Being a Likeable Badass - with Alison Fragale

All right, so Alison, welcome to the Brilliant Balance Show.

Thanks for having me.

I wanna start today with sort of the very beginning.

Um, one of the things that I enjoy mo- enjoyed most about your book, and I've read it twice now, is the level of, like, self-awareness and humor, and we get this little, like, peek behind the scenes at what you're like in real life.

And what I would love to hear about is what was little Alison like? Like, what...

There's, there's a part in the book where you say, "My tendency would always be on the side of more assertive rather than less," and I wonder how early that showed up.

Oh, I'm sure very early.

Um, uh, I mean, the person who really should be representing this on my po- on the podcast is my father, who has lots of opinions about this.

[laughs]

Um, uh, two things I remember my dad telling me as a kid, which, which seemed very false at the time, but now in retrospect, I'm like, "Oh, that's probably right," was he said, "Everything's either black or white with you.

There is no gray," which I think is still accurate, "And your mouth is gonna get you in a lot of trouble one day."

[laughs]

And I was like, "Okay." So, um, I'm a f- You know, I, I'm a, I'm an Italian first-born daughter and granddaughter on both sides.

Like, if you ever see the Instagram memes about the firstborn everything, like, that's so me.

Um, so I was v- had no problems with assertiveness, for sure.

However, I mean, when I think back about this, I've told this story not in the book, but in a couple of places, that when I was a kid, I grew up...

I was born in the '70s, and I st- I started school a little bit young for my grade.

Like, I was kind of on the cusp, whereas today, if I had my, my October birthday, I would be a year behind where I ultimately was.

But then everything was like, you know, negotiable-

Very Midwest, yeah

...

Midwest.

But whatever, right? You could just make a call, and it's fine.

So I started school, and my dad thought that I was ready academically.

I was...