On this episode of the Brazen Podcast, I’m chatting with Candace Ramirez of Moon Honey Media. She’s a content manager for creative, women-run small businesses and is here to talk about mental health and how it affects connection with people and life as an entrepreneur. Your brain and business are very interconnected when it comes to the state of your health and wellbeing. Having developed PTSD from an abusive relationship, Candace has personally seen the impacts of mental health, especially on work. Feeling isolated after her trauma, it was scary for her to sort through it, but when a coworker who also had PTSD reached out to her, she realized how helpful it is to have a support system. This lead her to build a community of people who are open about talking about their healing journeys, specifically relating to work life.

We discuss the silence and stigmas around mental health issues, the power of speaking up and sharing about your struggles, and the benefits of sharing your message no matter what the response is. There’s always someone listening.

Your mental health is not an excuse to not reach your goals. We speak on the self-care culture and mentality aimed towards entrepreneurs on social media and its potential for making it difficult to start or grow a business. Candace emphasizes the balance that’s needed between rest, drive, and making goals. Finding a balance between mothering yourself and having an outside voice, like a therapist, to give you guidance and words of reason is also extremely helpful as a business owner.

What if your home office helped bring out your creative genius, instead of causing you constant frustration? With all of us spending a lot more time at home these days (and often with new office buddies), this question is more important than every. Stephanie Jackson, of Practical Sanctuary, is a sensory interior designer, focused on helping highly creative and neurodiverse people create home and office spaces that support their creative genius. She sat down with me to talk about neurodiversity, what it means to be highly sensitive, and how to create spaces that support you. Learn more about her work at practicalsanctuary.com.

How do you know when to quit? ….. or when not to? That’s a question that comes up a lot for Shea Keats, a creative career coach, podcast host, and entrepreneur based in Portland, Oregon. We sat down to talk about the unique dilemmas and questions that come up for creative people when they’re making important decisions about their next career steps.

How do you build practices and boundaries into your business that protect your creative workflow? What does it look like to make sure your business is not only sustainable financially, but energetically as well? As a freelancer, your brain is your business's greatest asset, so I'm sitting down with Samantha Pollack, copywriter for feminist businesses and thought leader on entrepreneurship as a highly sensitive person, to talk about practices that will help you set boundaries that work for you.

How are small travel businesses coming up with creative ways to stay engaged and create revenue during global travel bans? I'm talking with Sierra Busch, founder of Creative Edge Travel and the travel networking group Travelistas United, to talk about the creative, beautiful ways people are connecting with clients, creating content, and adapting to the pandemic today. This episode was originally recorded as part of the Confident Challenge. Learn more at bit.ly/confidentchallenge2020

Can discovery calls be valuable to your clients? Do they have to feel like awkward sales calls, or can they (shock and horror!) be... fun? Today I'm chatting with Michelle Marie, Founder of Put Your Passion to Work. She's a business strategist for coaches and expert on scheduling and closing great discovery calls.This episode was recorded as part of the Confident Challenge. Learn more at bit.ly/confidentchallenge2020