An Interview With Melissa Llarena

Have you ever wanted to do something in your life but you just never had the courage to do it? Maybe you've pursued your passion to become a doctor or a pharmacist, or a lawyer because you wanted to do good in the world. But then you ended up working in an organization that’s got its own set of ideas you don’t necessarily align with.  Lorin Martin used to work as a pharmacist at CVS. For her, really getting to know the clients and getting to know customers was paramount. But it wasn’t something she could do there. After graduating from Texas A&M University with her Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology, Lorin Martin received her Doctorate of Pharmacy from the University of Texas in Austin. Upon graduation, she managed an independent pharmacy in Austin for 3+ years, where her passion for compounding grew. Currently, Lorin is the owner of Bear’s Compounding Pharmacy and the Pharmacist-In-Charge. Born and raised in Georgetown, Lorin could not be happier to be planting her roots back in her hometown! Could you e

When was the last time you went out for a hike in the mountains, walked on the ocean, or just experienced nature? Being outdoors can do wonders. So, get your hiking boots or your surfboard ready because you definitely would want to head out after hearing this episode.  Born and raised in Austin, Texas, USA, Matthew Guthrie grew up exploring its greenbelts (i.e. woods) and parks. His passion for the outdoors led him to create Hike Austin, an organization devoted to promoting and protecting the green spaces around Austin. His first visit to Westcave was on an elementary school field trip and he has stayed connected to Westcave ever since. Matthew is a photographer whose work has been published in local/regional magazines. Matthew also has a passion for entrepreneurship and currently works as a producer on The Build Show.  Today, Matthew discusses the mental break you get from being outdoors. Sure, it’s difficult to find time – but it takes intention. It’s a matter of getting to that headspace where you can turn

Imagine being an illustrator with a studio in Sydney right next to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Australia, who gets to use their talent to give people a good laugh at the silliness of life?  This week’s guest is Max Mendez and his artistry is behind the Squidinki brand.  Squidinki is a unique brand founded by Max Mendez and Kerry Findlay. With degrees in Industrial and Interior design respectively, Max and Kerry have had extensive experience working in design and branding agencies throughout the world, including England, Spain, America, Singapore, and Australia. Now after more than 10 years of designing brands and retail interiors for many prominent Australian and international brands, Max and Kerry decided to follow their passion for illustration and design, and create their own brand, Squidinki. Inspired by the humor Max sees in everyday life, and a desire to spend life sketching it, Squidinki was born. Max's witty and humorous hand-drawn illustrations are sold both as limited edition artwork and featu

What could be possible for moms who want to launch their own businesses and reawaken their imagination? A life consumed by making gooey chocolate that’s for one. Hear how this chocolatier (and mom), Rebecca Knights, navigated business over the course of 20-plus years, from working for BBC to doing a no sugar campaign with Sarah Wilson, and to even being hired to put together a chocolate event for Adele. All of the decision moves that wound her up to having a successful chocolatier career are truly impressive. Rebecca is a business collaborator and decadent inventor in the kitchen. Rebecca started in the food industry to support her design studies. She soon took off to France to pursue her other passion and trained at Valrhona Chocolate until opening the first cocoa chocolate in Edinburgh in 2004. After 10 years of working and training in Europe, she finally opened Coco Chocolate in Kirribilli, merging her two passions for chocolates and design. In this episode, you will hear: Striving to achieve to survive T

This conversation is perfect for new or aspiring entrepreneurs. What if you are new to self-employment and you want to put together a beta offer? What’s the key to having massive clarity on what you want to sell? Who might you want to ask to be your first clients? What if you could uplevel your skills to more deeply serve every one of those clients and get more money for your time? How do you handle the fear of building a coaching business or pivoting into a new entrepreneurial offer?  It’s natural to have more questions than answers when it comes to being an entrepreneur, that’s why you will surely enjoy the energy and vibe of this week’s podcast guest, Jessica Burgio. Host of the Beauty Inspires Beauty podcast, Jessica is an educator and speaker helping salon owners and stylists around the world to grow their business, while growing themselves. Her unique approach focuses on encouraging her clients to grow through personal development and self-care, all while offering the tools needed to build a thriving, s

These days, the thought of entrepreneurship for our kids as a viable career option doesn’t sound completely foreign or nuts. It may sound risky or unstable and less conventional than becoming a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or accountant – but it’s an option that is increasingly getting popular, especially since the advent of the internet. Do you think you have an aspiring entrepreneur in your home? What can you do to nourish her or his interests in launching something one day? How important are school grades? Are there any differences between socioeconomic backgrounds or cultures? Would the idea of entertaining a gap year for your child raise your blood pressure – and should it?  When I was growing up, the internet didn’t exist yet I was that little girl who picked up a green book about how to become an entrepreneur. I was fascinated by the ideas that kids could come up with to make money. But that was where the buck stopped for me until 2011 when I launched my own coaching practice.  I love the creativity and i

Joe Williams is a former NRL player, professional boxer, and turned mental health advocate, who’s bringing The Enemy Within workshops to various communities. The Enemy Within is built on its five pillars of values: love, care, respect, humility, and compassion.  Joe is known for his committed work within the community mental health and suicide prevention sectors. During our conversation, Joe mentions how we always talk about, "it takes a village to raise a child." And he makes a valid point that we don't have a village anymore. We wake up and go to work and send our kids off to school or to daycare in the morning, pick them up in the afternoon, and put them to bed. Unfortunately, we're not raised by our village anymore. Our kids are being shipped off and passed around by all these different people that have absolutely no idea who they are.  Now, where is this magical village that was supposed to help us raise our kids and support our families? How can we heal as a society and recover from some of the conseque

Are you on a spiritual journey right now? Chances are, if you are in your 30s or 40s, you have been on a spiritual journey of some sort, and maybe you still are going through the motions of it.  As for me, my spiritual journey started here in Australia due to the “at-home time” I had during the pandemic so I had the space to dig deep. As for many of us, it caused us to pause and reevaluate our purpose in life. It was my desire to reconnect with my intuition and keep my head above the water if I wanted to make progress on my business.  This brings me to this week’s guest, Johnson Chong, the best-selling and award-winning author of Sage Sapien: From Karma to Dharma. Johnson is passionate about creating a bridge between ancient wisdom, energy medicine, and direct modern application. His unique experiences offer a profoundly healing self-discovery experience, followed by very practical and actionable steps to create lasting change.  With his background as a teacher who trains yoga teachers and pilates teachers, J

How can pausing or neglecting your hobbies as a busy mom lead to feeling like you’ve lost an essential connection to yourself? In this episode, you’ll uncover what it takes to be an artist and a single mom, especially during those early childhood years. Hear whether it’s worth it to give up on your dreams, your artistry, or your own self. Also, learn about cost-effective and less time-consuming media you can use to express your artistry as a mom.  Belinda Lindhardt provides valuable insights and productivity hacks fit for a creative mom who is busy or overwhelmed yet still appreciates her art as a tool to give herself downtime and help reconnect with herself.  In this conversation, Belinda shares what it takes to continue and persist and work on your passion projects or even your creative business, no matter where you are in your life, whether you're a single mom, or a mom taking care of a lot of unpredictable people. This concept is applicable whether you wish to maintain a hobby or you want to commercialize

Lisa Messenger has lived a full range of entrepreneurial emotions – the ups and downs over the course of being in business for over 21 years.  In this episode, Lisa covered quite a bit, including the idea of finding your purpose, knowing why you're going into business, how to fail fast, and how to assemble and work with a team even if you can't pay them at first, and finally, the numbers that matter. This is actually all in her book, “Start Up to Scale Up,” which makes a great graduation gift or if you simply want to give somebody something that will help spark up an idea within them. (Use the discount code Melissa20 to get 20% off of any of her products. Lisa also shares how she is currently getting to know the North American market, considering the nuances between the U.S. and Canada, especially compared to the Australian market.  Finally, Lisa dishes out some actionable insights into when we should share our big business ideas, how to stay ahead of the curve if someone has already done what we wish to acco

What does it take to earn back the trust of not just anyone, but your kids?  In this week's episode, I invited Tim Taylor as he shares how he tried to earn the trust of his daughter back.  He also shares how fathers can create space for their daughters so that they can open up with their dads. He particularly talks about how not to rob daughters of the experience of having to go through difficult times, and instead, give them the grace and the dignity to go through them. Especially in a divorced family environment, the relationships are fragile. In Tim's situation, his daughter lost her trust in him, having witnessed him going through a spiral, including being addicted to a substance and going through financial woes. Whether you're a dad or a mom, or maybe you're the child who lost trust in their parent/s, you're going to get some ideas from Tim that you can apply to your relationships as well.  Emotional well-being is imperative to us as parents. If you still haven’t gotten on the waitlist for my book, pleas

What if you could create a gorgeous life on your own terms? What if you are exactly where you are supposed to be not behind or broken? What if you gave yourself the permission to envision your fantasy life free of obligations? What if you just want peace in your life in a world that knows how to poke your wounds and feel total and utter chaos? Whether you're a parent with many obligations or you're single and you feel a little bit burnt out, you have a choice to live a gorgeous life. It’s possible! In today’s episode, I want to introduce you to Michael A. Blunt is a master teacher, student, and global energy influencer. He unifies modern psychology, neuroscience, and spiritual energetics into a single path. He teaches creators and business professionals a global model for transformation that is so simple that it can be applied immediately to upgrade the quality of their life.  Michael’s purpose is to teach ancient wisdom in a modern way, and show creators that they can have it all. His purpose also includes e

We want our kids to have a lot less screen time. Yet we keep hearing that the only way to have a scalable business that sells while you're sleeping is online. How do we figure out things to make sure we stay in alignment with our values? How can we continue to be excited about an idea that we bring into the world, and at the same time, be present and enjoy our children?    This is a recent coaching conversation I had with Rianna Alvarado, a mom who wants to limit her kid’s screen time and someone seeking alternative ways to scale her business so that she could align herself to her values and achieve educational goals with her homeschooled kids.    Juggling her roles being a mom of five and an entrepreneur, Rianna has this huge dream of creating something that's scalable, and ultimately, she wants to get all the money she needs to buy her own house.    We covered quite the gamut including key questions such as how Rianna Alvarado feels about her big and juicy business vision, what it would take for her to feel

Happy Mother's Day, or as I like to call it, Happy Warriors Day! If you are an entrepreneur, or even if you're in a corporation, your health is more valuable and more important and should be a higher top priority than your wealth on any given day. One day, VeVette Turner, and her now husband, were at a beautiful resort but they ended up just watching other people do fun things they couldn't do because they were both overweight. This week's podcast episode is specifically for moms because the gift of health is the best Mother's Day gift I could ever give you.  If you take back control of your health today, irrespective of how lethargic you might feel, regardless of the size of the dress or pants you're wearing right now. None of that matters. All it takes is a decision.  VeVette takes us through those early days when she and her husband decided to change their lifestyle and how she made a decision to live a plant-based lifestyle. She managed to use her imagination and plugged a blender into her car so she can

Were you the first to leave your home country to settle in the USA? Were you the first to go to college? If any of these scenarios, whether you are Latina, or not, hold true for you, then it’s important for you to uncover the subconscious cultural narratives that could be affecting you or holding you back today.  Today’s guest is Valeria Aloe, the author of Uncolonized Latinas: Transforming Our Mindsets And Rising Together. It’s an award-winning book that decodes cultural limiting beliefs holding back Latinas from a life of fulfillment and success.  This is what a conversation sounds like between two educated and empowered Latinas, who also happen to be moms who want to ensure their kids are not held back by the subconscious cultural narratives we may have inherited.  Valeria shares how we can take back ownership in experiencing our own transformative process and reimagine what's possible for us. Learn how we all can contribute to society through our differences. She also shares valuable insights from the 55

If you’ve been working in Corporate America, you could find yourself in that rat race and not even be aware that you’ve been running on empty. And having to juggle that with raising your kids and all your other responsibilities in life would most likely put you on the brink of burnout and breakdown.  In today’s episode, Jo Dodd talks about her experience of leaving the corporate world to “living in Jotopia,” a hybrid life that she created on her own terms to make sure she and her four sons are emotionally well. She talks about her decision to leave corporate and how she found the courage to pull that emergency cord and leave. Jo got furloughed in 2020 and when she realized she didn't have work anymore, creativity just flowed out of her and she started to write a book. But when she got called to get back to work, she couldn't breathe. She knew that if she went back, she was going to get completely drained. She was on the brink of a nervous breakdown. While she was watching her friends who had gone back to corp

Today, you are in for an entrepreneurial treat as I feature Kim Pierce, the founder of Babe Australia, a company dedicated to giving customers an experience of just feeling good. You will hear a quote that you'll want to make your own which is, “I'm not here to get a haircut!”  This conversation all started with my love of candles and one of them is called Love Letter made by Babe Australia. Curious and eager to know more about the genius behind this wonderful product, I then reached out to Kim Peirce – and here we are today! As Kim was inching into her 40th birthday, she started to have that nagging feeling about what was next and what she wanted her next decade to look like. And so, she left a high-paying career as a management consultant to forge her own path in the beauty and wellness industry.  She then realized there was just no time like the present, and the safety net will never be there so what was she then waiting for? There is never the right time to make any decision. and this has been the mantra

Are you someone who’s scared to stand up in a crowd and ask questions thinking you might have a silly question? A lot of people hesitate to ask questions, especially because they think that maybe a bull's eye target will be on their back, or they will look silly or dumb. But just when you think you have to pressure yourself into asking the best questions, the irony of it is that not overthinking what to ask and just being present will help you yield the best questions.  The best questions will always surface at the right time. You just have to constantly train your mind to do that and opportunities will show up. And this idea of mental fitness will be explained by today’s guest, Marc Champagne, bestselling author and fellow podcast host. Marc shares with us some best practices that luminaries have leveraged in becoming amazing human beings who are extremely efficient and successful in their lives.  After four years of interviewing wildly successful humans, Marc noticed this pattern: all of them were asking re

What was your first memory of being sold to or just witnessing a sale? For me, it was accompanying my dad to liquor stores who was transacting as a sales professional for over 40 years. This week’s guest, Jason Marc Campbell, is the author of Selling with Love: Earn with Integrity and Expand your Impact. He is on a mission to inspire small business owners with sales reluctance to embrace it as a beautiful activity that transforms lives. He also interviews thought leaders from around the world on topics of leadership, team building, communication, productivity and so much more.  If you are new to entrepreneurship or self-employment, or even if you have an upcoming job interview, be sure to listen to Jason's message. Ultimately, it really does require you to believe in what you have to sell. In this conversation, Jason walks us through the five loves of sales. He also shares his first memory of selling with love as well as what's integral to this entire profession that is present in the world's best sales profe

Now that we’re nearing the end of Women’s History Month, we have Gina Barreca, a distinguished professor and author, to share her wisdom about finding that power to not care about whether people like you or not.  Gina was the third class of women to be admitted to Dartmouth. She was also the first girl in her family to graduate from high school in a timely fashion. Today, Gina talks about how feminism is not about the things you cannot do, but about the things you can do, how power lies in the ability to not have to please anyone, and finally, how you can leverage feminine humor to get your message across.  I’m also sharing with you these two podcasts that are lifting up other women who are metaphorically making a good kind of trouble in their spheres of influence. Gina’s Biography Gina Barreca, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Connecticut, has written ten books, including the bestselling They Used to Call Me Snow White, But I Drifted, as well as Babes in Boyland: A Pe