“I’ve always had a “plan B,” but there are so many others who weren’t prepared for their lives to change in such a way [during the pandemic].”
Q: What are you passionate about?
A: One of my biggest passions in life is helping others. I’m a licensed financial advisor. I love what I do simply because I’m able to educate my potential clients on ways to create generational wealth for themselves and their families.
Q: What were your younger years like?
A: I grew up in a very close-knit family. Education and religion were two things that were at the top list of importance. I’m grateful for all the lessons learned because it helped me to become a better person and who I am today.
Q: What is something valuable you’d like others to know?
A: 2020 was a huge wake-up call for me, and I’m sure for a lot more families as well. I was laid off from my job of 15 years. Luckily for me, I’ve always had a “plan B,” but there are so many others who weren’t prepared for their lives to change in such a way. My advice would be to never solely depend on one stream of income. Keep multiple streams coming in in order to keep your family afloat.
Q:What does feminism mean to you?
A: Being a woman, I think, is about being strong. It’s about continuing to move forward in all of life’s endeavors. I definitely have to keep a positive mindset and stay 100% committed to making all my life dreams a reality. I have two daughters that look up to me, and I want them to grow up stronger and better than I am. I love to see my ladies succeed! There was once a time when women were told we couldn’t do certain jobs or we couldn’t make a certain amount of money, but look at us now! Kudos Ladies! Let’s keep it up! God Bless.
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“You can be incredibly skilled or invest in learning the best strategies, but without the right mindset, you still won’t get the result.”
Q: What are you passionate about?
A: I’m passionate about finding ways to play and making the most of my time every day. I love spending time being a mom to my three-year-old son, cooking, SCUBA diving, and my work supporting other entrepreneurs.
I help entrepreneurs tap into playfulness in their business to elevate what they sell and how they sell it, so they can create massive visibility, make consistent sales, and have a whole lot more fun! Some things I’m currently working on in my business that I’m excited about are launching a networking container that will include a retreat to a fabulous location. I’m also building out a new program for people who want to work with me in a group or short-term capacity. It’s amazing because it allows me to support more people by having an impact at multiple price points.
In my personal life, I’ve started taking harp lessons. It’s so much fun! This is my first time playing a musical instrument, it’s never too late to learn. Also, I love to travel! I’ve visited over 40 countries. My new ones this year were Costa Rica, Senegal, The Gambia, Cape Verde, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Herzegovina. My favorite things to do when I’m traveling are to wander the streets and make new friends, take food tours, and watch my son take in the world.
Q: What were your younger years like?
A: As a kid, I always wanted to be a writer and a performer. I loved to sing, act and tell stories. So, it’s really perfect that now I get to do all of those things in my business, and teach other people how to grow their impact by telling their own stories. I really loved and excelled in school. And in my childhood, I always received the message that the path to success was to go to school and get a good job. So I did exactly that, went to a great school, and got a great job, but it didn’t make me feel successful or fulfilled.
I knew I needed to do something different, but I didn’t grow up with many examples of entrepreneurship, especially successful black female entrepreneurs. That’s why supporting and guiding that community is so, so important to me. I want to share the knowledge I didn’t have and inspire more women to build something of their own.
Q: What is something valuable you’d like others to know?
A: Mindset is greater than skill set. When it comes to growth and success, winning the inner game is crucial. I experienced this when I was transitioning from being an employee to an entrepreneur. I brought my employee mindset to building a business and it held me back for the longest time. But once I hired a mentor, he helped me rewire how I was thinking. Within six weeks, I made $20k in sales. And within a year, I had a six-figure business.
You can be incredibly skilled or invest in learning the best strategies, but without the right mindset, you still won’t get the result. Those limiting beliefs will still hold you back, and you’ll get stuck at the same point, the same level of success, over and over again. If you want to have a breakthrough, you have to have a mindset shift first. I’ve seen it for myself and my clients, it always works this way.
Q: What does feminism mean to you? A: Feminism, to me, means having choice and opportunity. For women to have the ability to choose what feels aligned and right for them in every area of their life, without barriers to their happiness, success, or fulfillment. The choice to be a mom or not be a mother. The choice to work or not to work. The choice to be feminine or not feminine. The choice to follow a faith or not follow it.
And for those women to have every opportunity that’s afforded to men. The opportunity to grow, to be a leader, to flop and make mistakes, and to see themselves represented in their media. That’s what feminism looks like to me.
MORE ABOUT NATASHA:
I’d love to share the mantra I live by, it’s been the mindset that’s made everything possible…
“I believe that if we let ourselves be paralyzed by our fears, we’ll never achieve our full potential.”
Q: What are you passionate about?
A: I’m passionate about documentary filmmaking because of the ability to connect people through stories.
I’m currently touring the film festival circuit with a documentary about two elderly, married entomologists.
I’ve filmed digital content for clients like National Geographic, the BBC, the Travel Channel, Lonely Planet, NBC, and a host of others.
Steve Jobs famously said, “The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller.”
The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation to come.’ I fully believe that!
Stories have such incredible power to inspire, to reveal our shared humanity, to bring about positive change, and to create empathy and emotion (humor being one of my favorites).
I’m also really passionate about helping female entrepreneurs acquire the skills to create their own video content from home.
With the development of the COVID-19 coronavirus, I think a lot of women [have been] working from home, doing more video conference calls, and trying to incorporate DIY video into their business to bring in clients.
I wanted to help other women continue to succeed with their businesses!
So, I recently began sharing the knowledge I’ve acquired over the years from big-budget film shoots and digital storytelling content and modifying it to help women create high-quality DIY videos from home.
I’m really dedicated to helping them learn to make videoes and storytelling their business ally.
I’m passionate about showing them not only learn how to use gear but also how to map out the story arc, messaging, and branding in each of their videos and conference calls with clients; how to develop a strategy before they begin putting up videos; and how to map out the way in which each video plays into the larger story of their business.
Once they have that knowledge and skill set, they will have such incredible power to inspire and connect with clients!
Q: What were your younger years like?
A: I was a major introvert as a child. I was very quiet and spent an enormous amount of time reading.
I loved stories, and I read everything from Roman mythology to the history of Dorothea Lange, to the latest science fiction novels.
At 15, I began taking summer school classes at Stanford, and I later received both my undergraduate and master’s degrees from Stanford.
My early fascination with storytelling influenced my decision to become a newspaper reporter after graduation.
After a time, I transitioned to telling stories through film and video and incorporated the skills of a print journalist into my approach to documentaries and digital content.
Q: What is something valuable you’d like others to know?
A: When I first picked up a camera, I remember being very intimidated by the technical aspects of it.
And I remember being similarly daunted by all of the logistics and crafting of a story arc when I made my first film.
But I believe that if we let ourselves be paralyzed by our fears, we’ll never achieve our full potential.
I steadily acquired the storytelling and production skills and the knowledge of film gear, and I would love to help other women out with that—especially female entrepreneurs who are working at home and need to incorporate DIY video into their business.
I definitely empathize with how video can initially feel very formidable. My message is: Don’t let that fear paralyze you! There are so many ways to DIY it.
And I’m more than willing to help anyone out that needs advice.
There are many statistics about the power of videos and storytelling, but for me, it all comes down to the ability to connect with others, to inspire and motivate them, and to foster our shared humanity.
Q: What does feminism mean to you?
A: To me, being a modern feminist means supporting those who identify as women, lifting each other up, amplifying our voices, and having the right to personally choose how we live our lives.
I also think it’s crucial to consider feminism through an intersectional lens if we want the movement to be truly inclusive and representative of the voices of women of all races, classes, religions, abilities, and orientations.
“We know that if it isn’t pleasurable, we aren’t going to stick with it.”
Q: What are you passionate about?
A: I’m passionate about helping people through food. My biggest joy in life is creating a combination of clean and healthy, festive, and flavorful cuisine that nourishes both the human body and spirit.
I love being a part of someone’s special event. Great food with amazing service is my goal for every client. I come to where you are, bring groceries, cook, serve, and clean up on the way out the door, allowing you to give your loved ones the gift of time. I get joy from watching people enjoy dishes that they initially thought they wouldn’t.
After years of following and learning fad diets riddled with destructive information, I could see the damage it was doing to my own body. This prompted me to research what an actual healthy diet looked like. The last 15+ years, I burnt up my library card reading information on everything that I could on all types of different eating regimes and scientific studies, and eventually, it clicked to me.
If whole food, plant-based eating has the highest number of people worldwide living without assistance well into their 90’s and into their 100’s, then there had to be something there. As I studied, I learned dishes everywhere and from anyone who was willing to teach me. I joke with my friends that “I cooked with your grandma.”
As I thought of how the groups of people worldwide that still lived by the diets of their ancestors it became to clear to me. A diet full of rich, vibrant fruits and vegetables and natural, lean protein was the way people ate 100’s of years ago, before processed food or “easy foods” were available became my mission.
Q: What were your younger years like?
A: Growing up, I was raised on and off by my grandma, who was not only an amazing person but also an amazing cook! She let me cook with her from a young age. There is a story they would tell me growing up that when I was four or five, my mother’s blood sugar started to get to low. I got the idea to make her an egg sandwich while scrambling the eggs I decided to put popcorn kernels in the eggs, because I love popcorn so why not. My mom used to tell me that if I ever wrote a cookbook that the title should be “Popcorn & Eggs.” It is in my business plan to write a cookbook with that exact title. My grandma raised me with her passion to help people and to care for humanity.
I am a military brat. I grew up a little of everywhere and nowhere. I spent a lot of my early childhood with my grandparents on a farm in Burlington, North Carolina, and the rest of my time traveling. I moved back as a teenager to remain in North Carolina until the beginning of this year, when I moved to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to open Kiss Creations Personal Chef.
Kiss Creations Personal Chef has been my passion project for over half of my life. I continue to study, listen to information, and research healthy living because there are a few pieces of the puzzle that come together to reach the goal of a healthy life and it is my mission. One piece of the puzzle is the fact that if it doesn’t taste good, then it won’t work. We know that if it isn’t pleasurable, we aren’t going to stick with it. For myself, I began to take old recipes that my grandma had made and removed some of the ingredients that lacked a nutritional base and replaced them with nutrient-dense foods. I played around with different styles, different techniques, different concepts, creating new ways to give the comfort of people’s favorite home-style meals and cultural favorites, while also creating my own personal style along the way.
Another piece of the puzzle is physical activity. I personally love lifting weights, walking, running, hiking, anything I can do outdoors invigorates me, but that’s my personal story. Taking a 30 minute walk every day on top of your regular schedule can work miracles for both your physical and mental health, get outside and garden, play with your kids, whatever it is that brings you joy and gets you moving.
The other piece is taking care of your mental health, having people around you that inspire you, care for you, and treat you well. Everyone deserves this in their world and if you don’t have it, listen to these words, babe…everyone deserves these things in their world, that means you! Back in North Carolina I would cook for friends, dinner parties, making food for charity events and my favorite event, Girl Parties, learning along the way how much fun it is to take care of people who take care of everyone else.
At the beginning of this year, I decided to move to Myrtle Beach to assist people in their journey with healthy living. I have met some amazing women who have inspired me to fight for my dreams and help where we can. With this ongoing crisis that we are facing as humanity, being a personal chef that comes to your home to cook meals isn’t the most popular service at the moment. In my first week and a half, I did a dig into my business what was working and what I needed to improve on. I formulated a plan of action around these lists and what I needed to do after this horrible crisis that we are in finally ends concerning my business. I’m also a state-licensed life insurance broker, so I am lucky that has still been an avenue to financially survive this crisis and reopen. I believe we should all help where we can throughout our communities during these times. Everyone is going through their own thing right now, so let’s be kind towards ourselves and each other.
Q: What is something valuable you’d like others to know?
A: Something valuable I have learned in my life that I would like to share is that you are worth so much. Never let anyone make you feel like you don’t deserve to be completely healthy in mind, body, and spirit. As women, if we stand together lifting each other up as we journey through this life we have been given, there isn’t anything that we can’t accomplish.
Q: What does feminism mean to you?
A: Feminism to me is the idea that whatever it is that makes you feel powerful and like a female should be supported by society. It is also the fact that, as women, we shouldn’t have to fight to be given the same rights and equal pay as our male counterparts. We shouldn’t have to be twice as good as the man standing beside us for the same pay. Feminism to me is this idea that women should support other women throughout our journey and understanding that our paths aren’t all going to be the same. Women are powerful beings, and if we would stand together, there is absolutely nothing we can’t create.
Q and A with Valeria, born in Budapest, Hungary, living in Costa de Sol, Spain
“I will spend the rest of my life with myself, so self-care and wellness for “my time” both physically and mentally have become a focal point.”
Q: What are you passionate about?
A: Awe my passions! My passions embody different paths: First, about my and your health, functional fitness, and how we can all age gracefully…I know it is a huge challenge for all of us to stay fit, flexible, and healthy.
I am an avid hiker with my puppers, and I love my CrossFit classes (both of which tighten and shorten my muscles and ligaments). My yoga really helps to balance it out and reverse the harmful effects of aging, but with that said, I am more interested in taking ownership of the health and aging of my body and mind (than nailing the perfect headstand or arm balance).
I have been doing yoga for the past 25 years and teaching for the last 15 years and have been fortunate to have studied under Baron Baptiste, Ana Forest, John Friend, and my beloved teacher, Shiva Rea.
Teaching yoga led me to study to become an Ayurvedic practitioner. I owned a yoga studio in Vancouver, Canada (I lived there for 30 years), and after classes, I had students come up and talk about their health concerns.
As a yoga teacher, I could only help so much, so I decided to embark on the journey to become an Ayurvedic practitioner. Ayurveda can be traced back some 3,000 years and is the sister science of Yoga.
My second passion would be about animals, by way of example my pets serve as a comforting escape like they do for so many of us…almost meditative at times. Lots of work, but also immense fun!
And a third passion would be as simply articulated as “my time.” I will spend the rest of my life with myself, so self-care and wellness for “my time” both physically and mentally have become a focal point as does continuing forward with a work-life integration (more realistic than a work-life balance in my mind).
As far as what I’m working on, my focus has been to create affordable, accessible, and easy-to-follow yoga classes and Ayurveda recommendations that we can all do in the coziness of our own spaces.
As the on-demand membership continues to grow on my website, I now continue “spreading the word” about my on-demand yoga classes (yin–restorative–flow) and Ayurveda articles to help you and me with a work-life integration; after all, “We are all in this together, stay strong, healthy and flexible.”
Also, as I get quite a few questions about how to begin yoga as a counter-balance for training from runners, swimmers, cyclists, bodybuilders, CrossFit participants, physique contestants, I have started to bring together a six-part, three-video yoga series aimed at beginners, those coming off an injury, in rehab, or those who just want to revisit some of the fundamentals.
Q: What were your younger years like?
A: Growing up in communist Hungary meant we could not travel at all, but my dad was a diplomat and so, we were stationed in different countries (Russia and Iraq).
We were privileged to see different parts of the world. I really think that was such an advantage compared to many of my friends living in Hungary. For this, I feel I had a very lucky childhood.
I was privileged to meet and have fun with other children of different races and nationalities–a formative time of innocence to shape a young mind that has embodied my life to this date. That really opened my eyes and framed, I am sure, some of my passions and formed the yogic idea of acceptance in varied forms at a young age. My dad, now 91 and still plays tennis every day, is very open-minded and loving like my mother.
Q: What is something valuable you’d like others to know?
A: I got quite sick at the age of 45; that’s when I discovered Ayurveda. Ayurveda is preventative medicine.
The great thing about Ayurveda is that its treatments always yield “side benefits, not side effects.”
What I would like others to learn from my story is to stay fit, flexible, and healthy, and find for yourself your own work-life integration toward your own self-care and wellness in whatever form it takes shape–and remember to enjoy the journey despite the ebbs and flows.
Q:What does feminism mean to you?
A: To me, feminism is that we all need to find our own individuality. We can accomplish and enjoy a lot on our own, but of course, it is beautiful to be in a relationship to share your life with somebody.
