Choosing The Right People is Choosing Yourself with Lisa Ehrlich
Entrepreneur Lisa Ehrlich joins Here For Me on the heels of the release of “Love, Charlie: The Rise and Fall of Chef Charlie Trotter,” the documentary film on her late ex-husband and business partner, sharing the twists and turns her life took from restaurant stardom to personal setbacks, reinvention, and reframing how she evaluates who and what is allowed in her world.
Show Notes:
Learn about Lisa’s company Drink Cultivated
Read The New York Times’ obituary of Charlie Trotter
Read Charlie Trotter's Wikipedia page
Watch “Love, Charlie: The Rise and Fall of Chef Charlie Trotter” on Apple TV and Amazon
See Lisa’s interview on The Varietal Show
Learn about the film’s director, Rebecca Halpern
Read the “Eater Chicago” piece on “Love, Charlie” mentioned in the episode
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[00:00:03] Nicole: Welcome to Here For Me, a podcast about the power of choosing yourself. I'm Nicole Christie, and I'm honored to be here with you to share life-altering stories, lessons learned and advice from leading experts that will help you show up for yourself with the love, honor, compassion and encouragement you give to others. Because just as we say, “I'm here for you” to show we care for someone, saying, “I'm here for me” to ourselves is the best form of self-care. Today, I'm talking with Lisa Ehrlich. Lisa is the principal owner of Drink Cultivated, a branding firm for wine spirits and related consumer products in Sonoma County, California. She's also the first wife and business partner of the late chef Charlie Trotter, with whom she opened the two Michelin starred Chicago restaurant Charlie Trotter's in 1987, serving as its first dining room manager and wine director, combining French techniques with American ingredients in an accessible way, Charlie Trotter's redefined the fine dining experience, merging the elements of food, wine, service and hospitality. The restaurant earned numerous accolades in its 25-year tenure, including nine James Beard Awards and being named by Restaurant magazine as the 30th best restaurant in the world and the fifth-best in the United States before closing its doors in 2012.
[00:01:32] Lisa shares the story of her life with the man she knew as Chuck in the poignant documentary, “Love Charlie: The Rise and Fall of Chef Charlie Trotter.” I had the great pleasure of meeting Lisa at the movie screening at the San Diego International Film Festival last October, and during the Q&A afterward, Lisa shared how she lost herself in Chuck's dreams, and I wanted to learn more about her and her journey. In an interview with Eater Chicago, director Rebecca Halpern said the film is a story that resonates with anyone whose identity is tied to the work. When the work goes away, who are you at the end of the day? The same can be true when a relationship goes away, especially if we've abandoned ourselves within it. I invited Lisa to join me on the podcast to talk about how this played out for her and how she found her way back to herself. Lisa, welcome to Here For Me.
[00:02:27] Lisa: Nicole, I'm really excited to join you and to have this conversation.
[00:02:33] Nicole: I am excited too, and it was so great to meet you at the San Diego International Film Festival screening of the movie here in San Diego. It was such a delight. And getting to know you a little bit during the Q&A, after the screening, you said the magic words of I lost myself in his dreams, and I immediately thought, I want to know more about Lisa, more about her story. So for folks who haven't seen Love Charlie yet, you met Chuck as he is known to you when you were both undergrads at UW Madison. Became fast friends, had deep conversations. You were staying up late arguing about politics, and then you lost touch with each other for a while and reconnected in Paris, where you were spending a year abroad. And then during that trip you explored the city through food. And that's kind of when you fell in love, and you had a scholarship to attend graduate school and law and political science at Northwestern with plans of going into academia. But the experience that you and Chuck had in Paris led to the vision of Charlie Trotter's, which you would open a few years later when you were newlyweds and you were just 23 years old, which in and of itself is mind blowing and incredible. And you said in the film, “Our relationship was dependent on me being there for him.” So I wanted to kick off the conversation, just understanding. What were you feeling throughout that journey as you shifted from your original plans for yourself to opening and running the restaurant with Chuck?
[00:04:00] Lisa: Well, it's so interesting that question. To answer that fully, I have to go back to that year when I was in Paris. It was the second year that I was in France. I went on my junior year abroad and then I ended up back in Paris for an internship at a French government agency. And as part of that, I ended up enrolling in law school at the University of Paris. So I found a postcard from that year when Chuck was there with me, and it was so supportive and full of admiration for who I was and what I was doing and the challenges and the career that I would have and the books I would write and the lectures I would give and my life unfolding before me. And the interesting thing was I had to choose between Northwestern and California. UC Berkeley were the two programs that were in alignment with the degree that I wanted to pursue. But it made so much more sense for us to settle in Chicago. I mean, we talked about going to California, how different our lives would have been, but being in Chicago meant that his family was there. My family was in Wisconsin, that we would have a network of support. And also he was going to open this restaurant and his father would be there to help.
[00:05:16] And it seemed like a good idea at the time. But over the course of the year, as Charlie started to get more and more involved in his restaurant plans, it became clear that there was tension between my academic work and the time and the attention that I was devoting to it and his dreams. So all those meals that we catered that they talk about in the film, we were catered dozens and dozens of dinners for the glitterati and the influential elite of Chicago. And those took an immense amount of planning and time and checked out a large part of it. But I was there with him, and you can only imagine if you've been at grad school how demanding it is, especially in an area that requires a lot of reading and writing. And I was also a T.A., so I was teaching. And the problem for me was that I wasn't really able to fully immersed myself in school the way my peers were academically. They were able to fully engage in school and devote themselves to the community, to supporting each other, to the activities. You know, they're going out for drinks after you've had a rough day of teaching or to pull an all nighter on a paper and you got somebody to go out and have coffee with.
[00:06:44] And so I felt alone in my studies and I was constantly going back and forth between what I was trying to do at school and helping him. But the other thing that happened during this year is it actually became clear to me that Chuck and I had really different worldviews and he started to get increasingly negative about my academics and the professors, what they were teaching, the work that I was doing. It was really hard for him to understand that the deck might be stacked against people who were not from the same kind of privilege or background. And in fact, he almost you know, I think he felt some guilt over the privilege that he did have. He was so supportive of any person he saw as disadvantaged, he’d want to champion their causes. So the academic world at that time, there was a shift towards structuralism and looking at how institutional bias and the legacy of power imbalance could reside and impact people generationally and how even the way the language of the law of the words we use could impact people. So the work I was doing was just getting him more and more obsessed. It got to the point where he just felt like academics overall was a waste of time.
[00:08:08] Nicole: And how did that make you feel through that?
[00:08:12] Lisa: Well, it made me feel defensive. I felt discouraged, but I also felt a little bit envious because truly it was a hard slog and there is no glory as a graduate student. Meanwhile, he was off having all these glamorous experiences working on the restaurant design, meeting with the architects and the PR people and going off to wine tastings. So I had seen myself having a role in the restaurant all along, and the area that I was already interested in was wine. I had worked the harvest when I was 19 on my first junior year abroad when I was in southern France, and I never knew how good wine could be. I'd grown up with wine on the table. My family enjoyed wine and we lived in Belgium when I was a young child, so I'd always thought of wine as being an important part of a meal that brought people together. But it wasn't until I lived in France where I really understood how magical it could be. The idea of taking something that was growing and transforming it into an elixir and that it captured culture and history and the pleasures of the table and bringing people together. It sort of brought everything that I loved together in one package. And then during the course of that year, while I was in graduate school, I attended a couple wine tastings that were really transformative for me. So at the same time, when I was feeling discouraged about the academics and don't get me wrong, I had wonderful professors, I had a great experience.
[00:09:55] I love my peers. I thought it was really interesting. There was just such a strong pull towards this other world at the same time that I felt really conflicted and torn. But everything came to a head like two weeks before the restaurant was about to open, and Chuck said to me, “You're either on the boat or you're off the boat.” And for me, at that time, it really felt like he was pulling away from the dock and I was going to lose him. And he also had said to me, at this time, you can always go back to school. I need you now. I didn't talk to anybody in my life that would have said, “Are you serious?” I didn't want to be talked out of it because I knew at the time it was going to have a tremendous consequence on the course of events. So I go over to Northwestern, downtown to the law school, and I walk into the office and I say, I'm going to pull out. And it was like the administrators did not believe me. I had my parking pass. I was ready to go. And I just remember that day, I didn't even feel relief. I just felt numb. I didn't want to think about what that really meant to me.
[00:10:58] And I'll tell you something, my family has still not forgiven Charlie for that. I mean, it was my decision. I can't blame Chuck, but my mother, especially my parents, were really dismayed because everything in my life at that point had led me to going through this course of studies and pursuing this academic path. And the other piece for me is I don't know if this is true for other folks, but I actually felt like this path was so easy for me that it was like sort of a cop out that, you know, school had always been pretty easy for me. I was in an honors program undergrad at University of Wisconsin. I had great mentors who helped me through a senior honors thesis that led me to this other internship in France. And then, of course, I would naturally go to grad school. And at some point I was thinking, “Well, what else is there? Is there anything else out there for me?” And I wondered if I was just settling for this academic path. And I wondered, too, if I'd taken some more time to think about it, whether the outcome would have been different. But surely I should have gotten more feedback from people in my life who could have held up a mirror to me at the time and said, “There's a reason why you're good at this.”
[00:12:21] Nicole: Do you have regret?
[00:12:23] Lisa: Yes, some. I have a wonderful career and it's led me to where I am today. And I think I would have been very successful in the path I'd chosen for myself. And I had contributions to make. I try now not to have regrets, but I question the way in which I made those decisions, and I wouldn't have done it the same way again. I may have come out with the same exact outcome. But I've learned to trust people in my life to give me constructive feedback and, you know, feedback you have to take also with a grain of salt.
[00:12:59] Nicole: Absolutely. Run it through your filter.
[00:13:01] Lisa: Right. Right. But to not solicit any advice at the time, because deep down I knew I was making a decision that I might question later.
[00:13:13] Nicole: So the regret is more not about the path that you went on, but the regret was more how you made that decision and maybe feeling like you were turning your back on yourself and people in your life would have said, “Hey, wait a second, think about this.”
[00:13:30] Lisa: And Chuck was, he was so much more decisive and clear about where he was going and what he wanted and, you know, getting on the Chuck boat at that point. In retrospect, it was definitely the path of less resistance.
[00:13:42] Nicole: Yeah, well, I think the journey that you had been on with Chuck opened the doors to a different path. You got married in 1986 and opened the restaurant in 1987, and you were divorced in 1990. And in the movie you talk about that little light bulb moment, which I love, the light bulb moment where you realize Chuck wasn't present in your marriage. He had just chewed out someone at the restaurant over a burned-out light bulb, and suddenly the light bulbs were burning out throughout the carriage house that you shared. And one night you found him reading The New York Times in the kitchen by the light of the open refrigerator. And shortly afterwards you told him that you wanted to divorce. So this journey that you went on from when you left Northwestern, you started the restaurant with him. I mean, it was about four years of your life. How did the relationship change over those years and what did you realize about yourself at the end of that time?
[00:14:37] Lisa: Well, that light bulb moment was emblematic of the problems in our relationship. And when a relationship falls apart, it's usually death by a thousand cuts. So there were canceled plans and trips instead of we were supposed to go on a ski trip together to Aspen with friends and it got canceled and I ended up going skiing with my family alone. We went to Key West together right before we open the restaurant, and he ended up in Norman's kitchen the entire time cooking. And I sat at a sushi bar alone every night and ate dinner by myself. We had, like, these canceled plans. And then no Valentine's Day, no birthday, no anniversary. You wake up in the morning and somebody doesn't smile at you or say hello or ask how you're doing and you walk past each other in the hall without saying anything. You know, we're at the restaurant together, but we were almost not engaged. You know, he was not connected with me. And so each time you sort of looking for signs, you're looking for proof this person cares or we're okay. And then it just confirms and confirms, confirms we're not connected. The other thing, you know, at the time we were so young, we didn't have the tools to communicate or to fight well. So I can remember feeling like I was being petty and bickering with him and finding reasons to fight with him over just silly stuff.
[00:16:08] And one night we were fighting on the way back from the restaurant, and he just ran in the alley in the opposite direction. He just turned around and ran away. Like, I just reminded me, you know, he sort of shut down and I you know, he just didn't have the tools to really communicate. Maybe the fear he was feeling and the fear of failing and disappointing and letting people down. He was under tremendous amount of pressure, but we weren't really able to constructively fight. There's ways of doing it that can build your relationship and build mutual understanding versus breaking it down. He started to accuse me of being petty and ungrateful and childish, which made me feel very defensive and powerless. And, you know, at this time I'd given up this independent life for myself, and I was totally dependent on this salary. And it was really just an allowance for clothes and hair and things like that. I wasn't compensated for the work that I was providing when I left the restaurant. Actually, they ended up hiring three people to take my place, and even just one of the people was paid triple the salary of what I was getting. So I really felt powerless.
[00:17:21] Nicole: And not valued. Right?
[00:17:22] Lisa: Yeah, but there were a couple moments. The light bulb moment was the time where I was really clear, crystal clear. But I had founded, along with a group of sommeliers in Chicago, we started an association to promote, mentor and provide community for the sommeliers in Chicago. And on the kickoff night, there was a gala in the ballroom of one of the big hotels downtown. The press came, Charlie came and immediately wanted to leave, and he took the car keys. And I think he even left before my speech. And he went back home. And I think we had it on a Monday night because that's when all the restaurants were closed, including ours. But from his standpoint, he was probably exhausted. This was boring for him. He didn't see any reason for him to be there. For me, it was my big moment. I completely didn't understand why he didn't want to be there to support me and also to see me shine, to be proud. But he left and I think we all went out for dinner afterwards. And then I got home by cab and when I got there, the doors were locked and he had the keys to the house which were inside, and he had gone to bed. So I was locked out. It was subzero temperature. I'm banging on the door trying to get him to let me in. And you know, the person I am now, I would have called a cab and booked a suite at the peninsula. Yeah, exactly. But the person I was then went over to the 7-Eleven around the corner and called repeatedly.
[00:18:56] The answering machine picked up. Nobody answered. I'm back in the alley. I'm crying and feeling sorry for myself. I shimmied up the side of the townhouse. I remembered that there is a window that wasn't shutting properly. I had grown up on the South side of Chicago. We used to climb garages for, you know, for fun besides the garage. So anyway, you know, I basically broke into my own place. He hadn't heard me. He was conked out. But anyway, it was just that feeling of just being locked out and in the cold on my big night. And we finally ended up in marriage counseling. And this is actually after we had separated. But the marriage counselor had said to Charlie, “You know, marriage is a game of tennis.” He was a tennis player. And when somebody hits the ball over to you, you need to volley back. And she said to Charlie, you know, you're letting the ball drop. So you need to decide at this point if this is a relationship that you want to invest in. And she explained that a marriage requires as much attention and energy as a restaurant. Well, he looked at me at that point. She said, well, what it's not fair to Lisa. And she looked at him and she looked at me and she said, “Charlie, are you willing to work on this?” And he looked at me and he said, “Can you just come back in ten years?”
[00:20:24] Nicole: Like, can we take a pause, essentially.
[00:20:26] Lisa: Just leave me alone so I can do my thing. He thought, just have some kids. And I knew that that wasn't the kind of marriage that I was going to have. And I realized he asked me what I knew about myself. I knew I wanted a real partnership and that it just wasn't going to be possible with Chuck. And if you look at his life, he really never took on an equal partner in his business. It wasn't how he was wired. He wasn't really wired to share the spotlight, and he wasn't wired to be in a partnership. And, you know, that's okay. That's who he was.
[00:21:01] Nicole: Yeah, absolutely. But then you make different choices.
[00:21:03] Lisa: Yeah. So that moment for me, I let go of anger and feeling like I was going to be able to fix the situation.
[00:21:14] Nicole: Because, you know, you can't change who he is. I think you recognized he's wired this way. And I want to commend you, too, for having that much insight into: I don't think this person or this partnership is going to be able to give me what I need and deserve.
[00:21:29] Lisa: It didn't make it easy. It felt like I fell off the face of the planet in a way. All of a sudden, my social network disappeared. Two of the best friends that I made during that period are still my friends today and stuck with me when I left the restaurant. Larry Stone in the film mentions that I have gone back to law school. I try to get back to law school. I applied to get back in and I was denied. So that door was really close to me for good at Northwestern. And in fact, one of our best customers was a partner at one of the leading law firms in Chicago. And he also sat on the advisory board to the admissions committee. And he actually lobbied on my behalf to explain the situation. And they were so angry about me pulling out.
[00:22:21] Nicole: That is incredible. It was almost like the door was closed for the reason. Right. Because I think a lot of people would think, oh, it was there was just different competition when I reapplied or but this was actually you had someone with intel.
[00:22:33] Lisa: Oh, yeah. They were not at all understanding of the decision. Well, anyway, I went back to Northwestern Political Science and finished up all my coursework for my PhD, but once I got back to academics, it wasn't the same. And in the meantime, since I had left, there had been a changing of the guard in the department, and I cobbled together a dissertation committee that didn't get along and was not in alignment, and I couldn't get any agreement on my dissertation proposal. And I went back and forth to the point where I really just got so discouraged. But I decided at that point that I needed to try something different. So it was a journey and I tried to go back and pick up the pieces and it just it was time for me at that point to move on.
[00:23:20] Nicole: So the next chapter of your life, how did that unfold for you?
[00:23:26] Lisa: I thought, I need a change. I picked up the phone and made a couple of phone calls to people I knew in the wine industry, and honestly, a few weeks after my divorce, I was in Los Angeles sitting in a company, Ford Taurus, on the L.A. Freeway with a Thomas guy in my lap working as a supplier for a wine company with the distributor. Nothing prepared me for this new career that I found myself in, but it was really challenging. It was really engaging. It was really, really interesting. And I discovered that I could fend for myself and strike out on my own path. And not long after I got there, I had to organize this event at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, and I struck up a friendship with the general manager. We had three days. It was a training seminar that we were putting on for the hospitality trade, and he suggested that I stay at the hotel rather than drive back and forth to the beach. I was living in Hermosa Beach at the time and it was kind of a long drive after the dinners and everything. So he put me up in a room there and it wasn't just a room. I was on the 16th floor in a suite. I was actually riding on the elevator every day between Leslie Nielsen and Sean Penn, who had no idea who I was, but I was just like, I'm on the 16th floor of this hotel with these celebrities and this is absolutely amazing. And when this event ended, I went back up to my room and I took a long bath and went out onto the porch and this big plush terrycloth robe. And I think I had a cigar and a glass of cognac. And I looked out on the balcony over the sparkling lights of the city. And I'm like, I did this myself. I'm going to be okay. I knew at that moment that I was going to be okay.
[00:25:29] Nicole: I love that you shared in an interview on The Varietal Show, which is great, and anyone can see this on YouTube. You kept the name Trotter for ten years after the divorce, and then someone asked you, how long are you going to ride his coattails? And so here you are in this new chapter that the cigar and the cognac marked this realization where you're like, I'm going to be fine. And you started an independent life on your own, but you ultimately changed your name back to Ehrlich. What did that signify for you?
[00:25:57] Lisa: When I moved out to Los Angeles, Charlie was known amongst chefs circles, and certainly that was why I'd gotten hired, I think, in the first place was that the powers that be at the company that hired me felt that I could open doors for them in restaurants where they had wanted to gain more traction. And working with all those chefs, it was really great because they knew who I was. They knew the wine program I had built. Many of them had been to the restaurant and I was the face of the restaurant at that point. I built my career and my reputation under Trotter. But one night I was sitting at the bar with one of my customers. I brought in some wines for him to try. He brought out a bottle of incredible Barolo, and we were sitting there sipping on it and talking about life. And he looked at me and that's who said to me, “How long are you going to ride your ex-husband's coattails?” And it really struck me deep. It was very painful. Because I had felt like I had built my own name and reputation and it just ate at me. But I used the opportunity when I remarried to change my name. That's when I went back to using Ehrlich. But now the person that I am now, I would have told myself, “Hey. Honey, you earned that name. Change it if you want, but you're not riding anybody's coattails.”
[00:27:33] Nicole: It's true. It was a partnership. Like you said, you wore the face of the restaurant. You built that wine program.
[00:27:39] Lisa: And of course, I worried, you know, at that time I was so worried about what everybody thought. We talked about filters earlier. Come on. My inner mentor now tells me. What was I thinking? Did I really want to listen to that guy?
[00:27:54] Nicole: But yes, you run it through a different filter now of self-recognition, but it does eat at you. I think that a natural...you know, someone makes a comment like that and they don’t know what you built. That's hard to hear.
[00:28:05] Lisa: It's hard. I will say that having the name Trotter was much easier than my current last name, which is hard to spell. People don't know how to pronounce it. It's a foreign word, which actually means honest, means honest in German.
[00:28:21] Nicole: That is pretty incredible because I think it's being true to you.
[00:28:25] Lisa: Yeah. Once I decided to go back to my birth name, my family name, I felt like it really resonated and it's who I am.
[00:28:33] Nicole: And you said that you advise your daughters and stepdaughters: don't change your name when you get married. Why is that significant for you?
[00:28:41] Lisa: Well, I just think that you deserve to have your sense of self who you are. I feel like you have that sense of identity and connection to the generations and everything that's made you who you are. I don't judge anybody negatively for taking their partner's name. I just know that for me, the changing of my name was a compromise that didn't recognize who I was and who I'd become and what I had achieved.
[00:29:35] Nicole: And like you said, you feel like you gave up something that you'd been sort of galvanizing towards your whole life to build this. And you felt like you lost yourself in his dreams. That, to me, would be emblematic, right? It would be a symbol of this time in your life where you achieved things that you did build on your own. But it felt like that for you, that you really took what you achieved on your own. Running Charlie Trotter's and then built this new chapter from it. But to say like, “This is me, this is who I am, this is who I always was,” even if maybe you felt like you set that aside for a little while, I think is a mark of you really coming into your own and choosing yourself.
[00:30:18] Lisa: Thank you. Thank you. Well, this film for me has been a process of even reclaiming some of that. So it's been an emotional journey and it's been rewarding in the sense of seeing how these pieces all fit together now.
[00:30:34] Nicole: Yeah, I think you've been reflecting back on that time in your life with the wisdom that you have now. It's almost cathartic and therapeutic for you, it seems like. Is that a fair assessment?
[00:30:46] Lisa: Yeah, I had put this chapter of my life in a box.
[00:30:51] Nicole: Literally the hundreds of postcards and letters were literally in a box.
[00:30:55] Lisa: And I put it away for 35 years and then going back through one by one and reading the letters, it was a grind. Emotionally, physically, I was just like, ugh, but it felt like layers were peeling off. It's just been a great kind of reawakening of parts of myself that I had thought were left behind.
[00:31:23] Nicole: How have you taken care of yourself during this journey and the making of this film? Because like you said, it's peeling layers off, which can make you feel really raw and exposed. So how have you taken care of yourself during this time?
[00:31:37] Lisa: I have tried to establish some decent rituals or routines for myself in the morning and in the evening to make sure that I set my day up and I end my day in ways that are going to be restorative and help me feel grounded. One of the things that I'm working on, but that I think that my experience with Charlie and subsequently in Los Angeles and switching careers has helped with, but just establishing better boundaries for myself.
[00:32:19] Nicole: What does that look like for you?
[00:32:20] Lisa: Well, one of the things that was characteristic you asked me about my relationship with Charlie and me being there for him. I was his intimacy guide with other people. He had a hard time empathizing with others, and by being the person who kind of explained to Charlie whatever other people were feeling and how he should behave and made me feel special. And over time, I started to realize that I had a pattern in relationships where I felt responsible for others and I needed to help them and do things for them. And it was all about me sort of taking care of other people. I had been repeating this pattern and it wasn't until I got very clear about this pattern and decided that it was time for me to try something different. And you asked me how I'm taking care of myself now, but it's having relationships that are healthy. And with people who feed my energy rather than need things for me. And that was a big shift in my marriage to my husband now, who's incredibly supportive and wonderful. He's a very mature person. And it was such a revelation to me when I met him that he didn't need anything.
[00:33:47] Nicole: And that probably feels weird sometimes. That feels wrong to you at first of like, “Wait, this isn't love.” This isn't what I'm used to. Did it feel like that?
[00:33:56] Lisa: I actually had a counselor at the time, and I was telling her all about him and she was like, “Well, he's a fully functional adult. That's how it's supposed to be.” So it's taking care of myself by feeding my relationships, by surrounding myself with people, whether it's professionally or personally, that feed my energy and spark my creativity. And also, it is taking time for myself. So my husband, although he’d totally deny this, is much more of an extrovert than I am, I'm an introvert. So for me, there are times when I just need to have some me time alone time. Actually, at the restaurant, I found it really challenging being in the front of the house, and there were times when I actually had to go down to the basement and just catch my breath from just all the intense interaction that was going on. So it's just making sure, especially with this film and we've been doing travel. The day that we were in San Diego together, there were 250 people. It was the first time that we'd had a chance to interact with an audience after the film, and there were so many people coming up and sharing. It was really gratifying to see how much the movie had moved all these people and their reaction was so overwhelmingly positive and enthusiastic. But at the same time I was a little...
[00:35:20] Nicole: Overwhelmed!
[00:35:21] Lisa: Oh, totally. And then we flew home and we were so excited because we had been out of the country for a couple of weeks. I just remember having this feeling of just no place like home moment when you walk into your house and your space and you're so delighted, you're excited to leave and you're delighted to be at home.
[00:35:41] Nicole: Well, then, as an introvert, my home is my sanctuary. I sense yours is as well. So it's where you get your energy. And to come back from that, like you said, very gratifying experience in these exciting travels out of the country. But to come back to that, there's where you fill your tank. I want to talk to you a little bit about John, because when we were at the screening in San Diego, John was with you and you and I were talking and you said, “I did a lot of work to get to this guy.” And you talked a little bit about that, about choosing someone who is a fully functioning adult and who is healthy. But take us through that journey of meeting John and the work that you did to not only find that kind of love, but receive it.
[00:36:21] Lisa: That's so interesting because up until I had met John, I thought that relationships were supposed to happen, like in Disney movies. I thought that people just popped into your life and I had this revelation and I went through some really constructive counseling. Once I moved to Sonoma County and I decided that I really wanted to make my life work better, both personally and professionally. And I had this revelation that I had been successful professionally by being very joyful in my career, in the type of work I was doing, the people I was working with and the businesses that I was supporting. And I realized I could be the same way about my relationship. So this is something that I never thought I would do. But I actually signed up online and it wasn't about being online with my profile. It was the idea that I could actually pick who I wanted. And so I went down a whole list of things that I wanted in a partner and just the idea that I could pick. So I shot for the moon, I went for broke. I wanted somebody who had traveled, who spoke multiple languages. I was like, “There's no way this guy exists. This is totally impossible.”
[00:37:48] Nicole: But put it out there.
[00:37:49] Lisa: I put this perfect guy out there, and John popped up as my perfect match. But the weird thing was, we had met in real life two weeks earlier.
[00:37:57] Nicole: Oh! And two weeks earlier. What was your instinct?
[00:38:02] Lisa: Oh, if I tell you this.,,
[00:38:06] Nicole: Now, you have to tell me!
[00:38:06] Lisa: Well, he tells the story all the time, but honestly, he was so handsome and friendly and he was at an event. It was actually an election night party in 2008. It was a pizza party to watch the election results. And he was there with a woman, a friend of mine who was 80 years old, and she's an artist. And I thought, “Oh, for sure he's gay.”
[00:38:28] Nicole: Oh, so you're like, this isn't even on the radar for me.
[00:38:32] Lisa: He's a handsome man in the room, and he's there with this older woman and, you know, very elegant woman. And I was like, his wife had passed away. He had been out of circulation for a couple of years. I hadn't run into him and he was sort of getting out in the world at that point. But he laughs about it. He said, I had my arms crossed and I was backing away from him. I just remember him being very, very friendly. So the reality was unmatched. I only had my profile up for one day and then I was getting some unwanted interest. And so I took my picture down. But John, and the day that I had my picture up, he had seen my picture. So when he pinged me, he's like, I know you.
[00:39:14] Nicole: I've met you before. I love that.
[00:39:15] Lisa: Yeah. And so when we drove up together for breakfast, we had breakfast at a place on my turf. So I figured, you know, I wanted to take some control on this time around. And I decided in passed. I never asked for advice from friends or family about what they thought about the people. And this time I was asking everybody in my world. So I went to this cafe right down the street from my office where I worked. I held residence there when I was trying to write or do creative work. I was there a good part of every day, so all the people knew me. So I was like, I'm going in on a date. My first date with this guy. You guys all got to give me feedback. And we had a first date where we were actually really open and honest about things that we were looking for and what we wanted, and it felt different. I knew it was different and also I just knew it was the right thing and it was the right guy. I knew I was in the right place. You know, people always say when it's right, you'll know. And I always thought that was complete B.S..
[00:40:12] Nicole: But you did. Yeah. And you had done the work on yourself to really know yourself, be empowered, do this intentionally. And then it sounds like you were trusting that gut feeling that maybe you hadn't in the past. And I love that there's a juxtaposition between where we started in the conversation of you not taking any input at all when you decided to leave Northwestern and go into business with Chuck to this moment where you were like, I was asking everyone for feedback. So not necessarily that when we do the opposite of something, it's the answer. But you had done all this work to get to this point, and that's how it naturally unfolded.
[00:40:48] Lisa: Yeah, and I've learned that the people in your life that you trust when you surround yourself by people who really care for you and hold you up to your best self, they can provide you with a mirror. So it's not about not knowing what you want or soliciting advice from people who you need to tell you what to do. It's really about you getting clear.
[00:41:18] Nicole: I think as humans, we're afraid of the mirror because what is it going to show us? I think sometimes we have people in our lives who are a strong mirror for us to be run from. And then it sounds like you got to a point where you're like, I'm ready for the mirror now. I'm ready to face it. I'm ready to step into who I am. And you surrounded yourself with these people. I think it's what you said about you surrounded yourself with people who fed your energy versus taking it. It was the step in the right direction towards it. So as we're wrapping up, this is a podcast about the power of choosing yourself. Looking back on this incredible life that you've led, we just talked about so many ways you did this, but what are some key ways that you didn't choose yourself and how do you do so now?
[00:42:03] Lisa: Some of the key ways that I didn't choose myself were not asking for help or feedback or even sharing. My decisions with family and friends and people closest to me because I was afraid.
[00:42:19] Afraid of that.
[00:42:19] Mirror. Yep. You know, it felt like I was choosing myself, but in reality, I was running from myself. The other thing is, when I got to L.A., I started my own wine brokerage, and I thought at the time that I really needed a partner, and I'm glad I ended up in marketing and making the decisions that I did. And I was able to sell my business successfully to the partner, and she ran it for many years and was successful. But the idea that I even needed a partner in the first place was based on my idea that I couldn't do it alone, which was false, because you never do anything alone. You always can find the support that you need. But my fear drove me into making some decisions in that business. That were not choosing the best path for myself. So fear of failure. Fear of being alone. Fear of what people would think. Thinking that I couldn't make it.
[00:43:28] Nicole: Do you think some of those fears were residual from running the restaurant with Chuck?
[00:43:34] Lisa: Yes.
[00:43:35] Nicole: So you had to really face those and then work on eliminating those fears to the best of your ability to really stand and realize you did actually accomplish things on your own, as you said. Yes, in a partnership. But you did these things.
[00:43:50] Lisa: And seeking out people who support me and being able to sort out feedback that's constructive and feedback that is just not helpful and understanding the difference between the two. And one of the things that I learned and this was a result of counseling and work that I did, but I was tasked with improving what my counselor called my bullshit meter. And that's if you're a caretaker person, a person whose ideas you need to fix or make things better for other people, and you're hearing from them that their problems are your fault or your problems. You, you, you. I could do all this other stuff if it weren't for you. You're selfish or you're this or that, right? The exercise I was taught was to actually agree.
[00:44:48] Nicole: Wow, I have not heard this.
[00:44:50] Lisa: So if somebody says you're selfish, you say, “Yes, I am selfish.”
[00:44:54] Okay?
[00:44:55] You have to think of that. I am selfish. I really need to take care of myself. And I know this is hard to hear, but yes, I am selfish. And yes, I am mean. And yes, I am stingy because those are, you know, those things that you're reactive to those things because that person is pushing your buttons and they know exactly the things are your biggest, deepest fears that I'm selfish or God forbid I'm selfish. So the moment that you start agreeing with them, it was the most transformative experience of my life to actually start agreeing and stop fighting with people about that kind of stuff.
[00:45:28] Nicole: You drop the defensiveness and you also take the energy out of the interaction, right? Because they're wanting you to fight back and it's like fuel, but you're just like, Hmm.
[00:45:36] Lisa: And that's what helps reset the BS meter because then you're like, well, no, this is BS that's changed my life. It's something I've tried to teach my daughters. It's like when somebody's problems are all of a sudden your problems or they have problems with you, you've got to agree, stop fighting it or think about it. Is it true? Okay, maybe this is true, but the moment you do everything shifts and maybe it is true, maybe you are being selfish or maybe you are being mean.
[00:46:04] Nicole: Yeah. And there might be some actual constructive feedback to consider. Right. But you're allowing it in.
[00:46:10] Lisa: But is it okay? It might be okay.
[00:46:13] Nicole: That's revolutionary. I have not heard that one.
[00:46:17] Lisa: Really?
[00:46:18] Nicole: Yeah, I have heard a technique that my therapist taught me is similar, which is disengaging when someone's coming at you, you know, just a gray rock. You just go uninteresting because someone's feeding off the drama. It doesn't even matter that it's negative. But this is like, yes, yes, I am those things, I'm going to own it and then shift the narrative.
[00:46:40] Lisa: It's a ninja moment where you stop resisting and there's this incredible power in that. And that for me was the biggest, hugest shift in my life. And the counselor at the moment, you know, because I was like, I'm, you know, attracting these people in my relationships and they're these patterns. And I said, “How do I stop that?” And she said, “The moment that you stop this pattern that you have of buying into this dynamic, you will attract the right person into your life.”
[00:47:14] Nicole: You think that was your here for me button?
[00:47:16] Lisa: Yes.
[00:47:21] Nicole: Lisa, I want to thank you for joining us to tell your story. “Love, Charlie” is a beautiful movie. And you talked about Chuck and the dynamic between you. And I am just so honored to have you here with your candor, vulnerability, and the thoughtfulness you put behind your own growth and evolution and what you've shared with other people as a service. So thank you so much.
[00:47:44] Lisa: Oh, you're welcome. I look forward to listening to the podcast.
[00:47:47] Nicole: I want to thank Lisa Ehrlich for joining me and sharing what she's learned as she's navigated the detours of her life. One thing from our conversation that resonates for me is that when Lisa tried to go back to academia, the door had closed. And even finishing her PhD was fraught with challenges that led her to just move on to LA and a new life of her own. In the first episode of this season, I talked about how maybe detours aren't really going off course, but just part of the path. In which case you can't really go back. You have to keep marching forward and leave what's behind you. This was certainly the case for Lisa, and it led her back to herself. There have been many mile markers along the way for her reclaiming her last name while recognizing she'd earned the name Trotter and the cognac and cigar moment when she realized she was going to be okay. But I think the most poignant takeaway for me was when she recognized she needed to solicit feedback from others along the way. When we talk about choosing ourselves, we often hear how important it is to trust your gut, to follow your intuition. But for Lisa, choosing herself means choosing people she trusts to be in her life and be a mirror. They help her get in touch with her intuition. And as she said, she then runs their input through that filter. She didn't do this earlier in life. On some level, she knew she was abandoning herself when she left grad school.
[00:49:16] And input would likely have steered her away from doing so. Later, when she met her husband, John, she asked people in her life to share what they thought of him, not because she needed them to tell her what to do, but because it would help her get clear on what was best for her. So sometimes choosing yourself looks like choosing the right people to accompany you on this journey we call life the ones who hold you accountable and hold your hand. Being here for you while you're here for yourself. “Love, Charlie: The Rise and Fall of Chef Charlie Trotter” is now streaming on Apple TV and Amazon. For more information on the movie, Lisa, and director Rebecca Halpern visit the show notes for this episode at hereformepodcast.com.
Here For Me is produced by Lens Group Media in association with Tulla Productions. As is often said, it takes a village to make the show happen, and my deepest gratitude goes out to every person in that village: our producers Dave Nelson and Stacy Harris; designer and illustrator; Amy Senftleben, who created our cover art; and our production assistant, Amanda McGonigal, who makes sure every "I” is dotted and every "T” is crossed and creates everything you see on hereformepodcast.com. Until next time, I'm Nicole Christie. Thank you so much for listening. Here's to you being here for you and to the power of choosing yourself.