Wrinkles, Wisdom & a Soft CEO Summer

A conversation about aging, authenticity, TikTok, and creating a business that feels as good as it looks.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to House of Sovereignty, a space for women who are ready to come back to themselves in love, relationships, and life. I'm Marla Martinson, matchmaker, coach, and intuitive. And in each episode, I'll be sharing stories, insights, and a little bit of magic so you can start seeing things more clearly, trusting yourself more deeply, and experiencing love in a different way. Hello and welcome to another episode of House of Sovereignty. I am so glad you're here. I hope you've had an amazing Fourth of July weekend. Happy birthday, America, 250 years. And this podcast is really about being sovereign and what does that mean? So today I just wanted to hop on here and do a short transmission talking about being our sovereign selves as women and stepping into what we what we came here to do, what we came on the planet to do, and feeling good about it and feeling confident and knowing that we can do whatever we set our minds to. And I think it's really also about just giving ourselves permission, giving ourselves permission to lean into that soft success. You know how we hear about that from coaches nowadays. Oh, lean into your soft CEO, your soft success and being soft. And since it's summer, and depending on where you are, if you're in, you know, the northern hemisphere here, it's it's summer, and a lot of places are very hot right now. I'm in Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley, and the heat, it's it is heating up. It's in the high 80s, and by the end of the end of the week, it'll be up in the high 90s, and that's nothing new for San Fernando Valley in the summer. But we do have a beautiful pool here at home, and so I'm giving myself permission to not even put on any makeup, to sit by the pool, take my lunch there, take my dog Macy swimming, do my work from my uh well, I call it it's a it's my it's actually my bed, but I have a koala bed, which is actually like this really comfortable armchair, and it pulls out into a bed, but it you just pull it right out. It's not any big production or anything, and it is the most comfortable thing I've ever sat on or laid on. It's so great, and that's in my sanctuary, and I sleep next to my dog Macy because she's blind and and 16, and so I sleep right next to her. And it's fine because my husband snores and I get up a lot, and Macy gets up, so he sleeps in the master bedroom for now, and I sleep uh with Macy because she does sometimes get up in the middle of the night. So it's that I'm digressing here, but just to paint the picture, and I've got my Christmas tree right in front of me, which I wrote a a piece for Substack talking about why I keep my Christmas tree up 365. And it's a very um, it's it this it's about my height and it's very narrow, it's small, it's thin, and it's so magical. And I just take a look at it, it's all lit up with all my special little little ornaments. And it's it's about that softness of stepping into your magic, slowing it down. And so often we're running around with our heads cut off like a chicken. Is that how they say like a chicken with our heads cut off? You know how they'll run. Isn't that an awful um where do we get that saying, you know, when somebody cut the head off a chicken, I guess they keep they start running around. Isn't that an awful visual? But we we're running around, and and I'm giving myself permission just the next couple of months to take it slow, get the work done I need to get done, but uh do it in this in this manner that just comes back to myself and allows myself to, you know, not put on any makeup if I don't want to uh work in my bathing suit. Luckily, I do work from home, not everybody does, uh, but I'm just doing that. And and um I wanted to share something with you that I think as a woman you're going to relate to. So I started something, and I haven't talked about it publicly yet, but I'm gonna do it now. So about uh April, April, maybe about the 20th of April around there, I started uh this new venture. I'm trying something new. Of course, if you know me, I'm a matchmaker for 25 years. I'm a coach, I do mediumship and readings, but I thought, you know what, I heard about this TikTok shop and being an affiliate and uh being a UGC UGC create user generated, yeah, you UGC creator, which means user generated content. And that is like when you're scrolling on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, you see regular people, and they are talking about a product, and then there's a link to buy instead of these polished commercials that you know uh companies were paying thousands or millions of dollars for, right? So now they're using regular people, user-generated content. And I heard that people were making great money, and I thought, you know, that sounds like a lot of fun. So I joined this agency. I'm in it for a year, and uh agency meaning I uh get training, training twice a week, and a coach and learning it. It's there's things to learn about it, but uh, and you have to have a certain amount of followers and all of this stuff, but it's really um not the amount of followers you have, because my followers aren't gonna buy this stuff, but it's pushed out, the algorithm will push it out to different people on their for you page. And it's this whole big thing. So I thought, let me give this a try. This looks really fun because I've bought a lot of things off of TikTok shop from these, you know, just user creators, regular people who are doing this. And I've I had quite a few things that I purchased. Everything that's on Amazon is on TikTok shop. So I started, and I've been making videos on TikTok, but uh before, just talking about dating or different things or magical stuff, just posting there for fun. And uh never with a huge following. My bigger following is on Instagram, like 13,000 followers, which I love Instagram, but I thought, you know, TikTok is kind of it's a wild west over there. It's pretty, it's pretty crazy. So uh I started doing this, and you need to post like daily, and you've got to learn how to make them short and and make the the person want to stop scrolling, you know, you want to get their attention within three seconds with a good hook and uh all these things. So I have some main things that I'm you know promoting there. Uh one of them is um a beef tallow balm for the face, another one is uh essential oils by Oracasha, there's a mushroom blend by Buddyguard for my dog. There's a few things that I really love, and I've been posting, oh, also my Dracula mug, my Dracula mug for for uh, you know, just the spooky season or spooky people, right? So there's there's different things. And you've got to post and post and post. And you've and one, so I always put, listen, you guys, I'm 64 years old. I just turned 64. I'm not the kind of woman who's gonna hide my age or lie about my age or try to try to pretend anything. Um, I was always a very beautiful woman all my life until you know age caught up with me, and then what do you do, right? The wrinkles catch up. But I was a head turner. I'd walk in a room and heads would turn, and my mother was the same. And I did do modeling and acting and all of that in my younger years. I'm writing an essay for Substack, which I've been loving writing the essays on Substack, but um, and I'm gonna share a little bit of it with you here. I haven't posted it yet, but um, about when that changed, when heads stopped turning, etc., etc. So as you know, they've got these filters on our cameras on Instagram. If you're posting on TikTok, you go in and you're gonna make a video and it offers you all these filters. And of course, as a you know, woman that it's tough looking at yourself and seeing an older woman now with all these wrinkles, I would put on a light filter just to kind of smooth things out a little, right? Nothing radical. And then uh I was doing that with my TikTok videos, the the uh affiliate uh ones. And then in one of the classes, uh, because we do uh Mondays and Wednesdays for an hour, it's a Zoom with trainings, right, for for this TikTok affiliate shop. And one of the coaches said, because somebody asked the question about filters, and she says, Oh no, don't put, you know, it's better not to use a filter because TikTok will think that you're I mean, especially if you're doing anything for skincare or anything like that, they just they might suppress it because they'll think this is kind of false advertising and all of that. And I was like, oh, well, that's unfortunate. Now I'm gonna have to just go, you know, what do you call it? You know, just commando, I don't know, so with no underwear, no, I don't know, but I'd have to just go oh natural, let's say. All right. So I do have uh professional lighting, you know, you want to have good, clear, bright light. You you don't want all these shadows or so I do have that, and that does help to an extent. But I turned off the filter, you guys. And so um I it was hard at first, and I, you know, I was looking at the screen thinking, who is that old lady? You know, it wasn't easy, it was a little bit emotional, but you know, I I think this is a good teaching, it was a good teaching moment for myself, and you might get something out of this. It's just becoming who we are, accepting who we are, and not trying to turn back that clock. Um our culture is, you know, it's Botox, it's fillers, it's um facelifts, it's microneedling, it's whatever you can do. It's like do whatever the hell you can do, creams and and people are injecting their buttocks now and and all of these things. And and I think about it, and yes, okay, I do color my hair to get it back to its natural red. I whiten my teeth because I drink a lot of coffee and I want white, nice white teeth. Uh I work out, I swim, I go to yoga, keep my body slim and trim because that's how I feel good. Uh I do my nails, my my toes. So, yes, there's things that I do to make myself not to turn back the clock, but to look nice and to look magical and to look fresh, right? But I realized when I turned off that filter, because I used to say, tease my friends, I'd say, God, if I could just walk around town, you know, walk around life with a filter on my face, is there anything that I could do? But then now that I'm in my 60s, approaching the mid-60s, uh, there's certain things you can go do for the face, but then it's like, okay, well, let's say the wrinkles are uh released from the uh erased from the face, but then what about the neck? Then what about the upper arms that's wrinkled? What about my forearms? Now they're starting to get wrinkled, the back of my hands. That it's just that it would go on and on. How do you just fix all that, you know, and and why do we need to fix it? Is it why do we need to feel that we need to be fixed? And so I've been leaning into it in one of the videos. I also um, well, I also do like a lot with a witch's hat, and I do some spook, you know, like the Dracula mugs. So I said in one of them, I said, What's a what's an old witch to do? I said, I'm in my crone years, I can't fight it. But I do like to nourish my skin with this beef tallow balm. So I'm leaning into it, ladies, and I would love to hear from you who else is leaning into it and accepting it. We can still keep ourselves fresh and fit and healthy, but not scramble to um make ourselves look like, you know, some ironed out version of our old selves. Um so I would love to have a conversation around that, you know. And so that's my new adventure and uh something that I've learned there. And um, oh, also, you know, when I when I was and I was also thinking about this, um these kind of things that people will say. So every now and then, if I mention that I'm 64, then another woman will say, Oh wow, you look great. Or, you know, oh you don't oh wow, you don't look it. And I know they're just trying to be kind, but I I it doesn't land right. I I don't want this was something I really thought about, and I don't want the compliment to be a compliment to be based on lowered expectations. Like, you know, I don't want people to be surprised that a 64-year-old woman could be vibrant or strong or stylish, funny, creative, or beautiful. And I don't take it as a compliment because it's sort of like, well, you know, you shouldn't look good at that age, but wow, you do. You know, it's it's it's just it's not, it's not. So, but I've felt like that for years. And I know people just try to be try to be kind, but it really stings, you know. So that is what I've learned. And I'm stepping into some new things. The matchmaking is um taking a little back seat as things have slowed down after 25 years. The the clients are not flooding in as they used to, the male clients. So we're being very my business partner Fredly and I are being very particular about who we're taking on now. And that goes into that soft season of okay, what do we want to do? I'm I'm no longer open and available to take on a male client who's 65 but won't date over 45, you know, who wants 35 to 45. I've done that in the past for years and years. And it's uh frustrating, it's it's um it's very hard, it's challenging, it's it doesn't make me feel good to try to, it's a it's a challenge. I challenge anybody to take my job and see what you could do with that because it's not only the age, they also want the woman to look like a model when they're paying these thousands of dollars. You know, this is the kind of client I've had over the years, and so I am finally saying no. I'm saying no to that, and I'm saying yes to fully aligned uh clients who I can really help and and um love working with, which I, you know, my clients are great. I can't say that they're they're not fun and wonderful people, but there's some uh guardrails they put up there. There's some there's some um what do you call it, you know, their particulars that their lists, their must-haves or non-negotiables that are pretty much looking for a unicorn. And so I'm not I'm no longer in the unicorn business, I'm no longer in the needle in a haystack business. I'm in the business of stepping into uh authenticity, love, truth, and accepting exactly where I am in life and doing everything that I love. And so I'm just sharing this with you to hope and I hope that this could inspire you if there's some things that you're doing that you really um don't that doesn't align with you anymore, or feeling, gosh, I have to keep up, I have to look a certain way, or be a certain way, or do it do us do it a certain way. I just want to share with you that House of Sovereignty, you're in the right place. I'm glad you found me, and I want to build something here where women can just be their authentic, amazing, magical selves. And so with that, I bid you farewell until the next episode, and I'm sending you much love. Thank you so much for spending this time with me. If this resonated, I'd really appreciate it if you left a review on iTunes and hit subscribe. And if you'd like to go a little deeper, you can explore my private audio experiences and one to one sessions inside House of Sovereignty at marlamartensen.com. Everything is linked below in the show notes. I'd love to connect with you.