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You Haven't Lost Your Creativity. You've Just Stopped Making Room for It. · Kind of a Big Deal

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hi everyone, welcome to Kind of a Big Deal.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Kristen Belden.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: If you've been around for a bit and have been enjoying the show, please hit that follow button.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: It helps more awesome folks like you find us, and it truly means the world to me.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Today I sit down with Debika, a second-time founder who is building at the intersection of art, creativity, and mental wellness.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: What I love about her story is that she didn't start there.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: She started in finance, moved through impact investing, built her first company in London, and has spent the years since following a threat that keeps leading her back to the same question.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to help people reconnect with what's actually meaningful?
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about what it looks like to let a business reveal itself to you instead of forcing it into shape.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: How to tell the difference between real feedback and noise and what the inner work of building actually looks like when you're the one in charge of your own day.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: I can't wait for you to meet her.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Here's Deba.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, Devica.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Good to see you.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, Kristen.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so excited.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate you taking some time.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Devica, she is somebody that I saw.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: She has been posting some really cool stuff on LinkedIn.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: I reached out to her because I loved what she was sharing about the power of art, as well as her own founder journey and what it's been like to build in real time.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: She's been sharing updates and just her thought leadership around what it means to be building, but also her real point of view around the importance of the arts in our lives and other just really cool stuff that she's been sharing with the world.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I reached out to her and she just very graciously said yes to a conversation.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: I I really appreciate you being here.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank you.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you reaching out.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's always fun to get those um messages, at least one just uh acknowledging the writing.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm really glad it resonated.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, which it feels like sometimes on LinkedIn, honestly.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Especially lately.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: So you started your career in your career journey in finance, if I have that right, which may on paper may not, you know, clearly align itself with being a founder in the arts and culture space.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I think let's start there at the beginning.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, what were those early career days about and what were you being drawn to?
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've had a bit of a squiggly path, I guess, but mostly started out very traditional.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: I studied economics in college and environmental studies, and so it kind of just made sense that I would get a job in finance after graduation, especially because of the market at the time when I graduated, it was you know, real emphasis on stability.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I really do, even though it wasn't it didn't end up being my passion, it really set the foundation for me as an individual, a professional.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: I learned a great amount from my bosses in both of the banks, and one was an asset management firm that I worked at, and I really you know have a lot of admiration for the work ethic and discipline and kind of mentorship that I got at those jobs.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: But ultimately, even though I have a I have a, I guess, more of an analytical or brain and had been encouraged to nurture that most of my um you know young adult life, I still had a lot of um interest in doing things more related to community building and very much interested in social impact and mission-driven organizations.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so toward the end of my time in finance, I started to work on portfolio management related to environmental, social, and governance kind of mandates.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that was really interesting.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: It got me into impact investing.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really inspired by Jacqueline Novergrads, who's the founder of Acumen, which is one of the largest impact investment organizations, and you know, a lot of what she talks about, and at the time she had given a commencement speech at Gettysburg, and it was something that really made an impression on me.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: It was just more of a call to do good while doing well, and I felt like I really had to kind of explore that a little bit more because in my mind I could always fall back on my financial background, and that inevitably led to me pursuing a graduate degree in MBA.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: I went to London and that kind of kicked off a lot of different changes in my life and experiences that led to me jumping into entrepreneurship, founding my first company, and then ultimately um the current company that I'm a founder of.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's so beautiful.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Doing good by doing well.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think every time I'm in these conversations, there's one or two things that show up that I'm like, all right, t-shirt, bumper stick, or something.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure that has to be somewhere already.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure it is.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: I would be curious for you, you know, as you thought about what the first kind of dipping your toes into entrepreneurship looked like.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what was what was that business about?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: And did you already did you always see yourself as somebody that would want to build your own business at some point?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, short answer, no.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: I never really considered that path.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: I've always been someone that kind of uh, you know, followed the rules and and kind of did the path that I thought that I should be taking, which is interesting because um every member of my family has started their own business.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: My mom started a nonprofit, my sister's been an entrepreneur, my dad is a lifelong entrepreneur, my grandfather on both sides.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of um entrepreneurial blood um in me.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think when I started to get involved with some startups during my MBA in London, that's when I thought a little bit more about what it would be like to have my own company.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I ended up doing my final thesis on what eventually became my first business.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, in a nutshell, that business was called Art of Kindness, and it effectively was a social good art marketplace.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: So it was combining a lot of my interests, which were art, community building, social impact.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: And even though I was kind of new to technology, we were doing some really interesting things with blockchain and digital storytelling, and the goal there really was to um activate the power of art for not only beauty, but social impact and good.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: We had some really awesome partners, and I was lucky to be able to build that business in London for a couple of years, but we ran into a lot of um, you know, roadblocks related to one market timing.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: People were not buying art online in those days.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: There was no such thing as an NFT.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, blockchain was early, a lot of the tech that we were building was very early and expensive.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: And on the flip side of that, a lot of younger people were very interested in getting involved in art and and impact, but they needed a lot of hand holding and needed a lot of guidance around what kind of art did they even want to buy.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: They had ideas of what they would like, but they weren't able to totally express it.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that kind of you know kicked off a different rabbit hole for me where I started to think more through not just selling art, but how do we actually get people to connect on a deeper level and start to understand what resonates with them, what's their taste, um, you know, how do they want to connect with contemporary culture?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many nuggets in all of that.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: I I think about that a lot.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think I shared this with you, but I was an art major in school and a dear friend of mine from those days.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're we're always kind of asking that question, even of ourselves still, of what are we connecting to and what do we like, what do you quote unquote like as it relates to being connected to art?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we don't always it's not something that's taught in the school.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: We're not taught to like engage with these things without somebody telling us what is good or important art.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what do you actually just what resonates for you, right?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like what are you drawn to?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: What makes you go?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I find that interesting.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I wonder if that's something that you are maybe let's talk now about what you're building today, because I think there's something really interesting about how you're asking people now to engage from a tech perspective with the arts.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, that question that you talked about that you know, you and your friends had studying art is the same.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think that everybody has, and somewhere along the way, we stop asking and just kind of opt out of the art experience.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: I know I was one of those people.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but when I was in London, you know, there's so many beautiful museums and art.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um my grandfather was a jewelry and collectibles dealer.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: My dad has some experience in that space, so I've had a bit of knowledge around, you know, some sort of like storytelling, you know, objects that really stand out and can capture attention, what it means to have an eye and and you know, really kind of uh be able to uh create a collection or curate a collection, but I didn't really have any of those skills myself at the time.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so I kind of just went through this process of exposing myself to a lot of different types of art.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: And through that process, I got very interested in neuroaesthetics, which is essentially how visuals, beautiful images, art positively impacts the brain.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: And that kind of ties into a little bit of you know how we naturally kind of talk about art as kids, which is how does it make us feel?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so all of those different components kind of came together to form the foundation of the company I'm building now, which is called Soul.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: And we're making art discovery a daily ritual for the culturally curious.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're someone that's felt intimidated or excluded, or possibly doesn't really know how to get involved with art, or maybe you do, but you just need a kind of a space that you can cultivate a daily practice, just looking at different types of art, then that's really where we come in.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: We're more of a um, like I mentioned, a daily practice versus a marketplace or traditional space that you go just to buy art.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's really about immersing yourself in creativity and beauty and meaning making, which I feel a lot of people are really um, you know, craving, especially in today's climate.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's something that I feel really um, you know, escapes us with how much we are inundated with information and now, you know, AI and content and AI slop and you know, art is just a really beautiful place for people to spend time with.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: So that's really the essence of um what we're doing and the mission behind what we're building.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's so cool.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if you're also I mean, two things.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: One is, you know, second-time founder now.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: How much of what you learned with your first endeavor are you carrying into not necessarily like the tactical or like the business components of it, but just by virtue of what it means to be an entrepreneur and how to build something?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: What's something that you're carrying forward from your first experience?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good question.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like I spent a lot of time in the world.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: It could be no one letting all of that.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um fair.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: What I do try to, you know, carry forward and and think about is um just the optimism and the enthusiasm that I had the first time I built.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, it was it's it's um kind of special to not really know what exactly you're getting involved in when you start building something.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, you you have a lot more energy, um, you know, kind of being on the earlier side of your journey.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: And what I didn't do the best in the first time was think about how to maintain and sustain that energy and not let a lot of the challenges mean more than they did in the moment.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so now I think it's a little bit about um, yeah, just trying to tap into how fulfilling and meaningful and um exciting it is to be creating something that is, you know, creating meaning for other people.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's so at such a good point just around I I was thinking about this recently.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: I had hosted um an event for the first season of women that came on the show, and I was so nervous, right?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: This was back in the spring, but it was because it was the first time, right?
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it was I had no idea what shape it was gonna take, and you know, all of the rest.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: And there is something so special though about the first time you do anything, even if it's your second time building a business.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's your first time building this business, right?
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so to your point, there's that kind of discovery and getting to see what shape it's gonna take, and that level of awareness that you only get to do it for the first time once, I think it's it kind of lets that be this beautiful season in in what you're building.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: When you talk about the sustainability of that, I wonder what that looks like for you now.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Is that somewhere in the world of what you were just saying where you're not, you know, letting some of the challenges overtake, or you know, are there other pieces to what it looks like to sustain that a bit more this time around?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think a lot of it is reframing um challenge and failure, which a lot of people have talked about.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think it's important that, especially when you go from like a corporate structured environment to some plus now a place where you are in charge of your own day, no matter what you're building.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you're you're kind of the captain of your own ship.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so there can be a lot of pressure, there can be a lot of um, you know, emphasis on doing the right thing each day and making the right decisions and going at a certain speed.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like this time around, I'm just reframing all of that to be more centered around me as an individual, what I need, the types of things that help me be successful, what gives me energy, recognizing where I need help and not like just pushing through something because I want to do it myself or kind of check that box off my to-do list.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: So it's been a practice for sure of identifying things that I normally would have either pushed through or forced or perhaps not really had the right resources or tools for, and then now kind of also building my schedule around the ways that I naturally work and operate, and you know, kind of making certain things non-negotiable for myself.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then the second piece of that for the reframing is just, you know, if things don't go right or I don't get exactly what I want to do done that week, it's okay.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: It like rolls over, and there's ways that we can kind of um find gratitude in the rejections and the failures and the challenges because you know, there I forget what the exact saying is now, but it's like if you haven't gotten um, you know, to a hundred rejections, then you should be excited.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like you should be trying to get to as many no's as you can as quickly as you can, um, rather than I think before it would be like, oh, I don't want to do that because I don't want the possible rejection.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: So now it's I think just yeah, facing things a little bit more swiftly and head on and and just kind of leaning into the fact that this is a journey, it's a long game.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's really made up of small daily decisions that compound rather than like one or two big things that are gonna change the course of your founder life.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yes.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: I heard um, I don't know if you follow Rachel Rogers at all.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: She's hilarious and a wonderful author, and um also a founder and coaches other women in business.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: And she shared on her podcast recently to somebody that was she was going to become a first-time founder and trying to kind of sort through those first, you know, the baby steps of what that would look like.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: And she kept saying, just be caught trying.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, don't be caught a year from now not even putting yourself out there.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, once you start to, once you rip that band-aid off, I think that's like that's really the hardest part.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's once you start getting the rejections, it's a lot easier, I think.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's those first one or two that it's like, ugh ouch.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's like Yeah, and then you start to get desensitized.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, it almost becomes a game.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, how, how many times can I try this?
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it's an opportunity, I think if we're listening close enough to refine our point of view, or you know, not to say that we need to go with the ebbs and flows of the market or other people's opinions, but people have something to share with us, even in the rejection or the no.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, it's the why behind that.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you're lucky enough to get somebody to have that conversation with you or hear maybe what's some of their, you know, kind of pressure testing around what that is, because then you get to hear specifically from your potential, you know, client, investor, whoever it is, maybe how to rethink the way you're framing what you're trying to do.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that took me as a service-based business a minute because I was like, you know, you it can feel a bit personal at first, and then when you realize it has nothing to do with you as a human, like it's okay.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um you shared, I wrote this down as an actual quote of yours.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, I hope it's okay that I just share it back with you because I think this is another important part of the founder journey that you spoke so beautifully about.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it was that soul has evolved alongside me and my this my own pivots and pauses.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's a reflection of the fact that growth is not always linear, pretty, or easy.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's been something I've stuck with because I truly enjoyed the process of uncovering what it actually would be, how it would look, and who would benefit the most from it.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's another testament to actually you're right, you're listening to what it wants to become and let it reveal itself to you instead of trying to like shove something in that's not, you know, really what is being sought after.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so I wonder now, you know, I think you shared that some months back, the moment that you're in as it's kind of continued to reveal itself to you.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anything you've learned about what it's meant to be today that you could never have imagined when you first set out to build this particular business?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good question.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, in general, what I said then and I feel very strongly about in general is kind of what you talked about too, which is like separating business from self and understanding that they are not one in the same.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so if someone does give you feedback, um, of course, you know, your own intuition and experience and expertise comes in to filter whatever is coming at you.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: But um I think for a while I kind of went where I thought the market would want to go or where investors thought Seoul should go, um, how it should be positioned, what market would be more attractive to investors.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so when I wrote that um kind of summary, I was thinking through how when I started to detach from kind of what I thought Seoul should look like, it really started to take on a life of its own.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: And it's kind of turned and transformed, which you know, initially I had thought it would be really cool if it took this angle because it's more fun for me because it aligns with my interests, um, and maybe not so surprising that it's it's come back this this way, but um, it's become more of a mental health practice ritual than a space to just discover art and buy art.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, what we've learned, especially in the last like month or so of having the app out, is a lot of the user feedback and reviews have been around how even just spending five minutes on the app has brought people back to calm, center, reconnect, learn something, um, or help them just have a beautiful pause in their day.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, had we been really kind of focused on building a specific marketplace or tool or service for artists or buyers specifically, it would not have had the chance to evolve in this way.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I think again, yeah, just trying to give it space and also um yourself as a founder have this space to listen not just to um external feedback, but the internal kind of compass of where I wanted to take the business and then having the conviction to take continue to take it in that way, maybe.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because in the early days you don't get a lot of feedback and you're just kind of going with your gut a lot of the time.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, especially when it's something new, people don't know how to place it and how to actually give.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Any kind of feedback until they have a product in their hands.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so there were there was a stretch there where you know there was no uh input coming in.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so we just kind of had to continue to build with the the vision that I had and allow that to unfold.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: How do you differentiate?
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's not a perfect answer to this, but I think it applies to so many folks who are trying something for the first time or building or you know, putting themselves out there differently.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: How do you balance or differentiate between actual feedback that you want to take in, right?
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that allowing of the market or others that you respect to help shape and mold this thing that you you obviously you know are pouring so much energy into and like what's noise, right?
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: And how many people are willing to give you their opinion uh one way or another, or whether it's asked for or not.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like, do you have any kind of practice that helps you differentiate between the two that makes me um you know think a lot about practices or things that anybody could do outside of building in general, which is just kind of tapping more into what feels true and aligned with you as an individual, because ultimately you are going to be the one driving what you're building forward.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so it should be enjoyable.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: Not every part of building is obviously going to be in your wheelhouse or it's gonna be really fun or easy, but I think on the whole it should be something very representative of a part of you or a kind of a an aspect of yourself that you can connect very easily with.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: And what I mean by that is like your intuition.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: So if you are someone that has taken time to understand who you are, what your gifts are, what you're naturally good at, what you're not, talk to your customers.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's the tactical part of actually like doing user interviews and prototyping and testing, and just starting to get a bunch of different information and data points and learning how to filter those.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's the other part of leaning on your own intuition and your own guidance around what you feel would make the most sense for the business because ultimately you know it best, you're the one that had that vision for a reason, and so there's got to be a way that um you know, I believe every founder can tap into that kind of guidance, whether it's through journaling or meditation, visualization, however, you as a person kind of want to uh lean into what your point of view is, then I think that is a helpful compass as well when you start to get a lot of feedback because otherwise, yeah, it gets very hard because one day you'll hear one thing that supports what you're building the next day.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: You might hear three things that don't.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, you have to kind of weigh those out over time.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yes.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: As somebody who used to pull her entire uh community before making a decision, I can attest to how hard of a shift that can be to like really trust yourself and to know, right, that like ultimately we know best.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: Not from a like not in a dickish way of like I know everything, but from a if something's coming from you and you're building something or doing anything really that has to do with you putting yourself out there, that yes, if it's not coming from that true source, it also you know it feels to me, anyways, you can feel it when it feels wrong or off or awkward or strange, right?
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like you're trying on people say it's like you're putting on someone's giving you a wool coat in the middle of summer, like that's not my coat to wear, you know, like it doesn't right, it feels itchy, it feels strange.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so to come back to that, I think is so important.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: I would, you know, I don't know that I could say I had those practices.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: No, I actually could say I did not have those practices for myself or rituals that really helped me, um, you know, up until probably three years ago or so.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I always wonder for folks like, is that something that you have you always kind of been tapped into your knowing and intuition, or is that something that has evolved over time, or um, you know, were you kind of exposed to or have those practices all along?
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, quick pause before we get back into it.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you're listening to conversations like this one and something keeps nudging you, like I know I'm at some kind of turning point, I just can't quite see it clearly yet.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's actually exactly what I do.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: I work with women leaders who are in the middle of something: a career shift, a business that's ready to evolve, a moment where what got you here just isn't cutting it anymore.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes what you need most isn't a whole program or a big engagement.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: You just need a few hours of someone who can help you see what you're too close to see yourself.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's the clarity session.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's a focused, one-on-one conversation where we dig into where you are, where you want to go, and what's actually in the way.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: You walk away with real direction, not a list of homework, but genuine clarity on your next move.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: If that sounds like what you need right now, I'd love to talk.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: You can find all the details at Beldenstrategies.com slash clarity.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: I believe we we all have it um at all times, um, you know, from the day that's we have it, but like do we are we aware of it?
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: We don't.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're right.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so I I can think back through times when I knew what I wanted to do and I went against that.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I'm sure we we all can have those moments.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, you know, I like you, there's only been a couple of years really, um, the last three or four years, where I started to really get more um into I guess the inner work healing journey.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my sister gifted me the artist's way a couple of years ago.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've done that, I guess.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it's really um beautiful and it it kicked off the morning pages.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, for people who don't know, it's just like the 20 minutes of journaling every morning.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that has been really impactful for me as a way to kind of tap into inner uh guidance as well as meditation.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, even walks.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a big fan of morning walks.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I do a lot of like walking visualizations, walking meditations, sometimes not listening to anything.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that's been a great practice.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: But um, yeah, you definitely have to, like you alluded to as well, like you have to make it part of your daily ritual.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: You have to make time for it and learn how to um to listen to it because you know, like I was saying, it's there, it's just there need there that shift from it listening and hearing it to actually actioning on it, especially when it doesn't make sense to do that.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's where the the like building the muscle comes, I think.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yes.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: I love I actually just started.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she wrote a more recent book called Um The Listening Path, and it's essentially taking some of her biggest lessons in the artist's way.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because artist way, for anybody who has not uh gone down that path, is a it's a tome, like it is a book, and it takes time to get through.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so sometimes I I suggest the listening path is much more condensed, and it's a little bit of her walking through both the morning pages and the silent walks, but also um she calls them the artist dates, where it's you spend an hour out of your week doing something for yourself that has that relates to bringing joy or something that has to do with you know g bringing something into your energy or into your world that is not something you would typically engage in.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I have to say I was terrible, terrible, terrible about following my own homework uh over the last few months, just in the like depths of summer with the kids, but in the seasons of my life in which I am better about being in those rituals and in those practices, it sounds like some of them can sound almost silly, like, okay, so I just write, you know, three pages in the morning of dribble.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, what's that gonna do?
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then, okay, I'm gonna go on a 20-minute walk.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: What's that gonna do?
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I imagine if you just take those things as they are, just as individual moments, maybe they don't feel that big, but it's I think it's in the compounding of the space that you take that the magic happens.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: It might not even necessarily be in the exercise itself.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's just I know this is my time to like get quiet, and it's in the quiet the whole thing, the listening path.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: It makes sense, but it's like it can feel really foreign at first.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like when I started the quiet walks, I was like, absolutely not.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like I've always got a podcast on, or I'm talking to my mom, or I'm taking a whatever the thing, right?
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: I looked at my walk as another opportunity to fit another thing in.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: And when I stopped doing that and just sort of using it as quiet space, it it was like a it had a profound effect uh for me for sure.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: So anybody that's considering it that is able-bodied and able to get outside and do the 20 minutes, I would 100% recommend.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're right, though.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: It does feel very foreign.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: All of these, you know, um well-being practices.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like at first you're like, what's that really gonna do?
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's so easy.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's so easy to like skip for that.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like exactly.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you're right, it it starts to show up.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like the positive benefits eventually start to show up, you know, in in your in your reality.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's when it starts to become a little bit more magical, and um, you know, you start to incentivize yourself really to to keep going with it.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because in the beginning, yeah, it feels silly, nothing's really happening, and you're just kind of like, what's the point of this?
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: Eventually it does come around.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think so too, because it's also in the subtlety of it at times, right?
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think sometimes when we talk about this, it can almost be that we're imagining or expecting or desiring some big epiphany that happens, or like a, you know, I've had a breakthrough or the struck by lightning, but that's not it.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that that's lovely when that happens, but that's so rare.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's the smaller moments that you're talking about when you're tapping into yourself and you're making you like you said, you're making decisions every day, one on top of the other, and you have to trust yourself in order to move at that speed and to do it in a way that feels aligned and not like in service of the external, right?
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's I think that magic happens, is in the subtlety of it.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um I wonder if you have a point of view on you know, some of what you're building is around folks interacting with other pieces of work, like as it relates to our own creativity, and do we underestimate how much we've kind of gotten disconnected from our own creativity and the way that we are structured, right, societally, and in our our hustle and the demands that we have in our life?
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: And does that cost us as leaders and as you know, just people in the world essentially?
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I I think so.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I I I feel like creativity is a skill.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's one that I'm sure everybody knows is is undervalued and not talked enough about because it's considered a soft skill instead of a hard skill and not something that you can teach or train.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: You're kind of born with the creative gene or you're not.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think there's so much research, and now obviously more thought leaders and voices around how important the arts, creativity, and um just really also like the process of creating anything as individuals and seeing it come into fruition, how important that is for human development and for connection and cultural development.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so I feel, especially in the time where we are now, where it's so easy to quote unquote easy to produce um, you know, something new or build a new app or vibe code something or use AI to write a book, you know, creativity is gonna become more important as a way to differentiate and to reach your ideal audience.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because if everything is starting to sound the same, then your unique point of view and your ability to tap into your creativity is how you're gonna be able to stand out and really ultimately call in the community that you want to reach.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so I feel like, especially with soul, on the surface it's art, it's visual art, paintings, photography, but underneath it is creative expression, and that's also why the business is called soul.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: It stands for signature of all life, which for us is creativity, is our own personal way to express ourselves, which we all do every day.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, we don't even think about how we're personally expressing ourselves with, I mean, many of us do, I guess, intentionally with our clothing and jewelry and phone cases, but it's just such an innate part of who we are and storytelling as well, which is such a big part of art, is um, you know, really critical as well in this current um marketplace.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I think no matter who you are, it serves you to kind of spend more time with your creativity and your personal expression.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think um my husband talks about this in a way that I've always appreciated.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: Again, if you've been trained in any kind of traditional arts or whatever, like for so long, I was like, well, if I'm not painting and I'm not picking up a pen, like what am I, you know, I'm not being cre creative, quote unquote.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: And he's he's really helped me evolve my own thinking around what creativity even means or how it can manifest or express itself in our like it can it can be that in different seasons your creativity shows up as making brownies, right?
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like it can be in the way you're decorating your office, like whatever it is.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we all are creative beings, but to your point, we've kind of used that descriptor for people that we see out there building in ways that are more typically what we think of as creative.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so to reclaim that as something that we all have innately in us, I I'm reading a book right now, it's called Imagine That.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: And she's also making that argument for imagination, and I think probably imagination and creativity are somewhere in the same world.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: She spends a long time at the beginning of the book, even trying to define what imagination is, but very similarly, like that's how we get ourselves through really challenging times, like when we can imagine a better future or a better world or a better way to do something.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: If we can see it and we can imagine it, then that allows us to actually build towards that instead of being in our kind of constant hamster wheel of or doom scrolling or whatever it is, you know?
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so to know that it is not only accessible, but just innately who we are, I think is a giant reframe for folks because it's not something that we always claim for ourselves.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I love that.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: The idea of um you said the signature of all life.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: Is that what you said, first of all?
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: Signature of all life, just so beautiful.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: I love that so much.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: I was I was wondering that, and I should have asked.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I appreciate you sharing that.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um this is a little bit of a tangent, but it was a question I was asked in a meeting recently that I thought was so great because it it inherently brought up different responses from everyone.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it was what is something from your past that shapes who you are as a leader today that would not wind up in your bio or resume.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: So not the things that we typically point to, whether it's a job or a mentor or whatever.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it could be a mentor, I guess they're not going to end up in your bio or resume, but something that you can think of that has really shaped, you know, how you show up as a leader today.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um gosh, that's a good question.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'll have to think a second to think through.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I feel like I've done I've done so many different things that don't show up on my resume.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I mean, this is more so just because I probably wouldn't go this far back, but I did my study abroad in South Caicos in the Caribbean, in Tricks and Caicos, and it was environmental policy and marine resource management.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually recently just thought of this because the this resort on South Caicos was just named like one of the most luxurious hotels in the world.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: And when I was there, it was completely uh barren.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: There was nothing built.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, actually, what we were there to do as part of the study abroad program was to help um the local community think through what it would mean to have development come to the island.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, fishing, overfishing, um, one of my projects was working on bringing a the first recycling program to the island.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a really formative experience for me, just one in terms of natural beauty, um, two in terms of being completely out of my comfort zone because our classroom was the ocean.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: We swam for like four hours a day and did a lot of snorkeling and diving.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: But um yeah, it was pretty amazing.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: Every person's childhood dream, by the way.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think like I just said some version of like marine biologists.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: Marine biologist.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's like when I heard this program, I was like, oh my gosh, that would be yeah, a childhood dream come true.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: So it it really was um yeah, pretty, pretty special in terms of just thinking through for me now, like community building, communicating something that many people might not understand, and translating the impact of that, and then um also thinking through like what the impact, something new, even though it would be really profitable and beneficial to a group of people, um, might not be as um obvious to some people.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so just yeah, just thinking through leadership and making sure that there was benefit to everybody involved.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's I think always the thing what so many are seeking is that the yes and of what you were just saying around something can be profitable, profitable and also be of benefit to people.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't always look at business cases that way.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's you're either right, like you have a business case for profitability, or you have the nonprofit that's serving people, right?
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have a whole lot of examples of those social enterprises where those things are being woven together, and um that's what an incredible thing that you're birthing into the world right now where you get to kind of show that all of this learning that you've pulled together over the course of your experiences and career are gonna now benefit you know, huge swaths of the population.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: That has to feel pretty amazing.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank you.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: It does.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_01: It feels it it feels fulfilling to be able to be at this place and um also you know have a lot of conviction in pushing through a model of this kind and just trying to um you know think think back.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking back, you know, how how difficult that used to be for me because it's important to fit a certain mold um, you know, in in different kinds of um places that you show up, especially in the startup world, but there are ways that we can do um, you know, do really successful businesses that have a strong mission, and you know, that's part of something that also kind of drives me as well.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, perfect segue into my last question that I like to ask everyone, and that's around legacy, and so you know, thinking about the through line of your work and what you're building today and what you hope to be building into the future.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, curious what building a legacy means to you.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's um it's a another great question.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: I I feel like a legacy is a word that I think about a lot, um, especially today when we can be doing so many different things um with our time.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the opportunities are really kind of limitless in that sense if if you're in this in kind of like a certain um position to be able to take advantage of them.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: But it's important for me to think through I think through my own kind of journaling and you know inner journey, I've thought a lot about meaning making and how how much kind of trust and um peace I've gotten from being able to tap into meeting through multiple different things in my life, and that's helped to make even this founder journey much more enjoyable.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so for me, I think the legacy around helping people connect to things that are beautiful, that are meaningful, um, you know, the business that I build to impact millions of people to be able to access these feelings, which I know unfortunately are out of reach.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and just being able to, yeah, cultivate that practice and be able to have that through line for me, no matter what I do in the future as well, it'll probably be something similar in terms of being able to kind of give people access to that feeling because it's it's definitely something we need help doing.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's not it's not naturally available to us, unfortunately.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, having different kinds of methodologies to tap into that is important, and that's kind of how I think about um my own legacy and like whatever I build will probably be to continue to show up to work towards that.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing, that's so wonderful.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think such an inspiration to anybody that's thinking about how they want to be intentional about what they're doing in their next kind of season of life.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for saying yes.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate so much that you took my my cold outreach and just went for it.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you for reaching out.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I really enjoyed the conversation, and you've built a great library of episodes with really inspiring women.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um thank you for adding you to the roster is a is a wonderful uh honor.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you again, and hopefully one day we'll get to meet in person.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I would love that.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: Have a good one.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for listening and spending some of your time with me here.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: I hope our conversation sparked some new ideas for you.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed the episode, please make sure to hit subscribe so you don't miss what's next.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're ready for even more tools and stories, head on over to beldenstrategies.com slash newsletter.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: I share fresh insights, stories, and tools for women leaders every week.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, keep building, keep evolving, and remember that you are kind of a big deal.