When people signal to us that they care, we are drawn to them. Our brains respond positively to those we respect and like. Competence and likability are crucial in relationships. The concept of ‘likable badass’ represents an ideal persona. People generally dislike selfishness and incompetence. Social dynamics play a significant role in our relationships. Emotional intelligence enhances our interpersonal skills. Self-awareness is key to becoming a likable badass. We are all striving for a balance of likability and competence. Understanding perception can improve our social interactions.

Jules (00:13) Alison Fregale, I am so excited to have you on this podcast. I met you only, gosh, about six weeks ago, two months ago, through the lovely Linda Fisk, and I’ve just been blown away. And now I’m following you on LinkedIn. I love you even more. So, I’m not gonna introduce you, I’m gonna ask you to introduce yourself. Can you tell everybody what you do and a little bit of your why. Alison Fragale (00:37) All right, well, I’m just as excited to be here. So, okay, I’m Allison Fregale. I am an organizational psychologist by training. I have been a professor at the University of North Carolina in the United States for over 20 years, teaching human behavior related topics. I have started and have always taught negotiation and influence as an example, which is a psychological topic. So I teach people the science of human beings. How do people think, feel, and act? And then how do we use that Jules (00:39) You Right. Okay. Alison Fragale (01:07) to get good outcomes, mainly at work is what it is. That’s the organizational piece. And over time, I’ve started doing more of that specifically for women to help them use the science of human behavior to overcome all kinds of gender-based obstacles that are put in their way that are not their fault. And so I try to use the science of my field to help them. so more recently, I wrote a book, which is often how people like, I think eventually is how you may entered your way to me. called likeable badass, so that’s a disruptor kind of model, ⁓ which is about, we can chat about if you want, is about the science of respect, which is status. And how do people decide that they respect other people and why is it harder than it should be for women to get the respect they’re due for all of their great accomplishments and how is that fixable? So that’s a lot of what I do now is talk to women. Jules (01:37) Congratulations. Right. my god, so if you’ve got the key for how to unlock that, that’s brilliant. But why did you, you know, you’ve had all this experience working with women, so why did you decide to focus on women as you started going through? I mean, I think I know the answer, but I’m very interested to hear what it is. Alison Fragale (02:17) So I always say I didn’t pick the women, the women picked me. Meaning, it was a lot of people I know that do kind of the things that you and I do, have these master plans for here is how I’m going to have my impact and here’s where my business is gonna go. And I was never that way. I was just trying to survive the day. Like I’ve got three kids, I got a busy job. And I spent a lot of time, like everybody, working in organizations that were male dominated. And then I become a professor and now I’m teaching in rooms that are male dominated. Jules (02:20) Yeah. Yeah. Alison Fragale (02:45) But what happened was that the women, numerically fewer though they were, were always the ones who would come to me after I would speak. And they would stand at the podium to talk or they would come to my office or they would send me an email and they would be talking to me about a challenge that they had. And it took me a while to connect the dots. I realized, okay, wait, why are these women coming to me? One, I look like them. So I feel like a safe space to go. Two, Jules (02:55) Right. Yes. Alison Fragale (03:13) They’re having problems that the guy sitting next to them isn’t having. Problems negotiating, problems influencing, problems being heard, problems being respected, problems advancing, all of these things. And then the third thing that occurred to me was I have this day job that has been really helpful to my own career journey, meaning that my day job is studying people. And when you study people as your day job, you get pretty good at… figuring out how to modify your behavior to get what you want from people. And so I started just like telling women, okay, here’s what I know is true about people. And here’s how I’ve used that. Here’s how I can help you solve your problem. And what happened was just, I started having those conversations and I just found a lot of joy in them. I thought it’s really fun to be able to use this, the expertise that you have and your life experience to like mentor and advise and help. And Jules (03:43) Yeah right. to genuinely help people. Yeah. Alison Fragale (04:08) to have these conversations about gender that were so different than anything I was having before. it just as they, one conversation after another that was started by them, not by me, I started finding a lot of joy in that. And I thought, how do I do more of this? How do I start bringing more of this to women? Women I don’t know or, you know, new science, stuff like that. So that’s kind of how it started. Jules (04:30) Okay, so the next question has to be, and I’m ashamed because I haven’t read your book yet, why likeable bad ass? Why is that the name and what I’m assuming that’s what you want women to be like? Or, I don’t know, just let me ask you that question. Big question. Alison Fragale (04:43) So yeah, so okay, so it’s a great question. It’s the question. I do it because, so let’s talk about a couple of reasons. One is it’s catchy and 80 % of writing a successful book is having a title that makes people wanna pick it up, okay? So I know I needed a catchy title, but it’s not just catchy. It’s not clickbait. It is a reference, a catchy reference to a very important psychological phenomenon. And that is how does a human being decide? whether or not they respect another human being. How does that decision get made in someone’s head? We study this and we know a lot about it. And the answer is that we are always trying to figure out two things about every single person we encounter. The first thing we try to figure out about people is do you care? Meaning, you try to, what are your intentions? Are you a friend or are you a foe? Jules (05:16) Yeah. Alison Fragale (05:36) So obviously we’re gonna respect people who are friends, who are gonna try to make our lives better. So I say, if you lived in cave person times and an unknown cave person walked into your cave, the most important thing you would wanna figure out is what are their intentions? Why are they there? Are they there because they have extra food and they’re gonna drop some off? Or are they gonna kill me and they’re gonna steal my food? So you gotta figure out, are you gonna help me or hurt me? Jules (05:36) Right. Alison Fragale (06:01) That’s on the cover of the book, I call that likable, but it’s a broader dimension of an orientation toward other people that psychologists will often talk about as our warmth. ⁓ And it’s, you caring? And then the second most important thing we need to figure out, once we know someone’s intentions are good, we need to know, they capable? So I know that you cave person are not there to kill me. Maybe you say we should join forces and go hunting. Well, then the next thing I need to know is, are you any good at hunting? Because I am not taking you with me if you are gonna slow me down. So I wanna be in relationships with people who are trying to help me and actually are capable enough that they could help me. And on the cover, that’s called badass, in psychology we talk about it as being results oriented or assertive, being able to control your environment to drive results. So when people signal to us that they care, Jules (06:32) Yeah. ⁓ right. Alison Fragale (06:55) and that they’re really capable, what our brains do is say, ding, ding, like, I like that person, I respect that person, that’s a person I wanna be in a relationship with. We don’t like selfish people and we don’t like incompetent people. So we want people who are both. not likable badass is not what I think people should be. Likable badass is what the world values. And it’s also what we are all going for. If I said, how do you wanna be seen? Do you wanna be warm or cold? Everyone’s gonna say warm. Jules (07:03) Right. Yeah. Alison Fragale (07:23) And how do you want to be seen? you want to be seen as capable or incapable, assertive or unassertive? Everyone’s going to say capable, please. So it’s how we also want to see ourselves. And so that’s the beauty of it is that’s how we get respect is signaling those two things to the world. But the and that’s really important for women because we are underestimated a lot and undervalued. But the beautiful part is that’s what we want to do anyway. So it ends up being very authentic with how we want to show up because we’re trying to show up as caring and we’re trying to show up. Jules (07:29) Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Alison Fragale (07:52) as capable. So it aligns very well with what we want. So that is why the book is called Likeable Badass. The psychology of that is called the interpersonal circumplex of person perception, which you should immediately forget because that would be the world’s worst title for a book, right? I mean, no one would read that book, but that’s what it’s called. Jules (08:08) I don’t think I’ll be able to. I love it, I love it. You know, it’s interesting that you say that because I grew up as an army brat and my dad was in the British Army. So we moved around a lot. And people often say to me, how do you think that affected you? And I’ve always said, and now you’re kind of, it’s making more sense, that if you move around a lot, you become one of two types of personalities. You either become quite introverted and very capable and happy of being by yourself and not really fussed about, or you learn very quickly how to make friends. And I did the second one. And so people say, how do you make friends easily? I don’t know how I do it, but it’s because I had to, I think, at a young age. And I think that’s really interesting around what you’ve just discussed. Alison Fragale (08:59) Yeah, I did not move at all, but I had a similar experience when I was a kid, which was I started school young. back, I was born in the seventies, right? I just turned 50. So it was all very negotiable, right? You could just go in and be like, she looks tall, she looks ready, we’ll just throw her in. And I had a fall birthday and I should have been a year younger than I was, but my parents were like, what are we gonna do with her? She’s really ready to go to school. We should send her even though she’s young. But my father was extremely worried that by doing this, Jules (09:12) Yeah. You Alison Fragale (09:30) he was gonna be putting me in this very awkward social situation that I was a year younger than my classmates and that that was going to mean that maybe I had less emotional maturity and people didn’t like me. And so when a lot of kids get lectured, like you should do your homework and you should read, I was always doing that stuff on my own. I was getting lectured at home. Make sure you’re nice to people. Make sure you make friends. Make sure you have to go out there and don’t make people feel like… you they’re not good if they don’t know what you know, know, make, be really kind and make friends and like treat people well. So that was like the messaging. That was the messaging I was getting. Jules (10:03) Nice advice! Great advice! Alison Fragale (10:07) I remember being kind of confused. Like, why am I being lecture? I’m perfectly nice. But what it did to my advantage was it made me start to think a lot from being like a kindergarten or a young kid. I wonder what people are thinking about me and am I showing up in a way that like makes them like me and not in a way that made me seek validation and chase approval. Jules (10:30) No. Alison Fragale (10:30) but in a way that made me thoughtful about like, huh, I wonder what causes like that person to like, like a person or not. And it was like the inner psychologist was kind of unleashed and I spent a lot of time, yeah, like thinking about it from a young age, all because my dad was lecturing me on being nice and making friends. Jules (10:39) well, let’s say it sounds like it. Yeah. Well, your dad sounds fantastic, I love that. okay, so in terms of disruption, because I have called this, she’s the boss disruptors. ⁓ What do you particularly want to disrupt and why? What do you think is a bit broken in the system? Alison Fragale (11:05) Well, I’m here to basically disrupt ⁓ women’s challenges. Yeah, like women’s challenges, getting the perception, the reputation, the respect that they’re due and all the power that comes with it. And one of the reasons I’ve done what I’ve done and spent a lot of time on this whole concept of status is because we have these other problems that we’re all trying to disrupt, right? Pay equity issues that are global. Jules (11:11) The perception. Yeah. Yep. Alison Fragale (11:33) ⁓ representation equity issues that are global. And I would love to be a disruptor for that, right? I, you know, I ⁓ always say like, I don’t know what my daughter is going to worry about when she’s an adult, but I just like her to be worrying about something else, like something new, right? Rather than the same stuff her mom worried about, that seems kind of boring. So that is really ⁓ what I would love to disrupt. But the way that I’m approaching it is through the skillset that I Jules (11:47) You Alison Fragale (12:01) And the skill set that I have is I’m a psychologist. So what I’m good at is helping people figure out their audience to get good outcomes. And so what that means is there’s a lot of ways you could be a disruptor in women’s equality, right? There’s activism, there’s implicit biases, there’s organizational design, there’s all kinds of things. But I’ve been trying to disrupt in a very specific way, which is by giving women good evidence-based tools and strategies to like… Jules (12:02) Yeah. Alison Fragale (12:29) bust through the bias even when it still exists. And that’s a part of the solution. It can’t be the only solution, but that’s the solution I feel like I’m well equipped and expert in counseling people how to do. That’s my form of disruption. Jules (12:31) Yes. No. And I think, you know, for women to gain that respect, one of the things that I’m often talking about is that you need to have an element of power and influence. You have to be visible if you want to make change happen. And so many women are driven by impact or legacy and trying to make change happen that if you’re a nobody, I mean, it sounds awful, but if you don’t have those connections and you’re not prepared to speak up, then it’s going to be impossible for you to make that change happen. So… ⁓ I love what you’re doing because it’s encouraging women to push themselves out there and be more visible, which they have to do if they want to make change happen. And we know that women own 50 % of the world’s social enterprises. ⁓ You know, they are driving that social enterprise and nurturing and community driven stuff so much. Okay, so ⁓ now I want to talk to you about your life because I actually really love this. the way that your life has affected you and you’ve told us a little bit about being in kindergarten. Did you have brothers and sisters and what did your mum and dad do? Alison Fragale (13:48) have a younger brother, he’s four years younger, ⁓ and he has traditionally been a ⁓ dentist, an endodontist. I don’t know if that is a global term, but doing root canals, basically, doing root canals. ⁓ Yeah, right. He’s literally like the person that nobody wants to see in the dentist chair. ⁓ My mom was a labor and delivery nurse, delivered babies when I was a baby, and then transit. Jules (13:57) ⁓ okay wow that’s Hahaha! ⁓ wow! Alison Fragale (14:16) transitioned during most of my childhood where I remember her to teaching nursing. So she was a teacher at a ⁓ community college. And then my dad is always, is an engineer by training who was then transitioned by the time I was born into running small businesses ⁓ and had always been ⁓ working on his own running small businesses. And so ⁓ I was definitely got this narrative, which informs how I ended up, which was not only be nice to people, but Jules (14:22) Okay, amazing. What a great role model then. ⁓ Alison Fragale (14:46) the path to financial security, because my parents grew up very, poor, the path to financial security is to be an entrepreneur and to run your own business. And so I got that narrative ⁓ very early on. So I thought, that’s what I should do. And in a way, I do now because being, yeah, because it is a very entrepreneur, but in a very non-traditional way relative to what I thought I was supposed to do. So ⁓ that was kind of the messaging that I got growing up and very much that Jules (14:55) Interesting. You do, yeah! Alison Fragale (15:15) whatever I did had to pay the rent. I think about some of the privileges that my kids have now of thinking about things they wanna do and they don’t think about the income as the primary thing always. My kids are young, right? So they don’t always think about that, right? Yet, but I was always told very early, whatever you do, it’s gotta pay the bills. And I was like, okay, pay the bills, pay the bills. Jules (15:31) Yeah, yeah. Yeah, right. That’s really good. So, did you like school? Alison Fragale (15:44) I loved school. So I was good at, you know, certain like brains are just set up to work within the rules of school. And mine does work that way. If you’re really good at memorization, like school’s pretty easy for a long time, you know? ⁓ And I was really, really good at math, which as a girl gets you a lot of positive attention at school. ⁓ Jules (15:48) Yeah. then exams become much easier. Yup. Alison Fragale (16:07) So like when most people, when people have math anxiety, like my daughter sometimes like, don’t like math, everyone in my family, our family likes math. Like I love math, you are genetically wired to love math, like that’s how it works. So yeah, I loved school and in fitting I ended up back as a professor. That did never occurred to me when I was going through school for a long time, but now that I’m back, thought, oh, that kind of fits, that’s where I was meant to stay. Like I belong in school. Jules (16:28) Now, I also just want to say, because I would say if people don’t know you, that they will think that you’re a psychologist working on one-on-one coaching with people, but you’re actually on stages everywhere, all across the states all the time. I just want to put that in so people understand what you’re doing, because you are not your average psychologist sitting in an office and meeting with people day in, day out. Alison Fragale (16:55) That’s right. So I don’t do any clinical stuff. I don’t do any coaching. ⁓ I do help people understand people, but like I help people understand functional adults ish functional ish adults in the workplace and how they can understand those people and get good outcomes through them. Cause that’s what we all do at work, right? We have to collaborate and work with other people. ⁓ And that can be, I always say that’s like the most frustrating part of work. Work would be easy if it weren’t for the people, right? That’s the stuff that drives everyone crazy. So I’m like, okay, well let me teach you how to deal with that. Jules (17:02) Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You that’s the bit I love. Okay, so, ⁓ you know, you are a psychologist, so I know you went to uni. Was that expected of you by your parents that you were going to go on and qualify in some tertiary level or not? Alison Fragale (17:41) No, in fact, I think the most concerned my parents ever were was when I told them I was going to get my PhD in psychology until I told them that at least in the United States, it’s free, it’s funded. And they didn’t have to write a tuition check because they thought this was going to be the stupidest money they ever spent. ⁓ So I went to college, university, ⁓ and I studied math and economics. Again, I was preparing for a business career and that was like, I loved math and econ seemed businessy. Jules (17:53) Yeah, right. Yeah. You absolutely were. Alison Fragale (18:10) And then I graduated and I became a management consultant because I didn’t exactly know what I wanted to do in business. And I thought that was like a good sampler. You go be a consultant, you see a bunch of industries, you you build your base, et cetera. Jules (18:20) So how did you get that job? Was that straight from uni? Wow! Alison Fragale (18:24) I, yes, and I said, you know, I got it, I did it because it was the easy thing to do. It was, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And so I stuck with the kinds of places that tended to come to the university and recruit. And what was that? A lot of banks and investment banks and finance and a lot of big consulting firms. So I worked for McKinsey, which is a global firm. And I took that job because I applied to all the banks and consulting firms that would have me. Jules (18:38) Right. Yeah. Alison Fragale (18:51) and I got a couple jobs and this was one and everyone said that was a good job, I should take it. So that was the extent of my thinking about this. And then I got there and I hated it for a couple of different reasons. Some of it was bad luck of just who I was working with, but some of it was I didn’t love the work and it wasn’t allowing me to do the things I love. Yeah, I love asking the questions and then I love being able to answer the questions and then I love… ⁓ Jules (19:05) Yeah. Which could be a problem. Alison Fragale (19:17) being able to like use the answers to help people. And I wasn’t doing really any of that. I didn’t get to ask the questions. I did get to answer them, but answer, then I didn’t actually get to implement any of it and make it, make it good. So I didn’t like it. And I panicked because I thought, my God, here was my whole plan to have this business career. I was going to go get my MBA, my master’s in business. And, but I was like, wait a second, if I do that, I’m just going to end up like back in a job like this. And I don’t like this. So I, then I was like, God, what am I going to do? So. Jules (19:27) Right. Yeah. Alison Fragale (19:47) I start brainstorming. ⁓ Jules (19:47) How long did you stick at it first? I mean, was this a couple of months in you were going, get me out of here, I’ve got to work out how to get out? Right. Right. Well done. Alison Fragale (19:53) Yeah, I I hated it within a couple of months, but I stayed there two years. I had my two-year commitment, I stayed. So I’m trying to figure out what I’m gonna do. And this is in late 90s. So this is like, we have an internet, right? But it’s not predominantly how we search for things. I had to go buy a book in a bookstore, and it was called Careers in Psychology, because I had always liked psychology. But what I couldn’t figure out, back to what my dad was always telling me was, how do you make money being a psychologist? I didn’t know. Jules (20:08) No. Right? Alison Fragale (20:21) But I did know that the few times I had taken a psychology class, I thought it was really cool. So here I am in my little studio apartment after consulting, and I’m flipping through careers in psychology, and I come across organizational psychologists. And there were two things that stood out to me. One was that they are the highest paid psychologists. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do remember reading this. I was like, okay, we’re onto something here. Okay, I might be able to pay the bills. And then the second thing was that it was basically psychology applied to business. I thought, oh, okay. Jules (20:35) Right. Yeah, okay. Alison Fragale (20:50) Here’s how I could blend. Jules (20:51) you got all the business skills. Alison Fragale (20:52) can have this whole business story and then I can take psychology and bring it in. That sounds good. So then I was off and running. And then I started looking at these programs that I, to that point, did not know existed, figured out, okay, you can study organizational psychology. And so I started applying and then I finished my two years and then I went in to get this degree. And again, my parents were panicked, but then they realized it was free. So they were like, fine. So I spent five years getting my PhD and then rolled out from that. Jules (21:03) Right? You Alison Fragale (21:20) into being a professor. In the United States, the five years, like pretty typical path for professor. Jules (21:25) Right, at that stage you’re thinking it’s going to be an academic career? Is that what you were… Alison Fragale (21:32) I very quickly realized that the organization… No, mean, business academia is the best of the worst, right? But yes, it is not the most lucrative thing one could do at their time. I… So ⁓ once I realized that organizational psychology, that getting a PhD was really training you for an academic career, I started thinking, would I like that? And that’s where I came back to this idea of I had really always liked school, the idea of being a teacher. Jules (21:34) Because there’s not a lot of money in academia, I would have thought. right Yeah. Alison Fragale (22:02) and a researcher seemed appealing. But I put all that together pretty quickly, like from my studio apartment when I was 23 years old. So I’m lucky it worked out as well as it did because although I picked more intentionally the second time, ⁓ I jumped into a pretty big lifetime commitment without a whole lot of knowledge exactly about what that would entail. But it does fit me well. ⁓ Jules (22:12) Yeah. Alison Fragale (22:26) I have enjoyed my ability to be entrepreneurial. Being a professor is a pretty entrepreneurial venture in a way with the safety net of having least some of your income provided by your university. So it’s an interesting way to be an entrepreneur. Jules (22:40) Okay, so how long were you in academia before you decided to step out on your own and go on stages and things? Or was there something in between? Alison Fragale (22:50) So I’ve been a professor for ⁓ over 22 years. just now went what’s called emeritus and I think I don’t know if we all, everyone uses that term, but the United States, ⁓ it ⁓ just means you’re essentially retired, but you get to keep all your perks and privileges. I, yeah, so I just, I was, I have been a full-time tenured professor for 22 years. I did, ⁓ Jules (22:53) ever. okay wow that’s cool right. Alison Fragale (23:15) just recently stopped. The main reason that I stopped had not to do with the speaking because that was going concurrently. It just had to do with a lifestyle thing, which is that I now live 1,500 miles or 1,200 miles from where I work ⁓ because I went remote before it was cool because of my husband and family, ⁓ his work and everything. So then I went back and forth for 10 years. Jules (23:32) Right. back. Alison Fragale (23:44) After I was so I was in ⁓ North Carolina where my school is and then I went back and forth for 10 years. And then the combination of a couple of things, like my kids getting older, me having this book and traveling a lot ⁓ and the commute. said, okay, I think now’s the time I will retire after 22 years of being a full-time academic and teaching and then focus solely on ⁓ the writing and the educating and the speaking in these other audiences. Yeah. Jules (24:12) ⁓ So you’ve built up your speaking career at the same time as working full time, obviously. Alison Fragale (24:19) I did, I started, it grew over time. If you like looked at where I spent my time, but I did my first external speaking in my very first year of being a professor. So I always, and then I did more and more and more. And I found I really liked it for two reasons. One is I love, like the thing I love the most about my field is taking these findings that I just think are fascinating and turning them into practical ways that people can use them. And that’s really fun for me. And the second thing is I, again, like I ⁓ love talking about my field, but I can really do without like grading papers and having conversations with students about like this grade or that grade. Like that’s not really fun. And so to me, all of the education I get to do is the absolute best part of my job. It’s like the, it’s, you know, it’s like the center of the cinnamon roll, if you will, like the, like the really good stuff in the middle. I get to. use all this knowledge to help people without having to deal with all of the difficulties of grading papers and classes and stuff like Jules (26:32) Okay, so where do you want to take all of this then? One book down, yeah. Alison Fragale (26:36) So this is back to this idea of I don’t have a grand plan, meaning, you know, I wrote the book and so the book did ⁓ what I wanted it to do. It definitely established my brand as a person who serves women. And so more audiences of women have found me through the book and have come to me this year. And that has really given me opportunities to like make my living standing on stages or in audiences that serve women. That I think is really cool. I’d like to continue to do more of that. ⁓ I think… Jules (27:01) Okay. Alison Fragale (27:05) I might write another book, but I don’t have a secret like that I’m keeping from you. I don’t have an idea. I’m gonna get through the end of 2025 and 2026 is my year to kind of start some new stuff. I also would like to, ⁓ one of the things about me is that the only way people really work with me or see me other than like, you know, podcast is, ⁓ if their organization or their group or their conference hires me. Because at this point, if I don’t coach, I don’t work individually with people. But one of the things I would like to do is make behavioral science more accessible to people who are not in these very elite spaces. So a book is one way to do that, right? Because the entry point for a book of, you know, 15, 17, $20 is way less than getting a whole graduate degree. Or listen. Jules (27:37) Right. Yeah, great. As long as they read, which a lot of people don’t, I guess. Yeah, Alison Fragale (28:00) You got to do something. You have to either read or listen, Jules (28:01) or listen. Alison Fragale (28:02) right? You got to do one of the two. But also the idea of creating some communities and spaces and programming that people can join as an individual at an individual price point where they don’t have to work for a group or a company that ⁓ has a lot of these resources. ⁓ So that’s one of the things I care a lot about is trying to help women who are working extremely hard, but not with the privileges of Jules (28:10) Yeah, nice. Alison Fragale (28:29) that come with so many of the people that I see. And those people don’t wake up necessarily feeling all that privilege. Life feels hard for them, right? Working, know? But I always remember, like, they’re at a big company that has a big annual conference that they bring in people to talk. Like, they have a lot of resources. Not everyone has that. So that’s one of my goals for 2026. Jules (28:36) No, yes of course. fantastic. well, can’t wait to watch it all unfold. if somebody wanted, well, firstly, I want to do something with you. So there is going to be something with She’s the Boss and Alison next year. Yeah, we’re going to have to do something together. ⁓ But also, if there’s anyone who’s listening to this who goes, my God, I love that woman, which I’m sure they will because you’re great. ⁓ What’s the best way of them being able to get involved, help you, book you, whatever it might be that they want to do? Alison Fragale (29:00) Okay, we talked about this, yes. Totally, thank you for asking. My website is the one stop shop for all the things. So it’s http://www.mynameallisonforgale.com. And when you go there, there’s a bunch of stuff. One is if you wanna learn about the book and what’s it about, buy it, you can do that. There’s three places I show up typically ⁓ in writing. I show up in my free newsletter called The Upper Hand, which is behavioral science to help women excel. Jules (29:25) Okay. Okay. Alison Fragale (29:47) And then you said, I’m on social, I’m on LinkedIn a lot, and I’m on Instagram. And all three of those things you could click and join from my website. And then I do a lot of media, a lot of podcasts, a lot of interviews. So this podcast will be on there as well as anything else I’ve ever done. And I always say to people, like, if you do like, ⁓ if you do like listening, ⁓ you can learn a tremendous amount. Like the amount of knowledge and information this world is pushing out through podcasts right now is insane. Like you could get the equivalent of. Jules (30:02) Yep. sure. Alison Fragale (30:16) a graduate degree of knowledge. Obviously it doesn’t come with a diploma if you’ve listened to 500 podcasts, but in terms of the knowledge, like you could get all the stuff we like say behind those like gates are in these podcasts. Like, so I tell people like, listen to that stuff. So anyway, that stuff’s yeah, that’s all on there. So, you know, you can hear me chat about all kinds of stuff. Jules (30:18) Ha Go and listen to them. Okay, fantastic. Now I know on your website, and hopefully this will drive people to your website, you’ve got some quirky facts about yourself, ⁓ which I particularly liked. I loved going in and going, here’s some stuff that you might not know about me. But my question is one that a journalist gave me years ago, and I love asking it because I get such mixed responses. The question is, is there a quirky fact about you that most people don’t know that you’re willing to share? And it can be anything. Alison Fragale (31:03) Okay, I do have a fair amount of them out there. So I’ll start by repeating, yeah. So I love coffee, I’m obsessed with coffee, but I hate all coffee flavored food. I don’t like tiramisu, I don’t like espresso martini, I don’t understand. Jules (31:07) You do? ⁓ That’s so weird because I hate coffee but I’ll drink Kahlua. Or I’ll drink something that I’m the opposite. But that’s amazing. Alison Fragale (31:23) Right. Yeah. Yeah. The second my eyes open, I’m like, coffee, coffee, coffee. Jules (31:29) You’re gonna have to come to Melbourne at some stage because we are known as the coffee… the coffee city. Like, have people, everyone is obsessed with it here. Alison Fragale (31:33) Award. I did have a friend who was traveling there to speak and said she was like really excited about getting her flat white when she got there. Okay, so let’s see, a couple other random things. There are three things I have said to my kids I will never do unless one of my kids begs me to do it with them, in which case, only because of my love to them, for them I will. Run another marathon, I have run one. It was 26 miles of torture, I never wanna do it again. Unless it. Jules (31:42) You Okay. It sounds horrific. Alison Fragale (32:05) Unless a kid said, with me, mom, and then I would feel like I had to. Jump out of an airplane. was like the whole point of going in a plane is to stay in the plane till it comes back down. That seems like a terrible idea. But again, I don’t want to be lame. So if they said jump out of the plane with me, maybe I would. And get a tattoo. I really admire tattoos on other people, but I’ve never had any desire to get one myself. But if my kid said to my mom, like, let’s go to the tattoo parlor, I’m like, all right, I’m in. Jules (32:13) Yeah. Amazing! Gosh, we’re so… I’m about to turn 60 next year and I just got my first tattoo because my sons… I was in a tattoo parlor with them. I said, let me buy it for you and then I was like, I’ve always wanted a cartoon bumblebee. I’m gonna get one. In fact, I have to show it to you. Look, it’s the cutest little bumblebee you’ve ever seen. So that was my first tattoo at 59. Alison Fragale (32:35) Did you? See? Amazing, see I would love… my gosh, I love it. I love it. love it. So that’s the thing I said of my kids. So I always say to them like which one of you is going to be my tattoo kid and which one of you is going to be my airplane kid and which one’s going to be my marathon kid. ⁓ So okay, those are some of my fun facts. I do see people who have a lot of tattoos, one of my favorite questions to ask them is which one’s your favorite? And they have a good story. And then I always ask them if there’s one they regret. And those are always interesting as well. Like a thing that people have grown out of. It’s when people have like lots and lots of them. It’s always fascinating. Jules (32:58) Yeah Yes. Alison Fragale (33:23) ⁓ Okay, wait, can I ask you? Jules (33:23) Yeah, well I said I might have a full sleeve by the time I’m 80. I thought I could start getting them everywhere I travel. I did this one in Singapore. So it was a bit of fun. Yeah? Alison Fragale (33:28) Yeah, totally. nice. Okay wait, can I ask you, what’s your, do you have a quirky fact that people don’t know really know? Jules (33:39) ⁓ gosh, no one’s ever asked me that. I ⁓ think my biggest one that sort of surprises people but very easy around food is I hate strawberries and I hate coffee and I just will not touch either of them except in Kahlua. So there’s that little thing. ⁓ And other than that, I don’t know. One of my favorite things is I lived inside Brixton Prison. for two months and I actually didn’t even know I was there. I was living in one of the warden’s flats because I had arrived in London and I was couch surfing and this guy that I’d met in Jamaica said, hey, come, I’ve got a spare room in my apartment. And I said, great. And I went and stayed there and then the next day I rang him to say, I need to go out, can you drop me off the key? And I knew he worked at Brixton Prison and he said, I’ll be there in two minutes. And I said, are we really close to the prison?” And he went, we’re inside the walls. And I went to the balcony and you could see all the barbed wire. Anyway, so that was my… And the other little quirky fact is that no black cabs in London will ever take you to Brixton Prison. So I’d be finishing work, I was working in ad agencies and I’d go, you know, catch a cab home, it was late. And I’d say, can you take me down to Brixton Prison? And they’d go, they’d just shut the door and drive off. So that was quite funny as well, I didn’t realise that. But I remember saying at the time, this is going to be great dinner party story for me one day. Okay, well, it’s just been wonderful to talk to you, Alison. I hope to get to know you more and do more things with you in the future, but I really appreciate you doing this podcast and I hope that you have a whole lot of new fans on the back of it because you’ve definitely got one in me. Alison Fragale (35:03) Totally. I love it. my gosh, that’s awesome. I’m glad I asked. Very cool. my gosh, right back at you. You are the best.