Former First Lady (Michelle Obama): This Is A Scam! People Were Running From Us Because We Were Black! I Was Bitter About The Racism I Received!

Michelle Obama served as the First Lady of the United States, entering the White House alongside Barack Obama. In this candid conversation, she joins Steven with her brother Craig Robinson, a former college basketball coach turned executive, to open up about everything from Trump’s inauguration to marriage challenges, grief, and rediscovering her purpose. Widely regarded as one of today’s most influential voices on leadership, identity, and social progress, Michelle offers a rare, intimate look at her personal journey. Together, they discuss: How their parents instilled empathy, discipline, and resilience growing up amid racial tension. Michelle’s journey through elite schools and corporate law, driven by a need to tick society’s boxes. The evolution of Michelle and Barack’s relationship, from colleagues to lifelong partners. Fertility struggles, parenting tips, and what it really takes to sustain a long-term marriage. Navigating life in the White House, grief, personal boundaries, and rediscovering her true calling. 00:00 Intro 02:11 Michelle and Craig's Childhood 04:48 Values Learned from Their Parents 08:45 Michelle Skipping Second Grade 12:16 The Role of Race in Their Childhood 15:19 What "White Flight" Means 17:01 Coping with Racism 20:55 Overcoming Being Underestimated 26:33 Michelle's Search for Identity 30:20 Meeting Barack 31:59 Introducing Barack to the Family 33:48 Why Michelle Initially Rejected Barack 37:28 Michelle's Career Change: Pursuing Joy 40:52 Relationship with Barack 44:56 Going to Counseling with Barack 49:34 Pregnancy Struggles 56:27 Hardest Moments in Their Marriage 57:31 Barack Obama Runs for Public Office 01:03:28 What I Should Have Said to Barack 01:07:11 Being the First Black First Lady and Facing Scrutiny 01:14:09 Reflections on a Sad Time 01:15:17 Remembering Your Mother 01:16:53 The Death of Your Mother 01:18:36 Processing the Grief 01:20:41 Not Attending Trump’s Inauguration Listen to Michelle & Craig's new podcast IMO: ⁠https://bit.ly/3YnxIUg⁠ Follow Michelle: Instagram - https://bit.ly/3Ymxs7W Twitter - https://bit.ly/4cYXiVC Follow Craig: Instagram - https://bit.ly/4lThkVB Twitter - https://bit.ly/4lTGJ1f You can purchase Michelle’s book, ‘Overcoming: A Workbook', here: https://amzn.to/4jTqcsi (UK) / https://amzn.to/3SbbelM (US) 100 CEOs: Ready to think like a CEO? Gain access to the 100 CEOs newsletter here: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/100-ceos-megaphone⁠ The 1% Diary is back - limited time only: https://bit.ly/1-Diary-Megaphone-ad-r… The Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards (Second Edition): https://g2ul0.app.link/f31dsUttKKb Get email updates: ⁠https://bit.ly/diary-of-a-ceo-yt⁠ Follow Steven: https://g2ul0.app.link/gnGqL4IsKKb Sponsors: Airalo - https://try.airalo.com/TheDiaryOfACEO with code DOAC3Vivobarefoot - https://vivobarefoot.com/DOAC with code DIARY20 for 20% off Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  People in power who haven't understood their why can lead us down some dark tunnels. We are in a really tough time right now.

• 0:11Steven Bartlett?

  The former first lady.

• 0:12Speaker 00

  And her brother Craig Robinson are sharing their rare perspectives into a world very few ever get to see. I grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood and we were taught foundational values so that we could function in our society. But growing up, I was just checking boxes. And then I met Barack Obama. He showed up in my life as the opposite of a box checker.

• 0:37Steven Bartlett?

  You rejected him at first, right?

• 0:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was even trying to introduce him to some of my friends. He said, well, why don't we go out?

• 0:43Steven Bartlett?

  And what did you think of him?

• 0:44Speaker 02

  Honestly, I was like, he may last two months. I remember my mom saying, well, at least he's tall.

• 0:52Speaker 00

  But the next thing, you know, we were on our way to building our lives together.

• 0:57Speaker 00

  And my initial reaction was, don't do this. There'd be death threats. How do you raise kids in the White House? How would we afford it?

• 1:05Steven Bartlett?

  Did you ask for any promises if he were to win?

• 1:08Speaker 00

  I didn't know what that journey was gonna be and what I would need to negotiate for myself. And if I had known what I know now, I should have said.

• 1:19Steven Bartlett?

  Michelle, I was watching the coverage of your decision to not go to Trump's inauguration. What was the thinking behind that?

• 1:26Speaker 00

  The truth was is that.

• 1:29Steven Bartlett?

  I find it incredibly fascinating that when we look at the back end of Spotify and Apple and our audio channels, the majority of people that watch this podcast haven't yet hit the follow button or the subscribe button, wherever you're listening to this. I would like to make a deal with you. If you could do me a huge favor and hit that subscribe button, I will work tirelessly from now until forever to make the show better and better and better and better. I can't tell you how much it helps when you hit that subscribe button. The show gets bigger, which means we can expand the production, bring in all the guests you want to see and continue to doing this thing we love. If you could do me that small favor and hit the follow button, wherever you're listening to this, that would mean the world to me. That is the only favor I will ever ask you. Thank you so much for your time.

• 2:11Steven Bartlett?

  Michelle, Craig, what do I need to know about your earliest context to understand the adults? And I use that word intentionally because I know that's what your your parents were intent on raising, the adults that are in front of me today.

• 2:27Speaker 00

  Mm.

• 2:29Steven Bartlett?

  Wow.

• 2:30Speaker 00

  It starts at 7436 South Euclid. You know, the the the hub of it all. That was the the home that we grew up in on the south side of Chicago. And it was a teeny tiny house. We lived above our Aunt Robbie. It was a single family home, a bungalow on the south side of Chicago. And our Aunt Robbie was married to her husband Terry. And they owned the home. And they had a little bitty, almost one bedroom, two bedroom apartment over the home. So it was a two family home.

• 3:09Speaker 00

  We were surrounded by extended family, that community of people that you probably because people didn't have a lot of resources, people lived with each other. You know, you shared spaces, you lived next to one another. And we lived with our great aunt because it helped our parents save some money and get us in a better neighborhood. Because my father was a city worker. He was a working class guy, didn't have a college education. And working for the city was a really stable job because it gave you benefits and some stability. And my mom wanted to stay home and and raise kids. So in order to save that kind of money, we banded together and lived with our Aunt Robbie.

• 3:52Speaker 00

  And all of the adventures and the lessons learned, when I think about my foundational values, that house really, and all the experiences and conversations, the beginning of my kitchen table happened on 74th and Euclid. And I I talk about it because you think it was a palace. But this was a little home. We shared a bedroom most of our lives because there would just wasn't room for us to each have our own room. And we shared the space, one bathroom. There was no dining room. There was just a kitchen.

• 4:28Speaker 02

  And the way it was set up, how it was supposed to be used, it was a one bedroom apartment. And the living room was the room that we shared as a bedroom. And the one bedroom it had was where my mom and dad lived. And the whole thing could have been seven hundred square feet.

• 4:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:48Steven Bartlett?

  You talked about foundational values.

• 4:50Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 4:51Steven Bartlett?

  What were those foundational values that you learned in that location? And how did your parents teach you those foundational values? And I ask that with great curiosity because as I read through both of your books, there are moments in your career where, as adults in your late twenties, where those values show up so clearly over and over and over again. And I was reading, I was thinking, gosh, what did their parents do to orientate them in such a clear way where both key moments in both of your careers, you make decisions not to get a pay rise or not to go for the thing that is higher status and to do something else, either something that's aligned with your passions and hobbies or something that's in service of others.

• 5:32Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 5:33Steven Bartlett?

  So what were those values and how did your parents instill those in you?

• 5:38Speaker 00

  I think our parents modeled it. I mean, if I were to think of one, one word that would describe my father, he was just a decent man, decent, honest, hardworking and loyal, trustworthy. I mean, these were the kind of things that we talked about. We didn't have material stuff. He couldn't provide that, but he provided a set of lessons about what it meant to be a good friend. He was the elder in his family, the oldest of, what, five? And my mom was the middle child. And he, he took care of everyone, even though he had multiple sclerosis

• 6:22Speaker 00

  and walked with assistance. He had a cane when we were younger. I never knew my father to walk without the assistance of a cane. And MS was a progressive disease. So over the course of his life, he just got weaker and weaker and weaker. But he was the strongest person in our orbit with everyone.

• 6:42Steven Bartlett?

  Never took a sick day.

• 6:43Speaker 00

  Never took a sick day. He was the father that fathered all the other kids in the neighborhood, you know? So when Craig was playing basketball, he was the person. That was at most of the practices, if he could be, if his shift allowed. He was the dad in the neighborhood where a lot of kids didn't have those kind of role models. And even though we didn't have a lot, you know, there was, there was never a time when my father wasn't gonna help somebody. So, you know, I guess those values where you, you, you take care of people, you know, money doesn't really matter. That's not the thing that makes you great. It's how you show up in the world. It's your word.

• 7:27Speaker 00

  It's, um, you know, how you treat other people.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  To Misha's point, he was the guy who was giving kids rides to practice and to games because their parents couldn't go. And he would be sharing stories, sharing his values. It was just embedded in his being to pass on knowledge that he had. And, and with regard to my mom, you know, my mom, I think, is where, at least where I get my philanthropic gene from. Not with money, because we didn't have any, but with our time and with our resource, whatever resources we had. What was behind all of this was unconditional love.

• 8:10Steven Bartlett?

  It's a tool in the toolbox that you sometimes don't even realize is there.

• 8:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:15Steven Bartlett?

  If you're privileged enough to.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 8:17Steven Bartlett?

  Because it's that tectonic plate that sits underneath you that

• 8:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:21Steven Bartlett?

  you never can really see, but gives you a certain sense of, I guess, risk and, and go get it.

• 8:27Speaker 00

  Well, and, and knowing that, you know, it's not just unconditional love, but our parents believed us. They valued our voices. I mean, they really liked to hear us talk. They, they encouraged us to think out loud and to problem solve and to come to us with their problems, but not be the ones that were gonna solve it. And this came in very handy when you're a kid in public school, because, you know, in public schools, South Side of Chicago, teaching was kind of uneven, you know? One year, you'd get a teacher that cared and, and invested in the kids. Another grade, you'd have a teacher that didn't care. And I remember distinctly, I started second grade and I went to a classroom that was

• 9:12Speaker 00

  completely chaotic. The teacher clearly didn't want to be there. And I knew this in second grade. And there was no order. We didn't have homework. We weren't doing regular lessons. And I knew that something was wrong. And I would come home at lunch and I'd complain about, we, nothing happened today at school. You know? And I'm, I don't know what second grade is supposed to be, but I don't feel like I'm getting what I need to get out of second grade. It took a month of coming home and complaining. And my mom was quietly listening, but she wasn't just listening. She was plotting. And it was a month in, she went up to the school, watched herself and saw that this

• 9:55Speaker 00

  teacher not only wasn't teaching, but it appeared that she didn't even like kids. So she went to the principal's office and read them the riot act. I don't know what she said or what she did, but three of us were pulled out of the class for testing. And I just remember, I just didn't have to go into that class. And I spent a couple of weeks taking some specialized tests. We were just doing bubble tests, didn't know what it was. Got the results and the results proved that I could skip second grade. And it was a lifesaver for me. But I'll never forget, my mom finally did, I would hear her complaining to my dad, this teacher, you know, these teachers who don't care about these kids.

• 10:39Speaker 00

  She had gotten us out, but she was worried about the kids who were stuck in that second grade class, who didn't have parents, who were their advocates, who, you know, were going to spend probably a wasted year in second grade, missing whatever they were going to miss. But that was one of those instances where I knew that if a cry for help from me was heard by my mother and acted upon, she could have been one of those mothers who said, well, just, you know, life is life, just get it together. But she knew there was something different in what I wanted and what I needed. And she, you know, she made it happen.

• 11:15Steven Bartlett?

  Does that teach you to respond to others who cry for that help?

• 11:18Speaker 00

  It probably does. I mean, I still think about the kids who were left behind. I mean, there's just something.

• 11:27Speaker 00

  That that really touches me about kids who are as bright as we are because we grew up with them. You know, my mother saw them. And the only difference between me and them was that they had a mother that cared. And a lot of their lives looked totally different from ours because of that. And I find myself being that advocate for those kids. Those the kids who are underestimated and under supported. And that turns out to be kids, most kids all over the world. So I do find that that moment for me was a defining in in a pretty fundamental way

• 12:09Speaker 00

  about how I how I fight for kids in the way that I saw my mom fight for me.

• 12:17Steven Bartlett?

  Race. One of the startling things with these two photos.

• 12:20Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 12:21Steven Bartlett?

  Mainly because I think it's this way around, but this is, I believe, what, second grade or something?

• 12:28Speaker 00

  That was first grade.

• 12:29Steven Bartlett?

  First grade, and then this is seventh grade?

• 12:31Speaker 00

  Seventh or eighth grade, yeah, yeah.

• 12:34Steven Bartlett?

  There's a lot less white people in the second photo, which means that which assumes that white people started leaving your school.

• 12:41Speaker 00

  Oh, absolutely.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  They're leaving the neighborhood, leaving the whole of South Shore.

• 12:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:46Steven Bartlett?

  My question really is about what role did race play in your childhood? Because I think about my own childhood and it's quite a prominent persuasive force in who I became and what I thought about the world and really what I thought about myself. So race is an issue as young people in Chicago. What role did it play?

• 13:05Speaker 00

  I think there is a lot of race pride in our family. There was this feeling, this understanding that because of people's prejudice, there would be a lot of white people that would underestimate you, that would mistreat you, that would assume things about you. Our family, our entire family on both sides.

• 13:30Speaker 00

  Really smart, talented, gifted people to have a family that big. And but all working class people, right? So we lived among sort of real, regular excellence, you know? I mean, people who were teachers and who were who were engineers. All of our cousins were people who were expected to do to do well in school. So we were taught like no one's better, smarter than you. You know, you're capable. My father was that voice for a lot of our cousins. If they didn't have that kind of energy in their lives. It was always like, you got this and you know what you're doing. So in our home, there was race pride.

• 14:13Speaker 00

  But when you, you know, live in a when we moved into South Shore, into Robbie's house, our Aunt Robbie's house, most of my neighborhood friends were white kids. Rachel Dempsey and Susan Yakker and Sofenat Konsepa, who was a Korean girl, because we lived by a hospital and her mother was a nurse. So it was a very mixed. The the stewards who were, you know, they they were a black family, but could pass for white. I mean, it was just sort of some of everyone in the neighborhood. Ms. Mason, who was the little old white lady across the street. And our neighbors were the Mendoza's, the Mexicans.

• 14:55Speaker 00

  You know, it was sort of everywhere, all around us. And everyone got along. Neighbors knew one another. We played with each other. I went to Rachel's house and for lunch and, you know. But then one year, it was like the lights went off for the white people and they were gone without a trace.

• 15:15Steven Bartlett?

  They call this white flight.

• 15:17Speaker 00

  This was white flight and action.

• 15:19Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah. And so you. For anyone that doesn't have context on white flight, what is?

• 15:23Speaker 00

  It's the sociological occurrence of what happens in communities when black people sort of start making their way up socioeconomically and can buy homes or rent homes in neighborhoods that are predominantly white. So instead of white people accepting it, they sell their homes en masse. There's a sort of undercurrent of we better get out because these black families coming in are going to ruin the neighborhood and bring down property values. So you better sell now and go. Go further south into the southern suburbs. And so when you're young, you you kind of know something is going on. You know, it's not like we were sitting around the kitchen table, talking about white flight.

• 16:07Speaker 00

  But what you do know and you take in as a child is like, these people are running from us. You know, it's like my dad, who is this, you know, amazingly kind and generous person who would would have been good for a lot of these people's kids, these white folks' kids, to get to know and be around us, who turned out to be who we were, and we were always going to be that. You're running for up from us. Well, our feeling was like, well, how stupid is racism? And how stupid are you for not really looking and getting to know?

• 16:49Speaker 00

  So so race to me and in my household was just a dumb manifestation of ignorant people. But we were taught to keep moving through it.

• 17:01Steven Bartlett?

  How do you stop it getting to you? One of the remarkable things I noticed, even when we spent some time together yesterday, was there is no apparent bitterness. And there's, one would say that there's reason to be. Because when you're so powerful and so prominent and so well known, you're exposed to everything. And going through that experience in those early years and then going through the everything that happened thereafter, there doesn't appear to be any bitterness. There doesn't appear to be any chip on the shoulder, any anger.

• 17:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. Sometimes there is.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, you just don't show it. You just don't show it. But I I will say, at least from my standpoint, mom and dad, but mom especially, she she taught us empathy, almost to a fault, right? So she always said, you remember how she always said, put yourself in the other person's shoes? And she would always say, you never know what's going on in someone else's home. And so I always approached negativity toward me with empathy. That was the first thing.

• 18:12Speaker 00

  It's like, oh, what's what's what happened to you?

• 18:14Speaker 02

  What happened to you that made you so mean and evil? The other thing that our parents were really big on was

• 18:25Speaker 02

  Do not care what anybody else who's not sitting at this table thinks.

• 18:32Speaker 02

  If we ever said, somebody said something and it affected the way we behaved, that's when you saw anger from my parents.

• 18:40Speaker 00

  That's when you get into trouble.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  You got in trouble with my parents. I mean, it was crackback right away.

• 18:46Steven Bartlett?

  What would they say back?

• 18:48Speaker 02

  They would be like, so you're gonna tell, you're telling me that what whoever this is over here said is more important to you than what you hear around this table? Then you can go live with so and so.

• 19:02Speaker 00

  I mean, you know, if our admonitions in our house were always conversations. It was discussions and you knew when your parents were disappointed. You knew when you had struck a nerve and it was never about, you know, just making a mistake or, you know, it was about thinking in a way that felt oppressive, internally oppressive. They didn't like that kind of thinking in us. They wanted us to feel our own power. They never wanted us to surrender the way we thought about ourselves to the rest of the world because they probably understood that they couldn't trust the way the rest of the world would treat us.

• 19:43Speaker 00

  Right? So you can't, you, they, they knew that we couldn't be so locked into what the world would say because the world was grounded in racism. And that, you know, a little black boy, more so, even my brother, they were probably more concerned with him because he was gonna encounter it every day as he got taller and bigger and smarter. Because all of the men in our lives had experienced someone trying to knock them down a peg or two. I think our parents understood that that was waiting for both of us and it was waiting for my brother in particular.

• 20:22Speaker 00

  So they wanted to arm him with enough self-esteem to fill him up at the table where he was safe, to give him the tools to just embed in him a level of empathy so that he wouldn't become angry. Because anger for a young black boy was dangerous, you know? So there was a real clever way of allowing us to have these conversations, but filling us up with empathy so that we could function in, in a racist society.

• 20:55Steven Bartlett?

  Being underestimated. It's a word that I saw throughout your book and it's a word you you mentioned a second ago. You knew you were going into an underestimated world, if I can call it that, a world that was going to underestimate you because of your race and and things like that. But it's so clear to me that you had your shoulders back regardless. And I I spoke to Valerie. Do you know Valerie? Of course, you know Valerie. You've worked with Valerie for many decades. She was a sort of an early mental figure in your life, Michelle.

• 21:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, she was.

• 21:24Steven Bartlett?

  And she actually wrote me a letter about you. She describes that she's never met someone in her life that was so clear on what they wanted to achieve in the world in terms of the social good and the impact they wanted to have, but was so unbelievably confident and high conviction. And when I think about when you went to Harvard and studied law, there was what thirty percent of the people attending were were women and then a tinier percentage were were black women. And you were aware again of being underestimated. But again, shoulders back, it seemed. Where does that come from in you?

• 22:02Speaker 00

  Living through the incorrectness of that of that underestimation, right? First of all, I grew up, you know, fortunately, in a predominantly black neighborhood after white flight happened where

• 22:17Speaker 00

  everyone assumed I was smart, right? I grew up as the salutatorian in my grammar school. I went to a top high school. I, you know, so I had the the fortune of growing up in a validating black environment. You know, which is, we talk about that a lot with black students, whether they should be going to HBCUs and what happens when you get pulled out into a mixed environment where you are so underestimated so early. You know, you you start, we talked about the messages that you start telling yourself.

• 22:54Speaker 00

  I didn't have that because when we were young, you know, my mentors, my teachers, the coaches, my dance teachers, they were all people who, if I made a mistake or if they doubted me, it was because, not because of my race, it was because I disappointed somebody in some other way. Right? So. By the time I hit Princeton, thankfully, I had enough internal data that I could do a lot of things, that I was better, smarter, sharper than they would give me credit for. And then it was confirmed when I walked onto Princeton's campus as an undergrad, feeling a little intimidated because it was an Ivy League school

• 23:39Speaker 00

  and I wasn't a great test taker, although I was an outstanding student. I wasn't a standardized, good standardized test taker. All those numbers said that I shouldn't do well at Princeton. And so I came in as an affirmative action kid, sort of feeling like maybe I don't belong in these ivory towers and maybe these kids coming from these other schools are really so much smarter and better than I am. And then I sat on that campus and I looked around and I was like, oh, my God. Well, there's all kinds of affirmative action that I'd never talk about. You know, there's wealth and legacy, there's athletic affirmative action. There were a lot of kids that were on that campus and, as I learned,

• 24:25Speaker 00

  continue to gain access to these seats of power that have nothing to do with their raw academic ability. There are a lot of bright kids who go to these schools, but there are a lot of bright kids whose parents get them into these schools. And when I got on campus and I came out of my first semester with straight A's, I was like, well, what's the, what are you talking about? What are you, who are you? Why are you trying to mess with my head in this way when you guys are, you're not even working as hard as me. But that was, it was infuriating, but it was freeing. Because I was like, I get it now. This, you're just trying to get into my head. You're scared of me, you know?

• 25:08Speaker 00

  You don't want me competing with you. And I think it was at that, that period, going to one of the top schools, that I was like, I'm done. I am done worrying about whether I belong here. You know, this is a scam. So that, I think that really, I came out of Princeton just feeling like, rah, you know, let me at them, you know, you know, forget all this stuff. And now I'm trying to tell other kids that. It's like I'm coming down from the mountaintop with the, with the tablet of truth and going, do not let these people scam you. This is all a racket.

• 25:48Steven Bartlett?

  What's the scam?

• 25:49Speaker 00

  That you don't belong, that they're smarter, that they work harder, that they know more, that they deserve this more than you do. That's not, it's, it's just not true. And so from then on, I was like, you prove that I don't belong here, you know? I'm going to sit at these tables and I am going to run it from now on. Why, why am I listening to you? Why don't you listen to me? I think that experience for me was freeing in an odd kind of way. And a lot of kids don't get access. They're just blocked out and they're, it's sort of like they're told, don't look behind the curtain because you don't belong. And they want us to think that way. I stopped thinking that way a long time ago.

• 26:33Steven Bartlett?

  The journey you've both been on is, is really, really remarkable for so many reasons, but it's also remarkable for the pivots along the way. And I was reading about a bit of an identity crisis that you had when you were 27, 28 years old, Michelle, when you were, you were a lawyer.

• 26:49Speaker 00

  I was a lawyer, yeah.

• 26:50Steven Bartlett?

  Sidley and Austin.

• 26:51Speaker 00

  Yes, beautiful, high-paid corporate attorney that allowed me to buy a nice Saab.

• 26:59Steven Bartlett?

  Saab driving attorney.

• 27:00Speaker 00

  Driving attorney, first job, first real job I'd had right out of Harvard, because that's what you did, you know? After you went, go to law school, top school, you're recruited by the top firms in the country and they offer you exorbitant salaries. So at that age, as I started as a first year associate, I was making more than my parents made combined. Which seemed like something you didn't turn down. You know, if you have the opportunity to do that, it's like, well, yeah, sure. I'm gonna work for a firm. But that's what I was really doing all my life. I was box checking. I was just, because I was a good student and I could do certain things, that's what I did. You know, I sort of understood that there was a formula.

• 27:44Speaker 00

  Be a good student, show up, do the work, check. Got that. Get good grades, go to a competitive high school. Went to a magnet high school, was this class treasurer, top of the class. Check, got it. I, cause I can do this. Da da da, I'm just marching through life. Check, check, check. Applied to a top college. Got into Princeton. Right, I'm in, graduated the top of the class, go to law school. Why? I don't know. There wasn't really a thought to why I went to law school. It was just, I don't know what I'm gonna do after graduate school. Not gonna be a doctor because I don't like science or math. I like to talk, I like to argue. And so, why not go to law school? So I applied to Harvard, get in.

• 28:28Speaker 00

  You go to Harvard. You know, that was just, that was my thought process. There wasn't a, there wasn't purpose, there wasn't, what do I care about? I didn't know what being a corporate lawyer meant. I was just checking boxes. Until I became a lawyer. And, and, and a lot of stuff happened in that year besides me just joining Sidley and Austin in that period of time. We lost our father. He died very suddenly. One of my best friends from, from college, Suzanne, died of lymphoma. And it was sudden.

• 29:09Speaker 00

  She was diagnosed in December and she died in May. Really, the first time in my life where people that weren't expected to die, died. You know, we had lost grandparents and great grandparents and... And I was really having kind of an existential crisis sitting on the 47th floor of my, in my beautiful office with a secretary and a Saab in the garage, thinking, why me? Why am I here rather than Suzanne? Because she was, that friend was also the dreamer, the person who wasn't box checking. She went to Princeton, but she traveled the world. She didn't go to business school right away. And I always thought, you gotta get your life together. You've gotta be on a path.

• 29:54Speaker 00

  And I thought, thank God she didn't do that because she didn't know she was gonna die. But instead of sitting in some office building, she was living life and trying on new things. And I realized I hadn't done that for myself. All I was doing was following a game plan. I wasn't trying to figure out my purpose. And at the same time, I met Barack Obama. He showed up in my life as the opposite of a box checker, but somebody I describe in, in my book as an ultimate swerver. He did nothing by the book, but he was brilliant and interesting. You know, he didn't go to law school right away. He worked as a community organizer.

• 30:38Speaker 00

  He lived in different parts of the world. He was really trying to unpack life in a way that people in my generation weren't trying to do. You were just, you know, I was, I was with the black bourgeois, right? And people were buying their homes and getting their cars together and trying to make partner at a firm. There was a very finite path. And I hadn't explored anything else but that. And I thought, I, I have to do something more before I settle on this. And I think Barack helped give me the courage, you know? He was the person in my ear that said, why would you wanna just stop here and settle on this career

• 31:22Speaker 00

  when there's so much out there that you haven't tried, right? You can do this. And I was like, but I'm, I'm loaded down with debt. And right around that time, we we knew we were gonna be together. We knew we were gonna be engaged. And he was like, we'll get, we'll figure that out. He was like, don't, don't settle on becoming a partner at a law firm because of money. You know, it's like, you need to see the world in a different way. And we'll figure this out together. And so I started swerving. I started trying other things in life and never looked back.

• 31:59Steven Bartlett?

  Craig, when was the first time you heard that your little sister had met a guy called Mr. Obama?

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Well, she called, called me up and said, hey, I met a guy. I want to bring him by. And my mom, my dad and I were sitting on our front porch. And she pulls up in her nice Op 900 that you've heard a lot about. And he gets out of the car and that was the first time we met him.

• 32:24Steven Bartlett?

  And what did you think of him, honestly?

• 32:27Speaker 02

  Honestly, I was like, you know, he may last two months. Because.

• 32:34Steven Bartlett?

  Because of, because of.

• 32:36Speaker 02

  Because of, she'd be, he'd do something and be like, oh, that's a deal breaker. And he'd be on, on his way. And my mom, I remember my mom saying, well, at least he's tall.

• 32:47Speaker 02

  We, we were just meeting him like we would meet somebody she'd, she'd bring by.

• 32:50Speaker 00

  But I never brought, I didn't bring a lot of boyfriends.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  She didn't bring a lot of guys by. So that's why we thought it wouldn't last that long. Because she didn't bring too many guys by.

• 32:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, but why would you think it wouldn't last? The people that didn't last, you didn't meet.

• 33:03Speaker 02

  But we heard about them.

• 33:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, but you never met them.

• 33:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I have known my sister.

• 33:10Speaker 00

  That's one of those just sort of miss, Michelle's so hard on men, you know? So it's like, yeah, you know.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  I didn't say she was hard.

• 33:17Speaker 00

  I brought them, I brought them home. And I think there were, there was one other boyfriend that you met, even though I had plenty of boyfriends. I just, you know.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  I met more than, than two guys.

• 33:26Speaker 00

  Well, that's because we went to school together.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:29Speaker 00

  Right?

• 33:30Speaker 02

  Right, those guys didn't last.

• 33:31Speaker 00

  But they didn't come, but they didn't come home.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  Well, okay, well, I met them.

• 33:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:35Speaker 02

  I met them.

• 33:35Speaker 00

  But they didn't meet mom and dad.

• 33:37Speaker 02

  No, they didn't meet mom and dad, but that's because we weren't in Chicago.

• 33:40Speaker 00

  Oh, anyway.

• 33:41Steven Bartlett?

  Well, that matters is really how it turned out, right?

• 33:44Speaker 00

  This is the sibling, it's like, you know.

• 33:47Steven Bartlett?

  You rejected him at first, right?

• 33:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, because Barack was, I was assigned to be his advisor. And that didn't mean I was his boss, but every, I was a first year associate. So they tried to pair first years sort of with new summer associates just to help get them acclimated and to kind of give them advice to sort of mentor them for the summer. So I was his mentor, right? So he comes in, he's late. So I'm thinking, okay, this guy's trifling because we didn't, in the Robinson family, we didn't do late, but he was raining and he didn't have an umbrella and so he was a little wet. So I was a little annoyed, but he stood up and he was tall and he was more handsome than his pictures.

• 34:33Speaker 00

  So I sort of thought, oh, okay, and not what I expected. So I took him around the office, got him settled into his office, took him out to lunch for that first day and we talked for like hours. And I knew that we were going to be friends. He was smart, he was funny, had a good sense of humor, didn't take himself too seriously. So we clicked right off the bat. And over the course of the summer, we actually became really good friends. I was even trying to introduce him to some of my friends, my girlfriends, saying, there's this really cute guy who's my advisor.

• 35:11Speaker 00

  Because in my mind, there wasn't any way that the few black associates there who both went to Harvard were going to date. In my mind, I was like, that's going to be tacky, that's expected, right? And I was just sort of into doing what wasn't, not doing the expected, right? So my mind went somewhere else. I was like, ah, meet all these wonderful, beautiful women that I know, you know? And after a couple of outings, he said, well, why don't we go out? And I was like, no way are we going to go out. That's just not going to happen. We are friends. And he was sort of like, huh, well, why? And he made the case. I said, well, you know, I don't think it looks right.

• 35:56Speaker 00

  And he said, who cares about how it looks? And so he made his Barack Obama case over a couple of weeks. And finally, I was like, okay, we'll go out on one date. And so he planned a After that, it was over. It was a full day date where he pulled out all the stops. We, I'm sure I picked him up because I had the nice car. And we went to the Art Institute where he showed me his suave, you know, view of art. And we had lunch at the museum and then we walked from the Art Institute down Michigan Avenue north.

• 36:37Speaker 00

  So we walked hand in hand, talked slowly and, you know, then we went and had dinner on top of Lake Point Tower, which was a beautiful view of the city. And then we, I think, ended the evening watching, going to Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. So, I mean, he had planned, you know, culture, you know, art, you know, lovely stroll. And slowly I was like, okay, maybe I, you know, I spoke too soon, you know? Maybe there is something more here. But yes, that's the long way of saying I did say no for a good month or two.

• 37:18Speaker 00

  And, but by the end of the summer, we were, I think, it was that summer, by the end of the summer, I was introducing him to my, my family.

• 37:27Steven Bartlett?

  You both have that through line through your story of ticking the boxes. And then eventually, it's kind of what we were talking about yesterday on your show where if you have sometimes your preconception has to fail you.

• 37:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's right.

• 37:40Steven Bartlett?

  You have to feel it for you to understand that maybe a pivot is needed in your life. And that was the same when I was talking about my early journey. Valerie, this very interesting character in your life, this is the letter, I found it, that Valerie wrote in to me. And she's talking about the pivot you made from being a lawyer to leaving that law firm and going in pursuit of something else. What was the something else you were pursuing? Before I read what Valerie said to me.

• 38:04Speaker 00

  I had no idea because I didn't know anything, but I started with what I, I had to spend some time thinking, journaling, about what did I care about?

• 38:16Steven Bartlett?

  What was the journal question?

• 38:17Speaker 00

  What brought me joy? You know, of all the things that I was doing in my life, what was the thing, when I had it on my calendar, that I would jump out of bed for, that would change my, the way I felt about the day? And it always had to, it went back to mentoring. Because while I was doing all this stuff in law in my education, I was always finding ways to help younger kids understand how to get here. So it was the mentoring piece that Craig mentioned. You know, we never talked about that when we think about our parents. That brought me absolute joy, you know. So I started really trying to listen to that self-interested part of me.

• 39:02Speaker 00

  You know, it's like, what made me happy? I never asked myself that. I always did what I thought I was supposed to do. And making money was one of the things that you were supposed to do. If you were anyone who had an opportunity to get an Ivy League education, that was really all they talked about. That's all they showed you. You know, there wasn't a course or a major in helping people. You know, there wasn't a course on working with young kids. You know, there's no major for that, especially in the Ivy Leagues. So I knew nothing about the nonprofit world. I knew nothing about NGOs.

• 39:38Steven Bartlett?

  Well, Valerie said, she said the opposite. I'm joking, I'm joking. The day I met Michelle Obama changed my life forever. I'll never forget the moment she strolled into my office for an interview, dressed in all black, hair elegantly pulled back. I was struck by the confidence that she carried herself with. She looked me right in the eye when she shook my hand. She was so poised and self-assured that it was hard to believe that she was only 27 years old. Michelle told me about her life, how she grew up in the South Side, how much love and support her parents poured into her and her brother Craig. I asked her why she was considering public service rather than a much more lucrative path as a partner in a law firm. And she said that she had recently lost her dad and her best friend

• 40:22Steven Bartlett?

  within a year. And their deaths were a painful reminder of the finiteness of life and the importance of making it purposeful, and how she knew that her abilities could lead her to make a difference in the lives of others, to serve and to give back to the city that she had grown up. I was so in awe of her clarity of purpose, determination and vulnerability that I offered her a job on the spot.

• 40:47Speaker 00

  That was close, right?

• 40:48Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. It was the same.

• 40:50Speaker 00

  It was like, ooh, what did Valerie say?

• 40:53Steven Bartlett?

  And at that time in your life, you know, those early 30s, what's going on with Mr. Obama?

• 40:59Speaker 00

  Oh, by then, he was, he had written his book because he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. The president of the Harvard Law Review is the top student at the top law school in the world. So, and he was the first black student to be elected president of the Harvard Law Review. And that garnered a lot of attention for him. We were dating at the time. And so he got a book contract to write his story, Dreams from My Father. Which I thought was, who writes a book at your age, right? You know, but he was like, yeah, I might as well tell them a story and, you know, and it was money, right? He got an advance and we were engaged, so he was working on that project.

• 41:43Speaker 00

  But he was still trying to figure out what he was gonna do. And when you're the president of the Harvard Law Review, basically, the world of law is open to you. The normal path is that you clerk for an appellate judge for a year or two, and then you go on to clerk for the Supreme Court. Then, you know, you go on to do appellate work, you, you know, you have offers from every law firm. You are in demand, or you can do policy or whatever. That was the normal path. I was like, so are you gonna clerk? He was like, why would I clerk? So he didn't work at any of the big firms. He went to a very small firm that was doing public interest work. So he wasn't making a lot of money. He was doing what I was doing.

• 42:27Speaker 00

  He was going the opposite direction of all the things that were supposed to make us money. But he was like, I, money isn't why I'm doing this. I'm trying to figure out how I can best use my skills to impact the most people. So he was doing. Fifty million jobs. And we were cobbling together our payments for our student loans at the time, which were more than our mortgage. We had bought a condominium. We were on our way to building our lives together, but we were in deep debt. So while we were both pursuing our deep love of being in the community, we, our incomes were going in the opposite direction of where they were supposed to go. But we were in this together, you know? Politics hadn't really come into the fold yet.

• 43:11Speaker 00

  It wasn't a part of the conversation. But we were both kind of on these parallel paths, kind of figuring out, how do we take all these skills and all this energy and help people? I was working in the city. He was working everywhere else and writing a book. And we were just kind of, you know, we were sort of plotting ahead.

• 43:36Steven Bartlett?

  Business takes me all over the world and I travel about 50 weeks a year. And up until recently, one of the challenges I continue to face was staying connected as soon as I landed somewhere new. The reality is I don't have time to wait around and sort out SIM cards while I'm on the go. So a few months ago, I tried something called ALO for the first time, and they are now a sponsor of today's episode. ALO is the world's first eSIM store. It's entirely digital. No SIM cards are needed at all. And you can keep the same phone number you have now. It means that you can get reliable data in over 200 destinations with instant access to a digital eSIM card with a click of a button. When you buy your first ALO eSIM, you can get $3 off by using code DOAC3.

• 44:19Steven Bartlett?

  For me, being able to land, switch on my phone and get back to work is game changing. And ALO makes this possible. Install ALO today to get $3 off your first eSIM with code DOAC3 at checkout. That's DOAC3 when you download the ALO app.

• 44:37Steven Bartlett?

  I guess I'm seeking advice from both of you on love and romance and relationships. Because in your, you know, I'm in my early 30s now. And when I looked at both of your stories of love in your 30s, it's not a straight line. Oh, no. No. It's not a straight line, to say the least. Michelle, you talk about going to marriage counselling with Brock. What does someone like me at 32 years old, who is in a relationship, who is aggressively pursuing a career, because I feel like I've got to build and build and build and set my family up for the future, what advice would you both give me about navigating love through that part of your career where it's go, go, go, go, go?

• 45:16Speaker 00

  For somebody with your personality in particular, my advice would be that, you know, I could see you thinking, you know, if we're, if, if, if I've got my stuff together and I've got my path going over here and you've got your path going over on over there, you know, as long as we're both trudging along, you know, and pushing, we're going to be good. And generally, that, that can work because you can be two independent beings out there with, you know, basically slaying your own dragons, right? Making the choices about which dragons you slay and how, you know, how, how much armour

• 46:01Speaker 00

  you want to use, you know? You're independent people and that feels good right now. Until your first and most important joint project happened, which you told me you want, you have kids, right? That's oftentimes when the rub happens because when you, when you bring life into the world, you know, that's the, that's the project where you can't do that independently. You can't, you can't be on one path and your partner on another. Because raising those kids and making them as whole as, as you'd want them to be has so little to do with the dragon you're slaying now than it does with how you partner and

• 46:46Speaker 00

  engage and, and, and make choices together.

• 46:50Speaker 00

  On this, these little creatures that you're gonna love more than anything in the world. And you're not gonna wanna get that project wrong. But you've gotta work with your partner. You gotta communicate. And that's when it gets really hard.

• 47:03Steven Bartlett?

  Is that when it got hard for you?

• 47:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, when you're independent operators in the world, it, you know, he's off, he's traveling, I'm traveling. You know, maybe I don't see him during the week. And then on Saturday, whoa, it's great. I love you, I missed you, this was so cool. Tell me about your life. And oh, this is, and it's sexy and it's all of this, right? And it feel, and you're, you're moving and, you know, and you're also okay having a break. It's like, let me miss you for a little bit. So I don't care that you're traveling or that you're everywhere. But the minute there's a little baby that is waking someone up, and if there's one person that's carrying the burden of that, you know, if one person's dream stops because they're taking on the lion's share of, of things

• 47:50Speaker 00

  and you're still going to the gym and you're still slaying your dragons at the same rate, and you haven't looked over at your partner who maybe is now stuck at home because she's breastfeeding or she made a set of choices to make this little creature work. And you guys haven't had a conversation about that and what that balance looks like because you're just slaying your dragon at the same rate. Oh, there's gonna be problems, you know? There's gonna be resentment, there's gonna be fatigue, there's gonna be measuring and counting and all the things. So I think it's just important to communicate now,

• 48:30Speaker 00

  to start doing the work of make, making sure that you're, you guys are defining your one life together. That you're deciding together now what dragons are gonna be slain.

• 48:44Speaker 00

  And who gets to do what, when, you know? And what does that feel like? You know, are you going to be working all the time? Are you going to be traveling all the time on the road? Is she coming with you? How does she feel about that?

• 48:58Steven Bartlett?

  Did you have that conversation?

• 48:59Speaker 00

  No, no, we did not.

• 49:00Steven Bartlett?

  You didn't have that conversation?

• 49:01Speaker 00

  No, because I didn't know that that was a thing that you had to worry about. Because when you're in the midst of it, it's when you're in the midst of pursuing your own independent journeys, it's beautiful, right? It is. It's like, I'm independent, he's independent. We, we get along. And then all of a sudden, someone's legs are cut up from under them, you know? You know, someone is making a different set of sacrifices that wasn't negoti- that weren't negotiated.

• 49:31Steven Bartlett?

  Because of children.

• 49:32Speaker 00

  Because of children, because of life.

• 49:34Steven Bartlett?

  You had some pregnancy struggles.

• 49:36Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 49:37Steven Bartlett?

  And I, I've spoken to many women on this show who have been through similar pregnancy struggles. And it's something that I've, it's actually a big conversation in my life at the moment, but also just some of my friends in my life around trying to get pregnant and the IVF journey which you went on. What do women who are struggling need to understand? And how did you feel when you were contemplating the IVF journey? And when you started to have struggles conceiving without IVF?

• 50:08Speaker 00

  No, it's the thing, you know, because we don't talk about our bodies and women's health. And there's just not a lot of conversation about marriage or pregnancy or any of this. Our parents don't talk about it. Their parents before them don't talk about it, right? So you imagine your life in, as you're checking boxes. I'm waiting, I've delayed having kids. I found the love of my life and now I'm going to get pregnant. And no one tells you that there is really a biological clock. Like, that's not false, you know? We have partner in podcasts, Dr. Sharon Malone, who wrote a book, Grown Women Talk,

• 50:47Speaker 00

  where she's talking, she's sort of ripping the, the, the curtain off of women's health questions. And in a conversation with her, she reminded us that women, we are born with a finite set of eggs. And we don't get any more. And every month, we're losing them. And so there is a period of time, usually, and it's different for everyone, usually in your 30s, where you go from fertile- To not. And it's like falling off of a cliff. And I'm like, why didn't anybody tell me this? Why weren't, why, why wasn't, why, why weren't people talking about this? So by the time I, we started really trying, which, which worked perfectly for our careers

• 51:32Speaker 00

  and maturing and having everything set, right? Because that's what we're, we're trying to get everything set. Unlike our parents who, you know, had us, we lived in a little bitty apartment, you know, one income. Our generation were worrying about, I want everything set. I, I guarantee you, you have things way more set than any, any of our parents had before they started having kids. But we're waiting for everything to be perfect. No friction. We don't want any friction, right? And while we're, we're waiting for our lives to be perfect, that biological clock is ticking. So you start trying and you, it's not working. That's when you go to the doctor and they tell you, oh, you're, you're running out of eggs. This is normal. I mean, you're gonna have trouble getting pregnant.

• 52:16Speaker 00

  And so try a little bit and then now it's time for IVF. If you can afford it, which it wasn't covered by insurance at the time. So, you know, it's just a shock to the system. And as some, as people who like learning and like knowledge, you really sort of feel gypped.

• 52:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:35Speaker 00

  You know, that what, why is this such a secret? Which is why I talk about it openly and I talk about miscarriages because the other thing I learned is like, most pregnancies, a good percentage of them end in miscarriage. That people have been having miscarriages for years, but not talking about it. So when it happens to you, a box checker, somebody that thought life was gonna be so and you did all the right things, to have things not work out and to know that it was gonna be that way and nobody told you so that you could be prepared for it, it just, it was a blow. And then as a woman, you're walking around owning the blow as if it's your fault. You know, and so you're carrying around that burden.

• 53:17Speaker 00

  And that can become the first pressure point in a marriage. Because emotionally, you've got a woman that is carrying all of this. Feeling like a failure, feeling not having anyone to talk about. Having her hormones go up and down, literally, right? Probably dealing with depression and maybe some postpartum. Still working, still slaying dragons, still on the path. But she's carrying it all on her own. And then if you do IVF, the bulk of the work, the shots, the, the, we are the, we are the, the, the Petri dish in the IVF process. You show up, you come in a cup and ooh, yay, good for you, right?

• 54:01Speaker 00

  And you're a little mad about that, too, because women have to get shots every week. And you have to go back and forth in between having your job, your high-powered job and keeping it all together. You're at the doctor's office every month, trying to count your eggs and hoping that you're producing eggs. And then you have to go through the procedure. And then you have to be pregnant for nine months. As your partner is going to the gym and keeping his figure and, you know, all of that, you know? So it's a long way of saying, there are just many natural reasons why marriage, infertility, trying to have kids makes things difficult.

• 54:45Speaker 00

  It's like, I, I try to tell couples, of course, it's hard. Just listen to what I said, right? Like, it's prob, if you're having some issues in your marriage, it's not you. It's the process of marriage. It's just all hard. Because guess what happens when it all works out right? You know what you end up with? Babies.

• 55:09Speaker 00

  Little people with their own sense of everything, they mess you up. You love them dearly, but they're a hassle. And they're demanding and they have their own whims. And now they're in your world, in your partnership. They are, they are factored into everything. So even when everything works out and you have the 3.2 kids and you've got everything right, it's still gonna be hard because now you're, you're developing a life, right? So I talk about these things because I think that

• 55:49Speaker 00

  people give up too quickly on marriage, right? Because there is so much friction built in to the equation. And if you're not getting help, talking about it, going to therapy, just understanding how things are changing and how do you continuously renegotiate your relationship with your partner? I just see people quitting because they look at me and Barack and go hashtag couple goals, you know? And I'm like, it's hard. It's hard for us too, but I wouldn't trade it, you know? He is, as the young people say, he is my person.

• 56:27Steven Bartlett?

  Was there ever a moment where you thought?

• 56:29Speaker 00

  You know, there are the moments where I'm like,

• 56:33Speaker 00

  right? But was it real? No, no, no. There was never really a full moment. There are moments when I was resentful. There were moments when I was mad. There were moments when I didn't feel like I got enough attention.

• 56:51Speaker 00

  But it's like, don't you feel that in your relationship right now?

• 56:54Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 56:54Speaker 00

  You know?

• 56:55Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 56:55Speaker 00

  So it's just me understanding, yeah, I was mad, but I forgot even why I was mad, right? That's like, was I really that mad? Oh, did I say that? I'm sorry, I didn't really mean that. So no, in the end, you know, mm mm. No, we're, you know? And the beauty of my husband and my, our partnership is that neither one of us was ever really, ever gonna quit at it because that's not who we are. And I know that about him. He knows that about me, you know? So no.

• 57:31Steven Bartlett?

  Both of your lives change because of a decision that?

• 57:36Steven Bartlett?

  Former President Barack Obama decides to make, which is to run for public office. And that is, has a profound impact on both of your lives because it's the most powerful job in the world. It is, you become the most famous family in the world.

• 57:52Steven Bartlett?

  When he said that he was going to do that, did you believe that he was capable of it?

• 57:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, that was the, the problem is that.

• 58:05Speaker 00

  You know, I, I, I knew that, in my heart, I knew that he would make a phenomenal president. And as I've written in, in, in The Light,

• 58:17Speaker 00

  the, the truth was is that my initial reaction was like, oh no, oh my God, don't do this. It had everything to do with having the foresight of knowing what this would do to our lives. I mean, I was projecting that if you win, which I thought he could and should, he would be somebody that I would want as my president. It was all about, this is gonna, you know, our kids are little, we're gonna have to move. How do you raise kids in the White House? It's dangerous, is the first black potential president. We knew there'd be death threats. There were just all the, how would we afford it? Because it's, it's expensive to live in the White House. There's, many people don't know. I mean, much is not covered.

• 59:03Speaker 00

  You're paying for every food, every bit of food that you eat. You, you know, you're not paying for housing and the staff in it, but everything, even travel. If you're not traveling with the president, if your kids are coming on a Bright Star, which is the first lady's plane, we had to play, pay for their travel to be on the plane. It is an expensive proposition and you're running for two years and not earning an income. So all of that was in my mind. How would we manage this? So my fears were, would came from the fact that I thought he could win. You know, because if I, maybe way in the back of my mind, I was hoping that maybe he wouldn't, you know, that this would be the last thing he would do.

• 59:49Speaker 00

  But I knew he had it in him to make this happen.

• 59:55Steven Bartlett?

  This one change has transformed how my team and I move, train and think about our bodies. When Dr. Daniel Lieberman came on the Diary of a CEO, he explained how modern shoes, with their cushioning and support, are making our feet weaker and less capable of doing what nature intended them to do. We've lost the natural strength and mobility in our feet, and this is leading to issues like back pain and knee pain. I'd already purchased a pair of Vivo Barefoot shoes, so I showed them to Daniel Lieberman, and he told me that they were exactly the type of shoe that would help me restore natural foot movement and rebuild my strength. But I think it was plantar fasciitis that I had, where suddenly my feet started hurting all the time. And after that, I decided to start strengthening my own foot by using the Vivo Barefoots. And research from Liverpool University has backed

• 1:00:37Steven Bartlett?

  this up. They've shown that wearing Vivo Barefoot shoes for six months can increase foot strength by up to 60%. Visit vivobarefoot.com/DOAC and use code DAILY20 from my sponsor for 20% off. A strong body starts with strong feet. This has never been done before, a newsletter that is ran by 100 of the world's top CEOs. All the time, people say to me, they say, can you mentor me? Can you get this person to mentor me? How do I find a mentor? So here is what we're going to do. You're going to send me a question, and the most popular question you send me, I'm going to text it to 100 CEOs, some of which are the top CEOs in the world running $100 billion companies.

• 1:01:22Steven Bartlett?

  And then I'm going to reply to you via email with how they answered that question. You might say, how do you hold on to a relationship when you're building a startup? What is the most important thing if I've got an idea and don't know where to start? We email it to the CEOs, they email back, we take the five, six top best answers, we email it to you. I was nervous because I thought the marketing might not match the reality. But then I saw what the founders were replying with and their willingness to reply. And I thought, actually, this is really good. And all you've got to do is sign up. Completely free. Did you ask for any commitments or promises if he were to win? Uh-uh.

• 1:01:57Speaker 00

  I, you know, it wasn't very thoughtful. I told him that he definitely had to quit smoking because he was still toying with smoking. He was in it and not in it. And we had to have enough of a nest egg so that, you know, we could, that we wouldn't be just financially broke at the end of it. And, you know, I thought that that, that was gonna cut it, right? Because we weren't in really, we, we were just starting to make decision moves where we were recovering the income that we lost making our purposeful moves. So I kind of thought that was gonna be the deal breaker.

• 1:02:40Speaker 00

  But then he was chosen to give the speech at the Democratic National Convention and he just blew up. And as a result of that, and maybe I'm getting it out of order, Dreams from My Father went back on the bestsellers list. He wrote Audacity of Hope, you know? So there was all this income that was being generated from his book sales. And he kind of looked at me like, I think we're okay. And I'm like, darn, drats. So I, I didn't know enough to know what to ask for. I mean, we were flying blind. I didn't know what that journey was gonna be and what I would need to negotiate for myself. And that was a bit problematic.

• 1:03:25Speaker 00

  It was problematic not to know what I needed.

• 1:03:28Steven Bartlett?

  What should you have said?

• 1:03:30Speaker 00

  Oh, um, I should have said that I needed his team to really, truly value that he had a family. You know, that I shouldn't have just said, "Well, this is what it takes to get this done." I mean, it was almost like the consultants that sit around. It was almost like, "This is the way it has to be." And remember, the legacy of presidential office doesn't recognize families. It is not designed, you know? You get in there and it all revolves around the commander in chief,

• 1:04:13Speaker 00

  who has always been a man. And the whole system of it doesn't really take into account that there's a wife and kids and their needs and the demands on them. So I wound up having to fight for a lot of stuff on my own. So if I had known these things, and maybe Laura Bush knew more than I did because the Bushes had been in the White House, maybe, you know, I think about, maybe there's some world where people knew more about this thing than we did to understand the impacts. But there are also generational differences. I was a very different First Lady.

• 1:04:54Speaker 00

  Not terribly different from Hillary Clinton, but it was a different time. We had small kids in the White House, and that didn't happen often. There were just accommodations and ways that the West Wing did not think about or worked to fully protect all of us in the process as a unit. And so if I had known what I knew now, I would have asked for different things. But ultimately, I had to push to get the things that we needed to be able to operate as a family, even when it came down to how the Secret Service protected little kids, you know?

• 1:05:39Speaker 00

  The girls had to have a detail, right? So they started school in second grade and fifth grade in armed cars with primarily men with guns going into a new school. Strangers. That they did not know. And the detail, these weren't, they weren't practiced on going to Sidwell's second grade schoolyard. So we had to basically work on, how do you, how do you do this for little kids? You know? So a lot of times, details just flood through. They, they, they continuously move through.

• 1:06:21Speaker 00

  It was important for me that we find two detail leaders that stayed with the girls for most of their time until they became teenagers. Because it was sort of like, you know, these people, right? At least they get to know, they couldn't just have strange men coming throughout. And we had to kind of fight for that. So those, that's just one example of the, what living under those things and trying to raise small children, you know, the kind of things that the guys in the West Wing weren't thinking about as they were fixing the financial crisis and dealing with Syria and on and on and on.

• 1:07:03Speaker 00

  I was trying to make sure that our kids came out of that process not crazy and whole.

• 1:07:11Steven Bartlett?

  Being the first black first lady in the White House, the public scrutiny that that comes with is a unique type of scrutiny. Being the first lady anyway comes with tremendous scrutiny.

• 1:07:25Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Since stepping reluctantly into public life, I've been held up as the most powerful woman in the world and taken down as an angry black woman. I've wanted to ask my detractors which part of that phrase matters to them the most. Is it angry or black or woman? I've smiled for photos with people who call my husband horrible names on national television, but still want a framed keepsake for their mantle. I've heard about the swampy parts of the internet that question everything about me, right down to whether I'm a woman or man. A sitting US congressman has made fun of my butt.

• 1:08:10Speaker 00

  I've been hurt. I've been furious. But mostly, I've tried to laugh this stuff off.

• 1:08:19Steven Bartlett?

  Craig, if that was my little sister, public scrutiny elevated to the, the highest office in the land.

• 1:08:28Steven Bartlett?

  I'll ask you the question. How would, how did you feel?

• 1:08:30Speaker 02

  So I, that's, let me back up. Because I had been a basketball coach at a big conference, I always had to tell them, don't worry about what people say in the newspaper. I'm doing exactly what I love to do. And that doesn't bother me at all.

• 1:08:50Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:08:51Speaker 02

  But then, once they got in the White House,

• 1:08:56Speaker 02

  I had to tell myself that.

• 1:09:00Speaker 02

  Because I knew that they were doing the best that they could do for the most people, no matter what anybody said. But because it's my little sister and brother-in-law, and my mom's in the White House, and my nieces, I was, there were times where I would find myself becoming enraged, and I'd have to coach myself to,

• 1:09:25Speaker 02

  I know they're doing the best they're doing, they can do for the most people, and I would not want anybody else sitting in that seat but my sister and brother-in-law. And that's how I got through eight years of that.

• 1:09:40Steven Bartlett?

  Because it's relentless.

• 1:09:41Speaker 02

  It is relentless.

• 1:09:42Steven Bartlett?

  It's relentless, it is global, it is unfair.

• 1:09:46Speaker 02

  And it's mean. It's just mean. And, you know, I leaned back on the lessons I learned from my parents a long time ago. I wasn't worried about what anybody said who wasn't at this table.

• 1:10:00Speaker 02

  And, and I coached, I counseled my family, my immediate family, the same thing. Because our kids, our older kids were old enough to read the papers and read the, read the news and, and things online. But, Misha always talks about this. In order to get through that, she always says she needed the village of her friends and family. And I just wanted to be a supportive piece of that. And we tried to get out there as much as we could and make it as normal as you can, you know, having Thanksgiving in the White House, you know? That, that's an oxymoron, almost, having a normal Thanksgiving in the White House. But we tried to make it as normal as we could.

• 1:10:47Steven Bartlett?

  And yourself, how does one deal with such scrutiny? The scrutiny occurs for eight years as the, you know, the public are at war with different opinions and ideas. And often the president is seen as the villain or the hero in that context. And the family is obviously impacted by that. But then even beyond the White House, it's relentless. What is the, is there a framework? Is there an underlying belief? Is there a set of values?

• 1:11:12Speaker 00

  You know, it goes back to what we learned earlier. I think I approach everything with empathy. And Barack does too. And he helps keep me in check. Because he is so smart and he believes in ideas and he understands context in history.

• 1:11:32Speaker 00

  You know, we are always putting these times, these moments into a greater context. And we're trying to understand where people's rage, ignorance, hatred, whatever it is, where it comes from. And it usually doesn't have anything to do with us. You know, it has to do with the state of the world, you know? And the world in this country is unfair for way more people than it is fair to. And it impacts people of all races. And folks are angry and they're scared and they don't have enough opportunity. And when people are put in that position, they lash out, they're mean. That's when they're, you know,

• 1:12:17Speaker 00

  we otherize people because it gives us a sense of stability. We pick on someone. Someone has to be a little more oppressed than us. But that doesn't make what they say or feel true. You know, that's, you know, just because you say it or think it about me in the way that I had to overcome the racist, low expectations of us in our childhood, it's the same thing. It's like. You're not mad at me. You don't understand a lot about the world. And you've been told a lot of things about who people of my skin color are. You've been taught to fear me because of the history of our country, because of what you're going through.

• 1:13:00Speaker 00

  And when you put yourself in other people's shoes, I do get why people are afraid. I do understand it. And also Barack helps me remember, which I experienced myself. You know, he says, this is still the country that elected Barack Obama twice. You know, and people in this country are proud of that. There is a very small percentage of people who would never, ever in their lifetime want a black man to tell them how to get down the street to the grocery store. Right? They can't hear it. But this, this country is bigger than that. Right? And we saw it. We experienced it.

• 1:13:42Speaker 00

  As much hatred or, you know, conflict or ridicule, we, we had so much love, so much goodwill. You know, so many people who tell us even today, we miss you guys, you know? And it doesn't look like any, you'd be surprised at what corners of the world. And our daughters felt it and feel it. Right? That is true, too. We are in a really tough time right now. And we were being led sadly by people who are, are not being, in my opinion, their best selves. For whatever reasons they have, whatever is moving them

• 1:14:26Speaker 00

  to, to push this country in this direction, whatever hurts they have. Billionaires have their hurts, too. You know, business leaders, people in power who want power and haven't understand, understood their why, you know, can lead us down some dark tunnels. Right? But it's that empathy for me, that, that ability to kind of. Give it some perspective that allows me not to take all that hate in and to really, you know, see the light in people, you know? It's just a better way to live. It keeps us from being embittered and it keeps us hopeful and it keeps us working

• 1:15:10Speaker 00

  for for people, you know? So it's it's kind of a necessity to get through it.

• 1:15:16Steven Bartlett?

  Marion, your wonderful mother.

• 1:15:20Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:15:21Steven Bartlett?

  She was a prominent figure throughout that time in the White House.

• 1:15:24Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:15:25Steven Bartlett?

  What did she give you that helped you through that journey of being thrust into the very, very, very highest mountain in public service? What role did she play? What force was she at that time for you both?

• 1:15:40Speaker 00

  For me, she continued to be that soft place to land, you know? The place where she always saw me, always, always saw who I was. And she was that soft place for our girls. She was common sense, right in the middle of the White House, you know? In that big house, people, you know, just with her sheer presence and her wisdom, you know, that old fashioned wisdom, she was the center of that house. Everyone came to her door and sat in her room and sucked up her wisdom.

• 1:16:24Speaker 00

  The butlers, the, you know, the florists, the housekeepers, the chefs, you know? They they were all mothered in some way by her. And so she was that for me, for sure.

• 1:16:39Steven Bartlett?

  I can still see her in your face as you reflect.

• 1:16:42Speaker 00

  She's there. She is there. I see it in his face more. You know, you you don't see yourself in your, like, I don't think I look like him at all, right? But he looks just like my mother, right?

• 1:16:53Steven Bartlett?

  How did that loss impact the family? Two thousand and twenty four, so it's fairly recent.

• 1:16:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it's still it's still painful. But, you know, I'll go back to what I I said at the very beginning when you talked about the values we had. The underlying value was unconditional love and.

• 1:17:14Speaker 02

  Misha and I knew that our mom loved us. And even more importantly, she knew we loved her. She knew her grandkids loved her. So while her dying was traumatic and disappointing and sad, I always feel like she knew where we stood. And it was when she was, right before she passed away, and we knew she was gonna be leaving us. And I said, you know, Misha and Barack are on her way. And she was like, oh, that's nice. And she just said that.

• 1:17:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:01Speaker 00

  There was nothing left unsaid.

• 1:18:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. And there's just a piece.

• 1:18:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. I just miss her. Right? But I feel like she knows how we feel about her. And that's always comforting. And speaking of comfort, that's how I felt when she was in the White House. For them. Because I didn't have to worry about them when she was there.

• 1:18:33Steven Bartlett?

  Have you processed the grief? Have you been able to?

• 1:18:37Speaker 00

  I'm sure I have more than he does because he doesn't process stuff. He just keeps working through it. But yeah, yeah, I think I...

• 1:18:48Speaker 00

  For me, making choices for me, I feel like now I have permission to do what I want to do. I think part of our podcast is part of that legacy. Because at least for me as a woman, I think at 61... I'm finally owning my wisdom in a way that I don't, you know, I think it takes women until we're about 60 to be like, I think I know a thing or two. But that wisdom comes from her and she's, she was, she's our, our last line of elder wisdom. And so now we're up, we're next up, believe it or not, me and Craig and our family,

• 1:19:32Speaker 00

  we're the, we're the ones. So IMO, in my opinion, our podcast is sort of that offering back. It's like, all right, let's, let's keep up the mentoring that we were taught, you know? Let's, let's, let's create our table and be a place where people can come for the little bit of advice and conversation in the same way that you're doing, Stephen. It's like when you, when you learn something, the way you hone in on it is that you keep teaching it to other people. Right? You said that. All right. And so this is sort of helping us continue to, you know, by helping others, which is

• 1:20:17Speaker 00

  a thing we both get great joy from, that mentoring, just being able to, you know, have this conversation here and maybe somebody's going to get something from it that I missed when I was their age. That brings us joy. It's like, we're here for a reason other than making a bunch of money and, you know, living a nice life or being famous. It's like, maybe we can help somebody.

• 1:20:41Steven Bartlett?

  Permission?

• 1:20:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:42Steven Bartlett?

  I was watching the coverage over your decision, your decision to sort of take back some of your control and not go to Trump's inauguration. Is that one of those key moments in your life where you did take back control?

• 1:20:53Speaker 00

  Absolutely, absolutely.

• 1:20:55Steven Bartlett?

  What was the thinking behind that decision?

• 1:21:01Speaker 00

  What do I want to do in this moment? You know, as a box checking? A person who has been box checking her whole life? Doing the right thing?

• 1:21:12Speaker 00

  Trying to always be an example, always going high. I think now I earned a little bit about, well, how do I feel? You know? Do I want to up in my life? And, and, and take this trip and leave my peace and my children for this? I don't, didn't have to, that, that was my choice. And I, I was not, I would have never made that choice. I would have always done what, what I thought was the, the right thing to do for other people to set an example. And I, I, I think I just told myself, I think I've done enough of that. And if I haven't, then I never will.

• 1:21:56Speaker 00

  It'll never be enough. So let me start now. This is the perfect time to start. So, yeah.

• 1:22:05Steven Bartlett?

  Obviously off the back of that, people start to swell. Rumors that there's an issue with you and Brock and there's a divorce coming. I can, I mean, you can say it yourself, but I don't think that needs to be addressed.

• 1:22:18Speaker 00

  What I will say, you know me now well enough, Stephen, is if I were having problems with my husband, everybody would know about it. I'd be like, and let me tell you. And then, and he would know it and everybody would know it. I'm not a martyr. I'm not, you know? And I would, I would be problem solving in public. And be like, let me tell you what he did.

• 1:22:38Steven Bartlett?

  Listen, if they were. He's got a podcast now as well, so we were.

• 1:22:41Speaker 02

  But if they were having a problem?

• 1:22:43Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:43Speaker 02

  I'd be doing a podcast with him.

• 1:22:48Steven Bartlett?

  Your, your podcast is incredible and I highly recommend everybody goes and checks it out. I'm going to link it below on the screen. I was fortunate enough to be invited on it yesterday and we had a wonderful conversation.

• 1:22:56Speaker 00

  We sure did.

• 1:22:57Steven Bartlett?

  I am, oh, in my opinion, it's a. It's a reflection of this kind of conversation. It's human, it's a discovery of life. You're bringing people on there that have wisdom to share, but you're passing through that to understand the world that we're all living in and the struggles that we're all contending with. So it's a wonderful, wonderful space on the internet. I highly recommend my viewers go and check it out on Spotify, on YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. It's a must listen, in my opinion, because it's so rare that we get an insight and a window into the family, but also just the human story of everything that you've both been through in your lives. As a really successful coach, as a stockbroker, as the first lady, as a mother, and then everything you're going to do thereafter. You're helping me navigate the world and you help other people navigate the world because not everybody has that foundation.

• 1:23:41Steven Bartlett?

  Not everybody has the parents at home. Not everybody has, especially in black communities, not everybody has the mentors. And you're vicariously mentoring the world through that show. So please do continue. It's a wonderful thing to get to podcasts. And I was so happy to hear when you joined the industry. We have a closing tradition.

• 1:23:57Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:23:57Steven Bartlett?

  And the closing tradition on this podcast is that the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for.

• 1:24:03Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:24:03Steven Bartlett?

  So the question that's been left for you both is, if there is one person in your life that you have been afraid of putting up a boundary with, but know you need to, who would it be? Now, you don't have to name them, but I guess this question is just about boundaries.

• 1:24:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:22Steven Bartlett?

  You know, creation might have finished.

• 1:24:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think I've kind of done that.

• 1:24:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. At this age, we got our boundaries well set.

• 1:24:32Speaker 00

  I think that's a, that's, that's.

• 1:24:38Speaker 00

  Because we're not naming a who, I think it's the act of practicing setting boundaries. Period. Right? And I'm, I'm having that conversation with my daughters now. I mean, it takes a lot of work to learn how to say no and how not to be people pleasers, which I think there are more of us out there than we'd like to admit. It takes practice and it takes decades of practice. And I am constantly giving my, my girls tips on how to do it, how to politely do it, how to, you know, how to not jam yourself up, how to not say yes right away, how to take a moment and say, let me think about that. You know, some of a boundary is just saying.

• 1:25:25Speaker 00

  Wait, I don't have to give you an answer right now. Let me go back and sit in it, in the request and figure out whether it works for me. And so many of us as pleasers, we're trying to give people an answer right away. And it's hard to look someone in the face and say no. So I think it takes practice, even practice in the wording of it. And then the older you get, the easier it gets because guess what you realize? Your no doesn't usually change anyone else's life. You know, they might be disappointed, but guess what? It all, they will find the next, you know, person that they'll ask. The world continues. None of us are that important.

• 1:26:09Speaker 00

  And people can deal with a little disappointment every now and then.

• 1:26:14Steven Bartlett?

  And with that, I thank you both. It's such an honor to get to meet you and to learn so much from you. And yeah, I, the rise of your family, the grace, the humility and the way that you've conducted yourself has been a huge source of inspiration for me. As a young black man that's navigating the world and that's looking up to role models that aren't often as in close proximity in our lives. So thank you so much. I, I can't tell you how much you had a profound impact on, on me. Thousands of miles away in a small little village in the southwest of England. It had a profound impact on me and shaping the man that I became in my life. And that's a credit to your family. And it's just the greatest honor that I got to speak to you both today. So thank you.

• 1:26:54Speaker 00

  It's been a pleasure.

• 1:26:55Speaker 02

  Absolute treat to be spending time with you. Thanks for having us on.

• 1:26:59Speaker 00

  And hopefully it won't be the last.

• 1:27:00Steven Bartlett?

  I hope not.

• 1:27:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:27:03Steven Bartlett?

  I find it incredibly fascinating that when we look at the backend of Spotify and Apple and our audio channels, the majority of people that watch this podcast haven't yet hit the follow button or the subscribe button, wherever you're listening to this. I would like to make a deal with you. If you could do me a huge favor and hit that subscribe button, I will work tirelessly from now until forever to make the show better and better and better and better. I can't tell you how much it helps when you hit that subscribe button. The show gets bigger, which means we can expand the production, bring in all the guests you want to see and continue to doing this thing we love. If you could do me that small favor. And hit the follow button wherever you're listening to this. That would mean the world to me. That is the only favor I will ever ask you. Thank you so much for your time.