The Personal Success Podcast with Ryan Watts

How to Define Success For Yourself | Career Reinvention, Food As Love Language and Fulfillment | with Lisa Parda

Lisa Parda · April 20, 2026

Wellness · Entrepreneur · Authorin

Interview with Lisa Parda

How to Define Success For Yourself | Career Reinvention, Food As Love Language and Fulfillment | with Lisa Parda

Podcast: The Personal Success Podcast with Ryan Watts

April 20, 2026 · 1 hr 6 min

What does success really mean when your life does not fit neatly into one label? In this episode, Ryan sits down with Lisa Parda for a rich and wide ranging conversation about ambition, reinvention, food, grief, curiosity, and what it means to build a life that actually feels…

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How to Define Success For Yourself | Career Reinvention, Food As Love Language and Fulfillment | with Lisa Parda

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Key topicsWhy the spaces we live and eat in shape how we feel and connectLisa’s career in real estate taught her that the spaces we live in shape how we feel, connect, and even eat. A cluttered kitchen can make cooking feel impossible; a welcoming dining space can turn a simple meal into a moment of community. Now, through both property and food, Lisa explores how environments support wellbeing. She shares how small changes - whether it’s fixing up a building to serve a neighborhood or setting a table that invites people to linger - can transform daily life. It’s not just about recipes or real estate, but about designing spaces that make people feel nourished and cared for. Turning Food Into Self-Care You Can FeelFor Lisa, food is not just fuel - it’s one of the simplest ways to reclaim agency over your wellbeing. She breaks down the emotional ballast food can carry: celebration, comfort, and sometimes shame. Instead of rules or perfectionism, she focuses on repeatable practices like sourcing food you trust, cooking in a way that feels manageable, and learning to enjoy what you create for yourself. With stories from her own journey - from early health scares to later healing through food - she shows how cooking can move from a source of stress to a tool for resilience and joy. Why Midlife Isn’t a Crisis but a Chance to Redraw the MapToo often, midlife gets framed as decline or burnout, but Lisa shows it can be the most creative season of all. At 53, she chose not to abandon the career she’d built in real estate but to shrink it down so she could expand elsewhere-into a radio show built on connection, a cookbook rooted in real-life meals, and speaking opportunities that energize her. She shares how to pivot without torching the past: honor what still serves you, release what drains you, and make room for what feels alive. Her story is proof that midlife isn’t an ending point but a doorway to reinvention. View all topics →

About Lisa Parda

Candid Conversations on Food, Wellness, and Finding Joy in the Messy Middle of Life

20+ years Real estate sales, management & renovationAward-winning New Hampshire real estate expert128 recipes Published in My Love Language is Food2-hour weekly show Lisa and Robyn on the Mic

For more than twenty years, Lisa Parda has helped people buy, sell, and reimagine properties in New Hampshire. As the Owner of RealtyScape Brokerage, LLC, she doesn’t just work in residential real estate — she’s also an income-producing, value-add agent with experience fixing up and revitalizing commercial and multifamily properties. That passion for creating spaces that serve people and communities threads through all her work.

Today, she’s just as likely to be found behind a microphone as she is at a closing table. As co-host of Lisa and Robyn on the Mic, a live weekly radio show, Lisa has spent the past two years hosting two-hour conversations that meander the way real life does. Listeners tune in for honesty, laughter, and the kind of exchanges that feel like pulling up a chair at the kitchen table.

Food has become her latest way of exploring connection. Her forthcoming cookbook, My Love Language Is Food (Fall 2025), isn’t about flawless recipes — it’s about survival, joy, and the small rituals that keep people going. Lisa draws from her own seasons of struggle: long work hours, the ups and downs of body image, and the lessons of using food both as comfort and as medicine.

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About this episode

What does success really mean when your life does not fit neatly into one label?

In this episode, Ryan sits down withLisa Pardafor a rich and wide ranging conversation about ambition, reinvention, food, grief, curiosity, and what it means to build a life that actually feels like your own.

Lisa has worn many hats across her life and career, including aviation professional, real estate broker, radio host, and cookbook author. In this conversation, she shares how a deeply held dream of becoming an air traffic controller came to an end, how she found her way into real estate, and how her love of food became a path toward healing, self expression, and connection.

Together, Ryan and Lisa explore the emotional meaning of food, the stories we inherit about success, the importance of asking better questions, and why fulfillment often has less to do with status and more to do with pride, presence, and authenticity. They also discuss Lisa’s radio show, Lisa and Robin on the Mic, and how open conversation helped her process grief, family pain, and forgiveness in a completely new way.

This is a conversation about living fully, loving deeply, and defining success on your own terms.

In this episode, we discuss: • Lisa’s path from aviation to real estate to radio and publishing • What it feels like to grieve a dream that never came true • Why food became her love language • Healing a difficult relationship with food and body image • The emotional and relational power of sharing meals • Why food can be both nourishment and medicine • How conversation brings hidden pain into the light • What success means when it is no longer based on money, image, or outside approval • Why pride, fulfillment, and connection may be better markers of success than status

Connect with Lisa Parda:

Get Her Cook Book, My Love Language is Food: The Everyday Edition: https://a.co/d/0iUj0QTF

Stars at Night Publishing starsatnightpublishing.com

Lisa and Robin on the Mic You can find Lisa and Robyn on the Mic on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/@LisaandRobynOnthemic

About Lisa: Lisa Parda is a real estate broker, radio show host, and cookbook author whose work blends curiosity, connection, and lived experience. Her journey has moved through aviation, communications, real estate, and media, all shaped by a deep interest in people, meaning, and the many ways a life can evolve over time. Her cookbook, My Love Language Is Food, grew out of her personal relationship with cooking, nourishment, and the way food can communicate care, memory, and love.

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Guest: Lisa Parda