245. Confidence & Resilience: The Inner Work Behind Entrepreneurial Freedom With Candace Tropeau

What if social marketing could be more than a business model? What if it could be a path to sovereignty?

In this episode, I’m joined by Candace, a powerful leader with 37 years of entrepreneurial experience in an industry that is often misunderstood, judged, and yes, sometimes deeply challenging. Together, we unpack the deeper truth behind social marketing, network marketing, women’s leadership, and what it really takes to build something sustainable in a space that can bring up sister wounds, insecurity, fear, and massive personal growth.

Candace shares her incredible story, from growing up on a farm and being inspired by strong women in living rooms, to building multiple businesses, pivoting across industries, leaving behind the 9-to-5, earning six figures, and helping other women step into greater possibility.

Inside this conversation, we talk about:

•  why social marketing can become a path to sovereignty 
•  the inner work required to succeed in entrepreneurship 
•  resilience, work ethic, and doing things before you feel confident 
•  sister wounds, competition, and women learning to support women 
•  the importance of discernment, due diligence, and choosing the right mentor 
•  how your courage impacts not just you, but your children and the people watching you 

This is a grounded, nuanced, and refreshingly honest conversation about women, freedom, leadership, and the kind of growth that changes you from the inside out.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Embodied Writing Warrior, a show for women who refuse white knuckle wellness and crave food freedom built for real life, where your fire gets pained not dead. Fall in lust with your own momentum and enjoy pleasure-led creativity. Because healing was never meant to be a full-time job. I'm Kayla, writer and help coach Gone Row. Now let's make consistency feel like foreplay. Welcome back to the Embodied Writing Warrior podcast. Today's conversation is such a good one, especially if you've ever felt curious about entrepreneurship, social marketing, or building more freedom in your life. And maybe you've also felt resistance, skepticism, or some fear around what this might actually look like. Today, I am joined by Candace, someone I have known for years and has inspired me for many, many of those years. Candace has spent 37 years in this space, and she brings such a grounded, honest, and deeply woman-centered perspective to this conversation. We talk about what social marketing really demands behind the scenes, past the hype you might have heard. We talk about the resilience and the work ethic that's required to stay the course, why confidence comes from doing rather than waiting, and how this kind of work can become a genuine path to sovereignty. We also get into sister wounds, the power of women supporting women, the discernment you need in choosing who you work with, and the personal growth that entrepreneurship can bring out of you, whether you feel ready for it or not. This one is for the woman who knows that she's made for more, even if she doesn't totally trust herself yet. I guarantee by the end of this conversation, you will walk away with new perspectives and new practices that will help you trust yourself even more. Let's dive right in. Hello, Candace, and welcome to the Embodied Writing Morrier podcast. Hi, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Thank you for joining me because you are someone who is such a powerful leader in a very challenging space. And I know that your wisdom is going to resonate with so many women out there, myself included. On that note, you're welcome. Why don't you share a little bit about who you are and the work you do in the world?

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Awesome. Well, I am, first of all, I'm a mom, I'm a wife, I'm a grandma, which is probably my proudest role. I love my daughter, but I love her daughters exponentially as well. So that's a whole other thing. But and I am an entrepreneur. I've been doing what I've been doing for 37 years. And it's something I started really as just something for fun. And I had no idea where it would lead me and how it would not only impact me, but my entire life and my entire family down the road. So I think that kind of my calling in life has been to serve. And my heart has always led me to women and trying to help women find their space in the world, their voice in the world, and anything I can do to support women that way just tongues at my heart.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

I love that so much. And I also love that you have spent 30 plus years in an industry that tends to cannibalize a lot of people. And you are so confident in what you do. And you've also never been afraid to pivot and make changes. So I love if you spoke a little bit to the journey you've had as an entrepreneur and some of the pivots that have happened along the way.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Well, I never started as an entrepreneur. That was never my vision. I really started at the ripe old age of 21, strictly because I've loved, liked a product. And, you know, I kind of grew up on a farm. I grew up in a place where everything, my mom did everything from scratch. It was, you know, everything from butter to cottage cheese to yogurt. I didn't even know what an Oreo was till I hit school. And, you know, my mom did all of that. And I grew up on a farm where we grew our own food. I mean, we we had everything from scratch. So I think I always had it innately in me that that was important to know what you're putting in your body, on your body, all that kind of stuff. And I remember as a little girl, I grew up, I was born in the 60s. So in those days, women had home parties. That was what they did. And my mom had lots of home parties, but she always had had home parties with this one woman. And even at that, it was she represented a company that had a higher level of cleaning products. I could still see this woman standing in the room. I must have been six or seven, eight years old, something like that. And my mom would always have this woman named Marge come and do it. And Marge to me was larger than life. And she, I'm sure she was a smoker because she had the raspiest deep voice you ever heard. And she was tall and blonde, and she wore pants and a turtleneck. And to me, she just I remember feeling like, oh, this is who I want to be when I grew up. And then she would step into this room of women and she would make everybody feel good. She would honor my mom. She she made my mom, my mom would be the host of the party. She would actually put a crown on my mom's head and a red cape, and she was the queen for the night. And everybody went around the room and said something beautiful about my mom. And, you know, Marge would just make everybody feel good. And I didn't realize it then. I didn't even know that that was having an impact on me. I realized it much later as I was standing in front of a room, making someone feel special, having their friends share all about this person. I thought, oh my gosh, I'm Marge. But Marge had represented to me an empowered woman. And I don't know Marge's story, but to me, in my little brain, I just thought, that's the kind of woman I want to be. And so I think I got that. I didn't really pick this as a career. It just kind of evolved. And so when I started with my first company in 1989, it was eloquirer-based skincare. And really, I just really wanted to do it because I wanted to be social. I wanted to have, you know, I wanted to get dressed up. And in those days, back in the day, we said the higher the heel, the higher the sales. Mary Kay taught us that. We all followed along. And I started to fall in love with this profession. And even though I didn't know it was a profession, I didn't have that verbiage. That verbiage wasn't spoken about back then. Anyways, so that's how my career started in 1989. And I toyed and I played and I had some fun doing it. And I left the space. I came back to the space. I knew, like in my first year of doing it, I ended up being, I think, the top five in the in the province, top in the cut in the country. But I was just having fun. I was just doing what I love and I was showing people. I was passionate about the Alobira makeup, the skincare, the, you know, the extra things that we had. Almond-based scrubs, and it was all kind of that stuff. I loved it. But then, you know, life pivots. I had a daughter. I was a single mom. I kind of got out of it. I sold some books. I did that kind of thing. And then in 2003, I got introduced to the company that I spent 20 years at. And it was a company where we taught people how to cook wholesome foods. And it was before it, I think we really were ahead of the trend of low sodium, gluten-free, know what's in it, read the ingredients, have five or six things, make it real food, let food be thy medicine was kind of our thing. And I got excited about that because I really thought, here I am sharing products with people who probably don't care how great it tastes or how healthy it is for you, but it tastes good and it's healthy. So I kind of felt in my heart that I was helping people be healthier, even if they didn't want to be. And as I stayed there over that 20-year span, a couple of years in, I started to see more. I started to see really what this could be. And I loved what I did and I was really living my calling, being of service with food. I mean, that's what my mom taught me. That's what I saw the women in my community do. I excelled at it. And in 2007, after a couple of years with that company, I hit the leadership rank. And with that come some really good things, and with that come some really hard things. And that's the level where you got to decide how much am I willing to grow, to look at things I don't want to look, how will it willing am I to get uncomfortable? And so I stayed there for 20 years, built a five, five, like five five-figure income, and I was making more money than I was working my nine to five job. And I realized really early when I was working in like the world in a nine to five job that I didn't fit that mold very well. I don't like being there. I mean, I I grew up on a farm where my parents were entrepreneurs, really. Farming is an entrepreneurial-based thing. We don't look at it that way, but it is. And they never had a boss. And I didn't really like having a boss. Like that really, you know, and I didn't like that no matter how hard I worked, how much time I put in. I'm an overachiever, so I always did more. I still got the same paycheck as the guy sitting beside me who did nothing. You know, like nobody, there was no reward, there was no acknowledgement, there was no feeling of doing something in the world that make a difference. You know what? If you love a nine to five job, you do that. You do what fills your cup. It did not fill my cup. So in 2007, after growing my business to a point where I was working almost two full-time jobs with n to five and my side hustle, my husband looked at me and said, I think you should do this full-time. And I went, Holy crap, seriously? Like that's I've hurt people doing it. So I did it. I quit my job. I am not been back in the workforce since 2007. So, anyways, I that continued on and I stayed there for a lot of years, and COVID came along and changed the world, as we all know, and it changed the industry as well. And you know, in a lot of ways, I felt a lot of shame for what I did for a lot of years because of exactly what you said, it's it's a challenging space. It I like how you said it cannibalized. Is that what you said? Cannibalized a lot of people. Yeah. Yes, it does, it has in a lot of ways, but so do a lot of other things. I felt pretty cannibalized at my nine to five job. Eaten up, spit out, you know, used up. So fast forward 20 years of that company in 2023. I made a pivot and moved directly into the health and wellness space, spent two years at a company where I kind of consider myself I got my master's degree in this. It was a really great place, but it was not my forever place. I recognized that along the way. But it also was the first time I hit six-figure income. It was, it gave me the space and freedom to retire my husband from a job that he was getting cannibalized at. And it kind of changed and really impacted our life in a big way. And last June or sorry, May of 2025, I pivoted again to a new company where I'm actually a founder. I've got my hands on and involved in how this company develops. And so I'm super excited about that. So I don't know that that kind of tells you the story. It's long, it's long. 37 years is a long story. I'll leave it there and we'll see where we go from here.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

So, first, just for the fact that you grew up having this role model that was a woman's woman, which is so important in today's world where we've come a long way, and there's still these sister wounds. There's still this competitiveness, this there's not enough for everyone. And what you do, and I've experienced it personally, is you do lift the women in your space up. And that's such a powerful role to play in today's world. And it's not always easy when many times in other places the opposite happens. So we just wanted to speak to that. And on that note, I would actually love to hear did you struggle with any sister wounds or competitiveness along the way, especially since the work you do is with women. And how did you navigate that?

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Well, I think do any of us escape without sister wounds? I mean, do we? I don't know. I don't know if you escape life without that. And first of all, I just want to pay that same compliment back to you. I mean, we we got to know each other where I came to you to where you were working, and you were my coach and my fitness coach, and you reframed my life in a lot of ways. I'm gonna get a little teary-ide, but I shared with you some really personal things that I had never shared before about my health, my weight, and all of that. And you, I'm gonna really get teary at you created a safe space for me. So I really want to say you did that too. You were one of the people in my life who healed some of those wounds for me to start with. Oh, sorry, but I just wanted you to know how much you meant to me in my journey as well. And I think that's why we've stayed in touch over these years. But anyway, so I definitely have had sister wounds and just, you know, it's this is the problem with our space. This is the problem with my space, is and I don't think it's unique to network marketing. I think it gets a bad name because of how it's been handled since it started with you know, companies like Amway and Mary Kay, and you know, in every industry, it starts one way and it has to evolve. Everything, right? We don't teach the way we used to teach. My kids are getting taught the way my parents got taught. You know, medicine changes, everything evolves. And I think in our space, there's been a great evolution, and it's even in it right now. I think we're in the biggest evolution of network marketing that's ever been. A lot of the damage that has been done has been not knowing how to do it better. Systems that worked that people tried to bring forward from there to use today that no longer work today. We're a different world. When I started this, there was no internet, there was no faxes, there was no social media, there was none of that. And I even remember reluctantly getting on on social media. So I think there has been a lot of damage in our field done. And that's one of the things I wanted to do this podcast work is my goal is to give people a different face of this industry. Yes, there are those people who cannibalize. There's women who are extremely competitive, but there's women who are extremely competitive everywhere. Those people are not unique to this space. It just seems to be judged harder in this space. For one thing, because I think it is a predominantly female-oriented business. And we don't want, let's be honest, in this world, we don't want a lot of six-figure income earning women, six or seven-figure income earning women running the world. We got to beat those babies back as quickly as we can. We do it in the corporate world. You know, look at the corporate world. How many women make six-figure incomes for the same job? 25, 30% more men make six-figure incomes for that same job, right? So it's a systemic thing, honestly. But it seems to take a harder rack wrap in this space because this space was born out of a place for women too. You know, Tupperware, Mary Kane, they all developed this space so that women did have a place to gather as a community and be strong and not just be about the babies, the husband, the it was really a space where women started to have the conversations, I believe. They gathered in living rooms. And so, but over time, some people come in, companies come in, they bruise it, they mistreat it, they use it for what it's not set out to, and people get, you know, taken advantage of, people get misled, and that starts to be the conversation instead of how many lives it has lifted up, how many people it has impacted in a positive way, and it ends up scaring people. So, you know, your question, you know, wounds and all that kind of stuff. Absolutely. I've healed most of them here, though. I've been exposed to opportunity and vision and coaching and mentoring and speakers and things that I would never been exposed to at a at my regular nine-to-five job. So as much as people feel that it takes away, I feel that it it gives power more than it takes the power away.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

That's beautiful. So is that what you mean by social marketing as the path to sovereignty, or does it go even deeper than that?

SPEAKER_01 17:58

It's a complex thing, right? Because social marketing, everybody wants to do it right now. It's the thing. It's the, you know, and honestly, everybody wanted to buy a kit and do direct sales too. They, I'll buy a kit and I'll go make a million dollars. And in a lot of ways, it's been promoted that way. Like, come in, make money, you'll be rich in six weeks. And I'm here to tell you after 37 years, that has never happened. I mean, network marketing, social marketing is the most underpaid job there is at the beginning. And then what people don't realize is in the end, when someone's making that kind of income, how long they have been at it. Right. And so I think you can't get sovereignty anywhere if you're not willing to look within, if you're not willing to do the hard work, if you're not willing to figure out what's okay with you and what's not okay with you, what are you willing to accept? What are you not willing to accept? And the reason I think social marketing can be that path is because we do give you the space. You can't be successful here unless you're willing to do that work, which is why most people exit and say it didn't work for me, because they get to that point where they have to start digging in and evolve and look at themselves and be vulnerable and be willing to go, oh, I don't, I see that in myself. That's some or it brings up old wounds or it brings up old history. And I mean, how does life brings that up? You know, you get in a situation and suddenly you remember when you were a little girl, someone said negative to you, and it changed your trajectory. So I really think for me, it definitely has been, and I've seen it be that path for many, many women who want to dig in and do the work.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

I think that is the cannibalization process we mentioned earlier, is that will happen to the people who aren't ready to do that inner work and the ones that are and have that staying power and that like emotional resilience over the long term. That's where a lot of those like beautiful benefits start to come from, not just monetarily, but just in who you become, which is so cool. So can you share maybe one to three of the most important like mental or emotional skills someone in this industry would need to build in order to make it past that place where it's too hard, I'm tapping out.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

Honestly, you have to be resilient. And resiliency, I mean, it comes in if you go on a diet, really, right? You go on a diet and you're not willing to be resilient enough those against those days where you really want to eat that that bag of chips and you don't eat that or you don't want to do that workout. That's resilience that keeps you going. Like it's not a special skill, it's not a special gift. It is you digging in and saying, This is not gonna take me down. So you have to have some resilience, you have to have some work ethic. Like, you know, if you this is why not everybody's an entrepreneur, because not everybody has that work ethic or that drive or that where you just know you were made for more. I think, and actually, I'm gonna take that back. I think a lot of people know they're made for more, but they're too scared to figure out how they could get to that path to be more. I don't want to play down people who don't want to take that risk because there's a lot of fear in the world and there's a lot of negativity, and and you have to really be resilient enough to put that to the side and say, I I'm gonna ignore that. And unfortunately, most of that stuff comes from your best friend, your mom, your sister, your family, your the people when they join me. I know you want your family to support you. I'm here to tell you they probably won't. And it's normal. It's not that your family's worse than my family or that family. It's that's just it's just not gonna happen. A, they want to protect you, make sure you don't get hurt. And so the best way people know how to do that is to show you all the things that could go wrong. Um so resiliency, definitely. Definitely work ethic. And this isn't one thing, but it's kind of you have to be willing to try something without confidence. Like so many of us want to live in our I hear this all the time from women. I'll do it when I feel more confident. You ain't gonna feel more confident if you don't do it. Like confidence only comes from doing. And we often say you got to do the do. And showing up 90% messy and you know, not professional and you know, looking like a mess. And that's that's how confidence is built. You know, I always have people saying to me, You I see you online and you're so confident. I said, but you didn't see me in 20 and in 2012 when I first hit social media and live wasn't even available then, but when live finally became available and I did my first live, that thank God is nowhere to be seen anymore. Because if you saw it versus today, you'd be like, I got confident doing it every day and doing it even today. I make a reel and I'm like, that reel sucks. Put it up, anyways, because that's the only way I'm gonna get better. So you have to be willing to be start things without any confidence to feel like, oh my gosh, you have to have resilience because that's gonna keep you going and you gotta have some work ethic. Three of the things I think you need.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

So if someone listening is feeling that pull towards more, whether that's like more freedom, more expression, more success in one of these fields, but they don't quite trust themselves yet. What would you say to them?

SPEAKER_01 23:31

I would say we talk about that a lot in this in this business. And I do, and this is part of you know, moving from that to that leadership role. Lots of people think leadership is about knowing all the answers and being able to tell everybody the answers. That's not leadership, that's training. Leadership is about, and I actually had this happen to me today. One of my team members sent me a message saying, I'm just not feeling it today. We're on a bit of a run right here, we're working on some goals, and she's like, I just, I don't know if I can get to my do what I need to do today. And I basically said, I get it, I get it. So, what I would say to someone is you don't have to have it figured out. You don't have to know you know what to do next. There's something, the biggest mistake that people do in this industry is they jump in, they don't do any research, they don't do any due diligence, they don't know who they're joining with, they don't know who is gonna do the training, they don't know what kind of support they're gonna get, they don't know what kind of time investment they need to make, they don't treat it as a real job. They treat it as I'll buy a kitch, sell it to my friends, and my friends will buy it and I'll make some money. I'm gonna break that fallacy for everybody right now. That doesn't work. So if you're sitting there and you're thinking, I made for more, I want to do something different, I need something, but I'm scared and I don't know that I know how to do this. And my friend told me she failed at it, and everybody else told me this doesn't work. What I would say is, you know, find someone online. Everybody's online right now, you know, sharing their industry, sharing what they do. Or if your friend comes to you and has this opportunity and you're like, I don't know, ask that friend to introduce you to their upline. Who are they gonna be coached by? Who is gonna invest in them? Who's invested in this enough to know how to do it, who has a plan, who has it figured out, who can sit down and say, tell me what you want. Here's the route to get it. Right? Because it is very systematic. It's like any other job. There is a system on how this works. And you want to be locked arms with someone, you may be locking arms with your girlfriend who's new too. Know that your girlfriend doesn't have the skill to get you there. You need to know who's your girlfriend locked in with. That is so key because that person that your girlfriend's locked in with, or the person above her, or the person above her, is the person who's going to show you the roadmap, who's gonna give you the skills, who you're gonna go to in those times and go, This is way harder than I ever thought it was. And you're gonna go, yeah, it sure is. Here's your next roadmap. Or tell, you know, so you need people don't do that due diligence. People don't, you know, they have a great story, they love the product, and they think that's all it takes. It's not all it takes. It's not all it takes for any job. You can't get any job and just say, okay, I'll do this. I've seen you do it, so I must know how to do it. Doesn't work that way. So if you're sitting there and you file the poll and you're thinking, you know, I want to try it, you can find me on Facebook. I don't know if you have a link you're putting in the, but you can put my Facebook link there and message me. I don't have a fancy giveaway or anything like that to, you know, get you introduced. I just believe a conversation does it. I need think you need to know who I am and I need to know who you are, because the reality is not everybody's a fit for everybody, not every company's a fit for everyone. And you owe it to yourself to find the place that will be a fit for you. And that has to happen through personal interaction. It's why you'd go for an interview on a job. You need to interview this like it's a job. And so I would say step in, have a conversation with someone, and just you know, try it in the end. Here's the thing lots of people come to me and they're in dire straits and they're like, here's what I say to people. So if you don't do this, what's your plan B? Like, how are you gonna get out of this if you don't do something different? So if it's not this, what's it gonna be? Like you can go do something else, but make sure you have another plan because there's no ferry that's gonna come and fix it for you tomorrow. You're still gonna be in the same boat if you don't do something different. So why not try this where it's low investment? You get the on on you know, hands-on training, you get that support. And in 90 days, if you don't like it, walk away.

SPEAKER_00 27:44

He touched on some beautiful things there. One is definitely doing that research and having that discernment. And the person that you do work with makes all the difference. That relationship is the most valuable part. So I will definitely be linking your Facebook for everyone listening so they can have that conversation and also just to see how you show up on social media, how vulnerable you are, how real you are, how you don't just sell a product, but you weave in you, which is such a beautiful thing to do that creates this authenticity that's just amazing to watch. So, Candace, I have loved this conversation so much. I like to get my guests to give the listeners an embodied challenge of some kind. So this can be a journal prompt, a type of movement, maybe breath work. It can be really anything that you feel called to have the listeners walk away with today.

SPEAKER_01 28:47

I would really like everybody to sit down and think of one person they know that's been in this space before. And maybe ask them what that experience was like for them. And take the time to find someone online and follow them a little bit because it's so twisted, people's perception of this. And most people who have a negative perception of it have never done it, have never touched it, don't know anything. They're just going by what so and so says. So I really want to encourage your listeners who maybe are like, I don't know how I'm gonna pay my bills next month. The cost of gas today, like my husband texts me at the cost of gases. I'm like, oh my God, how you know, two streams of income used to do it for people. We're now talking about four, five, six streams of income. So think about, you know, how are you going to create that for yourself? And this social marketing space is the up and coming thing. We all buy online. That's what we do. And, you know, this is an opportunity to really look at changing what you have, like the project, the trajectory of your life without adding another eight hours a day or losing more time with your family or taking away from what you have to get more. And I really want to challenge people to really look at it from a different viewpoint. If I've done anything today, I hope that I give you that moment of looking at it from a different perspective. Because as a mom, and I'll finish with this because I think this is so crucial. As a mom, when I was doing all of that, when I was working really hard, when I was, you know, pushing for myself and advocating for myself and learning. So were my kids. And I and now my kids are adults and one of them owns his own company. My daughter's been an independent income earner since she came out of school. It impacts them even when you don't think it is. They're watching you 100%. So if you're a young mom struggling, they're watching that too. And to be able to see you, young mom or young dad, whatever, you take it and say, I'm gonna do something different, I'm gonna put myself out there, gives them the courage to do it too.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

Obviously, that is a powerful share. So uh thank you so much, Candace. It has been a delight hanging out with you today. You too. Thanks so much for having me, Kayla. Yes, you are very welcome. Ready to stop outsourcing your inner knowing and crack your own code? Grab my free gift, Know Your Hungers. Discover the five hidden blocks behind your food struggles, and get a customized audio care package based on your results. You're not broken, you're just misdiagnosed. Visit embodiedwriting warrior.comslash gift, or click the link in the show notes.