How I Built a 20+ Year Business by Trusting Myself and You Can Too!

Are you ready to rediscover your magic and build a business that feels truly aligned with who you are? In this very first episode of You Are the Magic, I share the surprising, unconventional story of how I accidentally started a business that’s thrived for over 20 years. We’ll dive into the unique magic each of us carries—the passions, lived experiences, stories and gifts that make us who we are—and why embracing your authenticity is the key to success.

I’ll also explore the impact of cultural conditioning, how to rebuild self-trust, and the power of following what lights you up. Whether you’re starting something new or pivoting to a fresh direction, this episode will leave you inspired to take your next step with confidence. Plus, I’ll share one of my favorite quotes from Toni Morrison that perfectly captures the theme of this episode: letting go of what holds you back so you can fly.

Tune in to kick off this journey together and discover why you are the magic.

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Thank you for listening and just remember, you are the magic!

Chapters

• 0:03 You Are the Magic
• 8:41 Embracing Your Unique Magic

Transcript

Welcome to the very first episode of You Are the Magic. I'm so excited you're here! You Are the Magic is a theme that I learned from running my business and also from seeing all the people in the world who I love. It's our heart, our soul, that special thing inside of us, all of our stories, our lived experience. That is what I mean when I say you are the magic. Some of these episodes I'm going to do by myself to talk about things that I've learned, things you might be able to apply to your business. We're going to talk about both energy and strategy-- I believe the two go together. But I'm also going to interview a bunch of really cool people about the stuff they're doing. 

So let's jump right in. I'm going to tell you a little bit of my story about how my business started. It's just so bananas. It goes against all of the great business advice and it's worked out just fine for me for more than 20 years. 

And we're going to talk about you! How being the biggest, truest version of yourself is the way you are the magic, and so my goal for all of these episodes is that you walk away excited to work on your projects, whether that's a book, a YouTube channel, a podcast of your own, a new offer in your business. Or, if you're like me, all of those things. My personal belief is that each of us is on this planet to experience what it means to be fully human and that especially includes being the one and only you. So let's get started. 

I love podcasts. I love them so much that I’ve listened to hundreds of different podcasts. These beautiful conversations made me want to be a podcast host. I feel like knowing where a person has learned what they've learned, knowing who their influences are, is really important, and that's part of our magic.

I started my business accidentally. I had a job in my twenties. I was good at it. I had amazing clientele. The job had a lot of aspects of running your own business, because essentially, I was an independent contractor. I learned so much from that job. It also gave me the freedom to have a side hustle writing articles for magazines. I wrote for women's magazines. I wrote for local magazines. I wrote for industry specific magazines. One of my other main interests at the time was horses, so I started writing articles for horse magazines. I got to cover events. I got to interview people. I wrote book reviews. I wrote profile pieces. 

After I'd published more than 500 articles, someone who I interviewed asked me if I would write a press release for her. It got picked up by 56 media outlets. To say that I was hooked would be a major understatement. I wrote stuff for her. people. I helped with her interviews. I wrote all kinds of press releases, did media outreach. Over time people started asking me to do more of that for them. Within a couple years I had this thriving PR business that had expanded into every kind of marketing you can imagine and it all started from me just following my passions, which at the time was writing and horses. 

Those two interests converged in a way naturally that I never could have conceived of. I just did it naturally. As a result, I was attracting people to me who wanted to pay me for my skills. If I had sat down to try to come up with a plan, I probably would never have started my business. 

So if you’re listening and you’re on the verge, trying to get it all right, just put it out in the world. When you're doing things you love that come naturally to you, you're automatically going to attract the right people. In the course of that business, I got to book clients onto the Martha Stewart Show, Woman's Day Magazine, abc, nbc, cbs, fox, affiliates, all kinds of stuff. 

In running that business I learned so many skills that I use now. I got to be inside hundreds of businesses. It expanded beyond equestrian, because people who have equestrian businesses also have other businesses. And again, just the natural things that I was interested in brought more people to me. I worked with authors. I worked on some events that were book specific. I've gotten to work on startups, and now, as a business coach, I take all of that experience and help people grow their businesses by doing less, because everything that you want–more impact, more visibility, the book deal– starts by saying how can I create more space? So, anyway, we're going to talk about all that on many episodes. I wanted to share my story because I think that sometimes we just want to get in our head about things. 

What it comes down to is following your interests. What are you passionate about? Not being afraid of what you're passionate about. Also not feeling like you can't pivot away from something and be okay. It can be okay that you outgrew something. You're a new person every single day, so don't be afraid to move in the direction you want to go now. And we're in a really interesting time. It is very likely that things that you're doing now maybe don't fit anymore and it's time to look at them in a new way. 

For me, it's like we always come back to that specialness inside us, which is our magic. Yet our cultural conditioning really trains us away from our magic. What do we do about that? How do we get our power back? These are topics that are really near and dear to my heart. 

It was amazing to me that I started this business from literally nothing and it became something I could do for years and years. I did pick up some bad habits along the way, like always saying yes, and letting good girl conditioning make me think I had to solve every problem and always be helping all the time, which is great up to a point in customer service. But there's a point at which you can tip over into being such an overachiever and over giving that you harm yourself, and I have tipped into that. But I have learned all of the skills of how to get back out of that, and that's something we're going to talk about here too--letting go of our good girl conditioning, our good boy conditioning, and wanting to do things in such a way that they're extraordinary, but it can get out of hand really easily. 

I believe that we have knowing inside us. Even with the conditioning that we need to slowly but surely slough off, there's still that quiet voice inside of us that knows. One of the aspects of that voice is just following what interests you and trusting that it is right. This is how we, over time, keep becoming the biggest, truest, best version of ourselves. Every time we take a step from that voice inside us, and it doesn't have to be a literal voice, it can just be a knowing, a nudge, a feeling, an excitement. Every time we take a step from there, we rebuild the self-trust that we eroded away from following the conditioning. 

This is one of the things I want to unpack with our guests on the show, as well as lots and lots of strategies. Because for me, I feel like, yes, all the good vibes follow your intuition, AND when you come with strategy that's unique to you, nobody can tell you what's the right strategy for you, although it's helpful to learn many strategies and tactics. I'm talking about marketing, I'm talking about business models, things like that, but when you put the right strategy for you with your energy, you are literally unstoppable. 

At the end of the day, we're always going to need to be coming back to ourselves being the truest version of ourselves, noticing when conditioning is driving us, following that thing that doesn't make any sense, but when we know it's our thing to do. 

I want to leave us on this episode with a quote from Toni Morrison that you might have heard, but you can't ever hear it too many times. Toni Morrison said, “You want to fly, you got to give up that shit that weighs you down”. And that shit that weighs you down is all the conditioning, all of the places we've eroded our self-trust, where we need to rebuild it, all of the times that we'd listened to somebody else and taken action based on that, even though we knew it was wrong. 

This whole show is about rediscovering your magic, trusting that your magic is so unique and so beautiful and so needed. Who knows what this year is going to bring? This is why your magic, your gifts, your business, your work, your just being yourself in the world is so needed. Because, as each one of us becomes the truer version of ourself, we take a little bit of power back. As each person takes a little bit of power back every day, over time, we can shift these systems. Whether you live in a city, live in the country, live on a mountain, live by the ocean, it's up to each of us who has the awareness to start bringing our own magic back, to walk through the world, making it better, just by existing. I know that's the kind of person you are and I'm so glad you're here. 

I hope that I can bring you really inspiring episodes that help you go back to your own work with renewed enthusiasm. 

One of the things all my clients have always said, whether it was in my job in my 20s, whether it was my PR and advertising clients, whether it's my business coaching clients, whether it's my writer friends, one of the things they say about me is that my enthusiasm lifts them up. 

One of the things that I love about all the work I've ever done is I get to see human potential. I can always see how much potential people have and all of the beautiful things they can bring into the world. I can feel you listening to this podcast and going back to your work with renewed enthusiasm. That is my intention for this entire show. I look forward to meeting with you once a week, whether it's in interviews or solo episodes. 

If you like this podcast, please share it. I want to hear what you have to say so we can make this a show that is fun for all of us in our magic. Just remember, you are the magic.