Lisa Blackwood

My mother passed away when I was 20. And in her funeral service all the people that got up to speak about her talk about how authentic she was, how you always knew where you stood with her. She didn't pretend to be your friend, she was just very honest and straightforward. And at the same time, had wonderful personality qualities about being funny and friendly and all the other stuff, but it really hit me hard at that age in my life where I'd just spent my teen years trying to figure out who you are, who you're trying to be, what your own personality traits are, and I hadn't picked 'authentic' yet. So for me, that's something I really embraced and from that point forward I decided that that's what I wanted people to say about me at my funeral. That I was real, authentic, told the truth, said what I meant, meant what I said. So it just made a big impact on me at that point in my life. C: That sounds like an interesting experience, to learn about your loved one through the worlds of other people who knew her. Right. I mean I knew she was like that but it was sometimes embarrassing. Like she always told the truth but people didn't want to hear the truth sometimes. People used to say 'you don't ask Polly a question if you don't want to know the answer' because she would tell you. And you get a whole different perspective on that and how people appreciate that as well, when you look at someone's life and the impact that they made on you. C: How does that come into play for you? It's definitely an ingredient to my success. It's created a tremendous amount of trust with the people that I work with, whether that's internal or my clients – they know that I'm going to tell them the truth. They know that I'm going to tell them the truth early and they trust and rely on me for that. It's really a core ingredient I think to what has made me successful. C: Do you have a story you remember from your mom being very honest that affected you? She would just say stuff that nobody else had the guts to say. And it wasn't harmful – sometimes it might have stung a little bit – but she never meant any harm by any of it. She would just say the elephant in the room or the thing that everybody else wanted to say but nobody had the guts to say it. And then it would usually make everybody laugh because it was such a truth that everybody could relate to. I don't know if I can say it without crying but she used to always say to me that 'You're going to miss me when I'm gone.' And it was... true. She had cancer my freshman year of high school and then it came back my freshman year of college. And it was right at that time where you really become friends with your mom. We couldn't stand each other when I was in high school – we fought a lot. And then as soon as I moved out and went to college we were on the phone twice a day, best friends kind of thing. So that's a painful truth for sure.