gifts, And my gift was always communication, writing, and speaking, and it just came naturally to me from elementary school on. And so I could write anything. It didn't matter whether it was an essay for a high school class, a college term paper, or a legal memorandum. I could just do it. And so I definitely developed my writing in a different way in law school and learned how to write and support arguments, right, that's really what you're doing. You're you're crafting a creative it's it can be very creative you're crafting a creative legal argument, right, weaving facts in the law and then you're putting together cogent arguments to support it So it was absolutely, you know, a skill set, but the writing, you know, I didn't need I'll say this, I didn't need a degree to do what I'm doing now.
Glenn Harper [:Right. Isn't that funny? Mhmm. So that so that that's the the thing. You you already had, like, a superpower thing, whatever, and then here you are. Again, you could probably work on your communication talking today. You're a little hard to understand. You're not very clear. You know? I'm totally kidding.
Julie Smith [:But Always room for improvement.
Glenn Harper [:Yeah. I'm just saying. No. But you're obviously Matt, your biggest critic. Yeah. You're very you're you're obviously very good at that. And so that's where, again, the the framework of of doing the law part, it really has to zero that in on those particular legal things. But, again, you already had the skill set.
Glenn Harper [:You're just sharpening it there, and then you want the other thing. Now back to your piece.
Julie Smith [:Okay. So you didn't throw your law degree in the, trunk and never open it again. You decided to go into law. So walk us through that. As Glenn said, short lived, but, you know, how'd you get there?
Ashley Jordan [:My so yes, Julie. In my infinite wisdom, I decided it wasn't time to abort the mission, and I moved forward, but to your earlier question, I said to myself, okay, how can I take this law degree and infuse it with my passion? And the best way I could figure at that time was I will go, I will go work on domestic violence cases and advocate for women that way and so that's how I ended up taking a job at an at a district attorney's office in Rockford, Illinois and becoming an assistant district attorney prosecuting domestic violence cases and, you know, it was, you know, it was it was intellectually exhausting as well as, you know, empowering and and exciting at times, but I knew it wasn't it wasn't what I was meant to do with that fire and sign.
Glenn Harper [:Did you did you find that it was emotionally exhausting as well to see all these the bad people out there and have to deal with it? That has to be a lot of baggage. I attorneys that do that kinda it's just I don't know how they do it. Social workers, that's a tough one.
Julie Smith [:Yeah. I would be in jail myself.
Glenn Harper [:Yeah. I'd that's like I'll go kick that guy's ass. But yeah. So that's for you. I is was it the combination of both of those things where you're just like, well, I just I don't know if I wanna do this or not?
Ashley Jordan [:Absolutely, Glenn. It was emotionally exhausting. And I'll say this, one of the greatest mentors of my life was, my mentor and boss, when I worked at that assistant at that district attorney's office in Rockford and her name was Brenda Quoddy and she has passed away, since then but she was a huge inspiration and mentor for me and an example of for me of what hard work and passion look like because she was a lifelong assistant district attorney and she dedicated her life to that work and advocating on behalf of domestic violence victims and I've never seen anybody do it better than Brenda Coati, and she worked that woman was in her office 7 days a week at a time when everyone in the office wasn't even getting yearly raises. Right? There were salary freezes. They were underpaid. They had, you know, I think I had a a caseload of 400 active cases at one time and so the caseload and and the price personally and professionally of doing that work is high. And so to see an example of someone, you know, you talk about passion who dedicated her life at a personal and professional cost to that work for very little money, but she did it because she believed in it, because she was one of the best there could possibly be out there, and because it was needed. And so that example is one that I carry with me into my work today.
Julie Smith [:We always ask about the mentors and people that kinda shape who you are and who you become. Did she know that your passion may not lie in law and that you were still searching to find something that really, you know, ignited that fire inside of you? Did she help you find it or, you know, did she learn about it, you know, further further down the road?
Ashley Jordan [:So, actually, when I started writing professionally, she was one of my biggest supporters, and she, you know, reached out to me a few times and was super excited about the work that I was doing and encouraging and I look back on her as I sort of stepped into what I consider to be my purpose work and my passion work, what I'm doing now as one of my earliest cheerleaders, and and and biggest supporters in in finding my my own path forward, and I will always be grateful to her for that.
Glenn Harper [:So you decide, okay. This law isn't for me. You go work at this other organization, and you're there for a little bit. And, that sale has a lot of baggage there. Right? That's a lot of emotional stuff you have to deal with on a daily basis. Then you take a little hiatus apparently, and then you decide, well, I'm gonna be this writer and commentator and all these things. What made you make the jump from working for somebody to say, that's it. I'm doing this on my own?
Ashley Jordan [:Well, I think, you know, like so many women, my my husband and I at the time, he's now my ex husband, but my husband and I at the time decided to start a family and, you know, we decided at that time that I would the best decision for our family was that I would stay home, and and care for our oldest son full time and then, you know, in the years that followed, we had 2 more children and and, you know I was a mother of 3 right it happens and and I and in that time they were my passion right. I mean they still are my passion of course, but I dedicated myself to those 3 babies and and I'll say, like, so many women it came at a cost because at a certain point I realized that I was giving all of myself to my children, but there was nothing left for me. And my very creative, active brain had no outlet. Right? I had no intellectual stimulation outside of my children, and I suffered, I think, because of that and I think a lot of women, you know, do too. I think for me, you know, this beautiful imagination that allows me to be a storyteller, you know, if I don't feed it with healthy food, it will, you know, it will when left to its own devices, you know, it can act out in the form of anxiety or, you know, depression and things like that. And so, being home with 3 children, no matter how much you love being a mother and love your babies can be really isolating and and a difficult time for a lot of women and it it it became difficult for me and I realized that, I needed something. I needed something for myself professionally and intellectually. And it was a time where everyone, you know, blogging was really, a big thing and and people were doing it and so that's sort of how I started.
Ashley Jordan [:I just at the encouragement of my husband at the time, I started blogging and at a certain point, I was like, ah, I don't know about blogging, but I re it re it reunited me with writing. That was the purpose looking back, is that it brought me back to something that I forgot how much I loved. And so even though the blogging didn't feel like a fit, my ex husband was like, well, but you're loving the writing. Why don't you try to get your writing published? And I just thought, how does one get their writing published? I had no idea. And so I did some online research and I signed up for a couple non fiction writing courses through Gotham Writers Workshop in New York and New York University and took a class, like, maybe 3 classes or so on how to pitch your writing to publications and, you know, how to write nonfiction. And then I started pitching, and after a few months, I published my first piece, and here I am.
Glenn Harper [:You know, how how cool is it that you had the opportunity to with with your husband at the time that you guys were able to manage your finances and your household dynamic to say, you can step back from work, everything's still taken care of, be a full time mom, found the reward, but, like, I need to do something else. You could slowly get in this other thing, and you guys had the relationship that supported each other for your for what your goals were as a family, but also to do these other things and have that opportunity. I mean, that's that's great. Usually, somebody's back against the wall and they gotta fight their way out of something to figure it out, and and that was a good opportunity for you. That's that's pretty cool.
Julie Smith [:So I have so I'm over here on this side of it. Right? And so I understand where you're where you're coming from, and I kinda took the different stance on that and was like, well, I'm gonna make a career for myself and have like, I'm gonna prove the stereotype, you know, wrong almost if that's okay to say. But I think, like, for you, I think the question our listeners may have is, when were you writing? So if you're at home taking care of 3 babies, there had to be some sorta you you still had to sacrifice something in order to be able to take those three classes, to be able to write anything that would amount to being published. There were still a lot of sacrifices being made by yourself.
Ashley Jordan [:I'm glad you asked that question, Julie. So for me it was fitting it in wherever I can and I think as I say this to you, the memory in my mind that's coming up is of my own mother who as I mentioned before went back to school to get her undergraduate degree while working full time and being a wife and a mother taking care of me and I would wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and I would see my mother on the couch surrounded by highlighters and textbooks and legal pads and nothing but, you know, pitch black and a lamp light. And so she showed me the example of doing what it takes to pursue your passion and your dreams. And so for me, I fit writing in wherever I could during nap times. I woke up at 5 AM and would get an hour in, right, after my kids went to bed, when my husband got home sometimes, if I needed to depending on if I had a deadline, and so it was about, you know, I I always say there are so many books that have been written in an hour a day. If you can find even an hour a day, all of those hours add up. Right? And if you don't have an hour, do 30 minutes, and so for me especially at that time, that's what I did. Right? It wasn't it didn't look like a traditional work day, but it was blocks of time that fit together like puzzle pieces and amounted to something.
Glenn Harper [:Well, you know, this the the it's from a somebody who doesn't have that side of the brain. Right? I don't have whatever that creative side is. I do it in a different way, but the the filling in time to do a task, you gotta go do a thing and you do this, do this, do this, and you're straight, but to turn on the brain and do something where you have to tap into your creative side and create a story, starting and stopping, middle of the night, nap time, always in a rush, there's always something else to do, You know, god love you. That that sounds horrible. I I don't know how you even did it because I I can't get my thoughts together for just a regular thing. If I was interrupted all day long, that'd be impossible.
Julie Smith [:Well, I think sometimes men can only do one thing at a time while women have, like Yeah. We're good. You don't wanna see inside of here. But also, so as you go through this, and again, I'm just relating to you as a mom, as someone who's had a career, who's, you know, as I'm going through this and I'm listening to you, did you feel lonely? Because now you are giving everything you have to your, again, this is just my listening to you. My my take is you're giving everything you have to your kids in every waking moment that they're awake. But now you've kind of ice and I don't mean that in a negative manner, but you've kind of isolated yourself to any free time that you have is going towards this writing.
Ashley Jordan [:So I'll say this, I think the loneliest period of my life was actually when I had 2 very small children, a husband who was working full time and actually working on a graduate degree, and I had nothing, no outlet for myself, really, socially, intellectually, or otherwise. That was the loneliest time in my life. I think, you know, when I started pursuing something for myself professionally, it eased the loneliness because it was something, because it satisfied something inside of me. I wasn't starving intellectually, emotionally anymore in the same way that I was before. It gave me, you know, it was it was food for my soul, honestly. It is still food for my soul. When I am sitting with my laptop on my lap in fuzzy socks with a blanket telling stories in my mind because that's really what I'm doing when I'm writing. To your point, Glenn, even what you said, it for me, it wasn't about the length of time necessarily, but what it was about was carving out blocks of time just for me to do it where I could lose myself in my mind, in my story.
Ashley Jordan [:Right? And for me, that feeling when I'm in my work, when I'm in that space of creativity, of of storytelling, it feels like I'm dancing like no one's watching, and so that feeling, that fulfillment that I find in the work that I do is a is a remedy to loneliness, actually. It's an antidote for me. Even though it is very solitary, sometimes there is solace for me in that space.
Glenn Harper [:You know, it's not unlike most people who are entrepreneurs. They really truly love what they do, but most of the time, they never get to do what they wanna do. They have to do something else when they're running their business, and that usually is most people's solace when they do that. But you, by turning on that part of your brain and chilling out, is kinda like you're doing you're meditating at the same time, you're exercising your brain, you're getting deep rest, you're detoxifying, you're unloading all this stuff in your head. Sounds like you're doing, like, I know it's funny, but you're doing 30 things at once, which for a normal person be like, I can't do all that one time, and you're like, this is awesome. Right? You you see what I mean? And that and that that overbusyness of doing something you really like helps you relax.
Ashley Jordan [:Absolutely. Absolutely. It's it's nourishing in its in its own way. And I'll the word meditative is a perfect word for it because it is writing is meditative for me. And to your point, Glenn, I am I have been fortunate to be able to build a career in this way and have the opportunity and the the support to be able to do that without having to sort of divide my time, not just between being a mother, but also another job that pays the bills, right, while building the career that lights me up and and I'm passionate about. So I have been fortunate in that way, but I'll say this. There may come a day where I have to get a job just to pay the bills, but regardless, I will never stop doing what I'm doing. Never ever, because it is what I believe next to my children is the reason that I'm here.
Ashley Jordan [:It lights me up from the inside out, and so it will always be worth doing for me. And so that's what I wanna also tell your listeners that even if you are in a position where you the job that pays your bills is not the job you're most passionate about or that lights you up, find opportunities to do what lights you up. It is worth doing because it's for you and that matters and even though it may not be your day job right now, it doesn't mean it can't become your day job in the future and sometimes when you start to walk the path of your passion, roads open up before you that you never expected or saw coming. Sometimes the puzzle pieces start to fit together in ways you never could have foreseen once you just start doing the thing. And even if it's writing, right, you don't have to publish your work in magazines or newspapers or write a book. There is something meditative and soul nourishing about writing your story and sharing your story, even if it's just for you. It's worth it.
Glenn Harper [:Ain't that funny the, you know, most people don't have the time, but my old employer way back when I was in college says, well, you didn't make time. And so the kicker is it's not that you didn't have time, you didn't make time for that priority. So if what you were saying is you block off those sections for you time to do that, who knows what you'll discover, which is kinda cool, which is most people probably don't do that as much as they should.
Julie Smith [:Yes. Definitely. So when you kinda took this, fork in the road, let's say. Right? And so you're writing, it's your passion. Do you have a mentor that kind of has helped you through that and helped you, you know, get you to where you are and you're maybe still in contact with them or, you know, someone who kinda helped guide that road?
Ashley Jordan [:So it's funny. I think if there to get back to your question about loneliness, I think if there's one aspect of loneliness in my writing journey, it maybe was the fact that it didn't have a huge community around it. I didn't have writer friends. I did have, you know, professors, teachers in some of the classes that I took and certainly they were mentors in in those spaces But outside of that, you know, I've sort of found my way and I would say now through my publishing journey, I have a lot of, you know, wonderful colleagues and, professional teammates that I've worked with in in different aspects of of the journey from, you know, creating the book to putting the book out into the world. So I don't to answer your question, no. I don't have a ton of mentors in the writing space but what I do have is a myriad, a a community of mentors of women in my circle, friends of all ages who constantly support me in this journey and without whom, quite frankly, I would not be here sitting with you today and there would be no book to to reference or talk to you about. I have a number of wise, wise women in my life and they are friends and mentors to me and they aren't in the writing space but they support me, impart their own lessons and and wisdom in ways that have helped me heal, grow, transform, and shift, and sometimes with just one sentence. So
Julie Smith [:So to turn the table, have you taken anyone under your wing to mentor them?
Ashley Jordan [:So I I am always here to mentor any anyone, any woman, especially, however, I can. And so, yes, I hope so. I definitely have, you know, other writers that I am talking to and and friend you know, becoming friends with and and meeting with to support them as they write their own books and just, you know, through the book that I've published, what I love to do is to share my stories, to inspire other women to share theirs, and to help illuminate their own paths of entrepreneurialship and purpose and creating lives that light them up from the inside out instead of the outside in. And so what I get to do is, in sharing my book and my stories with them, is it's an invitation to them to share their stories with me And being able to bear witness to those stories, to hold a space for those stories is one of the greatest joys, privileges, and blessings of my entire life, and it's what makes this work worthwhile for me. It's why I'll never stop.
Glenn Harper [:Isn't it funny how chicks and dudes, they go and do what they do, but they don't know they think they just have to suffer in silence, and it's by themselves, and they don't get the key or the knock at the door or the opportunity or even just the question to say, hey. You could do this different. You could join this club and do this, and this is what you're empowered to, but they just never get the opportunity. I'm both both both men and women. Right? They just don't get the opportunity. So to create a platform where somebody might be itching for an answer or, I guess, the question probably first, you gotta have the question first, is probably that's a really cool thing that you're doing. I've got a it I was doing this, this my background on you, and I came up I've really got a a tough question. It's it's it's a it's a debate that's been around for at least 20 years, but I'm trying to figure out the Milwaukee.
Glenn Harper [:Where did the name come from? Did it come from the Pottawatomie word for council grounds, or is that the Algonquin word for good land is quoted by Alice Cooper and Wayne's World? Do you know which one it is? Because there's a lot of debate out there.
Ashley Jordan [:You know, Glenn, this is a question I have I I do not I I do not have an independently verified answer to your question, but I'm gonna go with, I'm gonna go with the option that wasn't Wayne's World. That's what I'm gonna go with. It's on a pretty legit. Final.
Glenn Harper [:And here's what's even funnier about that is when I'm on Wikipedia on that, they actually quoted this particular thing from Wayne's World. It was so funny when they were trying to there's so many different ways where it came from, but, you know, it's just it made me laugh. So I thought I'd bring that up and see if you could find the humor in that.
Ashley Jordan [:Oh, I love that.
Julie Smith [:I think you almost made her speechless.
Glenn Harper [:No. That's a good one. Pretty good.
Ashley Jordan [:That never happens, Julie. So that that saves a lot.
Glenn Harper [:Alright. We tested you there a little bit. Well, you know, part of the the fun thing we do on this is is, you know, if we can summarize your story a little bit, it's like you felt like you had to do something because that was gonna make somebody else proud, and you saw your mom working hard, and you thought you could do this, and you wanted to do this because you thought it was the thing to do, and then you realize, well, this isn't making me happy. And you had the, you know, the kahunas to say, you know what? I'm not doing that anymore. And then you did something else, and as you evolved into it, you realize how happy that made you, and most people don't get to discover that that happiness. So I think the the takeaway from me on this is that if you're not happy with what you're doing, you better readdress what you are doing and figure out something that will make you happy because life is too short.
Ashley Jordan [:Mhmm. Absolutely. And I just wanna reiterate that the thing that makes you happy, if it's not your day job that's okay, right? It doesn't have to be your day job again to be worth doing and talking about the blocks of time and sort of how I started and how I wrote this book Unhappy Achiever. I wrote this book in, you know, I would literally get up at 5 AM and I would set my phone timer from 5 to 6. It was an hour before anyone in my family woke up. It would be me and my in my robe with a cup of coffee and my laptop and I would silence my phone and set my timer and I every day I had to show up from 5 to 6 and write some days I would have a paragraph some days I would have a few pages it didn't matter what mattered was not the output but it was that I was gonna show up for this every single day and I was gonna accept what came but I was but I knew if I continued to do that something would come and I would create something and so it is it's about showing up for you. It's about asking yourself what lights me up, what is my passion, what feels purposeful to me, and now how can I create some time and space for that in my life and show up for it, and in doing so show up for me?
Julie Smith [:Glenn's gonna be real sad when I don't go back to the office with him.
Glenn Harper [:Where are you going? No. You know, as as as you do this, you as you do the writing, is it have you and this is just a question because writers, they're just a a different type of person how they think, but you got which the writers are always amazing. But you have fiction and you have nonfiction, and you're all doing the nonfiction stuff. Do you ever decide that you can do your alter ego and do some fiction work and write a story and the characters and those things? Is that ever something that you could throw that in there and make up a hypothetical, or do you like sticking with the real stuff?
Ashley Jordan [:You know, I think for me, part of what you know, they're we're we're all unique, and and that's why whatever we're we're called to professionally and entrepreneurially matters because even though I'm a writer, I'm unique. Right? What I bring to the table, my writing, my perspective, my journey, my story, they're unique and they're worth sharing as are everyone else's. And I think part of what's unique to me is that my work is related to my real life, my actual experience, my journey, my stories, my lessons. And I think, intuitively, I know that I'm not a fiction writer. I'm meant to write and tell stories from my life, and part of the gift of my voice is that I write from a place of authenticity. My book is my heart and soul on its pages. It's the purest thing I've ever written. And when I'm writing it, as I said, I was writing it from a space of what I needed to say, the stories that I needed to tell to make sense of my own life and my own experiences, and I wasn't writing it thinking about who would read it or what they would think.
Ashley Jordan [:I was just writing the story that I needed to tell to make sense of my stories for me, and so I think what's what's unique about what I do is the relatability of my voice because that is the space that I'm coming from and so that's me. Right? I it's not it's not the easiest form of writing. There would be something that feels safer about making up fictional stories or even writing my own stories and and pretending they're fiction.
Glenn Harper [:But you know what?
Ashley Jordan [:You know
Glenn Harper [:what's funny? It's like it's almost like you're writing a diary and putting it out in the public world, which is interesting because most people wouldn't wanna do that. Or you could be, you know, write another Harry Potter novel and, you know, subvert yourself into there and be an alter ego. So it it is unique how you're doing that. Well, I know Julie had some questions. Some questions because she's got a couple. I see a brewing.
Julie Smith [:So I think we've touched on some of these, but Mhmm. What is your superpower?
Ashley Jordan [:I think that my superpower is it is my superpower is storytelling, and I think, as I said, it is the relatability of my voice and my stories, and I think if I have shared anything about myself today with you and your listeners, I hope it's that I am a very ordinary woman. I'm a I'm a mother. I am not a wife currently, but I was a wife for many years. I'm a daughter. I'm a friend. I'm a sister, and I'm an ordinary woman finding her way, trying to create a life and a and a and a career that feeds her soul. Right? And that one in which I'll never stop, one in which I don't ever wanna retire from it. Right? And finding a way to do that and put food on the table and provide for my family.
Ashley Jordan [:And so I think that my superpower is the relatability of my voice and my story and the whole purpose of my work is to share my stories to show other women and not just women, but other people, other listeners who are scared to make that job change, scared to take a flying leap and step professionally into a path that isn't what they went to school for, that feels extremely uncertain and that maybe everyone in their life is saying, don't do it. What are you doing? Right? Keep the law job. Keep keep the accounting job. Is to is to show them through my story, through my voice that, listen. If I can do it, you can do it too. Right? And you're not alone. There's nothing wrong with you for wanting more. There's nothing wrong with you for wanting to do work that feels purposeful and and meaningful and lights you up.
Ashley Jordan [:And so I think that that's my superpower, and I think certainly that's the whole point of my book and the whole point of of the career that I'm building.
Julie Smith [:So I have a burning question that doesn't normally come up, so I'm gonna throw all the people first around
Glenn Harper [:here. Script? Uh-oh.
Ashley Jordan [:Oh, okay.
Julie Smith [:Are your parents and those people that you were trying to please in, let's say, the first part of your life, can you not have you made them proud?
Ashley Jordan [:You know, I I can't speak for them, but I I hope so. I, you know, I talk about in my book, I talk about pleasing my grandmother. And there's a little while and she's since passed away, but there's a little while after I left law and I was writing where I would talk to her on the phone and she would be like, are you ever gonna go back to being a lawyer? And I was like, nana. I don't think so. And I think at that time, she just didn't understand, but I do feel now, that she would be very proud of me. I think that, you know, I think that if there's one legacy of the women in my family that I can carry on and and and am carrying forward through the path I've chosen and this work, it is that I come from I descend from a long line of incredibly strong women, and it takes an incredible amount of strength to walk a path that isn't necessarily certain. Right? When we step into entrepreneurial work, it is often stepping into the unknown. The steps aren't carefully crafted or laid out for us.
Ashley Jordan [:It takes courage. It takes strength. It takes faith in yourself and what you're doing. And so I think in that way, and I hope in that way, I have made my parents and my grandparents proud. But more than that, Julie, I'm trying to set an example for my children. I wanna make my children proud, and I want them to see that their mother went for it. I want I want I don't want them to go to law school because it's what they think I want them to do. I wanna teach them now and model for them what it looks like to know yourself and to ask yourself what do I want to do and then walk that path early on instead of instead of the one that I I've chosen which or that I had chosen which wasn't wrong.
Ashley Jordan [:Right? But there's another way to do it And so that is what I'm trying to model for my kids. And I hope at the end of my life that I have made them proud.
Julie Smith [:Well, I think more than anything to summarize though, I think what you've learned and what you're trying to teach And I I I think from your stories, your your mom did it just in a different way. Right? But it's to keep that promise to yourself. Whatever that is is not to kind of let that go for anybody else, but to stay true to you. And I think you, you know, you've learned that. You figured it out. And I think your mom was a good, you know, model. I'm sure your grandma was a great model. And I think your kids will probably they've picked up on it.
Julie Smith [:I'm sure they're doing it younger than any of the other generations have. I have one last question, and you've already alluded to it. But what is your end game?
Ashley Jordan [:You know, it's funny. I think walking this path, you know, this this this unknown path, it's easy, I I don't even I identify myself as a storyteller and I see my writing and I see speaking and I see even what we're doing here together, this conversation, right, as they're all opportunities, modalities to share my stories, right, But I don't I'm not attached to being a writer. I'm not attached to being a speaker. I'm attached to using my gifts in ways that serve, right, in ways that are gonna serve other women. And so I think at the end of my career, I I wouldn't be surprised if this work has taken on all sorts of forms and if I have done all sorts of projects that I can't even foresee sitting here with you today, so I the end game for me isn't being a writer, being an author, being a speaker. The end game for me is living out a career that has helped inspire, support, serve as many women as possible in walking their own paths of purpose and so whatever form that takes doesn't really matter but I'm gonna keep showing up for that and I'm gonna follow the unknown path wherever it leads so that at the end of my life, I can say that I did that. Right? That I shared my stories, that I shared my gifts in service of as many people as possible.
Julie Smith [:So that was an amazing answer. But if I could sum it up, there is no end game. It doesn't matter where life takes you. You're gonna continue to use your experience, your storytelling, your gifts, and, you know, whatever opportunities that may lie ahead. But for you, you're not gonna be sitting on the couch eating bonbons and and not using those, to serve.
Glenn Harper [:Well, maybe a couple times a week get bonbons. But, well, Ashley, you've been a joy to have on our show. We appreciate you being here. If you wanna give a plug to your book or how people get a hold of you, appreciate it.
Ashley Jordan [:Sure. Apple absolutely. So my book is entitled Unhappy Achiever, Rejecting The Good Girl Image and Reclaiming The Joy of Inner Fulfillment, and it is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and all of the places that you buy books, in hardcover, audiobook, and Kindle. So, if it if it sounds like it resonates with your listeners, I hope that they will check it out, and I hope it serves them.
Glenn Harper [:Well, you've been inspiration. We appreciate you being here. Another edition, stellar edition of Empowering Entrepreneurs podcast. I'm Glenn Harper.
Julie Smith [:Julie Smith.
