150. Power, Perception, Prestige & Desire: Interview with Dr. Tanetha Jamay Fisher

What if the biggest limitation on your creative work isn’t your talent—but your perception of its value?

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Tanetha Jamay Fisher—leadership professor, former Capitol Hill strategist, and luxury business advisor—to explore the powerful intersection of power, perception, and prestige.

Together, we unpack how high-level creative women can move beyond the “starving artist” myth and into positions of leadership, influence, and meaningful wealth creation.

Dr. Fisher brings a rare and compelling blend of academic rigor and real-world strategy. With a background spanning political science, education, and high-stakes PR, she now helps experts translate their innate brilliance into language that resonates in the marketplace—without losing integrity or depth.

This conversation moves far beyond business tactics. We explore:

• The psychology of prestige and how desire shapes leadership, visibility, and success
• How emotions drive decision-making—in politics, business, and personal growth
• The role of feminist, Indigenous, and anti-racist research methodologies in expanding how we understand human experience
• Why narrative, phenomenology, and qualitative inquiry create more human-centered, impactful work
• The shift from luxury products to luxury experiences—and what that means for creative entrepreneurs
• How to monetize your genius in a way that reflects your values and expands your impact
• The hidden cost of scarcity thinking in helping professions—and how to move beyond it

We also talk about the importance of creative rest, mentorship, and prestige positioning—and why investing in yourself is not indulgent, but essential for sustaining your mission.

Dr. Fisher challenges conventional narratives around money, success, and creativity. Her work reframes financial growth not as excess—but as an act of leadership, agency, and legacy-building for the modern woman.

If you’ve ever felt the tension between creativity and income, purpose and power, or artistry and visibility—this episode will expand what feels possible.

Connect with Dr. Fisher

Instagram @jamayfisher

References

Feminism and Intersectionality in Academia

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Transcript

There is an intersection between power and perception, and this intersection really is a place guiding high level, creative woman to move beyond what my guest calls a starving artist myth into a place as market leaders and creative thinkers. Doctor Tanetha Jamay Fisher is a leadership professor, and she's also a veteran Capitol Hill strategist, and she specializes in the psychology of prestige. We had an amazing conversation talking about research methodology that is both anti-racist and anti-white supremacy, ways of knowing that are feminist and indigenous, and allow a space for individual stories to be told. Now, as a luxury business advisor, Doctor Fisher is helping experts translate what she calls innate brilliance into a different kind of language. What she brings is a blending of academic rigor, evidence based practice with her experience in high stakes PR strategies. And I cannot think of a higher stake than Capitol Hill right now. And she does work that empowers creative founders to develop their signature offers. But she focuses on helping people mirror their true values. She is a co-author of Feminism and Intersectionality in Academia. She is widely published in the peer reviewed journals, and she believes that for the modern woman making legacy, money isn't a financial goal. It's more of an act of leadership. And she will turn your thoughts about scarcity and finances on its head, because she has a story that spans the spectrum around. Finances and education and her work is truly inspiring to me. Doctor Fisher is a colleague and a friend, and I'm so excited to introduce her to the modern creative woman. So welcome in to the podcast. Let's get into this. Let's get this started. 

And welcome to Doctor Tanetha Jamay Fisher. Thank you so much, Doctor Tanetha Jamay Fisher, for being here today. Thanks for having me. Doctor Amy Backos, it's always a pleasure to have a conversation with you. I'm really excited to talk with you today and for the listeners to hear about your career path, because as is true for all of us, our paths wander in a direction. But they're not always a linear path from the outset, right? Things evolve and opportunities show up and emerge, and you are in such an interesting space with your career right now. Will you just talk a little bit about your career path? Sure. It's interesting how things come full circle because, um, now I'm at the phase of my career and my life overall where I'm really leaning into the role of creative thinking and creativity. That's why your work is so important. And the reason it became full circle is because, um, when I was small, things were pretty turbulent for us, I guess. Needless to say, for most people in our country, we live in the US. So, um, relatively turbulent. Like, we grew up in a really violent neighborhood and, um, government housing and all the things and home instability in that times, food instability. But my mom always instilled in us the role of literature and creative arts and writing. And she is a beautician. She's a master barber. So aesthetics and beauty has always been really important to us. Despite what was going on around us, but because of all the things that we went through and my family did a fantastic job. So I mean, I don't. It just is what it is. But I wanted to create a lot more stability in my life, and I had to I thought that I had to do things a certain way. One thing she did tell us when I was young is to make sure that we go to college. So I was like, okay, well, I'm tired of living in a what we used to call the projects back in the day. I was like, I better go to college. So I went to school, I went to college, and I really wanted to do things right because I thought it would create a lot more stability for me. And it did. So my background is in political science. That's my first degree. And then I worked for two members of Congress on Capitol Hill. And today, to this day, I still am a veteran Capitol Hill PR strategist. So I still do that work in my life. I try to leave the hill and leave politics for a while, because I thought it was a bit too turbulent for my taste, and again, I was looking for stability. But stability is a thought and is a feeling, so it's circumstantial. And as you're the psychologist here, so you know, you can help do all of this, but, um. I went to get a degree in education because I had known people who were in education, and they looked like they had more stability in their life and they had more control over their lives. So I love politics and I love being on the Hill, and I still love being a strategist, PR strategist for Capitol Hill to this day. But, um, I went into politics. I mean, I went into education. So from there. Um, I did teach for a little while, but when people find out that you do PR, they always come back to you. To you. So they were like, oh, well, it's funny that you have this PR background from the Hill. Why don't you work at like headquarters, which in districts, you know, um, school districts in the US, we call them different things like district centers or different things like that. So I was in the Saint Paul, Minnesota area and we call a district center. They was like, okay, why don't you go up at district center and work there and do PR work there? And so over the years, what I have learned is that I really needed to lean into the creative side of my work and into more of the creation aspect of the work. I had always wanted a doctorate, and so at first when I went, I went to University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities, and my major was human resource development, and it was a bit too prescriptive for my taste. I wanted something more because I had. Really something around creativity and museums and the art and performing arts, because I had the performing arts when I was a kid, too. I mean, my family tried to keep us involved in doing different things in the arts, even when we were young, despite what was going on. So I had this love still for like museums and arts and performing arts and things like that. I mean, most people would say that politics in our country is a performing art. So. Yes, depending on how you describe it. Um, but I decided to get my degree in culture and teaching because of that aspect. I really wanted to get back to the role of culture and how as humans, we make sense of our world and how we express ourselves through our culture, including like the foods we eat. I love the culinary arts, the way we express ourselves through poetry and writing, and how we preserve memories and documentation. And of course, there are a lot of sculpture, a lot of statues in the Washington, DC, Baltimore area. And what those statue means, means, as we know, like statues, doing certain things with statues is a form of protest, right? Statues fall. So taking down art is a form of protest. But I wanted to get back to the role of, like, culture and the arts and things like that. So long story, short story short. Somebody told me it was like, you're really good at reinventing yourself. That's part of the reason I do the work that I do. Um, long story short, I went into academia. I worked in leadership and policy studies, but I really wanted something more for myself. I wanted to reach more people, and I wanted to. Academia still felt very prescriptive to me. I mean, there are ways to do research that are not, um, feeling so like, um, and we have to have this in science. I am a big proponent of the scientific method. We do have to have some things around science that we need, but there is a way to express yourself in science, like through things called narrative inquiry, through phenomenology, and through those different kind of epistemological lenses. But I wanted to do it on a wider scale. That's why I decided to start doing private practice, and started helping people tap into the more creative, thinking, creative aspect of their selves in everyday lives. Because I was teaching it how to do it at the university around creative thinking. I had a student who used phenomenology for his like, research methods, and he won like awards for his dissertation and all of these things. And I'm like more people. I think that if we tap into more of our creative thinking and more of the creativity side of ourselves, I think people will be more fulfilled and we will address more mental health concerns, things around occupational burnout and and those kind of different phenomena and different health, things that we face in society. If we would just, um, and it's not just the just like that. So it's not we could just do it and it works, but I think we would be more balanced in that way. So that's what brought me into my practice today. I still am an academic. I'm a leadership professor, in addition to a luxury business advisor and in the leadership professor role. Even though I do bring luxury and leadership to everything that I do. But in the leadership professor role, I really leaned into like post structural theory and narrative inquiry and those like more like, I don't know what to call them. Um, I guess the more like it is, um, both an situations rather than like an either or, because my dissertation was on matters of social justice and racial equity, and I thought that there was one way to do that. And I quickly learned that there are more than one way to do that. So that's my long story. That's a long story. I love hearing how the story has really come together, and you're absolutely speaking my language of academia and the kind of research that allows us to be a human being. And of course, there are necessary approaches for research that involves maybe medicine or understanding large groups of people. But what you're describing with a narrative or phenomenological, this qualitative inquiry that allows the researcher to study the experience of the phenomenon personally and up close, with them being positioned in the research, sometimes being their own participant, but being able to tell a story. It's so much more practical. And as you mentioned, it fits so well with cultural humility, critical inquiry. It allows us to really subvert that dominant paradigm of there's one way to understand people and expand it into the multi. Ways of knowing because we are so vastly different and phenomenon cannot all be captured in one way. So I love what you're describing, how you came to your own research work, and how you guide your students. And it makes perfect sense to me that there is this academic piece that you retain, particularly in writing and research and your publications, because that supports and guides your work in your private practice. And then the other way is true that your practical work in the world can inform your research questions. And so a scholar practitioner model really is what you're describing. I know I used to resist that because I was like, well, you only could be one or the other, remember? I was like kind of like dichotomous in that way you can only be one or the other. But when one of my first roles as a professor was at the University of Florida at Gainesville, and they were like, you're more of a scholar practitioner. I'm like, no, no, I'm not. And so now but now I have learned to, like, do it in a beautiful way, because I do think that we do need both. I, um, I do teach, like, at the university. And one of the things I'm learning more about myself and my private practice, because it's a self of study to a study of self too, is that even my students who do, um, positivist studies and quantitative studies, now they're leaning into more of the post positivist work or more into like the critical, um, qualitative analysis. Like one lady is she just finished her doctorate and I taught her how to. And I'm not even a call person myself a more I mean, a person myself. I'm more of a qualitative researcher. How to do like critical statistical work. And so she studied how women philanthropists, how women philanthropists are represented in higher education settings, because we always talk about higher education. Philanthropy through the lens of is overly male saturated situation and is mostly men who are seen as a philanthropist. But there are a lot of women philanthropist who give to higher education institutions. And her study is on in higher education about how women philanthropists are understood and what are the statistics around that. And it's really is really, um, fascinating work there to in to bring this to more people, just to be able to think more creatively and bringing this to a larger group of people, besides in the ivory towers and things like that, is is what keeps me going. In psychology. It was about the ivory tower until maybe the 60s. And so when we say ivory tower, we're talking about academics sitting in there, quote unquote, ivory tower. White men generally were imagining the studies, asking questions from their perspective and then doing research. It's how we ended up with so little medical research on women. It's how we ended up with so little medical research on women of color. It's people sitting, thinking. And the scholar practitioner model in psychology emerged in the 60s because it occurred to psychologists and the researchers that it would be helpful to have more practical experience. And that's then the moral sense that that a psychologist will practice research and clinical work working with people. And it changed the trajectory of how. How we ask questions, what kind of questions we're asking, and the newer methodologies, and certainly pedagogy of the oppressed informed all of this for me. Thinking about how can we ask questions that are for the people who are researching? How can we engage in, um, pedagogy teaching in a way that is teaching to the people in front of us, not simply a reflection of what the teacher knows and thinks should be imparted. And so it becomes much more reciprocal. And one of my favorite approaches is participatory action research. So it's involving the people that you're working with in the research that it becomes a co researcher experience. And it removes that old fashioned model of the ivory tower and someone imagining what should be studied, to asking the people what they would like to know about whatever's happening in their lives and the people you're asking become your co research. And I think that for your audience. Pedagogy of the oppressed is a good book to read if they are teaching art to other people of all ages. So they are listening to your work and they're teaching art in the community or the young folks or whoever. It doesn't matter their age, because I'll do a little name job here. But Vendela Gusto, she does art around pedagogy of the oppressed and like how we can use that in the art classroom and teaching people about art and stuff. So you're mentioned to them about like learning about that book. People think, oh, it's just for teachers who teach like adult ed or teachers who teach children. No. If you're teaching, if you're teaching people about even if you're homeschooling, like for your listeners, homeschooling and teach the young folks about art in the homeschool, it's a really good book for people to use. It really helps them learn how to express themselves through the arts in a different way. I love it. I'll put a link in the show notes for that book if people are. And it's by Paulo Freire, um, from Brazil Maybe in the 70s it started. But people have carried on his work in this incredible way, expanding across all kinds of ways that we teach and teaching. You're right, is more than in a formal setting. We teach our children. We teach people how to treat us. We teach in so many ways for our own experience. We teach ourselves what to think, and we reinforce or back away from certain strategies. Right along with that is the theater of the oppressed. It goes along with the similar lines of the because that's specifically related to the performing arts. So cool. All right. I'll drop all those links in so that our listeners can check those out. I wonder if you would talk a little bit about the psychology of prestige. And the reason I'm asking is you and I talk a lot about your work related to luxury and what that means. We'll get to luxury in just a minute, but tell me a little bit about the psychology of prestige and how we experience that. Well, one way to think about I'll start at the end and then go back to how I came to this work, because I'm not a formally trained psychologist or anything like that. As our fabulous host, Doctor Michaels is but dabble in the theory. So and it actually plays a huge role in the business, in business and leadership. So, um, psychology, psychological theory and things like that. Because one thing that I'm learning about does or one thing that I know for a fact in my own work, is that the psychology around prestige is related to the role of desire and desirability. And I wrote a paper a while ago is actually called The Desirability of Whiteness. So it's like around issues of racial justice and equity and things like that. However, the role of desire not only plays a role in how we make sense of other humans and how we interact with other humans based on what we see, but also what we want for ourselves. So, um, when we're, um, growing our business and we are monetizing because I work with my people and my private practice isn't sort of in my university work to to monetize their exclusive and their best offers. It really taps into the role of desire, like thinking about, you know, creating demand, um, showing something in a way that's desirable. And it always starts with you first. So as leaders, you always go first and you always go often. So how are you being a role model in terms of how you're loving and desiring and wanting your, um. Best work for your people. And that is the role of emotions. And I came to issues of emotions from my dissertation, which has been quite a while now. So I do not suggest that people could read it, but you're welcome to read it. So I say go to the book itself, feminism and intersectionality, or go to my Instagram account. But if you want to go back to the roots of it all, the dissertation. So in the dissertation I looked at how people what is the my question was what happens in a classroom when people study issues of race and racism so broadly? That goes into like how people make sense of quote unquote controversial issues. They do it through their emotions. So emotions were a huge issue in my dissertation. And I wrote an entire chapter on the role of emotions in this kind of teaching on quote unquote, controversial issues in that particular classroom. It was around issues of racial justice, race and racism. However, on what I've noticed that emotions play a huge factor in how we lead and how we also go about monetizing different things in the marketplace and also how we go about, um. Making sense of what we want and what we don't want, and I can't remember which episode it is. Doctor Buckells, but you you mentioned before about getting close to like knowing what you want and going to what you feel like you want and what you desire. So you teach about this and you work to and similar. Not in your vein because I'm not a psychologist, but I talk about in teaching or monetizing your best work. It really is about the role of your emotions and the role of desire. So that's how I came to this work. And now, like I'm writing about the role of emotions around like issues of policy. Like I had a paper in, um, that's published in academic journal around like, what issues, what policy issues do people find really important for them and why they do it through their emotions. So the emotions they emit around certain policy issues, for example, my papers on immigration. Yes, I say that because immigration is a big policy matter right now. But I realized, I realized that these things should not only happen in politics, but they also happen in business, too. So and how we, um, why do we sell our premium offers? Because we feel like it's where our geniuses, our geniuses, our geniuses and our best. Are you desire to express yourself around your genius and where you can support your people the most? So it comes down to that role of desire there. And how can you also speak to people who want to invest in luxury experiences? I was just reading something, um, that came across the media about how people are more interested in sensory experiences now necessarily. Well, not sensory, but more about like a hospitality experience more than they are about luxury products. So they want to know how they they want to experience and have experiences like travel or like, um. Networking experiences, how they want to feel when they're doing the work more than actually maybe the product itself. And there's a lot of reasons around that. Something that has been cited around economics, some of it has been cited around like environmental justice things and the production of certain products. So it's a lot of different reasons why, but that's why. That's how I go about this work. Focusing on the psychology of selling to elite audiences or your best work, your premium work. There is a strategy of research called desire based research. And it's more, um, well, I learned about it from Doctor Jennifer Clay, and I was so lucky to be on her dissertation committee. I learned so much from her work, and she worked with indigenous people in Southern California, and she used qualitative strategies like we were talking about. And desire based research is a research technique that's appropriate for and created by indigenous people. And the idea of what do you desire, what do you want, what's important. And so when I translate that in my head to acceptance and commitment therapy, what are your values? What's important to you? And then what do you want to do to move towards that? And certainly in the work that I do, I help women rethink how they can go towards what they want. So a lot of times women are not knowing or not saying what they want, or it feels too uncomfortable to express a desire. And so once we finally get there, then we have a lot of additional thought to overcome in terms of how can I take action towards that? And am I valuable enough to do that? Or who am I to do that? And the work of prestige and desire is the same. That there's a feeling comes from old stories, and the feeling stops us in so many ways. But the idea that that you brought up with a hospitality experience or a luxury kind of experience is getting greater investment than luxury products. And you bring up a good point about the environment and how things are made over consumption, and the idea of spending money on another pair of shoes, versus investing in your personal experience, or investing in how you carry yourself. When I was, I think 48. I invested in a it was more. The only thing I'd spent more money on in my life was my education. This was a a package working with the happiness psychologist Doctor Amy Crozier. And I could not believe the cost. And I did it. And I did a lot to be able to pay for the experience. And it was a multi year work with her and I am a new person because of it. The way I think, the way I wake up in the morning, the way I interact, I feel so much less defensive and ego driven and I can't imagine how I could have done this without having mentor and leadership from her. And so what you're describing that ability to connect with someone, to have an emotion that's different, to feel confident investing our resources into an experience with someone. I think it's picking up in the world. People understand that we don't need more stuff. We need to be the person we want to be. What do you think? I think that that's right on point, because those are life altering investments. And, um, you can. I'm all about a good handbag or, like, a belt. I'm a accessories person, but I buy vintage because I'm just like an accumulator that way. And plus, I like the hunt. So I just bought a 1995 LV like luggage bag, so I was like, well, it's vintage, so it is. I bought it so but those things can like the emotions of finding the vintage bag is what is thrilling. And by the way, that was one of the bags you and I kind of joke about in the in our friends too, who does one of the bags I bought as a gift for myself. So and so. But when you invest in really the. Changing your life so you become more of who it is you want to be, or that next iteration of yourself. Like the pivot. Like you invest in that pivot. They say we only live this one life. Like you can live multiple lifetimes in this one life. Every time you choose to invest in yourself in that way, to give you a whole new perspective. So I can buy the vintage Louis Vuitton bag, but I might hate it. Um, if I think a certain way about it after I get it? Or am I love it when I think a certain way about it? You know, depending on how I make sense of it because of how I construct my world and the world around me. So it seems a little like, woo, a little bit, but it really is, is really important that it's fine to buy nice things. I mean, I'm not, um, I am an accumulator. So, uh, when I buy nice things, I keep them forever. So I don't like to buy a lot of new things, environmental justice reasons and different things like that. But when you make that investment, like you said, in something that really changes your whole perspective on your world, it's like you're living multiple lifetimes in one. Oh, that's such a good way to say it. And, well, let's talk about the environment for a moment, because it impacts women in a tremendous way as women suffer consequences around environmental pollution in a different way. And I also have, I think, since maybe age 15, been obsessed with vintage shopping. And I would cut school in the morning when they had the $5 bag days at the goodwill. The idea of consuming, um, a new dress. I really like to have cool clothes. When I was in high school and being able to get a whole bag of stuff and pass it around with my friends. And then it was only really later that we became voracious consumers. And still I'm obsessed with the vintage finds and I'm with you. My purchases are almost exclusively vintage or just thrift store or on. Um. There is a store here called crossroads. So people buy and sell and even get credit. And so a cycle where I'm not adding to the landfill feels good. And it is about environmental justice as well. So I have no criticism of purchasing luxury, and I personally find it better for me to purchase it in a vintage way. One it costs much less, and to the it's already shown proof of product, right? It it's been carried or worn and it's holding up. So you know, it's already a quality item and it's lasted to make it into a Fe used store. I think this gets into the psychology of the work to maybe the psychology of prestige, to its the thrill of the find. Like you said, you would skip school to go to the, the, um, store and just to shop the, um, the youth section and then like, they have great use like bookstores and use like vinyl stores and, and it's the thrill of the fine and it really is just like, it's just so it goes back into desire. Like it just goes back into like. Um. It's like climbing a mountain. When I went to. I didn't climb. I actually did. And in Washington and Washington state, I did climb a mountain. Not all the way to the top, but I did go mountain climbing. And I love it because it's always about that. Like the thrill of the like, oh, what am I going to get when I get there? And then I did that in Hawaii. I climbed the I don't remember what it was that I. Yeah. I just it's just I don't know, I just like doing stuff like that. And it's always that emotional aspect of it. Going back to the psychology and emotions and the emotionality of the find, the emotionality of of really being able to harness your strength and being able to monetize your best work, for example. So is this this a lot of fun? It's actually I'm having my business. I'm having a time in my life. And because of that, I'm also having the time of my life as an academic, too. And Doctor Amy is definitely help me with that balance around that. So, well, I have to comment on the psychology of climbing a mountain. There is a lot of psychology about having a vista where you're up high enough to see quite a distance, and it's Vista is used in that Rorschach inkblot test as a strategy, as a particular way of seeing things. Um, I've read things. Advising. Deep thinking happens best when you have a view to go climb a hill and be in nature. Of course, has a huge impact on us, but to be able to see far is a great metaphor for our our thinking, to be able to not just see details, but to see the big picture. And I think a lot of us have a preference for big picture or details, yet we all have to do both. We all do both. There's just one aspect that maybe comes more easily to us, but Vista is a way to capture that big picture. Thank you. Mhm. Mhm. I wonder if we could talk about money for just a moment and I'll tell you why. In psychology there's often the feeling that people don't go into this for the money. And there's not a lot of options for finances. And people start working in a nonprofit. And there's the whole nonprofit industrial complex, which burns out the workers and people are told, well, you have to keep working and stay late and work extra and just take a few more clients. You have to do it for the community. And so there's kind of this play on a little bit of guilt. There's not a lot of, um, outstanding fundraising for many nonprofits. Now, some are really good at it, and they're able to take care of the people who are taking care of the clients, but not so many. Glide church here is one that does a lot of fundraising, and it takes care of the community in the in the wider sense. But so many therapists struggle with feeling like they don't deserve to make a lot of money, or they've been told they can't make much and it makes it really hard to pay off student loans. And this pervasive idea of scarcity in human service fields, in teaching or in psychology. It's it's a narrative that I think keeps people thinking very small and not having a lot of. Expectations about what they're capable of. And you've talked about monetizing are genius. And I think of an example, a number of years ago, my husband and I were going to go stay at a nice hotel downtown in San Francisco, and I was feeling particularly sad about, um, interacting with an unhoused person and just feeling so sad to see people without resources. And I was really lamenting this, and he said, Amy, you're not gonna help that person by not taking care of yourself. You're not going to do anything to help your clients by not taking care of yourself. He's a really smart guy. And he said, you're you're going to go to this hotel, we're gonna go swimming. We're going to go out to eat. You're going to have a replenishing experience and enjoy time with your family, and that will nourish you to go back and do the work. That's other people. And I started reading more about this idea. Like, if we throw ourselves off the cliff to help someone who's fallen off the cliff. Now nobody can help anybody. So what do you think of this idea of, like, a scarcity expectation around money in whatever our profession is related to creativity, the arts, psychology, education. But that's, um, some critical theory thoughts around that. I have a lot of thoughts when it comes to, like the role of critical theory and why things are happening the way that they're happening in that regard. Besides that, in addition to and people can look it up, your audience can look it up at their careers. But in addition to what would what's really important for me right now, because I was that person too, like, I will come from like politics and doing PR on the hill and like burning and working the midnight hour, teaching and not sleeping or staying at school late and planning and all the things and. So, um, one thing I'm getting to the point of my life now is that I'm on a mission. So when you're mission driven, if the founder of the mission can't fuel themselves, the mission dies. So. And so you have to. And this is sometimes it means saying no, like I've said no. And I've literally cried after saying no because I felt bad, like. And I just laughed. Allowed myself to feel the feelings. But to know that I want to reach more people with the mission. So once you define your mission and realize that you're creating a movement to continue that movement and to keep going on that mission, it's like a rocket ship. You got to fuel the rocket ship in order to be able to go off into space and do the mission, because if the rocket doesn't have fuel, it's not going to leave the Earth. So it's just I have to remind myself of that a lot, because especially people who are in the service, like human development space or often women are overly represented in this role. Like we have to do everything for everybody else first before we do anything for ourselves. And we forgot how to tap into desire, like going into back into what it is you really want for yourself. And how are you going to build that mission and continue to do this? And now that, like, I'm growing my private practice and I'm also in a caregiver role for my husband, he is having some health challenges right now. It is a great reminder about and sometimes it's easy to forget, especially when you have demands coming at you in a certain way. But you just when you're on a mission you just can't forget, you just have to keep fueling that rocket ship. Otherwise it's not going to go into space. That's a great metaphor. Thank you. I think, um, the last episode, I talked about the idea of rest, and there's seven different kinds of rest. And that idea of rest as a radical act emerged from black women scholars. It's not an idea that, um, people tend to remember very often. I've noticed in supervising clinicians and in working with a lot of different people, that rest is essential. It's, of course, it's a radical act when labor has been forced upon someone. It is also a way to, as you said, fuel the rocket ship and allow the energy to keep going. And rest is not merely sleep. It's so much more than that. And it's community, and it's the idea of luxury, whatever that means to someone, that the little luxuries that feel important to them are part of that fuel as well. And it's easy to overlook, especially when you have a lot of demands that people expect of you and things like that. And that is something that I learn from you. I told you, I went to the Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth and it was like invigorating. I'm like, just looking at the art, and it just really felt like it fuels you. And then I did, um, kind of a hotel lobby tour in Waco and went to some boutique boutique hotels and things like that, just to look at the interior design of the hotel. And that is important. It's easy to forget you have to, like, show up for your calendar when you put that on your calendar. I have to go. You can't say, oh, I'm not going to go, I'm just going to postpone it. It's really important to, like you said, it is a radical act because I like how you put it, because you're actually telling something else. No. And sometimes it's hard to. For me, at least. I mean, I've had to learn to do that several times. And when you get to a certain point in your professional life and just your life in general, that rest part becomes even more important because you're solving bigger problems so well. Good point. Solving bigger problems. I stay pretty active in my local politics, and I write my representatives and my senators. I write somebody every day. I've been really, um. Grateful to have friends in San Francisco who invite me and keep me informed about, you know, where I can get more information. And what speaker can I go here? And, um, I went to see my San Francisco representative, and when she was speaker of the House, she said she was often sleeping about four hours a night. And she said that was just what was happening with so many people during that time. And it was this pouring of themselves into the work. And then they'll have a break. They'll go home and do things in their district. But that sheer level of exhaustion, it's like having a baby to pour ourselves in to our mission without rest, without being able to say no. I've seen so many people working in social justice and working in, um, their their job as an advocate as well. Um, you know, being really so focused on that mission that they start to self neglect. And I hope everyone listening hears that it's part of the business plan to have rest. Part of my business plan is that I am a member of the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco, and I go on a regular basis. That's part of my business plan. I see no patience and no clients on Wednesdays, so that I can do something that is invigorating and reminds me of my mission. How do you stay focused on what's most important to you? I forced myself to do creative rest. I had to force myself to do it sometimes. And that's where my best ideas happen is when I do that. So even if it's just finding, um, the film is not what it used to be in my opinion. Everyone says stuff about different things like that, but I do will find a nice film that will help me come up with new ideas that'll help. It actually helps that creative aspect of the work. Like, I come up with new ideas by doing things like that. So, um, I have to admit, I'm not a swifty, but I do watch the Taylor Swift documentary about her airs. Taylor and she talked about one of the things that she does is she will she does take time off. And that time off when she's not on stage performing for the big crowds is when she come up with some ideas and different things like that where she's not. I mean, she's doing her own form of creative rest. It's just about the creative process of the arts tour and all the people required to put on such a big production, from the dancers to the seamstress and, um, Taylor herself, of course. And, and it really is another example of just and with me watching that reminded me also. Okay, I it's good to rest and get inspiration from other places to besides just, just constantly thinking about my business. And I love, I love it, I love working, so that's part of the problem. But I also realize, like you said, part of working is getting inspiration to and that creative rest. So now I'm restructuring my time in that way, and it's really about calendaring for me. Like you say, you save Wednesdays, I have to my days are the days fluctuate. Wait for me. But I do make sure that I put in my calendar when I do things like that. That's a really good point. Calendar has made a huge difference in my life. Not just scheduling my appointments, but scheduling my vacation time in advance and my time off. It really, really does matter. Tanita, what would you say is like your favorite kind of problem to solve? Like, what is it that that shows up and your genius is able to solve? Oh man. I think now if it varies, but because I'm really as I'm teaching my process and my methods, I'm applying it to my own life and my business to it really now is positioning now as prestige positioning? I call it prestige. Positioning is one of the things that I, the pillars of my work in leadership and luxury is where we place our messages and how we make sense of our like, the work that we do and how we position it in our own narratives and the narratives we share with other people. So right now is prestige, positioning, and sometimes just getting the right kind of prestige positioning will allow the monetization to happen is more than just about the money too. It really is about being able to reach more people. I mean, my big goal was to be a is to be a major philanthropist. So that's one of the things I want to do. So I want to be able to be a big philanthropist in education, especially around quality education for women. So it really, uh, prestige positioning is my big one now. I love it. You and I met at Sochi Women's Leadership Conference, and I think of that of being in a room with other people on the same path or having a similar mission that's pushing them forward is part of how we improve our positioning. Right? What is it about being with other women or having a mentor that you think allows that prestige positioning to happen? The mentor or the advisor will reflect thoughts, which is really not. Let me put it this way. That mentor and that advisor will show you your best thinking. We know more than what we give ourselves credit for often, so they will show you like, okay, you don't think you're doing this work, but you're actually doing this. So they will be there with you. They will tell you what to do, and they tell you what to do based on them listening to you and reflecting your back. Because we it's a lot going on in the world. We're inundated with data and information all the time. So oftentimes my thoughts will get muddled in some of my best ideas. So that mentor and that advisor and that guide, the the muse will be able to extract those diamonds from your thoughts and give them back to you like this is what you need to focus on. So I think that that's the value of a good guide and a good advisor. That's an excellent point to be able to to pull out what's already working. And that's a strength based approach in psychology as well, is trusting that people have their own experience from which they can create that it's not. As a therapist, I'm not telling people, well, you got to think this way or this way, but helping people shift from where they are into a more desire based place, a value based place. I love how you described being able to extract that and kind of point in the direction of go this way instead of that way. Mhm. Friends, we understand in the research that we all have blinders. So psychology understands that we are unable to see ourselves clearly. And so the role of a mentor is to fill in the gaps and help us remove some of those blinders. And remind you of who you really are. So because there's so many different things, when you're a leader or an entrepreneur that is expected of you and it's sometimes easy to forget who you really are. So that good advisor mentor guy will give you a whole new. They will shift your perspective. They remind you of who you really are and what you're really doing, and you're like, oh, that's right. I love that you mentioned we can live many lives in this lifetime. And I've always admired when people invent and reinvent new ways of being. I think it's incredible to see your path as a series of reinventions moving in this direction, where you support women in such powerful ways, and it's embracing a woman's genius and directing her towards how to put it out in the world in a way that makes sense to others, that feels value based. How how do you think your approach is different? Because it seems so different to me from how other people are mentoring and advising. One thing that I really Borgmeier work on is the role of what? What we know that is rigorous. So what do we know from science that's rigorous and how do we bring that into the everyday? So that is one of the things that I focus on. And also allowing it to be an art too. So because there is like is this balance between the art and the science and you, you talk a lot about this too. And just what makes a difference is that I focus on like best in education. Like GNOME practices, I guess is a way to say it and own practices. What do we know? What can we build off of that is already scientifically based that we can use as working, and put your work on top of it as the artist, as the creator, as the philosopher, on top of that, to move the work forward. So in order to help you reach your goals. And that's what makes my work unique. And I bring the lens of both luxury and leadership together in that space to be able to do that. Not everyone who comes to me is looking to particularly monetize or do business in the luxury market, but I'm a big person when it comes to hospitality. I think a good experience for the people who come into your world is really important. So and creating an environment for that to be able to happen is really key. So that's what makes my work different to. It's so obviously different to me. And I think what we talked about in the before the 1960s, the ivory tower was the only way, and people were just making up questions to research and it was not informed and balanced. And I think a lot of what I see on social media is back to that. Somebody has an idea and now they're saying, this is how it is. And without that research and personal experience, it's really challenging and frustrating. It's anybody can say anything on social media without evidence. And so I think those of us who practice science and research speak in a really different way that this is likely to show or you may experience. We describe things in a very realistic way and not saying this will change your life. And this is the only way. And it's much more gentle way of describing the reality. Because when it's based in evidence, we have the evidence based practice in psychology and best practices for how to, um, understand change and what are the mechanisms of change and how can I push on those to help someone move in this direction over here? And I talk a lot about going in through this side door. We can't always just burst through the front door and make change. That there requires a lot of subtle pushing and changing, and it's things that, you know, AI can never replace. Is that that human knowing and and observing someone and poking around on the cognitive side and then having a result over on the spiritual side of things that that ability that you bring with. The evidence and the science behind what you do there. There is a whole science around luxury and prestige positioning, and it's incredible to see how much you are able to implement your academic and your research. And the the pedagogy of your work shows up in this beautiful way. Thank you. There's a lot of I like what you said. I use the words a lot of fluff online that just taps into like the emotions of the work, not rooted in any kind of science or whatnot. So there are some basic things we know in science that are really, actually really helpful. So and the thing about what Doctor Buckells and I do is that we can because of our training, we can see patterns really quickly. And I think that that is also what makes my and your practice unique in the marketplace is that we can see things happening really quickly. We don't have to waste the time. Time is valuable, especially when you get to a certain part of your life. We can do things really quickly because we can see the patterns really quickly, and we can tell you exactly how to move the needle on certain things without having to spend that extra money or spend the the extra time in trial and error, or trying to educate yourself via the stuff that is not rooted in any kind of rigorous background or things that come online. So what makes my work unique, and yours too, is the ability to see patterns really quickly and be able to surgically place the treatment of what people need really fast so that they get results really fast. Oh, that's such a great way of saying it. And it's true. In acceptance and commitment therapy, there's six areas where I can. Make change. And if someone's struggling in one area, I don't always go straight into that. I know what the opposite approach is and push on this other area that there's a ability to it. I love how you said it is a lot faster when you know the evidence behind what you're doing. You're not flailing around and throwing spaghetti at the wall, so to speak, and skip the trial and error, unless that's what you want to spend your time doing. So. But you know, I'd rather do my trial and error in the kitchen, so. Exactly. Yeah. Well, how do people find you? What's the best way to find you? And I don't think your book that you mentioned in the show notes as well. Thanks. My best place I'm pretty active on Instagram at Jamie Fisher. Jamie FISA, that's my middle name and my last name. So you can people can find me there. That's where I best reach. I'm also can be reached on email and Doctor Buckells will put that in the show notes. Is he a wife? Um, that's my other email. Don't email that. Don't email that one. My email is t a m a y at leading. Lavishly. I love it. Leading lavishly. So nice. Well, thank you so much, Doctor Fisher. This is really always so much fun to have a conversation with you. It really is inspiring to hear how you go in this value based direction and what you bring to leadership. You invest in your own experiences and you also bring those experiences, plus the art and the science to the people you work with. It's really such a cool way that you work with people. I appreciate that. Amy, thank you so much for being here. You're welcome.