Greg Pinneo Podcast - Episode 69 - Molly Leber

In Episode #69 of The Greg Pinneo Podcast, Greg sits down with real estate entrepreneur, broker, writer, and newly published poet Molly Leber for a deeply reflective conversation about creativity, self-awareness, authenticity, and the way we process the different chapters of our lives. Writing has been part of Molly's life for decades. What began with journaling and an attempt to better understand her own thoughts and emotions eventually evolved into poetry, short stories, fiction, and other forms of writing. Poetry, however, has always been different. Molly describes poems arriving unexpectedly—sometimes while driving or in the middle of everyday life—with an urgency that requires her to stop and capture the words before they're gone. For Molly, those poems became something much more than creative expression. Each represents a moment, emotion, question, or experience she was trying to understand. As she tells Greg, they are almost like "receipts" for things she has paid for in life—some beautiful, some painful, but each connected to a larger story. Over more than 25 years, Molly accumulated more than 100 of these poems. What began as handwritten pages, scraps of paper, old computer files, and homemade collections eventually became her published book, Chronicles of Her Perspective. Molly takes Greg through that unlikely journey—from giving family members handwritten poetry as Christmas gifts when money was tight, to compiling her work, finding a publisher, and ultimately seeing decades of her life bound into a finished book. But reaching that milestone produced an emotion Molly didn't expect. Instead of feeling only excitement when the finished book arrived, she found herself grieving. Completing something that had accompanied her for so many years meant acknowledging that one chapter was ending and another was beginning. That experience led to a powerful realization: sometimes the price of a new life is letting go of the old one. Greg and Molly explore how that same process applies far beyond writing. Whether navigating relationships, difficult real estate transactions, personal loss, career uncertainty, or major life transitions, growth requires the willingness to examine what happened, take ownership, learn from it, and continue forward. Molly shares how authenticity has become increasingly important in both her personal life and her real estate career—and why avoiding difficult conversations or uncomfortable truths often creates a greater burden than simply facing them. The conversation also turns to purpose, resilience, and the ability to "self-rescue" when life isn't going according to plan. Molly candidly discusses a difficult period in her own business when transactions disappeared and she began questioning whether she even wanted to continue in real estate. Her way forward began with a simple internal message: stand up. Sometimes we aren't as trapped as we believe—we simply have to remember that we still have the ability to act. Molly also shares that she submitted her newly published poetry collection for consideration for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, another step in a creative journey that, for most of her life, she never expected to share publicly. Episode #69 is a conversation about much more than poetry. It's about paying attention to your own life, finding a way to process both the beautiful and difficult parts of it, recognizing when a chapter has ended, and having the courage to stand up and begin writing the next one.