Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - Brit Morin, Founder of Brit + Co. Asks You to Be Messy, Get Creative, & Take the Leap Episode 95
Episode Date: February 23, 2021Brit Morin’s goal has always been to help women find their passion. Brit grew up on creativity and technology and after working at Apple and Google in their early years, she combined her two loves t...o start her own company. After some messiness, a lot of data, and just a bit of faking it, Brit + Co was born. Now she has been able to build it into $75M+ in revenue, nearly 400 million users on the website, 1.2 billion pageviews, and so much more. Join us, as Brit shares her story, the lessons she's learned, and how she is turning around and teaching other women to follow in her footsteps. About the Guest: Brit Morin is the founder & CEO of Brit + Co, a lifestyle and online learning company providing classes, content, product and experiences geared towards young women with a creative spirit and a do-it-herself attitude. She has also been awarded various accolades, including Ad Age’s 40 Under 40, Adweek’s Creative 100, Forbes 30 Under 30, Fortune’s Most Promising Entrepreneurs, Refinery29’s 30 Under 30, one of Parents magazine’s Most Influential Millennial Moms, and one of ELLE magazine’s American Women at 30. Morin is the author of the bestselling book, Homemakers: A Domestic Handbook for the Digital Generation, which debuted in early 2015. She is a regular lifestyle expert on Good Morning America, the Today Show, Live with Kelly & Ryan, Rachael Ray and more. Finding Brit Morin: Visit Brit + Co: https://www.brit.co/ Follow Brit + Co on Twitter, Instagram, & Facebook: @britandco Sign up for Selfmade: https://tryselfmade.com/ Read Homemakers: A Domestic Handbook for the Digital Generation Listen to her podcast: Teach Me Something New Follow Brit on Twitter, Instagram, & Facebook: @brit To inquire about my coaching program opportunity visit https://mentorship.heathermonahan.com/ Review this podcast on Apple Podcast using this LINK and when you DM me the screen shot, I buy you my $299 video course as a thank you! My book Confidence Creator is available now! get it right HERE If you are looking for more tips you can download my free E-book at my website and thank you! https://heathermonahan.com *If you'd like to ask a question and be featured during the wrap up segment of Creating Confidence, contact Heather Monahan directly through her website and don’t forget to subscribe to the mailing list so you don’t skip a beat to all things Confidence Creating!  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Hi and welcome back. I'm so excited you're back here with me yet again.
So thanks for joining me.
Okay, I need to give you some updates, some crazy things.
Someone brought this up to me on LinkedIn in a post,
randomly asking me what happened with Harper,
Collins leadership, and my book.
All right, so let me just, I'm gonna give you
the quick overview.
I pitched myself to my agent 14 times, so let me just, I'm gonna give you the quick overview. I pitched myself to my
agent 14 times, she said no. On the 15th time she said yes to my book proposal, we sent the
proposal out. I think to maybe it was 10 or 15 different publishing houses. The first five came
back, no, I was freaking out. And then we got a bunch of yeses. We decided on HarperCon's leadership,
and I'm glad we did.
I have a great relationship with my point person at Harper. She's awesome. Totally gets me, gets the book
and is pushing me to be better, which I love. Okay, you got to be your own people who are pushing you
to do the work and be better, even though it can be frustrating sometimes. So let me explain what I mean by that.
So I had, I believe it was a 65,000 word count obligation contract with Hartburg that I
had to deliver a 65,000 word manuscript on December 1st.
Yeah, yeah, it was December 1st.
Okay.
So I ended up writing 65,000 plus 8,000 words,
which I thought was nice of me.
I thought that, oh my gosh, they get this for free.
They didn't pay for that, you know, but whatever.
Anyways, bottom line is I had no idea
about the publishing business.
And what I found out is that going 8,000 words over
is a huge financial problem.
So while I thought it was so nice of me,
they not so much.
So they said to me, listen, cut 8,000 words
and get back to us.
Well, that was a nightmare, right?
Because you write a book with stories and lessons
and learnings and you structure it in a way
that you spent months working on.
And then someone tells you, it's like, you know,
just drop part of it, or I don't even know.
So, I ended up completely removing the Q&A sections,
I ended up cutting one complete chapter out,
or maybe even two, I don't know.
It was a rough road, but I've submitted it back to them now
for this next round of consideration,
waiting to hear back from them, and they told me I should hear in the next two weeks.
Well, to give you even more color on this, when the pandemic was going on, and we were still in
quarantine, book sales plummeted across the industry, and publishing houses needed to cut costs. So one of the phone calls I got during the pandemic
was, hey Heather, it was me, my agent,
and my point person from Harper on the phone.
And she says, hey Heather, wanted to run something by you today.
So I was all excited.
I'm like, okay, what is it?
And she says, well, you know,
the book business is really struggling right now.
And I'm reaching out and I'm reaching out to all of our authors.
We're going to go ahead and let you know we're not going to produce a hard cover on your book.
I said, what?
And this is super funny.
There's some moments dealing in this book world where I know I'm a rookie
and I have no idea what
I'm doing, aka, you know, going 8,000 words over my word count, which I had agreed to.
I just didn't know.
And so when they told me that, I understood, holy cow, it's all about printing charges
and this wasn't forecasted and I can't just do that, right?
That wasn't my idea or option.
I didn't have that option.
I understood that.
However, when she called and said to me,
hey, we're gonna go ahead and not create a hardcover,
I just defaulted to myself, right?
I just deferred to my instinct.
And I'm on the phone, not in person,
with my agent, not in person,
with my HarperCollins point person.
And I just said, wait a minute, pump the brakes.
Absolutely not.
And I just went with my gut and my instinct that, no,
I have already written a book, Confidence Creator,
which is an amazing book if you haven't read it yet,
you have to.
The reviews on it are sick people love this book.
And I love this book.
It's so freaking good.
I'm really proud of my first book.
However, a lot of people bought the hardcover
and anytime I'm doing a speaking engagement,
people want me to sign the hardcover.
So listen, I haven't written 20 books, right?
But I've written one and this is my second one.
I know enough that people want that hardcover,
especially for gifts, right?
When people are giving someone a gift, they don't want to give them a paperback, they want to give them that hardcover, especially for gifts, right? When people are giving someone a gift,
they don't wanna give them a paperback,
they wanna give them a hardcover.
My book comes out in November, right before the holidays.
I know it's gonna be gifted to people,
so I just said no, I said absolutely not.
Now of course, looking back on it,
that was kind of risky because I had zero relationship with them.
I'm an unknown author in this new world,
right? I don't have some big author name like Brenney Brown with millions of books sold. You
know, I'm this unknown author. And they're taking a risk on me in some ways. I don't really think so,
but I'm sure in some ways they think so. Anyhow, so I just, I leaned into me full force.
I was not taking that answer.
I was not going to not have a hard cover.
That was crazy to me.
So I very forcefully said, no, I said, that's not going to happen.
And I said, listen, here's the thing.
And I understand how business works.
There are other places you can cut.
I said, but we're not
going to cut my hardcover. It's just not going to happen. And I have too much intel into my audience,
especially my business driven LinkedIn audience knowing those people will pay top price for a hard
cover. So I understand your challenges and I empathize with you, but this is one book that will
have a hard cover.
And I get that some of your other books just won't.
And that was essentially what I said to her.
And it was cool.
She immediately said, I hear your conviction and passion in your voice, and I completely
get your concern, Heather.
She said, but now I need your help.
She said, I have to sell this up the food chain, then.
You have to give me some data as to why we need to provide a hard cover on your book and
we should be cutting somebody else's.
And I said, you know what, that fair enough.
Okay, let me go do a little bit of legwork.
Let me come up.
Basically, what she needed, she needed me to craft a pitch as to why Heather Monahan's book
should be able to have a hardcover.
And so I did that.
I went and pulled the numbers and I obviously sales is my thing.
I've been in sales my entire life,
but specifically 20 plus years in corporate America.
So I just said, all right, put myself in her shoes.
She needs to sell them as to why this hardcover
will sell and make them money and not creating it will cost
them money.
So March 2020 was when my book proposal was submitted to them and I grabbed that proposal
and I updated all of the stats throughout the marketing portion.
So there's all these stats in there in regards to downloads of my podcast, followers on
LinkedIn, followers on Instagram, profile of views on LinkedIn,
comments on LinkedIn, whatever, blah, all the stuff.
And I updated all the numbers.
And thankfully, I had been working really hard
on growing my social media, growing my community,
and the stats, they don't lie.
So when I submitted the book proposal
a year ago, I believe it had 8 million views on my LinkedIn. Well, when I updated the numbers
and ran the reports and I gave them the screenshots of everything, it wasn't, you know, my word, it was the stats pulled from the platforms. It was at 25 million. So exponential growth, huge
growth. And so I basically showcased and I had huge growth on Facebook, Pinterest, a bunch of
different places randomly. And so I highlighted all of the growth points and basically made the
pitch that while I completely understood book
sales were down and that there was a concern around an audience paying, you know, $25 or
$30 for a hardcover book, I ran the numbers on my audience.
I showed the average income of my audience, which is pretty high.
And I showed the average income of my flycast listeners and I got into the details
and justified the pitch with the data to support it. And I never, ever heard back on it again,
which basically means it was approved. And so she needed my help to help her save my hardcover.
And I was grateful she shared that with me so I could provide the data and
the work and the reporting to support her and me and get this done.
Okay, so that was one of the bumps along the way.
Well, then I got a note a couple of weeks ago saying, hey Heather, I don't know if we had
this conversation, but I'm pretty sure we're just going to move forward with a plain cover,
with just the title written on the cover.
And I reply back, um, no, we are not.
That is not a conversation that we've had.
No, and number one, and number two, no, I have a personal brand.
And there is recognition for, you know, my face.
And to me, I look at Rachel Hollis's books
and her faces front and center on all of them.
I look at Marie Forleo's books, her faces front and center.
Write these people who have these personal brands
and podcasts and social media presence.
They're leveraging their face.
So people will say, oh, I know who that is.
Okay, I'll grab the book.
That's familiar, right?
It might not be the only selling point,
but there is a portion of the audience
that's gonna connect with that and say,
hey, I know that girl.
Yeah, I wanna, you know, I wanna read her book.
I said, so no, I don't want it just to be a white cover
with bread writing, with a title.
No, I want my likeness on there.
So she replies back to me.
This is my couple weeks ago.
Well, if that's the case,
Heather, we need the photo now.
And I'm like, what are you talking?
I have, this is so crazy.
Doing something new like this,
doing a book with a publisher is so incredibly different
than when you do it on your own.
When you do it on your own, you are in charge.
It is your timeline.
Now everything I do is on their timeline and I'm in the dark. I have no idea now that I've done it once the next book will be easier
Because I all know what to expect
But this time it's been very confusing. So I think to myself. I'll never forget it was driving to my son's school
To get him when this was going on on my email and when I got to the school I stopped and thought,
okay, let's go to my file and send a couple of photos
because I didn't have any time to go do new photos
when she needed the photo now.
And so I just went real quick through my drop box
and sent a couple of photos over.
And she really quickly said no to a few.
And then I didn't hear from Morgan.
And I replied back, hey, is there any way I could pull together a photo shoot real quick?
Because I have my deals on what I'd like to look like.
I just need, you know, maybe two weeks to get on my photographer schedule or whatever.
I don't hear back.
And so then I just went out and did some photos, and I loved how one of them turned out.
I sent it to her.
The same day I sent her this photo. She sends me back all these mockups of a book cover with my face and likeness on it.
I don't love the picture, but whatever. Right, at least I got on the cover. And she said,
you know what? We really like this photo, this one that I don't like, but whatever. And she said,
I think we want to move forward with this. And so I'm just letting you know,
this is the crazy highs and lows of working
in a new industry with people that you don't have
rapport with different expectations.
And it's just, it is a wild ride.
But for the win, right?
We got the hardcover, hooray.
We had to cut the 8,000 words, but you know what?
I'm again deferringring to them their expertiness
and hopefully it made the book better.
And then finally, we got the win on,
I get my likeness and image of me on the cover,
even though it's not the one I picked,
it's not the one that I was hoping for, that's okay.
Again, deferring to them and their expertise
and excited that we did get the win.
So I will take the win, shock it up, and keep it moving.
So that is the answer to some of this question
that actually remembered I had posted about not getting
to have my face on the cover and they wanted to know what happened.
So yeah, we are getting the face on the cover.
Oh, we don't have the final version yet.
They are working on it and I'm super excited.
I'm really grateful that my Harpercon point person
is willing to work with me on these things when I definitely,
I don't roll over, you know, immediately when they,
when they share with me what they'd like to do
for these certain issues and topics,
I definitely fight for what I believe in.
So hopefully in the end, it makes it all worth
it. Okay, so we will be right
back. You are going to love my
next guest.
Hi and welcome back. I am so
excited for you to meet my
guest today, Britt Moran.
She's the host of Teach Me Something New Podcast,
the author of the best-selling book, Homemakers,
a domestic handbook for the digital generation,
as well as running her massive company, Britt Inc.
Britt has received accolades such as ad age 40 under 40,
ad weeks creative 100, Forbes 30 under 30,
Fortune's most promising entrepreneurs,
Refinery 29, 30 under 30, fortunes most promising entrepreneurs, refinery 29, 30 under 30, one
of parent magazines most influential millennial moms and one of Elle magazine American women
at 30, oh my gosh, these are a lot of athletes.
As a CEO of Britain Co. she's created a destination that inspires and educates women on how to
be creative, which we will dive into as well as her new business self-made,
which I can't wait to hear about, but thank you so much for being here.
Thanks for having me.
I love 30 under 30s, made me feel young, but unfortunately I'm not under 30 anymore,
so, sorry, I'm here listening.
That is the word when the cutoff comes.
I was speaking for a YPO event the other day and someone said, oh, you know, why aren't
you in YPO and I figured out, oh, I missed the cutoff.
Shoot, if you missed these cutoffs, you're screwed people.
I know, where's the like 60 under 60?
Cause we need to get that good done.
I mean, in my life, yes, I'd be one of those, thank you.
All right, so one of the things that sticks out
about you besides all of your success, obviously, is how creative and curious you are.
Is this been the way you were even as a kid
or is this something that happened through business?
No, actually it was something as a kid
that I was just really into creating new things.
I wanted to be an inventor at first.
And so I was constantly burning stuff, breaking stuff.
Literally, I burned my hair off at one point.
I was just tinkering around my house.
And then my parents were both working parents.
They were usually gone leaving me to fend for myself.
And so I would find scraps of fabric.
And I saw a sewing machine in the closet.
So I'll teach myself how to sew.
You know, there wasn't a Google or YouTube around at that point.
I just had to like trial by error my way through fulfilling
this creative passion of mine.
And over time, it just turned me into a really creative girl.
I loved hosting parties and events.
I sewed my own bed spread.
I sewed clothes. I was decorating everything and events. I sold my own bed spread, I sold clothes,
I was decorating everything,
and really just learning how to make things for me.
And at the end of the day,
that's what being an entrepreneur is.
So, you know, when I became one at 25,
it didn't feel that different
from that life I lived as a little girl.
When you were a little girl
and you were living that creative life,
were you thinking to that creative life,
were you thinking to yourself,
wow, I'm going to make this into a business
or you didn't even contemplate that far ahead?
Oh, I was definitely thinking about businesses.
I have a whole list of my inventions
that I wanted to create as a little girl.
And some of them have come to fruition today
through other companies, which I'm still pissed about,
but some of them not.
And I'm still wondering if I should make of them not, and I'm still wondering
if I should make them.
I was also a Girl Scout, and I was the cookie seller
of the year at age nine, which maybe I should have taken
more seriously as a Lou that I was supposed to be
in Entrepreneur, because at the end of the day,
being an entrepreneur is just about selling yourself,
your company, your product to investors and to customers
and that's like the key to it all at the end of the day.
I'm so happy that you said that because my whole background in corporate America was in
sales and as a newer entrepreneur that makes me happy to see that you see so much value
in the sales aspect of it.
So you didn't just launch into the entrepreneurial world though, you went the
corporate trail for a while. Yeah, well, I was fascinated by creativity, but I was equally fascinated
by technology. And so as a teenager, I was really torn. I was taking computer science classes,
and I had heard about this magical place called Silicon Valley. This is like the late 90s, you know,
but I also loved creativity.
And I thought maybe I should move to LA or New York
and be like an artist or designer or work in media.
And I ended up getting a job at Apple when I was 20
because I was graduating college early.
But I also had an opportunity to join the Jimmy Kimmel show
in LA back when it was just starting.
No one knew who this guy was.
And I remember that being such a crossroads in my life
because I chose Apple.
And I was really concerned I was making the wrong decision.
But choosing Apple meant that I chose Tech, I chose Silicon
Valley.
I got the experience of a lifetime
seeing what these big companies like Apple and Google
were like in the first few years they were started.
And ultimately, I built the network that I really
needed at the time and that have gone on to propel me
into what I'm doing today.
How did you make that choice when you look back between Kimmel
and Apple?
You know, at the time for Apple,
it was still hard to sell iPods to people, to be honest.
So it wasn't like the fancy company,
biggest company in the world that it is today.
But, you know, it was also this unknown entity.
And as sexy as I thought it would be to work in television,
like I said, I knew the internet was this magical thing
that was going to create so much opportunity and would transform so many industries. And
so I chose Apple because I believed in the future that it could provide not just me,
but the world and and how being a kin to Silicon Valley within Apple would expose me to so many more opportunities
for my career. Brett, that was so powerful what you just shared and I want to shine a light on this
that making a decision in business based on the future and looking forward is so important
and just to give a little color. I was in the radio business for 20 years. I never picked my head up to say,
I wonder what other industries are in growth phase
so that I don't need to be in an industry and decline
and be working so hard to achieve numbers and achieve growth.
It's so important to pick your head up out of your industry
and look at trends and what's happening
and what a great thing goodness that you did that,
not to not Kimmel, but obviously Apple
was a big choice for you. Yeah, and Kimmel turned out to be okay too. So, you know, he found himself
a team that did just fine. So from Apple, you moved to where else, Google? Yeah, where else?
I know, and I was even afraid of doing that because I mean, Apple was so cool. It's very trendy, very designing.
A lot of my creative fires were being stroked there.
But in Google, what's kind of dorky and nerdy,
but like, so interesting.
And what I learned working at Google
was how to make data-driven decisions.
We literally tested a shade of blue on 100 times, a specific button on a specific landing page to see which shade of blue got the most click.
And like it's not just two shades like we literally tested all the shades of blue and used that data to update the landing page like the maniacal amount of like detail orientation that went into my career at Google was like fascinating.
And I get 25.
I was given a $50 million budget to manage,
to launch Google TV, which is like unheard of.
The amount of responsibility that they give you there,
because they trust that they've hired really smart people
is absolutely parallel to none.
And I often tell people I got my MBA working at Google.
So I was so happy I did go into the corporate world
before entrepreneurship because I learned a ton
and made a lot of great friends.
Oh my gosh, you're dropping major knowledge here.
The next key is data, doesn't lie, leverage data.
And that's again, such a powerful teaching.
Quick example when I wrote my first book, I self-published and I didn't see through
the lens of, wow, I've got to test everything and I just said, speed to market, I want a
product to sell and I skipped over all of the data.
Oh, clearly could have done that differently.
Now I'm launching a book with HarperCollins leadership and every, I mean, every detailed Brit, it's painstaking, but I
know they're right because it goes back to data doesn't lie. They test everything from
the title, the font, the blue, the every shade of blue. So I know that I'm in good hands
and I challenge everyone listening to use your data, leverage your data because it will steer you in a better direction.
For sure. It's it's also one of the first things I tell new entrepreneurs like so often they get so afraid to put out their idea into the world.
But literally if you build a landing page that just like as a paragraph about the thing you're building maybe a picture of it and a sign up now button.
Like you can just see in the data
how many people are interested and if it catches fire
and maybe you should build 10 versions of that
to see test 10 different ideas.
You know, a lot of people are stuck in between ideas,
what should they choose?
So just put it out there, test it.
You know, it's like 10 Ferris to your point about books,
literally bought words on his own dime to test the four hour work week. That was the most clicked
on ad for his book. Many tested like 100 variations of that title. So it's so true. And as
much as my like creative artistic heart hates making data driven decisions sometimes, so they just want to go with my gut.
The data doesn't really lie. And the best is when you compare those two things together.
Oh, that's so true. That's when it's pure magic. Okay, so how did you get yourself to walk away
from such an amazing job with so much responsibility with amazing people?
A very good question. My parents asked me the same thing.
I bet.
They were like, the number one place to work
for like three years in a row while I was at Google.
And like, there was frozen yogurt, like 10 feet from my desk
and like a bouncy house.
It was just like the most insane thing ever.
And the truth is, I knew that at 25,
I probably had a narrow window where I didn't have kids.
At the time I wasn't married,
I had six months of savings under my belts,
and all these entrepreneurial ideas
I'd wanted to try my entire life.
And so, worst case scenario, if I spent six months
figuring out if I should be an entrepreneur
and testing out one of the ideas and it failed,
I knew I could go get a job either back at Google or somewhere else.
Like I had something on my resume, I was a smart person,
I could go back to the corporate world.
And if I didn't try at 25, when else would I do it?
I knew that I would probably get into like getting married, having kids.
It's so busy, I'm not sleeping like, and I just wouldn't do it. And then I do think the naivete being young really
helps you sometimes. It's like pretty clear that a lot of young people start
companies because they just don't know what they're getting into. And frankly,
I'm glad I did that back then. That's not to say though that you can't start a
company at any age. I mean,
I've worked with 70-year-old women who are starting companies and it's just as powerful
of an experience for them, too.
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So what was the final moment that you said, you know what, now I have to do it now.
Was there an actual tipping point that occurred for you?
It was my four year anniversary, to be honest at Google.
It felt like I had literally done my college in the A or something, like, you know, every
four years.
At that point, I was also just like repeating patterns.
I had built three different products within Google.
You know, I knew how to launch a product.
I knew how to work with engineers and product managers.
But most importantly, back to the data,
I saw in the data that how to search queries
on Google and YouTube were always the top
search queries of the year and they skewed female.
And yet the search results behind them from like eHow.com and these like really boring
websites were not really that interesting to me who at the time was 25.
And I thought to myself, oh, I wish I could help women like me find like the tools and the instructions and how to get smarter and how to do things and.
At the time also Pinterest had started and that was a massing a massive following with all women and I was like women going to learn shit like I can teach them shit. I'm creating stuff like.
I like creating stuff. Like, I should do this.
I think, frankly, too, as I was preparing for my wedding,
which was later that year, I fell back in love with DIY.
And actually, the data does show,
now that we've done all this research,
that women on average get married at 26,
and that correlates to the same time point
where women start to believe in their creative confidence again. There are a bunch of
studies on this. And so I really do think that getting married and having babies hold something out
of women that forces them to be creative because they want to choose the flower arrangements and the
colors and the event design. And that sort of like can snowball into creating a more creative
creatively confident woman herself.
And that definitely happened for me.
And, and so all of those things just kind of triage together.
And I was like, I think I got to do this.
And so I did.
So where did you start?
You had this big idea with, and you mentioned this for a lot of people have a big idea,
but they say, I, you know, I've got it.
But now where do I go?
Where did you begin?
Well, so originally it was after my wedding
and a bunch of my friends who went to the wedding
who were women were like, Brit,
I've never seen anything like that.
How did you literally make wooden flowers?
Like, I wish I could be creative.
I wish I could be creative.
They kept saying that.
And I was like, what you can.
And so I at first decided I
would create this company that would talk a lot about creative ideas and how to's. But then it
would really be like a multi-pronged map strategy where we'd have like a wedding app, a home app,
you know, a food and cooking app. And you know, you would download each one of our apps to use while you were
cooking or decorating your home or whatever. And the content hub was just going to be like the
central place where you learned about these apps and ultimately it was a marketing vehicle to get
you to download them. What ended up happening was like all the women loved the content and it
worked out letting the apps. And this was a really pivotal point
in the Britain code journey
because we had to at one point make a call
to change instructions.
And we shut down our first app.
It was a wedding app.
And we decided to become a digital media company,
which I had no prior experience doing.
I didn't even know the difference
between like a managing editor
and an editorial director and all these fancy terms.
Never knew how to sell ads to anybody,
but it's what the data suggested the women wanted.
And so onwards we went.
And what were some of the big lessons
that you have from launching your own business
that you want to share with people,
that you do share with people on your new teaching programs.
Yes.
So, the first thing I would say again is trust the data and trust that you're probably
going to be wrong when you first start your business.
The hypothesis you have will probably be misproven or taken in a whole different direction
based on your customer's feedback.
I think a lot of times entrepreneurs fail because they're so wedded to their idea being the only path forward.
When in fact, it might just be a clue on the trail to what your customers actually want or the problem you actually should be solving. And I think that's happened over and over again. Like Airbnb is a great example.
You know, Ryan, the founder who actually is a friend of mine,
was literally looking for a couch to stay on
when he was traveling for different conferences.
He didn't have that much money.
And, you know, it births to his couch surfing.
That was the whole premise of Airbnb.
But what it ended up happening was that the customers were like,
it would actually be cool
if I could rent an entire room or an entire apartment
or house from somebody.
And so they of course pivoted into that direction.
If Brian would have been hellbent on a couch-only rental program,
I don't think Airbnb would have been as successful as it is today.
And so, listen to your users, listen to the data,
don't be married to your idea.
That's definitely a big step.
The second step is to fake it till you make it.
And I think this is particularly important for women.
For some reason, and I'm speaking generally,
not for all women, we tend to be a little bit more risk
adverse and a little bit more insecure when it comes to flaunting our talents and experiences.
And oftentimes women don't take the leap into entrepreneurship because they think they're not smart
enough, they've never done this before, you know, wouldn't be perfect. They don't know the exact right
idea. Like there's just so many obstacles stopping them. It all comes back to self-doubt. And so if you can
quiet the self-doubt and think about it as a six-month experiment of your life where you're just
going to try some stuff and put it out there, even when it's messy to see what sticks. I bet you will
be really shocked by the outcome of that.
And at the end of the day, not only will you feel more tied to one of your ideas and moving it forward,
but so will actual real humans out there who want what you have to offer.
And so I think just starting and sort of speaking with confidence about what you're doing,
whether that's to your users, your friends, your grandma, or investors, that's a huge step in the process.
Did you ever have that imposter syndrome
when you found yourself growing so quickly
and leading such a big company?
For sure.
I mean, I had managed three people before in my career.
And now I was managing like 100.
Like, I had an executive coach. I was just like trying to
talk to all my mentors like what am I doing at what point should I bring in you know my HR
person at what point should I start tearing our manager programs you know like it was a lot of
stuff I didn't know what I was doing and I think to some extent being vulnerable in those moments is the best thing you can do.
Like, you know, it's not being afraid to ask for help.
Putting your hand up when you have a question, I think those are so important.
And at the end of the day, all you want to do is learn faster.
And people want to help you. And that's what happened to me.
I also love that you invested in yourself and hiring a coach,
hiring someone who's been where you want to me. I also love that you invested in yourself and hiring a coach, hiring someone
who's been where you want to go. Just like you said, it helps you get there so much faster,
which is now what you're doing for others. That must be an amazing feeling to be able to be that
resource for other people. For sure. And in fact, like the genesis of self-made, which is our
entrepreneurship program designed specifically for new female entrepreneurs or sort of young young female entrepreneurs in the process is really about like what would and how to fundraise and how to do social media and all of those things.
But one of the best parts of the self-made program is the community of women that you
have access to.
And we're talking like some of the coolest, most badass business ladies in the world.
Like, you know, the SEMO of Netflix, Poseomos St. John, who went at Paltrow,
the CEO of Goop, the founder and CEO of Minted,
Joy Cho, the founder of Oh Joy, like,
we try to find women from totally different industries,
some of Bootstraps, some of Race Capital,
and they are there specifically to be as transparent
with you.
It's literally behind closed doors.
It's not a public thing to tell you their story
and like what to watch out for along the way,
what they learned, what, what, like,
fast-tracked to their business.
So you can just get all that stuff covered out the gate.
You can ask the questions like, when should I hire
the HR manager or like, you know, what if I have kids
and I can't work from two
to five PM, you know, it's like you can be you and there's a community of women there
to help you problem solve along the way. And that's kind of the irony of the term self-made.
Well, we want everyone to take credit for their own business, but there's a girl gang behind
you to support you along the way. That's such a beautiful thing though,
because no matter what it looks like on social media,
no one is out there succeeding alone.
There's no one doing it by themselves.
However, like you said, sometimes it appears that way,
but it's so important for people to know.
There's always a team somewhere, whether it be friends
or community or advisors or something.
How did you come to launch self-made?
It was something that happened super organically.
It was my own entrepreneurial founding story.
Again, here I am 10 years later,
of basically founding a new company,
even though it's connected to Britain Co.
But it was the height of the pandemic last year in May,
when the
Black Lives Matters movement was correlating with the massive amount of unemployment,
health and in this country, which was skewing female disproportionately. The New York Times
called it a she-session actually, I don't know if you heard that before, but it just started
to make me angry that I knew how these women
could go out and make money, even if they had to be stay at home moms, even if they were
out of work.
And I couldn't help them do that.
And then it dawned on me.
I could actually.
Why don't I just literally teach them?
And why don't I bring in all of the women who have helped me to coach them along the
way.
And it's not going gonna be a video recording
that they might do or might not.
Like, we're live, we're one-on-one with you.
You are accountable for doing this.
It's not gonna take you more than like two to three hours a week.
So even if you do have a full-time job, you can do it.
And so I just did it as a one-time thing.
I made a square space site in two weeks
to my point about being messy. I just threw it up. Like I said, sign as a one time thing. I made a square space site in two weeks to my point about being messy.
I just threw it up.
Like I said, sign up, sir, open.
If you wanna come learn how to make your own money,
doing the thing you love comes sign up.
And we had 175 women sign up.
And I thought that was just gonna be it.
Like it was like a one time thing, cool.
Like, but literally that last week of that first cohort, I was
balling in tears because these women had watched, they had started
companies, many of them were seeing real revenue come in the door, they were
feeding their families, they were like doing the thing they loved, like
they've always wanted to do, but they were just so afraid of, and it was
the number one most rewarding thing I've ever done in my life.
I'm not just saying that. And so I was like, we have to do it again. And so we did it again
the fall. We doubled the number of students, brought in more amazing women. And then that went really
well. And so now we're like, I guess this is a thing. And it's like to my point about like
iterative baby steps as you go. Like I just started it in two weeks and like here we
are now and it's this whole full-fledged brand and we're thinking about all the ways we could grow
it even beyond the course and like building real a real platform for female entrepreneurs
and I'm so excited about it. So it's it's one of those like highlights of COVID that I will never
forget for sure. So Zoom School Lunch Lady isn't
your highlight from COVID? Well, Zoom in general is not my highlight from COVID but it is the way
we teach the course. So I guess I have to love it. It's so clear your passion around this project.
I mean, you can feel it. It's so purpose driven. And you can just sense how excited you are.
It must be unbelievable to hear some of the stories.
Can you share one of the stories with somebody
that you've coached on the transformation they've had?
Oh my gosh, I have so many.
And I have to also say, it's your point
about purpose driven.
One of the proudest achievements that I've had with this course
is that in each of the last two cohorts there have been only 38% Caucasian women, 62% have been women of color, you know,
immigrants, just like all kinds of incredible backgrounds and helping change the ratio.
And that part of the female entrepreneurship world has been really impactful for me.
Some of the stories have been fascinating.
So we help women that have both already started a business or those that are just starting
for the first time.
One of the ones that's memorable for me is this woman named Lisa.
She was in our fall cohort this past session.
She was working at an ad agency. She just had a baby. She was sort of
on maternity leave just coming back, not really feeling fulfilled from her ad agency life.
And she realized as a new mom how crappy it is to have to figure out which products to buy for
your baby when there's like a thousand different versions of a pacifier and a bottle.
And so she started a company called Upbring,
which goes out and it's like Birchbox for baby products.
Like they are getting samples from like all of the baby vendors,
baby product vendors to put in these boxes that are tailored
towards your baby's age.
And so every three months, you get this new kit of like three different types of passifiers
and three different types of bottles and three different types of onesies.
And like, you can sort of try them all to figure out what suits you best and your baby
best.
And ultimately, you know, become brand loyal to the one that works for you.
And as a mom myself, I can totally attest to how valuable that would
have been for me, my kids are now four and six. When I was just trying to figure out like
glass or plastic bottle, I don't know, like what do my girlfriends think? It just becomes a lot of work.
And that's been really successful. She's just about to launch, but she already has many hundreds of beta subscribers without even launching yet.
So that's been incredible.
Another woman has created a magazine called Mighty Kind.
It's a new brand highlighting kindness for children.
Imagine like highlights magazine, but for children.
And she at the beginning of the course was just like an artist
and decided to make this brand.
We did a manifesting challenge on the first week
and she put on her vision board, like, be featured on Ellen,
thinking like that would happen in like five or ten years.
By the end of the course, she had been reached out to
by Ellen's team, like Target wanted to feature her,
like her magazine is now getting picked up
and all of these amazing places.
And it's just been incredible how your brain
can actually propel you forward
if you unlock it to do so.
So that's been a fabulous testament as well.
I could go on, there are so many that have really taken off.
And I would say that many of the women who have taken the course
have also said, this has actually just
been helpful for my professional career.
Even if I don't want to start a company,
I have learned how to think entrepreneurial
Lee for my day job.
And maybe I have my side hustle, but I'm
so much better at my day job, too,
while I'm figuring out if the side hustle
is gonna really be the main hustle.
So I do think that entrepreneurial thinking
is something you can't get if you don't do it.
You know, you can't just go to business school
and learn to be an entrepreneur.
You have to actually start something
to learn to be an entrepreneur.
It's so crazy.
I just started teaching a course at Harvard
and it's so interesting to have
been your background be real life and now be dealing with people who are only living textbook life
and that gap is massive and not to take anything away from someone who's smart enough to get into
that school. I clearly did not have the grades to get in there. That's why when you can't get in,
you go back and teach. However, you exactly what you just identified,
that somebody needs to bridge that gap for you to say,
okay, in a real world, that would never actually happen.
Here's some ideas how you can handle it in the real world
because when you're just reading that stuff in a textbook,
it doesn't connect.
Oh my gosh.
Now, way, you have to know, it's painful.
Like it's not easy.
You're making cold calls.
You can't get your scrapping together. You don making cold calls, you're strapping together.
You don't have a budget to hire a bunch of people,
but that strappiness will take you in so many places
in your career to your point,
whether or not you choose to build a company out of it
or just use it to get your job done much more efficiently.
And I didn't have the brains to go to Harvard either.
I aspired to, but also didn't have the brains to go to Harvard either. I aspired to, but I also didn't have the dollars to go to Harvard, to be honest.
So I love your idea of giving back later in life to put it on your resume.
We will nominate you for a class there next first.
Sure.
I love that you brought along not only the business sense and, you know, entrepreneurial
knowledge that you've learned, but you're coupling it with manifesting, which a lot of not only the business sense and entrepreneurial knowledge
that you've learned, but you're coupling it with manifesting,
which a lot of people don't do,
and I wasn't aware of manifesting.
I used to think that was woo, woo, you know,
maybe people that were hippies or something.
So can you talk a little bit about the impact that way,
that top process and that skills that it has impacted you
in your life?
Yeah, for sure.
I thought it was woo and hippie too.
And then I started doing it.
And I was like, oh my goodness, this is crazy.
Like what I think it means, and you can read
like the law of attraction.
And you know, there's so many books about this
that like when your brain is focused
on a positive outcome that it believes it can achieve,
you can't say, I want to be a billionaire and put like in your head, you're like, but
I'm never going to be a billionaire.
Like, it has to believe it.
So maybe you want to say, I want to make $1 million, right?
Or $100,000.
Like make it a believable number for you and pick like three of these things that you want to accomplish and think
about them each day, like focus on them, ground yourself in it, think about the ways to get
there. I kid you not like random doors start opening and it is insane. And I think it's
what's happening to me without knowing it was called manifesting while I was building
Britain co like I wanted to be on television, but I was literally in Silicon Valley. I've never
been on video before. I was awful on video. And one day like the today show emailed me
and like it's just like these things started happening, but I believe they could happen.
You know, I was very in my head, sure that it was going to happen.
And so I would really ask yourself,
like, what is in my heart that I just know
I feel good about, that I wanna see happen
for myself in this world.
And like, how can I just repeat that thought
over and over again, because energetically,
you will start moving into that direction?
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Do you work with your kids on manifesting it? We actually did a 2021 vision word, now that you say
that. I said, you know, what should we, what should
we achieve this year? And of course, like my six year olds, like Lego land. So I don't
know the, like they're not, you know, manifesting for their whole lifetime. They're thinking about
short term rewards, but, but we're trying. They're still a little bit young. Have you done
it with yours? Yeah, Bines 13 now.
So you're going to that next step where they can think out
a little bit further.
And it is funny when I have bad moments
during the pandemic, whatever I'll say, mom,
remember what you're putting out to the universe right now?
Do you want that to happen?
Oh my gosh, you're right.
No, OK.
Thank you.
Put out to the world and put out to the universe
what you want to happen, Not what you don't.
And I truly believe that, you know, when our kids see us do those things, they just start taking a mod.
It's such a... And that goes back to your coaching program and self-made. You know, when you're around like minded people that just keep repeating and keep hearing an endorsement for this.
Yes, this works. And this work for me, it starts to sink into you
that this is real and it can work for you too.
That's the beauty of the actual student community.
Like we have a wins channel and our messaging platform
and like, you know, almost every day,
someone has a win and it shocks them that it's a win.
You know, they're like, I made $1,000 overnight.
I didn't even know I could make $1,000.
Like I just did one thing on my website
and like my conversion, like, doubled, you know,
and as a fellow student, you're like,
well, in part of you immediately goes to,
well, I'm not good enough, I'm not, I couldn't do that.
But to your point, the thing about manifesting
is to shut down those beliefs and actually think about
how could I do that?
Maybe I could do that, you know,
and think about it optimistically to flip the switch.
Oh, it's so good.
Where do people go to check out self-beat?
Is there a way for them to try it without signing up for a year?
Oh, yes.
So we have a free boot camp that's actually happening.
February 16th to 18th, and the videos will be on replay too if you can't make it live. I'm doing that literally as a way to help you get your idea set in stone because the number one problem I hear from new entrepreneurs or even existing entrepreneurs that haven't really had a lot of success yet is like, I don't know if my ideas the right idea or I have too many ideas, I need help choosing. So this bootcamp
I'm doing helps unpack what your passions are and then what makes for a great business idea.
How can you evolve that into something that's a six or seven plus figure of business idea?
And I will walk through so many examples of these and focus on how to add a little twist
for a competitive advantage and what you're doing.
So you can sign up for that through the self-made website.
It's tryselfmade.com.
You can also sign up for the course there as well.
And we do have a number of scholarships
for people who are either financially
unable to afford the course or frankly,
who are just like underrepresented and want to go through
the entrepreneurship track for the first time. We like I said really want the ratio of underserved
women to be more proportionate especially in this field of work. That is so amazing. I'm so proud
of you doing this work and the world so neat that so thank you, Britt.
And I will include all those links in the show notes guys.
So just go to the show notes to click on
and you've got to check this out.
This blue campus worth it and you are worth it.
So Britt, how do people follow you?
Well, I'm at Britt on basically every social network
and then you can also follow the brand at Britt and Co
on every social network as well.
And let's see, if you go to my Instagram account,
you can notice in my highlights
that I've done a bunch of crazy things in my day.
And I've tried things that scared me
and that were really uncomfortable.
And hopefully it'll make you feel
like you can tackle the world too.
And you have the coolest insta story.
So definitely check out at Brit on Insta she will serve you
up some laughs and definitely some inspiration. Thank you so
much for being here today and please keep this great work going.
Thanks so much for having me. Okay, we'll be right back.
Okay, so I've been getting a lot of questions lately about
getting fired. And I know that's because
so many people have been furloughed laid off, you know, during this pandemic. And it's,
it is so hard. If you have lost your job or been laid off or furloughed or whatever,
I so feel for you. Oh my gosh, I can remember as if it was yesterday, what it felt like
that day. And, you, and initially when that happened,
it felt so scary, there were so many unknowns,
and I certainly wasn't embracing it as,
oh, this is exciting, no.
I was embracing it as this is a nightmare
and why am I living it?
How is this my life?
I thought after working for so long
and developing so much flipping success in business,
how could it be that I was fired?
And how could it be that I had to start over?
Here I am today, you know, three years later
and I'm super proud of what I built.
I'm super proud of the things I've created,
but it hasn't been easy, right?
So I'm just gonna share with you for anyone
whose lost their job been furloughed, been laid off,
or know someone who has,
here's the steps that I implemented.
Number one, the first thing that I did,
and I was bawling my eyes out for at least 24 hours,
at least, but keep it real, really for a month, you know?
But what I did do after 24 hours is I raised my hand
and I posted on social media,
I have just been fired.
And everyone was saying, take that down,
that looks so desperate and pathetic,
but I didn't want to.
I thought if people don't know, I'm fired,
how are they gonna help me?
You know, so people totally came out of the woodwork
to help me
and that post went viral.
And ultimately, Froggy from the Elvis Durant Show
tweeted at me, hey, I saw what happened.
If I can help, let me know, which was so nice
of him, he's such an amazing guy.
And I tweeted back, which here's a huge lesson.
When someone reaches out to help you
or extends an olive branch to you,
convert that opportunity in the moment.
Do not wait, do not delay,
because that opportunity will disappear.
And so I tweeted back at him, get me on the show.
He did, I flew to New York,
I had no idea what I was gonna talk about
on the Elvis Durant show.
I just knew if I could reach a larger audience,
I could reach more opportunity, just that unknown.
And so halfway through the interview, Elvis said to me,
well, Heather, obviously you're writing a book.
And I said, well, obviously, but I really wasn't.
I had always seen myself as the social one,
the sales one, the sales leadership one.
I never saw myself as an author, the smart one that could write a book. No, I never saw myself as an author, you know, the smart one that
could write a book. I know. I never saw myself that way. I didn't even know if it was legal.
I thought to myself, like, how, how does someone even write a book? So I googled how do you write a book?
And basically, Elvis had given me that confidence. He transferred it from him to me in that conversation.
And I ran with it. I googled how do you write a book and it says that you sit down your discipline you write every day and I had just been fired
So I had time. I thought okay. I'm gonna write every day
I'm gonna bust this thing out and when I got enough writing down on my computer
I thought I need someone who is light years ahead of me that can help me move fast.
And so I shouted out on social that I needed an editor.
I found my first editor, Ryan in LA.
And I hired him.
And when you start working with someone
who's light years ahead of you,
he had written 19 books.
I had written none.
I sent him all my content
within a couple days or a week. He got right back to me.
Okay, here's the structure. Here's what's missing. Here's what I need from you. We moved so fast.
Once we were working together, it was mind-blowing. And he liked the book. And I was so excited
because this is someone who had expertise and experience. And it moved fast. So, you know,
basically, I knew I needed a product to sell.
I knew that I had the ability to solve problems for people.
So that's something I would challenge you to do.
You know, number one, ask for help.
Put it out on social media.
And if people tell you they're crazy,
that's about them, not about you.
I've reframed getting fired.
I call it in good company.
Oprah's been fired.
Mark Cuban's been fired.
JK Rowling's been fired, right?
All these amazing people have been fired, so I rock that, you know, I put it to work
for me, reframe that it's a negative, I see it as a positive and I am excited about
it now and you can be too.
So I decided what problem can I solve for other people that I can be paid for, a product
or a service.
That's where confidence creator came from, solving the problem of anyone that struggles
with confidence or wants to go bigger and doesn't know how.
Confidence creator is a compilation of my lowest moments in my life and how I leverage them
to create real sustainable confidence and how the reader can too.
So I created a product I could sell and then I got to
selling, you know, I moved fast and I googled, how do you sell books? And it said speak. And so I
started cold calling every company in the world. And I am not fooling you when I say hundreds of
companies I called because sales is a numbers game. And I didn't even know people paid speakers FYI,
which is super funny because I had been in one industry
for so long and they didn't pay speakers in that industry.
And I hadn't picked my head up.
So pick your head up out of whatever industry
that you just left or that your friend just left.
And challenge yourself or your friend to say,
where else could your unique skills and talents
be applied to be successful?
Blow up the lanes of just working in radio like I used to do, right?
Take your talents wherever you want to go and you will be successful.
The same reason why I was successful in radio is the same reason why I'm creating success
now.
And it will be the same for you too.
Just have to put the work in.
And yes, it feels so scary at first.
And it feels really scary for a while.
But here's the thing, when you feel scared,
you're actually growing.
And I remind myself of that all the time,
every time I step into new opportunity now
or a new situation, it's a growth moment.
And when I got on my first TEDx stage,
and I was about to walk out from
behind the stage and I was so flipping nervous, I remember saying, if you don't walk
out there, you'll never forgive yourself. But if you walk out there and blow it,
I'm gonna be so proud of you. And that's the reframe is that it's not about
that end result. It's about the fact that I took the step because in every moment
you are either creating confidence or chipping away at it.
And I know which one I'm going for and I hope you're going for it too.
So take the step into fear, take the step into the new industry, take the step into creating
something new, but move fast and break things and start focusing on what problem can you solve?
Where can your talents be applied
that you haven't thought about before?
And as you take those steps, it'll be scary.
You won't see the steps in front of you,
but you'll just keep going.
And it will eventually come together
just like it is for me.
Okay, so another question that I got I wanted to jump on
was someone asked me on LinkedIn,
hey Heather, how do you create a speaking business?
I'm a really good speaker,
but I don't know how to create the business.
I get asked this a lot,
and I'm just gonna shoot you straight.
It's not easy.
This is not easy people.
So I mentioned I didn't know people got paid for speaking.
So I spoke for free for at least a year,
if not a year and a half when I first got fired
and didn't even realize you could get paid for it.
And then once I realized that,
here's what I figured out,
if you need to have four different keynotes
that you kind of have, you know, ready to go
because you're gonna start pitching yourself
to get hired as a speaker, right?
So you wanna have these customized keynotes
ready to email out to people.
I ended up branding it and putting it in a PDF
so that I could send it out easily to potential prospects
or somebody who had reached out inquiring to me.
You wanna promote yourself on social media
as a keynote speaker, hashtag, keynote speaker,
hashtag virtual speaker.
You're gonna need to create a real,
because people want to see what you look like speaking.
And I didn't have a TED talk at first, right?
That happened in November 2019.
So, you know, I had to create a real.
And back then, that was pre-pandemic,
that was 2018 going into 2019.
I hadn't been having footage of me,
because I never knew to do it.
So now I was suddenly trying to take any piece of footage I could get from anywhere and showcase
me speaking. You can do it now with virtual, stand in front of Zoom and record yourself on your
computer. Hello, that's a virtual reel. And that's what people want to see now is what are you
like as a virtual speaker. So get that footage, start promoting yourself on social so that you can start creating opportunities
to get booked. And listen, the marketplace will determine what you charge. You know, you may
have to speak for free at first. I certainly had to speak for free for a while. And then you start
amassing testimonials and reviews of your work and the results people get from your speaking engagements and you want to leverage and showcase that like crazy.
It's so powerful to have testimonials and reviews of what others say about your speaking.
Then I would apply to all the speaker bureaus.
You want to land some agents and develop a rapport with them.
And for your SEO, you want to show up on speaker website, so people see you as a speaker.
You want to tailor your website to showcasing you as a speaker,
and you want to promote yourself as a speaker,
and ask people to hire you as a speaker.
Those are some sure fast tips that I can give you
on highlighting yourself, presenting yourself,
and moving yourself forward into the speaking business,
then you can start landing some paid speaking engagements
and start investing in and growing your business from there.
I hope that was helpful.
As always, it means the world to me when you're here,
oh, if you haven't joined Clubhouse yet,
jump on Clubhouse and you will catch me there.
I'm always there at five o'clock and at eight o'clock with Alex's room. So definitely catch me on Clubhouse yet jump on Clubhouse and you will catch me there. I'm always there at 5 o'clock
and at 8 o'clock with Alex's room. So definitely catch me on Clubhouse. These live Q&A sessions that
we've been doing are so impactful, so fun, such high energy and I'd love to see you there. So
definitely catch up with me on Clubhouse and thank you for hanging here with me. Check out my
website, Heather Monahan.com.
I have tons of free resources there.
My free e-book, my free stop saying sorry PDF.
There's a lot of information there
that will help you along your journey.
And thank you for joining me on mine.
If you can please post on social about the show,
subscribe, rate and review.
It all helps so much.
And when you tag me, I always
repost it means the world. Until next week, I hope you are creating your confidence, you know I'll be
until then. Your game here is starting to learn and growing. You can inevitably something will happen. No one succeeds alone.
You don't stop and look around once in a while.
You can miss it.
I'm on this journey with me.
At a time when change is constant
and we are pulled in far too many directions,
we need a way to stay present to life
and to increase our ability to
remain calm, think clearly and maintain our well-being. Many studies indicate
mindfulness improves our mental, emotional and physical health. On a mindful
moment with Teresa McKee, you can learn how to practice mindfulness and enjoy
its many benefits. Tune in for guided meditations and to hear tips and advice from some of the most respected
experts in the fields of mental health and mindfulness.
The world truly can be a better place.
It all starts with a mindful moment.