In this episode, Lucy explains how positive self-talk can rewire our brains, creating new neural pathways that foster confidence and resilience. 

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

WATCH THE EPISODE

Hi everybody! It’s such a joy to be here with you today. This episode is to share with you something that has the powerful ability to transform your life, your career, and your connections. It’s something straightforward but significantly impactful and that is the power of positive self-talk.

You see, we all have this little voice inside our heads. It’s constantly chattering, and the things it says can either lift us up or tear us down. This is exactly what self-talk is. Now, imagine if this voice was always telling you how amazing, capable, and remarkable you are. Imagine the confidence you’d feel walking into any room or taking on any challenge.

Unfortunately, for many of us, myself included, that little voice isn’t always so kind. It might remind us of our past failures or predict future failures. It might tell us we’re not good enough, not smart enough, or not deserving of success or we are not ready for better. And here’s the kicker: we believe it! We let that voice dictate our self-worth, our daily habits, our thoughts and emotions, our actions, and ultimately, our lives.

Negative self-talk is like a cloud that dims our potential. It drains our energy, diminishes our confidence, and stops us from reaching our goals. When we constantly criticize ourselves, we reinforce a narrative that keeps us small. Think about it: would you let a friend or a loved one speak to you the way you sometimes speak to yourself? I bet not!

But here’s the good news: just as we can be our own worst critics, we can also be our greatest cheerleaders. Studies have shown that positive self-talk can rewire our brains. Neuroscientists have discovered that our thoughts can create new neural pathways. 

This means the more we practice positive self-talk, the more it becomes a natural part of our thinking process. We start to build new habits, new behaviors, and yes, newfound confidence.

So, how do we harness this power of positive self-talk? Here are three strategies:

1. Awareness and Reflection: I probably say this about every topic I speak on, always start with awareness. First, become aware of your self-talk. Pay attention to what that little voice is saying. When you catch yourself in negative self-talk, pause and reflect. Ask yourself, “Is this thought true? Is it helpful?” Tell yourself: “oh there goes that negative self talk, gotcha!” Once you notice it, don’t react to it and stop letting it effect your feelings. 
2. Reframe and Replace: Next, reframe those negative thoughts into positive affirmations. Instead of saying, “I’m terrible at this,” try saying, “I’m learning, and I’m improving every day.” Replace “I can not do this” with “I will find a way to do this.”
3. Practice and Consistency: Finally, practice positive self-talk daily. Make it a habit. Start your day with affirmations. Write down three things you love about yourself every night. Surround yourself with positivity—whether it’s books, podcasts, or people.

Let me share a quick story with you. A few years ago, when I started this podcast, and I was terrified. My inner critic was in full force, telling me I wasn’t ready, that I’d make a fool of myself. That I was nobody. That I wasn’t THE Lucy Liu people are used to seeing on screen. But then I decided to try something different. I took a deep breath, looked in the mirror, and told myself, “You’ve got this. You are unique, and you are capable.” I repeated it over and over. And guess what? That simple shift in my mindset transformed my fear into excitement. And here I am, 4 years later, this podcast is still here to bring you weekly value to transform your life. 

Now, imagine what you could achieve if you made positive self-talk a daily practice. Imagine walking into every room, every opportunity, every challenge, knowing that you are enough, that you are capable, that you are worthy. Because you are! 

You ARE amazing!

You ARE remarkable!

You have superpower!

You are irreplaceable!

You are powerful!

You are everything that you dream to be!

So, I challenge you today to start speaking to yourself with kindness, encouragement, and belief. Rewrite your inner narrative to one that empowers you, builds you up, and boosts your confidence. Remember, the most important conversation you will ever have is the one you have with yourself. Make it a powerful one. Thank you & I’ll see you in the next episode.

I believe we are always healing from something, and this episode is for you if you find yourself also on your journey to healing and personal growth.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

WATCH THE EPISODE

Jennifer Joy Jimenez has dedicated over two decades to empowering the well-being of individuals across the globe, especially with her world-renowned dance modality. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today is healing and growing with dancing. 

Jennifer’s profound impact on wellness extends far beyond the dance floor though. Her innovative programs have captured the attention of major media outlets, including Fox, NBC, South Magazine, and she has shared the stage with other thought leaders like Marianne Williamson, Wayne Dyer, and Deepak Chopra.

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Hello, hello, beautiful souls. Welcome, welcome. 

I believe we are always healing from something, and this episode is for you if you find yourself also on your journey to healing and personal growth. And for this special topic, I have my special guest, Jennifer Joy Jimenez. Jennifer has dedicated over two decades to empowering the well-being of individuals across the globe, especially with her world-renowned dance modality. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today is healing and growing with dancing. 

Jennifer’s profound impact on wellness extends far beyond the dance floor though. Her innovative programs have captured the attention of major media outlets, including Fox, NBC, South Magazine, and she has shared the stage with other thought leaders like Marianne Williamson, Wayne Dyer, and Deepak Chopra. Welcome to the show, Jennifer. 

Thank you, Lucy. It is such an honor to be here. I’m super grateful. Thanks for having me. 

You’re all about healing through dancing, right? Is dancing a form of therapy? 

There is dance therapy, actually. So dancing is a form of therapy, just like art therapy is a form of therapy. What I have done is really emerged the worlds of the science of health and wellbeing with transformational spiritual principles. So think personal development, right? Which is more of a forward movement type of work therapy. We’re working with the past coaching, transformational coaching. We’re working with a vision. We’re really being drawn by a vision into a greater expanded version of ourselves. And then my secret sauce is conscious dance. It’s been one of my greatest powerful tools for healing, personal development, selfdiscovery transformation. We can talk more about that, but that’s a little bit of the difference between the two. 

So how does dance help healing? 

Well, something that’s so important these days in our modern world is that scientists and doctors are talking about how sitting is the smoking. And the reason for that is number one, our lymph system is the system that reduces and eliminates toxicity in our body, right? And so many of us spend hours and hours sitting. So just in pure health and wellbeing science, the more we can get up and move our body in dancing is one of the easiest. You need no equipment, maybe just your favorite playlist, but you literally can stand up a few times a day, hit your favorite song and literally just dance down the hallway, dance around your desk, dance into the kitchen. And it gets the lymph moving and moving all the toxicity out of your body. Just for circulation benefits, it’s really powerful and healing. There’s also been a tremendous amount of studies that are showing that of the brain, our ability to really age well in the brain, that dance above and beyond many other types of exercise or movement increases mental acuity by 76%. 

This was a study done by the New England Journal of Medicine. It can absolutely support any Alzheimer’s or any mental health issues. There’s also been a tremendous amount of studies in universities around mental health. A dose of dance actually activates our happy hormones, dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. So it’s a natural mood booster. Just a few minutes of dance, you feel a little more happy, you feel better. It just creates this beautiful sense of self. Now, those are all the scientific reasons. 

Emotionally as well. Now, emotionally, of course, is connected to our hormones, but on a spiritual level for me, my transcendence practice, which I’ve been, I created over 20 years ago, I’ve been using as a healing and spiritual modality for myself as a spiritual practice, as a health practice, as a mental health practice for myself. But it’s also something that I bring into my transformational coaching. 

So I’m a transformational coach that specializes in mind, body, spirit connection. And one of the tools that I use to help my clients who are primarily women, but I also work with men and women to connect to their bodies is conscious dance, mindful breathing, free form movement, working with the natural energies of our bodies. I believe we’re spiritual beings having a human experience. And so many people live completely cut off from their bodies. They kind of walk around like a talking head and their brain tells their body what to do, but what they’ve disconnected from is that the body has innate healing wisdom within it. The body’s number one job is to keep us alive. Our body’s number one job is to fight off any disease. We’re either working with the body to help the body be healthy and whole, or our lifestyle is working against our health and wellness in overall mind, body, spirit connection. 

So one of the things that I learned really early in this work is that so much of our health and wellbeing information is information coming at us, telling us that our body is something that needs it’s going wrong. And our body is something that needs to be fixed. And my message is actually your body is going right. Your body has innate healing wisdom. And if we can just invest some time, right, feeling, being disconnected from our devices, feeling, breathing, and connecting to the body, the body is giving off signals and messages for health and wellbeing. It’s either giving off a signal, Hey, you need to move your body more, or Hey, you’ve done enough work. Now it’s time to rest and recover, or I’m thirsty, right? Give me some water, or you know what? I really just need some nourishing, healthy food, but instead we’re going to, you know, low energy foods like sugar and things of that nature. So it’s about really connecting with the body and allowing the body’s innate wisdom and healing capacity to emerge, be listened to and responded to in a powerful way. 

Thank you for sharing. That’s so much goodness. And I love what you said about dancing through the hallway and dancing. I do that. I dance to another room, right? It’s these little, little things that adds up to big movements, right? But can dancing heal something even deeper like childhood trauma or other types of trauma?

Yeah. You know, one of the things that we have found in the transformational space, is that big T’s, major traumas, as well as little T’s really exist for almost the majority of the population. We’ve all had really challenging experiences in our life. And I’m a big believer in all sorts of therapeutic approaches. And if there’s been a really major trauma, particularly a trauma that involved the body, which I guess all traumas are because we’re walking around in the body, but like physically touching the body, right? So sexual abuse or accidents, injuries that were really traumatic, that trauma lives in our cellular memories. So just talking about it alone, what some people share is that that alone didn’t get to the root energetic transformation. My doorway to a deeper study of the mind body spirit connection actually came in my transition out of being a professional modern dancer.

So my first love dream was to be a dancer. I studied it all over the world, became a professional modern dancer. And then pretty early, actually in that career, I became pregnant with my daughter. So I’d been married for a few years and as life would have it, I get pregnant. I’m 25, only 25 when I get pregnant with her. And being the daughter of a thought leader, of course, all of her friends are handing me all these books on natural birth. And I’m very feeling the fittest I’ve ever felt in my life. And I’m understanding manifestation. And I’m like, I got this. I can have a natural birth. So I trained for this natural birth. Like I’m training to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. I’m visualizing every night. I’m reading my dream birth. I’ve got the whole plan. And I actually ended up with a 50, five, zero 50 hour labor that ended in an unwanted epidural. Although it was either epidural or end up with a C-section because I stalled in my labor. 

So after my birth, I’m thinking, okay, here I am the best shape of my life. Here I am doing everything that I’ve been told to do to all the exercises and the natural birth classes and the visualization and the vision. And so clearly there was something, there was a disconnect here. What was this disconnect? And that really launched me on this quest to discover what had happened for me. But I, it was also this doorway into what I do today, right? What I do today, which is people want to have this beautiful, amazing life. And often there’s a disconnect between the head and the heart or between the mind and the body. And what it was for me was in my dance days, I had a very abusive controlling and critical relationship with my body. I told my body when to eat, what to eat, when to move. I often overworked and under rested at that period of time. Well, if you want a natural birth, you actually need to come at your relationship with your body through the lens of love, trust, and a deep surrender to the body’s wisdom. And so on this quest, I found mentors, teachers, books, all sorts of materials that helped to teach me really what innately I knew deep down that there is this divine connection between the mind, the body, and the spirit. 

And so as I began to discover all of this, I began to find conscious dance and I found some conscious dance mentors at the time. And I began to dance. Now, how does this connect to healing trauma? Well, my birth was a very traumatic experience for certain aspects of it that created trauma in my body that I honestly didn’t even know until I started dancing. And in conscious dance, the difference between regular dance is it’s choreographed movement. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do the movement. In conscious dance or in transcend dance, you’re unlocking and unleashing this inner dancer from within this inner healer. I like to call it your wise inner being, or you also have this inner doctor within you that is healing you as long as you know how to connect to and trust this inner being. Right? So I start doing this conscious dance and in the dance practice, I could feel the pain, the grief, even the physical trauma that I had endured as part of this birth begin to heal, begin to shed, begin to let go. I started to talk to other conscious dance practitioners, as well as leaders. One of my good friends, I talked to her at the time, and she talked to me all about years and years of therapy to overcome her sexual abuse. And it wasn’t until she found conscious dance and started dancing that the deepest layers of healing occurred. And now 20 years later, now that I’ve created my own conscious dance modality, taking the best of everything I had learned from my mentors and leaders and bringing in layers of personal development and transformational principles into the conscious dance practice, I have found many, many clients heal traumas and deep wounds by means of these principles. It’s pretty amazing, pretty powerful. Oh, and by the way, the successful part of the birth story is that I went on to have two more children. My son, Joel, who’s now 20, I had him in two hours and my son, Joaquin, I had him all natural dream birth in 90 minutes. Now I wasn’t going for speed. I was just simply going for a harmonious, beautiful, natural birth. And using the principles I had learned along the way, I was able to do that. 

Beautiful story. Thank you for sharing. So what are some of the top health benefits of dancing you’ve seen with your clients? 

Yeah, I would say several things. The difference between transcend dance and other types of dance fitness or fitness classes in general is oftentimes if you’re feeling like you have a headache or an stomach or an injury or something like that, typically you’ll opt out and be like, I’m not going to do that class today. In transcendance, I actually invite clients to bring their ailments to class because we’re actually re-energizing the body. We’re releasing tension and stagnant energy, low vibration energy, and we’re connecting to this effervescent flow of energy that we all have access to. So by the end of class, they’re saying things like, I came with a headache. My headache is gone. I had a tight foot that is completely released. I was feeling a little low energy or not as my best self. Now I’m feeling rejuvenated and full of joy and aliveness. 

The other thing that I often hear, particularly from those that would consider themselves non-dancers, people that say they’re clumsy, they have two left feet, they’ve been told they can’t dance, or they’re super self-conscious. This modality unlocks that uninhibited, confident, free being without alcohol, without drugs, without having to be at a wedding. You know what I mean? All of a sudden they come alive and they feel seen, acknowledged. They feel safe in this environment and they find this ability to really move and become more embodied. If you’re that self-conscious and you’ve been told all your life, oh, don’t dance, don’t dance, you actually kind of rise above your body. What I often hear from those clients is they feel clumsy. They bump into things. They trip over things. It’s because they’re not actually grounded in their body. 

One of the benefits of being more embodied through a modality like this is you actually inhabit the world in a more graceful way. You move fluidly and you have spatial awareness is what I would call it. I could go on and on. There’s new science actually about bone density health, as well as the ability to retain muscle. You would think weight training would score the highest. They’re actually finding that dance, because there’s different movements going on in the body at all times, the twitch muscles, there’s fast twitch and slow twitch muscles actually help retain and sustain muscle mass above and beyond resistance training in some of these studies in the UK. It’s balance, cardiovascular health, mental health, physical health. The list is incredibly long in terms of the health benefits of dance. It’s amazing. 

I love how you put it in a scientific way. For me, it’s just very simple. Dancing is a good brain break. Therefore, it should be in our life, even if it’s for a couple seconds, like you talked about earlier, just to dance across the living room and dancing through your house to the kitchen. That’s going to add up that compound effect to your everyday life. 

Exactly. Yeah. The benefits don’t require hours and hours of dance. Literally just a few minutes of dance they have found creates that dose of happy hormones that activates dopamine and oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins are all released. If you choose a song that makes you happy is part of it. Music is part of the health benefits of dance because we’re usually dancing. You don’t have to use music. Sometimes I’m just dancing around and my kids are like, why are you dancing? I’m like, because it feels good, but infusing music into it is also part of the health benefits of dance as well. 

For someone new to the concept of conscious dance and holistic wellbeing, would you say dancing is accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds? 

 Yes. Yes. The beautiful thing about a conscious dance modality like transcend dance is that it absolutely crosses the age barrier. So you can do this with your children. We have transcend dance facilitators that I’ve trained who work with senior citizens. You can do this in a chair. I actually have clients who are healing from surgery, who are in bed that do very minimal movement. They’re able to do an entire transcend dance session while recovering from surgery. And that’s also because we’re activating the mind. If you’ve ever seen a, an Olympic athlete getting ready for their competition, you will often see them wearing headphones. You’ll often see them with their eyes closed. And sometimes if you think about a skier, you’ll see them imagining you can actually see in their brains that they’re visualizing themselves going down there and doing their routine. You’ll see this with gymnasts as well. So it is not new information that the power of the mind is massive. 

They did a scientific study with basketball players with free throws. That’s where you stand way back and you throw the ball and it goes through the hoop, right? So they took and split the group in half, half of the group, they just had visualizing the free throws. The other half of the group actually physically did the physical action. And they found that the group that just visualized it didn’t actually physically do the action improved equally to the ones that were physically doing. That’s because there is a brain body connection. So in transcendence, we’re activating the power of the mind and visualization, which activates our creative brain. We spend so much of our day in our left logical intellect, which is fine. But part of, we know that we don’t access nearly the capacity of the brain. And we do when we’re younger, we activate and access. Part of that is we’re more mobile and moving. We have recess or we’re running around, we’re playing, we’re using our imagination. We’re creating things when we’re young. So in transcendence, we’re actually activating that part of our brain and we’re using the muscle of visualization. And for me, even when I was healing from my own knee surgery, I would do certain movements, but then I would actually visualize and imagine the movements that I was not yet able to do physically, but I would see myself do them. And I absolutely know a hundred percent that my full healing and my ability to walk and hop and skip and hike and run and, and leap and do all of the things that I now am able to do post surgery had a lot to do with, of course, regular science and following my, my doctor’s orders and doing physical therapy and all those things. Yes. And bringing in the power of the visualization, working with energy and the components found in transcendance. So, yeah. I love it. 

You kind of went straight into my next question, which is talking more about the interplay between movement and mindset, right? Cause we talk about mindset transformation, how that’s important in achieving your optimal health and joy. So what is your take on the interplay between the movement and the mindset?

] It’s so important. And I’ll just sum it up this way as a professional dancer and in the professional dance world in my early twenties, right? All the information coming at me from society, as well as even close people around me, I was told that you had to be very, very thin and you had to look a certain way to be a successful professional dancer. I received that information. I didn’t argue with it. I went ahead with it. And that led to some very abusive behaviors with my body, starving myself, overtraining, under eating, really trying to shrink my body. And it created this very adversarial body abuse mentality and results, right? 

With my actions through my birth process, which I shared. And then my finding of conscious dance, all of a sudden now I’m in classes where instead of looking at myself in the mirror and being told you need to have six pack abs and buns of steel, right? Which is very much the generation that I, that I was in at the time. And a lot of fitness classes, you’re taught to look at your flaws and try to fix those flaws with this fitness or dance or movement technique that you’re being taught, right? In conscious dance, there’s no mirrors. So number one, you’re not staring at this, just the flesh and tearing it apart in your mind, right? You’re taught to go within and to actually learn how to feel connected to your body. Let’s do this now, actually, let’s do this together. 

And I’m going to invite the listeners to do this with us. So we’re not just talking about it, but we’re also having a mini experience of it. So if you just close your eyes and just take a nice deep breath, breathing in through the nose, exhale out with a nice sigh, place one hand on your heart, one hand just below your belly button and just feel your body for a moment. 

So you notice the tips of your toes, notice your fingertips, bring your awareness to your ears, to your nose, and bring your awareness to your heart beating and your lungs breathing. Now, for some people who are very mindful and practicing meditation or yoga, maybe they did today send a wave of gratitude to their heart beating and their lungs breathing. But most people take for granted that their heart is beating 24 seven without rest from the day they are conceived. 

And that heartbeat is the first dance of life in the mother’s womb before their bodies even formed is the heartbeat to the last day that they take their last breath. The heart is beating. And even if we tried, we can’t breathe our own bodies or make our heart beat. It’s an involuntary thing that occurs right inside of our body. And yet for me, it’s a sign and signal that we are being breathed, that there is a power greater than us that has gifted us with this life. 

And for a moment, we can just send a wave of gratitude to our whole body for working so hard day in and day out, to be the vehicle through which we live and breathe and express and love and bring forth our dreams. And to look beyond the flesh, beyond the form to all of the many gifts that this body gives us. Gift of loving the gift of eyesight, smell, hearing, taste, touch, the ways your body is working. We’re grateful for that, right? 

We’re grateful for all the ways our body is working. And then we allow our eyes to gently open. 

So just a few minutes, right, of going within. That’s one of the biggest differences in conscious dance is it’s an inner world, right? You’re moving from the inside out. There’s this body wisdom that when I let go of the left brain and all of the ways I’ve been taught to move, and I learned to really come into this inner world where there’s a part of me that isn’t, it’s the higher self versus the human self, right? 

So when I activate conscious dance, I’m allowing my higher self to move the human self and to quote Gabrielle Roth, when you put the body in motion, the psyche heals. It’s such a powerful, powerful practice. So through this, I was able to heal my body abuser, so to speak, right? That inner, overactive inner critic. And I was able to install like an operating system. When you think about kind of rebooting your computer’s operating system, I literally had to pull the weeds of all of the limiting beliefs and disempowering messages that I received for many, many years about my body. I’m more of a curvy woman and embrace that this is how God made me. And there’s nothing wrong with me. And that actually, as I just eat healthy, find beautiful, fun ways to move my body and love my body, my body’s loving me. My body’s meeting me with this love. I am so much happier. I have so much more energy. I have more energy today and I’m almost 50. I just turned 49 than I did when I was in my mid twenties. You know, I am living a life of my dreams and really helping other people heal the disconnect, heal those disempowering messages that they received as well and find a different way of moving their body that is loving and supportive. 

I love that. And I completely resonate with what you just said, because I’m in my forties too. And I feel so much better than in my twenties and thirties. Oh my goodness. It’s because we are replacing our disempowering beliefs with high vibrational thoughts. And for you, it was being a curvy women. For me, it was something different, but everyone has disempowering beliefs. Just it’s possible, right? Beautiful. Jennifer, what is your favorite quote that you go by in life?

Oh, I love it. So my favorite quote is by Martha Graham and it is, there is a vitality, a life force and energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action. And because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost. 

Beautifully said. Thank you so much for sharing everyone. If you’ve enjoyed this powerful exercise and wisdom from Jennifer, check out Brave Thinking Institute, and it will be linked in the show notes. 

Thank you. Beautiful. Thank you so much for having me. 

Hosted by the inspirational Lucy Liu, this episode is a must-listen for anyone who finds themselves nervous about public speaking, whether it’s in front of a camera, a crowd, or even just a few people. Lucy shares her expert advice on how to build and maintain confidence in any speaking situation.

Lucy begins by dispelling the myth that confidence is not an inherent trait. Instead, she asserts that confidence is a learned skill that anyone can develop with practice and the right mindset. She challenges listeners to make a firm decision to become their most confident selves, emphasizing that confidence is a choice and a way of living and dives into actionable tips to boost your speaking confidence.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

WATCH THE EPISODE

This episode is for you if you ever find yourself a little nervous when speaking in public, speaking to a camera or speaking to others because I’m going to teach you my best tips on how to be more confident when speaking. Hello hello beautiful souls, welcome back and I believe I’m qualified to talk about this topic because I speak on the topic of confidence, I facilitate workshops around building confidence and I get this alot: “Lucy, you seem so confident!” Well I’m going to start with that being confident is a decision. 

Confidence is not something you have or don’t have, it is a way of living life, it is your choice to be that person or not.

Before we go any further, have you made the decision to be that confident version of you? 

Are you still blaming your parents for not giving you confidence genes? No, confidence is not something we are born with, it is a learned skill and with practice anyone can be as confident as you wish to be. 

Are you still admiring others who are so charismatic when they are speaking? No need for that, you can be the exact same way with practice. But do you even believe that’s possible? 

Do you think you are not confident because you are an introvert and you can’t be loud? Eh Eh! Don’t let being an introvert or being quiet be your excuse to step up your game. Confidence is not about decibels, I can be the most quiet person in the room yet still be the most confident! 

So after you have made a firm decision to be a confident speaker, always believe that building confidence in speaking is a skill that can be developed with practice and most importantly the right mindset. 

Here are my top 4 tips to help you become more confident when speaking:

1. Adopt a Confident Posture Body Language: Stand tall, make eye contact, and use open gestures. Confident body language can influence how others perceive you and how you feel about yourself. If I need to be more confident, I personally like to do the power pose, the superman or superwoman pose where you raise both of your arms up above your head. This body language sends signals to your brain to be more powerful and it’s helped me alot. When you use the restroom before an important meeting, virtual or in person, you can do this to power up. Breathe Deeply: Deep breathing before speaking can calm nerves and help you stay focused. 

2. Prepare Thoroughly Practice, Practice, Practice: Remember we said confidence skill takes practice. IF you are giving a talk, rehearse your speech. Practice in front of a mirror, record yourself and listen back. When I first started being interviewed on other podcasts, I would get so nervous, but after some episodes, I no longer needed to prepare materials because I had enough practice. I would also listen back to hear what filler words I was using and that’s how I got rid of my uhms. You have to build your confidence muscles just like going to the gym. If you are nervous around people, get more practice speaking to others and it gets better because your confidence muscle will grow. 

3. Focus on the Audience, Not Yourself What we focus on grows! 

Shift the Focus: Concentrate on the message you want to deliver and the value it provides to your audience rather than on your own fears. 

If you focus on your fears, your fears will grow, if you focus on how introverted you are, you will start feeling you can’t be as confident and you’ll start shrinking. If you focus on what others will think of you, you will start feeling like a clown. 

But, on the brighter side, If you focus on what value you can provide your audience, you become valuable. If you focus on how you can bring positivity to each of your engagements with other people, you will start to feel good about yourself and in turn be more confident in continuing to show your power. 

4. Turn Anxiety into Excitement: 

What do I mean by that Lucy? Well when you think you are anxious from speaking, whether that’s before speaking to a group of new friends or speaking in front of your boss in a meeting, you might start feeling physical symptoms such as sweaty palms or racing heart or butterflies in the stomach. Because of these symptoms you start telling yourself you are nervous and you can’t do it. Well what if I told you are not having an anxiety attack, you might be having an excitement attack? Does that change things for you? I don’t know about you, but when I ride the rollercoaster, I get all those symptoms and I feel excited. Same with speaking, if you get these symptoms, don’t automatically think you are anxious, because you listened to this podcast today, just know that there is another possibility, that your body is feeling excited for this new speaking endeavor and just go for it. 

Which tip do you like best? Let me know. 

Welcome to another inspiring episode of The Lucy Liu Show, the ultimate fueling station for your mind, business, and life. In this episode, host Lucy Liu sits down with the incredibly talented Carina Gardner, a surface pattern and craft designer turned CEO, who has successfully turned her creative hobbies into a thriving multi-million dollar business.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

WATCH THE EPISODE

Carina Gardner, who has built a successful brand in just two years, shares her journey from being an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota to becoming a successful entrepreneur. She reveals how she started her digital scrapbooking business while juggling her academic career and family life. Karina’s story is a testament to the power of decision-making and the potential to turn creative passions into profitable ventures.

Throughout the episode, Carina offers valuable insights on:

• Transitioning from a hobbyist to a business mindset.
• Overcoming limiting beliefs and embracing new opportunities.
• The importance of distribution and how to find the right channels for your products.
• Managing risks and knowing when to quit your day job.
• The benefits of joining a mastermind group for business growth.
• Practical tips for running successful Facebook ads.

Tune in to this episode for an inspiring conversation filled with practical tips and heartfelt advice. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to take your business to the next level, Carina Gardner’s insights will empower you to believe that you are enough, just as you are right now, to achieve your dreams.

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Hello, hello, beautiful souls. This episode is for you if you want to turn one of your creative hobbies into a profitable business. And for that, I’m really excited to welcome my guest today, Karina Gartner. She is a surface pattern and craft designer turned CEO who teaches hobbyists to make money as designers. As a former university professor and creative director of her company, her expertise led her to build a multi-million dollar brand in just two years. She is also the amazing author of two books on Amazon and host of the Make and Design podcast. Isn’t that amazing? Welcome to the show, Carina.

Oh, I’m so excited to be here.

Oh, lovely. Okay, so I’m all about decision making. So let’s start there. At what point in your life did you make the decision to actually create a business from your creative hobby?

So for me, it was directly after I finished my doctorate. So at the time I was an associate or not associate, I was like an adjunct faculty professor at the University of Minnesota because I just finished my doctorate. I had two really small children and I decided to start a digital scrapbooking business where I was designing 12 by 12 papers and accessories. And this was for the crafting industry. And while I was brand new to the market, it was pretty hot. And as I’ve kind of built my career over the years, I have dug even more into things that I really like to do and figured out ways in order to make money in particular design because that’s what I knew the best about. So fabric, I love the fabric market. And so I managed to get into that market. I like stickers. I like die cutting machines. And so all of these things ended up being things that became part of my business in one way, shape or form. And it became really obvious to me that if you had a great hobby, very often if you knew what you were buying, how you were buying it, you could probably figure out a way to make money in that particular area.

And I’ve myself helped clients turn their hobby into businesses. And I know it’s all about mindset. How did you turn your mindset from it’s just a hobby into a full-blown business mindset?

Yeah, this is hard. This is a hard question for me because I know a lot of people go into like their hobbies, like their quilting. I work with a lot of quilters. They love quilting and they’re like trying to figure out how to make money from quilting. Of course, there’s like a gazillion ways you could make money from it. You could actually sell the quilts you make, right? You could sell like, I have a friend who sells like packs where it’s like everything’s precut. And so then you sell that there’s, you know, the physical part of it. You could sell classes on quilting, right? You could sell the fabric. Like if you designed the fabric, which is what I do, design the fabric and sell that to manufacturers. So there’s like all these different ways you can make, you could sell sewing patterns, like in quilting, right? So there’s all these different ways you can make money. I think that the best thing you can do as you’re kind of just trying to figure out like, how do you make that transition from hobbyist to profitability is to like really brainstorm all the different ways you could make money in that hobby and decide which one you are best suited for. What do you have the most expertise in, in order to get it done? You know, maybe you are a phenomenal cutter, you know, like there’s not very many people who are really great cutters actually in the quilting world. And if you’re really great at cutting and organizing, then you could organize a whole bunch of people who could cut and sell, you know, sell pre cuts of this fabric, right? If you’re a great designer and I was a designer, it made a lot of sense for me to make money selling the design work to fabric manufacturers.

And I think it really starts with the belief that it’s possible, like just how you talked about, you know, what is possible? Because if you’re just sitting at home alone and overthinking, you’re going to think, well, is that possible? Right? Is this is just a hobby. Whereas if you listen to Carina and her experiences with working with different types of creatives, then you will know anything you’re thinking of someone out there is probably already doing it.

Yeah. And have you bought it? That’s the other thing. If you’ve bought it from someone, then if you have a limiting belief that no one’s going to buy it from you, why is that? Why do you feel like nobody will buy it from you? You know, a lot of times expertise comes from just beginning, right? Just getting started. And so, you know, if you like have a limiting belief that no one’s going to buy your sewing pattern or your creative, amazing craft or your jam that you can or whatever it is, you have to really go back to a couple of thoughts, which is why do you feel limited by it? And then second of all, are you feeling limited just because you don’t have the education around it? Because education can be purchased and gotten right. And experience can happen over time. So you just have to get started and your identity will change as you kind of like rip away that limiting a belief by just simply doing the tasks involved with making that hobby into a profitable business.

And I think very often when we turn that hobby into a business, there’s always this question around should you quit your job or at what point do you quit your job? And I think I’ve seen people on both sides. I’ve seen people who actually kept their day jobs and still run a very profitable business on top of their day job, just on very few working hours.

What’s your take on that? You know, I think everybody is right on this. You know, I think everybody has their own way of doing it. Me personally, I teach a lot of design students. I have tons of designers who I work with, whether I’m a creative director over, you know, whatever we’re working on. And my feeling is, and this is because I am risk adverse, to keep your day job until you make enough money to prove that you can replace your current job. It always makes me slightly nervous because a lot of markets need proven techniques, right? Like I’ve noticed there are certain markets that in my mind, and granted this might be a limiting belief, they have kind of a market margin. Like it’s very difficult to kind of get over a certain hump unless you like open up another category. And so because of that, I would say like, for example, if you’re canning jam, like if that’s the thing you’re doing and you’ve got it in three mom and pop shops and you’re selling pretty good, if you’re still not making your current income, or you’re not like at, I would say 80% of the way, there’s kind of where I would be. Then I would make me a little bit nervous because it really isn’t about number of jamming can jams that you’re making, right? It’s about number of opportunities, marketing distribution opportunities available to you. And so that’s what I would say, like getting to at least 80% of your salary, if not your full salary, before you make that leap, makes a lot of sense to me. I didn’t leave one of my current jobs until I literally had made in a month what I had made at my job for a whole year. So like my entire salary I made in one month and that’s when I quit. Like that’s when I kind of made the transition. With same thing with my husband. So my husband’s a stay at home dad. He’s been a stay at home dad now for about two years, but we didn’t let him quit his job until I made his entire salary in a single week. So like we have kind of stringent methods for making those decisions, but it’s because I’m risk adverse. I want to make sure that we’re safe, that financially we’re okay. We have three kids, we’re paying for college and I just, I want to be careful. And if you’re someone who’s like, you know, kind of like spontaneous, you might not feel like you have to be that stringent with the way you do your finances, but I just like to be really careful. So. Yeah.

Wow. Well, building a multi million dollar business in less than three years, that’s definitely something you can brag about, right? What would you say were your top tips though in making that happen?

Yeah. I think one of the best things I did was join a mastermind that probably changed everything for me. When you’re designing or entrepreneuring all by yourself. One of the problems is you just don’t know what you don’t know. And I did not know a lot. Yeah. Despite the fact that I had a PhD and that I had been in business for 13 years, it was truly the moment. Like I can, I can mark it to the day, February 17th, 2020. Like when I joined a mastermind, it changed everything because I flipped my mindset around a couple of things that needed to be done in my business. I think one of the biggest things that I figured out was that, you know, I have always used other distribution methods for making income. So I own, I own another company called mini Lou, which is a physical products. It was a physical products company. We did deals with like Nordstrom and just really big entities and then 500 independent stores. We use wholesalers to get to where we needed to go for that. So I was using those distribution methods. I didn’t understand online distribution methods like this course creation thing and, you know, selling programs. I didn’t understand it. And the moment I joined a mastermind, it changed everything. Cause I really learned what I needed to learn. The second thing probably was, I am sure you hear this a lot since you’re a life coach, but like, just because you’ve done it before, it doesn’t mean that you did it right. And you feel like you’re spinning your wheels because you’re doing the same things over and over again. There’s a pretty good chance. You’re not doing it right for me. That was Facebook ads. I had run Facebook ads previously a couple of years before, and I just didn’t get very much traction on them. The, the time I did it while I was in the mastermind, I had a little bit of help and I still run my own Facebook ads. We don’t, we don’t have an agency do them, but when I figured out how to do them and got the education around them, when I did them again, they worked, they totally made sense. But a lot of it was cause I just didn’t understand how to make them work. And I think this whole idea, you do something and you’re like, well, that’s done. Never doing that again is actually a very poor way to look at business. Like you have to do things and iterate a few different times to get it right.

I love how you talk about practical, these practical online education can really change your life, right? Like we don’t learn if anything like this in our regular education system.

Yeah. It’s a very interesting thing. I don’t know if you know this, Lucy, we actually are starting a university. So our private university will be starting in January of 2025 and we’re trying to change that exact thing in the current education system. I love the current education system. There’s so much good about it. The way we can teach our students, the time they get. I love those years, that 18 to 24 year old time period where a lot of people are changing. But I work specifically with women who are like 45 to 65. And a lot of it’s because you get enough life experience at that point to realize what you really want to do with your life. And so I started thinking about how can we change design education or any education so that it’s more outcome based? Because at that age, you’re not going to want to come out with just some general education. You want to come out with the ability to actually do things. And so we’re all of our curriculum is very much centered on you leave our program owning an actual design business that’s actually running and actually making sales. And when you start thinking about outcome based education, there’s actually a lot of it out there, but sometimes we have like kind of looked down on it. Great. A great point of that is plumbing, electrical, like all these vocational schools are outcome based education. And I would love to see our white collared education follow suit that there is actually all of these outcome based education pieces that we can do in the white collar segment.

I love that. And I love about outcome based education. my daughter just got accepted into an art school and I actually never knew these like pre educational schools existed until her teacher told us about it. And now I was so excited because we don’t know what we don’t know, right? They have a hundred percent acceptance rate into art colleges after that. These kids just love art and they’re all creatives. All your friends are going to be creative, truly exciting stuff.

Yeah. I love that your daughter is doing that. And the fact that you didn’t know about it and someone had to tell you about it, but what they’re doing is so important because the fact that she can get into an art college after that is because they’re spending so much time preparing them. So they have a good enough portfolio to get into art college. That’s something our general education system is not going to do. And a lot of that is because most kids don’t know they want to be X, Y, and Z in middle school. Right. They don’t, they don’t know yet what they’re going to do, but like when you’re able to give them opportunities and kind of put them on a path, it’s really interesting because then they can kind of become expert quicker. It’s like that 10,000 hour rule, like Malcolm Gladwell or whatever, like, yeah, 10,000 hours. I’m like, is it 15,000? Is it 10,000? It’s a lot of hours, but you can, if you can get those hours earlier in your life, then you succeed much faster. And that’s basically what you’re doing with your daughter in art school by getting her along the way a little bit faster. You are giving her the opportunity to get to a place faster than somebody else. And that actually is really important because we actually live in a society. It’s so crazy. We keep talking about general education, giving people general education, but we actually live in a society that’s specialized. I don’t use grammar every day. That’s like not the thing. I’m not writing and making sure my grammar is perfect yet. I went to school for lots and lots of grammar. It’s not a terrible thing, but what if some of that education space had been design space for me? Would I be further along? Would I be an expert faster? Right. Because at the end of the day, most of us are doing specialized things. Have you talked to somebody who’s like, oh, I do a little bit of math and I do a little biology in my job and I do a little, right? No one does that. You’re a copywriter or you’re a designer or you’re a administrator. There are very specific things that we end up all doing. We are in HR. We understand law, right? It’s very, very often, I don’t see anyone who’s just like, I’m a marine biologist and I also go work in the life sciences and I also am in charge of writing all the, you know, I mean, there are some things we do that’s general, but usually it’s not that broad of a scope.

Yeah, that’s funny, but hey, it’s never too late to start, right? So no matter what stage you are in life now, no matter what season it is, you can always start a new goal and make it fun. Yeah, it’s so true. So what are things you would suggest to someone who’s just starting a creative business?

Distribution, distribution, distribution. If you can find a way to get distribution for your product, whether it’s physical or digital, that is everything. So there’s that piece. The second piece is it’s going to take a lot longer than you think it’s going to take. And I think if you think in your head, this is a three to five year process, not a three month process or a year process. You set yourself better up to win.

I love that. And there’s always going to be bumps on the road, right? Nothing’s ever perfect. So what was one of your memorable moments where you overcame an obstacle that you can think about? Oh, my gosh.

Well, we’re in the middle of obstacles. I think the more successful you are, actually, the more bumps there are. I’ve probably dealt with more setbacks in the last three years, made more money and had more wins during the last three years than ever in my entire business life. And that says a lot, right? Like the more winning you do, the more failing you do. I think there is really something to it. But in terms of like an actual bump in the road, we had a year in the last three years where we hired way too many people and the wrong people. And it was rough because there is nothing I hate more than firing people. Like it is not exciting. It’s not. It just was awful. And in particular, we had hired several people in different countries to do like VA work for us. And we had to fire several of them because they could just not get on track. They couldn’t go without how fast we were going. And at the time, we didn’t realize how fast we were going. But until we started having people on the team be with us for only two or three weeks and realize, oh, they can’t catch up because we move this fast all the time. If they can’t catch up in the next month or so, then they’re going to be so far behind that we’re not going to do anything about it. And so what you end up doing is you lose all this time in training people, tons of time in training people, tons of kind of emotional like, oh, I just love this person, but they just literally cannot do the work like they can’t keep up with what we’re doing. And then third, there’s this rehiring process to make sure that you get the right people in the job. And so I just there was a year there we hired and fired so quickly and it was clearly my fault. I mean, it was so clearly my fault. And that’s really hard. Like it’s hard when you’re kind of like gauging in your business and trying to figure it out. And you realize like everything you’re doing, you’re kind of like, that’s my fault. That’s my fault. I didn’t do that right. You know, you do you feel like you’re failing a lot. And I would say if you if you feel like you’re only winning, then you’re probably a narcissist. If you feel like you’re failing all the time, that’s probably pretty normal. But hopefully you’re celebrating a little bit of both.

Ah, such good tips. And obviously you started as a hobby and you didn’t hire until you were successful, right?

Yeah. How long did it take you to start delegating? You know, I probably so I’ve owned a few different businesses. My first assistant, I probably hired in year five of the business. So it was pretty far in. And then I didn’t even build for many Lou, we built a full team. There was six of us on that team and it was in a physical space in a warehouse because we had products getting shipped out. That was probably in year seven or eight when we started that business. And then that no longer that’s all a digital asset at this point. And then the current biggest of my companies, which is design suite, that company we currently have, there’s 16 of us and it’s virtual and online. And so I would say there is like a process because the first person you hire will probably not be the last person that ends up with you forever, right? Especially as you’re figuring it out and finding out what your organizational behavior looks like. We’re the current team I have is an online virtual team. So you have to no one’s checking your time. We do not do that in our company. It’s like, you’re just doing the work. You get the work done, you work fast, you work efficiently. And if you can’t, then it’s hard for you to keep up with everything everybody’s doing because all of our work affects each other. We had a working meeting just this morning. All the coaches, four coaches and three of the VAs were on that. So it was like eight of us on this one meeting trying to finish up grading rubrics for the upcoming courses we’re doing. And so someone was building a grading rubric. Someone was training on a grading rubric. Someone else was putting in tests. Someone was reformatting the classes. So it was like everybody was there just working, getting their piece done as fast as we possibly could. And I just think you, not every personality is meant for that. And you can kind of see that as you kind of hire people and find out who really is meant for that kind of work. Yeah.

But they like, like the saying goes, new level, new devil, right? But it’s just fun. Let it be fun. Let it be something you enjoy doing. Then that makes it worthwhile. Yeah, it does. Well, thank you so much for sharing your business with us, Karina. What is something, a quote that you go by in life?

Yeah. I, um, I think the mantra that I use very often with my designers and I think it’s relevant here is you are enough just as you are right now. You are enough. Uh, if you think that if you need to plan it and spend a lot of time planning it before you start your business, that’s nonsense. We like, you can ask my team, we get going and start doing something even before we know all the steps. We’re like, we’re in it. We go, we go for it. And this whole idea of imposter syndrome, which I keep hearing so much about, I just want to tell you, like, it is exactly what it is. It’s imposter syndrome and you don’t need to have it. Like you could actually spend your time thinking about how you are good enough and how you are the only one that can bring this to the table in the shape, form way that you’re going to do it because you are unique. There’s no one else out there like you. So like, if you can bring it to the table in this package that only you can bring, then you’re plenty enough for it.

Beautifully said. Great reminder that enough is a decision and that’s your decision. Awesome. Carina, where can we find you at?

If you want to come visit me at carinagardner.com, that’s my main website. It will direct you off to our new university site, which we hope will be up very soon. And our, our course site, we have a, an online professional development program for designers. That’s we just, it’s really fun. And then you can also see like my fabric lines and I still own design businesses and stuff and mini Lou. And so we have lots and lots of stuff always going on. So you just go to karinagardner.com to check things out. How fun.

Thank you for being with us today.

Thanks for having me.

This episode is for you if you have been thinking about taking a break away from social media.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

WATCH THE EPISODE

Hello hello beautiful souls, friends of LL, and of course I’m your host LL Lucy Liu. If you are new welcome welcome  and if you’ve been here before welcome back. 

First a little update, I took the summer off for family vacation, traveled to Taiwan and Vietnam andI am fully recharged and ready to share my positive energy with you. 

Some of you may have noticed I didn’t post anything on social media for the entire summer since it was my decision to take a break from social media.

Of course my clients still have access to me no matter where I am in the world. 

This summer, besides Taiwan I finally checked off another bucket list destination and traveled to northern Vietnam of Hanoi. About a 2.5 hour drive from the capital of Hanoi, recognized as a natural wonder of the world, the Northern Vietnamese paradise of Ha Long Bay indeed lived up to the hype. Yes it was crowded, but yes the scenic beauty was still so worth it!

So while I mentioned me taking a social media break, I wanted to talk a little bit more about well, taking a social media break. 

Let’s start with the benefits of taking a social media break:

Omg there are so many where do I even start! 

1. Clarity! If you know me you will know how much I love having clarity and everytime I take a social media break, long or short, there is always newfound clarity. And that’s also exactly what I help my clients to achieve, because after all, clarity is priceless. To reach your full potential, clarity is crucial in all areas of your life. You need clarity in your values and priorities, you need clarity about your purpose and goals, you need clarity around knowing your strengths so that it’ll allow you to leverage them, you need clarity around knowing your weaknesses so you can make improvements. You need clarity about your boundaries and setting clear limits to protect your time, energy, and well-being. You need clarity in your relationships and you need clarity about your habits and routines that will support your consistent progress towards your goals.
2. Try it yourself, taking a social media break will simply put you in a better mood. Studies found that decreasing social media time leads to increased mental health and well-being. Participants even reported decreased depression and loneliness. Of course you are going to feel better when you are not comparing yourself to others, when you are not constantly feeling anxious to check your apps, when you are actually living your own life instead of looking at someone’s else’s highlight reel. 
3. More Confidence: Social media can be a slippery slope for lower self-esteem. It makes you feel behind because you might see everyone else is accomplishing or having so much. Still focusing on what you lack. Focus on how much you already have in life or how far you have already come. You are enough just the way you are. You are at the exact place you need to be in life. 
4. Having Gratitude: Instead of thinking, “I can’t believe she’s on vacation again or omg she bought a new ____”, you’re better able to focus on the good things in your own life. When you start having deeper gratitudes for your own life, that’s when you start having more joy, confidence, resilience, all the factors you need in order to live a good life, well they are all there, you just need to see it. 
5. New Possibilities: When you’re not spending countless hours scrolling, you can spend all of that time doing … well, whatever you want. Pick up a hobby. Get some extra sleep. Create something new. Actually start traveling. Finally getting to the gym or getting outside. The possibilities are endless! 

So now you have my top 5 reasons why you need to take a social media break, I wanted to share with you the single habit that helped me the most to have a successful break is to actually not have the apps on your phone. 

If you think people might worry about your absence then announce it ahead of time, then remove the apps from your phone and set a specific time frame when you will be back. 

Notice how you feel, notice how your mood or confidence level or gratitude level changes.

Be mindful of your body and also set a new intention for when you return. You can always create new routines for when you restart back on social media.

Follow accounts that only make you feel good about yourself and feel motivated. If an account gives you any form of discomfort, whether that’s fear, stress or anxiety, unfollow them. Instagrams only suggest content that is relevant to you, my feed is full of motivational speeches, inspirational quotes, everytime I open my app, I am uplifted and motivated and happy. Make sure what you see on your explore page makes you confident and happy. 

Experiment with what works best for you, after all, always remember that it’s your life, take control.

Cheers to you enjoying your social media break and enjoying life and I’ll see you in the next episode.