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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

This episode is for you if you are looking for a dose of inspiration as you learn about this motivational story about how Mz Skittles went from investing $300 into her first business to making multi millions.

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Mz. Skittlez, often dubbed ‘The Kris Jenner of Marketing,’ is a highly sought-after marketing maven based in Atlanta, renowned for her ability to conceive and execute campaigns and strategies that elevate brand recognition and drive substantial sales. With over a decade of experience, Mz. Skittlez has proven herself as a marketing powerhouse, steering her own fashion brand, Cupcake Mafia, from a $300 investment in 2011 to a $2.4 million-dollar business in just four years.

However, success was met with adversity when an acquisition-gone-wrong led to financial challenges, forcing Mz. Skittlez to sleep on an air mattress. Undeterred, she leveraged her expansive network and marketing expertise to regain control of her company. Her entrepreneurial journey, marked by ups and downs, showcases her ability to engage audiences and translate attention into sales.

Currently, Mz. Skittlez is the visionary behind the Icing Agency, a full-service marketing consultancy she founded in 2015. This agency provides a range of services, from graphic design to brand development, and emphasizes her commitment to supporting up-and-coming female founders, particularly minority entrepreneurs. Her client list includes notable names like Tamar Braxton, Kountry Wayne, Shear Share, and SPERGO, featured on Shark Tank.

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to the show.

I am so excited to be here. Thanks so much, Lucy.

Your show is amazing, so I’m so happy that I could get on here to chat with your audience really quickly.

Well, let’s start from the beginning. You founded your fashion brand, the Cupcake Mafia. You went from an investment of just $300 into a $2.4 million business in just four years. Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, so I started with $300. I mean, it was literally my first 30 t-shirts and my logo and my website and that’s all I had. I had friends that knew how to create t-shirts and had a t-shirt brand before and he guided me on it.

And actually, if we want to tell a little bit of secrets, I was even scared to start with $300. So my friend who had a t-shirt brand gave me $150 to push me over the edge to get started. And in four years, we were in retail stores all over the U.S. and then going now to opening up different retailers globally as well. And then we got approached by Forever 21 in our fourth year to do a $1.4 million deal with Forever 21, which led me to partner with investors. And then I got fired from my company and it led me on a journey to really figuring out how to not put my eggs in one basket and what my true gifts and talents were. And that led me to my marketing agency, the ICA agency, my digital community for women, which is called Girl Mop, and then now I’m the owner of the largest female-focused coworking space, which is called The Bakery Coworks.

So that pitfall literally pivoted me into all of these different areas and lanes.

Yeah. And you speak a lot about your acquisition gone wrong story, right? That really led you to some financial challenges in between that left you sleeping on an air mattress.

I love this story. So tell it.

So yeah, I got fired from my own company, okay. And that led me to literally sleeping on an air mattress. I had an apartment above overlooking Central Park.

And I was like, oh my God, I have this apartment. And then I had nowhere to actually move back to in Atlanta. So that shifted everything for me.

I ended up on an airbed, but honestly, I always tell people it’s what I needed. That airbed story brought me closer to God. That airbed story literally transformed my life in ways that I didn’t know.

It made me believe in myself. It made me believe in my power. It made me open my mind to other opportunities, which was starting that marketing agency that in 2020 did $16 million.

So if it wasn’t for the airbed story, I probably would have just kept operating and building out that clothing brand to who knows if it would have worked or not. And then years later after putting my eggs in one basket for 10 years, then I would have failed and then had not been on this wavelength of where I am now. I mean, I’m talking about for six months, I slept on an airbed and directly after that, I went to China and opened my own factory in China and operated my factory in China for four years, going to China literally multiple times a year, taking women there so that they wouldn’t ever get beat in a middleman situation again either.

So I mean, I’ve been able to do so much and I’ve learned so much along the way, but it all came from that very big traumatic experience.

I love that story so much. And I love how you mentioned that it’s through these low points in our life that we grow, right? We don’t grow from having comfort or when everything is going smoothly, we grow when we hit these obstacles.

And then obviously you are here today with me because you obviously did not let those setbacks stop you.

Yeah, I didn’t. I didn’t let it stop me. I knew that it was so much more inside of me, you know?

And not only did I know that it was so much more inside of me, I surrounded myself by people that poured into me. And I think that’s the biggest thing. I tell my friends all the time, I tell people all the time that when I was on the airbed and I called one of my best friends who had exited her company, and I was like, Alex, can you look over my resume?

I’m about to work at Best Buy at night to pay for my store, like the staff that I had at my retail store. And she was like, girl, if you one multi-million dollar company, build it again, like build another one. And it was that that I needed for somebody that wasn’t myself to pour into me and tell me like, you did it once, you can do it again.

And that exact conversation is what gave me the momentum. And I was like, but how do I do that? And she was like, get on Periscope, start sharing your information, start talking about what you went through.

Like don’t be embarrassed. Don’t sit around and crawl under a rock, like use this as the momentum you need to go into something else. And that’s what I did.

And that’s how I actually started my agency. And then also someone came to me and was like, they needed a consultant for a multi-million dollar marketing idea for a retail brand. And they were like, we know that you’re the perfect person.

All you need is an agency. And they told me exactly what to do, how to start. So I think when you are in the darkest of times, it is also so important for you to find people around you that can pour into you.

And that is not going to let you give up. And it’s not going to let you throw in the towel. You know, like I have friends around me.

I say this all the time. I have friends around me that when I want to throw in the towel, they throw it right back.

That is so true. You got to have your tribe who’s rooting for you, but they’ve also got to have the same vision and goals as you though, right? Sometimes a lot of entrepreneurs, they’re, they’re not getting these positive feedback or positive energy from people around them is because say their family, they’re not in entrepreneurship.

They’re not, they’re not having the same goals and visions. So that wouldn’t work.

A hundred percent. Yeah. A hundred percent.

You have to change your circle. You got to change your circle. You got to find people.

There are so many communities. There’s so many, I mean, there’s so much out here where you can meet people that are like-minded. If you have friends that you’re in a circle with, or your colleagues don’t pour into you, then you need a new circle.

You need, I always say, if it’s not reciprocal, like if you can’t pour into them and then they pour in you and you pour into them, then you’re not in a circle, you’re in a cage. And so, you know, you need to get out of the cage and find new people that will pour into you, that will inspire you. And there’s so many communities, entrepreneurs, the female founder collective, girl mob.

Like there’s so many communities. I own a community myself and I’m still in other communities because I feel like your network is your net worth at the end of the day. And so it’s not, you know, the opportunities that come in your life often are from other people.

It’s not even from what you know and the degrees that you have. It’s from someone saying she’s the best person for the job.

I love everything you just said. So you have actually pivoted many times in your own business as well, right? Yes.

I talked about the importance of pivoting and how pivoting is good for you in business. Would you agree with me?

A hundred percent. Yes. I sit around and I watch so many business owners drown in their own, like, like drown in the thought process of like, I started it, I have to finish it all the way through.

But meanwhile, you could have pivoted and saved the business. Like you want it to think about Blockbuster, right? Blockbuster was there.

I mean, I’m probably dating myself, but I remember going with my mom on every Friday to get a movie from Blockbuster. That’s why it’s not around anymore. No, because there’s Netflix, there’s Amazon movies, there’s all these other ways.

No one’s buying a DVD. No one’s buying a VHS tape, but they were not, they didn’t want to change. They didn’t want to convert their business model.

Oftentimes it’s not about you just converting your business model. I always tell my clients that you should be finding five ways minimum to make money doing what you currently are doing. For example, if you do skincare, right?

If you’re like, I am a statistician, I do skincare. I make all of my money behind the chair, working on a client’s face. No, you should one, have your own skincare brand so that when that client gets up, you can now sell them the routine on how to keep their skin beautiful in between treatments, right?

So you can sell that client, your skincare brand. You can also sell people now that never makes it to your chair. That’s out of town, but may follow you on Instagram or may love what you do.

You now can sell them your skincare line. That’s from all over the world. You can now train other estheticians on your special techniques and how you’ve been able to do it.

You can also create a training for your clients on what to do, what not to do, what not to eat on how to keep their skincare, their skin routine beautiful, right? Cause I, if I go to a esthetician every two weeks and then she’s selling me a course and the proper skincare on how to keep my skin beautiful, I will buy it because I’m going to trust her expertise. So I just think that people think that this is the only way, right?

And then what happens during COVID when people don’t want to lay in front of you to get their skin. Now it’s nothing. They can’t do anything for you.

Like you can’t do anything. You can’t make any money. But if you would have had those other four streams of income streaming, you wouldn’t have been out of business, right?

So I think that is so important to pivot and not just completely go from doing skincare into baking cookies, but maybe you do skincare. Then you have a class. Maybe you have an ebook.

Maybe you have a training manual. Maybe you have a planner, the skincare planner that you sell on your website. It’s so many other things that you can do that will allow you to pivot and still do what you love every single day.

So much truth in that because we as entrepreneurs, we wear so many hats and yes, you can, you can have all the things, just not at the same time. You just don’t start them up at the exact same time, but then you can go on to the next, right? Yes.

I love how you mentioned there’s so many opportunities and a lot of women, especially they get stuck in choosing between having a or B, but why not both, right? Why not? A, B, C, D, E.

Yeah. And I think that’s important in seeing the opportunity when your audience gives you that feedback, right? What I’ve seen is women, they are in a certain niche, but their audience is asking them for something else.

But, and they say, Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t offer that. Why not create this extra offer?

Absolutely. And for me, when it came to my marketing agency, right? I feel like I have a doctorate degree.

You guys see it behind me. I’m like, I’ve worked, I’ve been doing this for nine years. If anybody, there’s no one that can tell me about marketing.

Like, obviously I’m always a student, but I know what I’m talking about. I’m watching cases. I’m doing so much research on So I set my tiered price of what I wanted to work with, right?

Like, Oh, this is the minimum budget needed to work with my agency. But then I started to realize like, wow, there’s so many women that I want to help. There’s so many women that I want to be able to change their lives, but they don’t have the budget.

So I had to create different tiers of access to my company, which is our a la carte division where you get to work with my team. I get to see all of the work, but you don’t hands on directly with us, but this is for budgets under 5,000. And then I created another tier, which is like a mid range.

And then I created the elite portion of my agency where you get hands-on services done for you. You’re working with my team, me and you are speaking weekly. So that pivot opened us up to more business because everybody maybe cannot afford a $15,000 retainer a month, but there is someone that still needs that initial marketing services and maybe they’re at like 7,500, maybe they’re at 5,000.

And I want it to be like, okay, I can’t go from telling you, you need marketing and branding and all these things, marketing, brand strategy, all these things. And then just tell you, Oh, well, you can’t afford me. So go to Fiverr.

You can’t afford me, go to Upwork. And then that customer gets the wrong or doesn’t really know what she wants. So she’s not going to get the best out of her money.

I had to be able to do it somewhere. I already have the team of people that are amazing and know what they’re doing. Why can’t I develop these other levels and layers for clients to be able to access my agency?

Yeah, I totally get that. And sometimes people get stuck. They are stuck in the overthinking and you know, when that happens, I would say, okay, go ahead, go get yourself someone on Fiverr for like $15 and get it started.

But then immediately work on something bigger, right? Because sometimes in the beginning, you just really get stuck.

Yeah, totally. I always tell people when you’re looking at your brand, and when you’re looking at your business, when you start to talk about it in the world, it’s now the world’s idea. It’s now the world’s concept.

So best person to market that idea is the one that’s going to be known for it. There’s so many brands in this world that are doing the exact same thing, probably have the exact same look, but it’s only one that you know about because like there’s so many smart cars, there’s so many electric cars. But at the end of the day, everyone’s talking about Tesla because it was quickest to market.

It was biggest to all the influencers, all the celebrities. Oh, Elon Musk is a whole person. So at the end of the day, you got to think about like, okay, yeah, I can go on Fiverr, pay $10 and get this terrible logo and get this terrible marketing plan.

Or I can truly believe in myself, invest in myself. And when I go to market, people are going to say she did that first and she did it best. So it’s the best marketer that wins.

Yeah. And I know you speak a lot about this idea of having forward thinking, and I really resonate with that because I talk about how I believe there is always a way. And when you have that mentality, you’re moving forward.

Even if that means failing forward or having these challenges, we’re still making progress, forward progress.

Absolutely. Everybody in my company, the people around me must be forward thinkers. Like there’s just not an opportunity for you to be around me.

I have this sheet. Oh, I just took it in the other room, but I have this sheet, um, in my office. And it literally says, before you come to me, do these things, ask yourself, like, what would I do if she wasn’t here?

What decision do you think is best? Like basically what’s the best case scenario? Are we losing money?

Are we losing customers? Are we like, once they done all of that, then they have their answer. They didn’t need me to answer it.

But most people don’t trust themselves. They don’t trust their thought process. They don’t trust their thinking, which causes them to be like, let me ask someone else.

Let me ask someone else. Let me ask someone else. Let me ask the boss.

Let me ask. No, I need you to trust yourself because you made it through a whole interview out of all the people that I was interviewing you and you got the job. So there was something about you that you trusted yourself to make it through that interview.

You answered the questions. You weren’t just, when I asked you, Oh, how’s your, how’s your day? You didn’t reply.

How’s your day? Like you didn’t ask me for the answer in your interview. So I know that you have the answer.

I know that you have the, the answer. And all you need to do is forward think, okay, if I make this decision, what will be the outcome? What is going to happen after that?

What is going to happen after that? What is going to happen after that? To me, that is how I think, like, I’m already thinking like, all right, well, cause right now I’m planning, even though I’m not there yet, but I’m planning for my exit.

I built an amazing business, business and businesses. I worked a very long time. I have an amazing team, but I ultimately want to exit one of my companies.

All right. Well, if I want to exit one of my companies, how do I remove myself from the brand now? So that my personal brand is not so wrapped up into the company that they think that the company cannot exist without me.

So how do I pull myself back to where the company can live on its own? Right. How do I build my SOPs, my trainees, my guide?

So when any CEO comes and sits in this seat that I’m in now, they’ll be like, Oh, easy. Like everything is there. Every question is answered.

Everything that I could have possibly thought that Mary would have explained to me about this particular role or this particular part of the job is already in this handbook. It’s already in this manual. And then I also think, okay, once I exited, I wake up one day and I’m like, I have an exit, like, oh my God, million dollars, multimillion dollar, billion dollars.

What am I doing? The time that I want to spend with my kids, where do I want to live? How do I want to show up?

Am I still going to want to be on Instagram? What is that going to look like? Do I want to speak at schools?

Like, I think that you should be forward thinking in every single thing that you do.

I love that so much because, you know, in the beginning, when you were in that first initial $300 investment, you didn’t think about the exits, right? So if you’re listening and then you’re in the beginner stages, know what’s possible because of Mary.

And honestly, I want to say that I didn’t think about the exit, but I did think about, I’ve been a forward thinker for so long. So while I was not thinking about exiting, I was thinking about how is this going to go global, right? And so I think for the people that are in the startup stages of their business, for me, it was $300.

And I was like, Oh my God, I have these t-shirt lines. If I could literally pull up right now, our first photo shoots, our first photo shoots were done as if it was a major brand already. Like I knew that if Macy’s was to call or, you know, a bigger retailer, ladies footlocker was to call me, I wanted the photography and the branding that I had to be enough, right?

I didn’t want to have to rebrand and, Oh, now I got to take me out of it. Oh, now our messaging is swayed. I have to sway it this way or sway it that way.

So I’ve always thought about like, when I started Cupcake Mafia, my concept was I would be the streetwear version of Juicy Couture. And so when I started to think about Juicy Couture and how they literally infiltrated the market when it came for, for our, you know, for our ages, like 16, 17, 18, everyone wanted Juicy Couture. Like everyone needed to have a like the fleece with the bling on the, on the butt, right?

Like everybody needed that, right? And so like, when I thought of that, I’m like, you didn’t really see the owners. You didn’t really see the founders in all of the photo shoots.

You didn’t see them on all, you’ve seen models, you’ve seen the celebrities, you’ve seen the Paris Hiltons of the world, you’ve seen all of those people. And so I wanted to make sure that my brand fit that same wavelength. I was thinking about the forwardness of when this company goes global and it’s sold in Japan, like it was, and it’s sold in Africa, like it was, I want this company to be bigger than me.

So I definitely think that you should be thinking about that in your starter stages.

So much goodness. So much goodness. What is a favorite quote that you go by?

Oh my God. So some of my, one of my favorite quotes, this is like something I live by is a slow rise to the top is better than a fast fall to the bottom. I truly believe that like when people look at me, they’re like, oh my God, you’re an overnight success.

Just we’ve seen you. I’m like, really? I started my company 12 years ago, my first company.

And now I’ve been in my marketing agency nine years. So I don’t know about overnight. If overnight takes 12 years, then yeah.

Okay. Overnight. But I think when you slowly rise to the top, every single pitfall, every single bump that you encounter, it just makes you stronger.

But I always tell people, if you look at a ladder, right? If I just came and put a ladder in the middle of the floor, it was like, Hey Lucy, jump to the top of the ladder. If you did it, you may make it to the top, but you’re going to fall off because you didn’t have that time to like balance yourself and pace yourself.

And the momentum of the jump is going to cause you to cause the ladder to fall over quickly. And that’s when we get overnight successes that never make it to their next business. Or that’s why we get music artists that are here today going tomorrow, because like one day you’re hearing that song.

You cannot, every single radio station is playing the song, but they didn’t have time to actually build their career up, build their name up, build their brand, the ability of build their visibility up to where customers actually cared about them after that one song. Right? So I, that is my favorite quote, a slow rise to the top is better than a fast fall to the bottom.

Beautifully said.

Thank you so much for your wisdom. Everyone go follow Ms. Skittles on Instagram so you can get that dose of inspiration yourself and all of the ways to connect with her will be linked in the show notes. Thank you so much.

Thank you, girl. I appreciate it.

If you are a women with a pelvis, this episode is for you. 

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Tami Lynn Kent is a women’s health physical therapist, founder of the original method of Holistic Pelvic Care™ for women, and author of Wild Feminine, Wild Creative, and her newest book Wild Mothering. 

We talked about: 

• What is pelvic care? 
• Pelvic bowl vs pelvic floor. 
• What are bad habits for your pelvic floor?
• How do you know if you have pelvic floor problems?
• How to take care of pelvic health?
• and so much more…

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

So let’s start from the beginning. What is pelvic care?

Well, it’s something that we all should be getting as women.

I think if you think of what if I ask someone, what do you think of as women’s health? They usually name the PAP exam, which is a little bit sad that that’s what we think of, right? Because a PAP exam is really looking for problems.

It’s not preventative. It’s not holistic. It doesn’t help with just general wellness and health.

The pelvis is actually part of our immune system. And we need all the flow of the organs, the chi, the hormones to be flowing well there. And most women that I see as a pelvic physical therapist have congestion.

So we ought to be coming in and receiving internal massage and getting more in touch with the chi of our bodies, accessing it, working with it in a way that’s more preventative, holistic and serves us in mind, body and spirit.

So when I hear the word pelvic, what comes to mind is actually pelvic floor. Is that correct?

Well, I think of the pelvis as the more the whole bowl. So yes, pelvic floor is the base, the muscles at the base of the pelvis. I think that’s one thing is whenever I start with a woman that comes in, I start with a literally an anatomic model of the pelvic bowl, which includes all the bones, the ovaries, the womb, so that she can see because you think we most of us don’t actually know our anatomy, haven’t even seen it and myself included when I started in a PT school.

So I share that and I teach and you can take better care of what you know. So I think of the pelvic bowl as the whole space and all of the muscles, the organs, the chi, the beauty that is there.

So what are some of our daily bad habits for our pelvis?

Well, number one is sitting too much, which I’m guilty of as well. I mean, we are just more sedentary. So movement is really key.

We get a lot of congestion from sitting, congestion, meaning tension, blood flow, not flowing as strongly. And that builds over time kind of like rocks in a river. So things aren’t flowing well.

So movement is really key, getting up at least every hour, moving the body, taking walks. Another one is just not being connected to that space. For many reasons, we tend to be, Western culture tends to be more head oriented, mental.

And so we lose touch with that sort of basic, beautiful rhythm that’s natural within our bodies. And if we connect to that more, we tend to take better care of ourselves because it’s the part of ourselves that will say, get up, stretch, enjoy a cup of tea, take a walk. It’s different than our mind, which might just push, push, push and keep us going rather than living rhythmically.

We’re so guilty. We’re both sitting right now, by the way, right?

And if you tune into your pelvis, you can actually feel your pelvis kind of doesn’t like it.

It’s just, we’re very good at cutting it and just dissociating from it. So we don’t actually hear it. So because I’m more attuned and I’m listening to it more, I just, I noticed my pelvis actually saying, get up and move.

You know, it wants to feel that blood flow, that chi flow, and we’re more naturally meant to be movers.

But how would you know, like, how do you know you’re at the point that you’re actually having a problem with your pelvic problems?

Well, that’s the thing is, so as a women’s health physical therapist, I used to work in a hospital setting. So my oldest son is 24. And when he was born, I left and started my own practice and just never left doing that.

But in the hospital setting, I was mostly seeing women by referral from a urologist who were having problems, urine leakage, pelvic prolapse, pain. I would say what we actually want to do is not just treat symptoms, but back up and treat more preventatively. So yes, I was seeing women with problems.

You know, if you have a problem because you have pain or prolapse or urine leakage. But what I found from working on women’s bodies is everyone had tension. Everyone had disconnection.

Everyone had imbalances from birth injuries, life, menstrual products. And so actually doing bodywork on everyone more preventatively before they had symptoms. So it is much better for us.

And that’s why I talk about it more in a holistic manner of actually coming in, getting a pelvic massage, learning how to do self massage, becoming more aware of your own anatomy, and then get to the level of the chi, the energy of the organs, we can actually be a lot healthier and actually avoid those problems and tune into the beauty and power that’s in this space for us. You mentioned pelvic massage. Is that something we can do ourselves?

It is. So I’ve written three books, as you mentioned, and in Wild Feminine, I talk about how to do self massage. It’s not hard.

You know, you can do massage in any part of your body. You can massage your pelvic floor. And I describe how to do it more specifically in that book in chapter two.

But really it’s about just kind of realizing that you need massage there. I think aren’t even aware of what could be women’s health care, right? Another way is to actually go and see a women’s health physical therapist or practitioner that I’ve trained in holistic pelvic care, which they’re listed on my website, wildfeminine.com, and learn, you know, go in and have a massage. And that kind of teaches you when you have a professional that works and knows how to work with it, then it kind of helps you learn how to then work with your own body.

That’s great information because as women, we grow up to know, oh, well, my muscles are sore. I need a massage, but we don’t really think about the part of us that’s actually really important, such as the pelvic floor.

Absolutely. I think of body work as essential health care, just as a healer myself as a physical therapist. And I certainly didn’t grow up that way.

But then as I came into this profession, and I learned a lot of things, and then I did a lot of massage with my children. And I think of general body work as good health care. So if we can just apply that also to our pelvises and understand that there’s a lot we can do to help our chi and our health of our pelvises on, you know, in a preventative way so that we feel better and feel vibrant and feel healthy and avoid problems.

And you mentioned this type of massage, would you say is covered by normal insurances?

If you go to a physical therapist, it’s in a standard clinic, they usually do take insurance. And so it’s something to check out with the clinic you were planning to go to. So yes, it would be covered under physical therapy.

I don’t take insurance because insurance is such a difficult thing to take as a provider. And I tend to work more efficiently, I might see someone just for two visits and not take insurance out of pay pocket. So it’s really quite affordable in that manner.

So there’s a few different ways to access that care.

Yes, beautiful souls, you deserve the luxury of getting your pelvic checked and getting a massage in that area. I think more commonly, women would feel tension more than pain, right?

Yes, I would say if you have pain, you’ve gone further down the route of tension causing problems. Most women have tension. And sometimes I think it’s like a lot of parts of our body, we are so used to it, it feels normal.

So what will happen is women come and see me, and they might not really realize it’s sort of like the jaw, you don’t realize you’re carrying tension, and then someone starts working on it, you realize, oh my goodness, I’m carrying so much tension there. And so they’ll leave my office and they just feel better. It’s a little bit like a facial too, you know, if you get facial massage, you realize, oh, I’m carrying so much tension in my face.

And then after the massage, you just feel more vibrant, you feel more blood flow, you feel better. It’s the same.

Beautifully said. And obviously, you talk a lot about feminine energy, and this all connects. So for someone who might be new, let’s go back and talk about feminine energy.

How is that different than what we’ve been taught in school? Like, tell us more.

I think I started to be curious about feminine energy, because I was working with the body and the pelvis and women so much. And I felt this kind of potency, if you will, like, like just a vibrancy, and not every woman felt connected to it. And it was more piqued my curiosity, what is this, and I would give that name feminine, it’s not just female, of course, males and females both have the yin yang, the feminine masculine, but to me, that’s where I had to unpack what I thought of as feminine, you know, was feminine, how you dressed, or was feminine, a color, what was feminine, I came to understand it more as an energy, and I would describe it as the energy that infuses life with all beauty. So it’s sort of like the inhale.

It’s when you look outside, and you see the beauty in the in the sky and the flowers, that’s the feminine, it’s like this, it is an expression. So in a way, it’s tied to beauty, but it’s something that do we give that to ourselves, I think of the masculine more as the worker bee, you know, the one that gets things done the task orientation, and in Western cultures, we’re usually encouraged to check things off the list, get things done to be productive, that tends to be more masculine. In nature, the feminine is take a pause, take a moment, inviting the beauty, notice the presence of the moment that beauty, the color, the textures of it.

And that’s to me is what I came to know as feminine.

Beautifully said. And would you agree with me if we really need to tap into that feminine energy, because the go go do do do masculine energy can get only get you so far?

What I learned kind of the hard way too, because I myself was like a, you know, recovering academic, hardcore, task oriented female, I started to realize that I was depleting myself. And so were the women I was serving. So yes, if you’re only in your masculine, you’re only using your energy, and you can only get away with that so long without the infill without the receiving.

So to me, the feminine is vital for for living well for replenishing and also for just enjoying life. You know, when you’re task oriented, you’re, it’s a list, and it’s never going to end, it’s linear. So the feminine gives you that pause gives you that refill gives you that wonder in the moment that actually makes life really worth living, makes it more beautiful.

And so I think it’s essential for living well.

Beautifully said. And I think a lot of women, we don’t actually take care of a body or start thinking about our pelvic care until we actually either have a child or feel the tension for someone who might be a little bit younger, who might not have a child yet, would you say pelvic care is still important?

Yeah, that’s one of the aspects where I when I left the hospital. So in the hospital, I was seeing women post menopausal and older. And when I left the hospital and started my own practice, I started seeing women much younger of all ages.

So I’ve seen women, you know, 18 1920 years old in their early 20s. And what I was surprised by was how much tension young women carry as well. And I think they’re able to mask it a little bit more because you know, life hasn’t had the impact as much yet.

But it’s beautiful to get that worked on more preventatively. And just you don’t know it’s there. And then but once you clear it out, it feels so much better.

Also, younger women are sometimes having menstrual cramps, you know, menstruation isn’t supposed to be painful at all. And so again, that’s thought of as normal, but it’s not. That’s a sign of tension.

And so I’ll have women come in and they just feel they feel better, their periods are smoother and easier. And I think also when you’re younger, attuning to your own center on an earlier side of life, you tend to know a little bit more about what you want and who you are. Whereas we can if we’re not attuned to that we can shape ourselves to the outer world to either our jobs or partners or what something external is telling us and then we have to course correct later.

So it’s nice to kind of get that connection early on and you tend to chart your life a little bit more with yourself included.

Great to take those preventive actions before it happens. But for someone who might be going through menopause or a little bit older, how would you say is the best way to take care of pelvic health?

Well, once again, I say pelvic massage. So I’m menopausal. So I really know that in my own body and things tend to you know, we have less hormone flow.

And so in a way, that’s sometimes why symptoms are silent until menopause because when you have less hormone flow, things will show up a little bit more. So again, if you have health in the tissues, working with the massage, working with the breath and the chi, you’re going to be healthier and more vibrant. So regardless of what is happening.

Thank you. Well, is there a favorite quote that you go by in life?

There’s so many because I love so many books, but I was going to just share the one that I have at the beginning of Wild Feminine. It’s from Marian Woodman, who is an elder that’s passed on and I really honor her. She wrote many books, she understood the feminine well, she wrote this, she says this quote from her book Bone Dying into Life, the great work that is beginning is the realization of the feminine as the bridge between God and humankind.

And what she meant by that is, here we are in our bodies living our lives, but what makes it deeper, what makes it more magical, what brings in the mystery is the feminine. So I just invite everyone to ponder what is the feminine and how do you access it in your life?

Great reflections. Thank you for your time, Tami. Where can we connect with you?

Best way to connect with me is on my website, wildfeminine.com. I have classes that I teach. I offer sessions, distant, long distance sessions and in-person and also all my books are there and some of my classes that I teach.

So that’s a great way to connect with me. I’m also on Instagram, Tammy Lynn Kent. Look forward to connecting with some of you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lucy.