The Lipstick Gang

Stepfamilies make up around 11% of UK families with dependent children. They're one of the fastest growing family types in the UK with 1 in 10 famillies being blended or having a step-parent involved. And I'm one of these step-parents. As a stepmum myself, I was thrust into this completely new dynamic, almost overnight with no manual, no guidance and not a lot of places to go for advice or support. And although we're slowing moving into a society where step-parents and blended families are becoming more accepted and understood, many stepmums still encounter a lot of stigma, expectations and judgement. It can feel quite isolating.

Thankfully there are stepmums out there who are educating and empowering other stepmums who find themselves navigating this new family dynamic. And two such ladies are Billie Barnes and Jordan Smith, founders of The Stepmum Collective. The Stepmum Collective is an Instagram community aimed at championing the positives of being a stepmum, featuring real stepmums' stories, sharing their stories and providing a safe space of no judgement when things get tough. Billie and Jordan have experienced their fair share of stigma and negativity around the stepmum experience as well as not feeling like they had anyone to speak to or anyone who could relate to what they were going through, which is why they wanted to make sure The Stepmum Collective is a solutions-focused platform.

Billie, Jordan and I got together (virtually) to share our stepmum stories and quickly learned that even though our stories had different details, the stepmum experience is often a shared experience. We chatted about the early days of accelerated dating someone with a child, how to set boundaries, reaching key milestones such as when we each actually felt like a "proper parent" and important advice we'd give our younger selves.

We also spoke about an important petition that The Stepmum Collective recently started with another UK-based stepmum - raising awareness and demanding change to stepmums' access to fertility treatment on the NHS. In the UK, women are being denied fertility treatment such as IVF on the NHS (National Health Service) simply because their partner has a child from a previous relationship. An issue that is close to their hearts, we talk about why this petition is important and can have far-reaching effects, not only for bonus parents but for all women.

The aim is to reach 100,000 signatures, you can read more, sign, share and support the petition here.

You can find out more about Billie, Jordan and The Stepmum Collective on Instagram, @thestepmumcolletive.

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There's nothing I love more than people breaking down stereotypes and proving others wrong - going beyond what society believes are your limits and Emily Pyke totally embodies this.

After getting pregnant at 16 and raising two girls as a single mum, Emily is also a car technician, founder of the online community Featuring Inspiring Women, and an all-around badass.

Working in a traditionally male-dominated industry, Emily has faced her fair share of prejudices, micro-aggressions and sexism in the workplace. She shares her experience gaining her qualifications and auto-shop apprenticeship while finishing high-school (and looking after her young daughter) and the challenges she's had to overcome. From customers refusing to have their car serviced by a female mechanic to managers assuming she'd be "more comfortable" in a desk job, she's heard it all.

We chat about her journey and how she got to where she is today - the lessons she's learnt and the cautionary tales. And while there's been tremendous growth in diversity and women in the trades, the industry still has a way to go in terms of normalising the idea that a woman can work and succeed in these industries. We discuss the idea of having a diversity quota in the trade industries and how that might (or might not) work in practice, as well as what employers can do to encourage more women to enter the trades. Emily is one of the many women around the world, paving the way for more gender diversity and she offers amazing advice for women looking to get into the trades and how to handle gender stereotypes.

Not only is she leading by example and teaching her girls that women can be and do anything they want, but she also created an online community called “Featuring Inspiring Women”, which features and celebrates different women in the trades - telling their stories, teaching people about what they do, increasing visibility of diversity in the trades and inspiring people who may want to get into the industry.

You can find out more about Emily and Featuring Inspiring Women at @featuringinspiringwomen and featuringinspiringwomen.ca.

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It's often said that grief is a process and a journey. You never fully overcome it, rather you find ways to navigate, understand and live with it. Charla Grant has been on a journey. After a number of years of unsuccessfully trying to start a family with her husband and countless amounts of heartache, Charla lost her daughter Olive in childbirth. Navigating through her grief and coming to terms with her journey with infertility, Charla discovered how powerful gratitude can be as a resilience tool. Creating a habit of finding her "crumbs of joy" even on the darkest days, Charla was able to shift her mindset and focus on making what she already had, enough.

Armed with her morning ritual of coffee and gratitude, Charla started The Grateful Hearts Club with original illustration blank gratitude cards for anyone to write their affirmations on. Now, Charla coaches people in her gratitude workshops, helping them understand what gratitude is, how it can help in day-to-day life, how to channel it into a tool of resilience and mental strength as well as ways to start building these positive habits into routine.

She joins the podcast to share her story and how she came to start The Grateful Hearts Club, how gratitude helped as a coping mechanism during a really difficult time and ways that all of us can change our thought-process and start appreciating what we already have as opposed to fixating on the things that we don't have. The world could use more people like Charla.

You can find out more about The Grateful Hearts Club on Instagram @thegratefulheartsclub and thegratefulheartsclub.com

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Alanna Deutrom is a singer-songwriter, music coach, podcast host and entrepreneur based in Melbourne, Australia. After songwriting and journaling for many years, in 2020 she embarked on a new creative project born out of lockdown called Grounded Minds, a collection of original-illustration affirmation cards.

A strong believer in practicing gratitude and setting intentions, she one day decided to read through her journals and began to pick out affirmations and mantras she found particularly inspiring. Armed with a black permanent marker, she began to illustrate single-line drawings to go along with these affirmations and Grounded Minds was born.

Alanna joins the podcast to chat about tapping into this creative flow and the whole creation process from idea to pen to product. On a mission to spread love, joy and positivity, Alanna believes that everyone can be creative in their own way and finding ways to unlock that individually will help us all unlock so much joy. The aim for Grounded Minds is to help people unlock their own potential, help spark some creativity or provide moments of self-reflection and validation that what you're feeling is normal and that you're not alone. The COVID pandemic has brought so much uncertainty to our lives and Alanna believes making time for these grounding moments is super important.

An all-around creative, Alanna not only runs Grounded Minds but also owns a music coaching business called Coach Music Academy, teaching students of all ages how to sing and how to use their voice. She also hosts the Coach Music Podcast, interviewing musicians and singers about their experiences and personal stories.

Injecting fun and confidence into everything that she does, Alanna has had quite the life so far, starting her music career in her early teenage years after writing a song for Delta Goodrem at the age of 12. Her music career took her across the globe, spending time in London and Nashville, but Alanna also talks very openly about the negative impact this had on her self-image and body image at such a young age. Drawing on her own experiences, she now coaches young artists how to not only physically prepare but emotionally and mentally prepare for a career in the entertainment industry.

You can find out more about Grounded Minds and Alanna on @groundedminds and @coachmusicacademy.

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Raised in Istanbul, Turkey and currently based in New York, self-image coach Ela Topcuoglu is on a mission to empower and inspire womxn of all backgrounds to achieve their goals. Prior to becoming a coach, Ela was living a seemingly perfect life in Hollywood, working on successful TV shows such as House of Cards. However, after finding herself in a plastic surgeon's office in her mid-twenties, Ela realised she had to make changes and truly work on loving herself. Through her own journey of self-discovery, facing issues of self-esteem and body image, Ela found her calling and began to train as a development coach to help clients battling similar demons to herself.

During 2020, Ela started to co-run a female-empowerment social community called The Wopo. Originally based solely in Turkey, The Wopo tells real stories from real womxn about their own self-love journeys. Since then, The Wopo has grown from a few hundred followers to over 23,000 and spawned an English-language sister community called We Are Wopo. Aimed at empowering womxn with real, raw, relatable and inspiring stories from womxn of all backgrounds, the community shares affirmations, life lessons, cautionary tales, with the hope that it will encourage other womxn to take the leap into the journey of self-love.

Ela and I chat about her journey of self-love, and how that's shaped the way in which she works with her clients. She opens up about the challenges she's faced around expectations and achieving perfectionism, as well as the incredible life lessons she gets from coaching her clients. We laugh about the consistent number of similarities that come up as we chat, from our education and cultural experiences to pressures of achievement and even lipstick colours. We also dive deep into some of her favourite affirmations that she practices daily with her clients to keep focused and present.

You can learn more about Ela's coaching services on @elavatecoaching. And please do go check out @wearewopo on Instagram for incredible and inspiring real-life stories from real women around the world.

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Today's guest is Millie Ginnett, who founded the South London Book Swap after being put on furlough during the first UK lockdown in March 2020. With a lot more free time on her hands and limiting her social interactions, Millie took up reading more. However, where previously she would have donated books to charity shops after finishing them, her usual donation spots were also closed because of the lockdown. With the books piling up on her shelves and no where to go, she posted the books on her local forums for free, offering to drop them off as part of her daily exercise. Within 24 hours, all 20 books were gone.

Realising there was a demand, she set up the South London Book Swap group on Facebook and within two days had collected over 200 books from across South London. After cleaning and organising the titles into genres, she posted the titles available on a first-come-first-serve basis. And the book swap was born.

Since its launch, the book swap has grown to over 800 members as well as branched into 10 local sub-groups, a sister group in Fiji and a dedicated book club!

Millie joins The Lipstick Gang to chat about how she started the swap and how it's evolved to a self-run platform that not only brings second hand books to people but also human connection and a sense of community during these challenging times. She shares amusing stories of people she's met thanks to the swap, including local authors who have donated signed copies of their books to rotate within the swap and grateful members who have offered Millie baked goods and wine vouchers as small tokens of gratitude. And we talk about the amazing coverage the book swap has received including being featured on Humans of London, The Guardian newspaper as well as mentioned and commended by London mayor Sadiq Khan. 

We also dive deep into our mutual love of Tooting, a south London neighbourhood that both Millie and I are based, discussing local Tooting businesses that we love to visit.

Millie is proof that anybody can make a difference and start something that sparks change and inspiration in others. A community initiative that was born out of a hobby, during a worldwide pandemic, that has evolved into a platform that brings people together!

You can find out more about The South London Book Swap on Facebook.

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It's been a challenging 12 months since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, now more than ever is it important we focus on our mental wellbeing and physical health. The wellness industry has seen a tremendous boom over the last few years, with both physical and mental health increasingly treated with the same level of importance - practices such as yoga, mindfulness and meditation becoming more and more part of people's everyday lives.

Yoga instructor, wellness expert and female entrepreneur Tilly Berry previously struggled with mental health issues such as anxiety and eating disorders. It was through yoga that she was able to unlock a way of living more mindfully that helped her overcome and manage her anxieties. Through this journey, she launched her business, The Yoga Agency, offering classes and wellness workshops for corporate and private clients.

We chat about the connection between physical health, mental wellbeing and spirituality, how practicing gratitude every morning has helped her tremendously with her productivity and self-belief and the ways in which she overcomes imposter syndrome. Tilly also offers amazing advice and insights into how we can all start to live more mindfully and work at being the best versions of ourselves!

You can find out more about The Yoga Agency at theyogaagency.co.uk and follow on Instagram @theyogaagency_ and @tillyberrywellness

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At only 30 years old, Natasha Moor, has the kind of drive and passion that truly makes an entrepreneur special. Starting her career as a make-up artist, she quickly became one of the most sought-after bridal make-up artists in the world. As she travelled and worked with different women all across the globe, she also worked on a number of philanthropic initiatives including donating her time, expertise and talent, doing make-up for victims of human trafficking and substance abuse at women's shelters in California. It was while working with these brave women that she really noticed the transformative power of make-up and decided to create a beauty brand centred around empowering and inspiring women to look and feel their best selves.

Launching Natasha Moor Cosmetics with a line of molten matte lipsticks, each with empowering shade names, Natasha continues to grow her business and brand - launching in Sephora, Macy's and Amazon in 2020.

Natasha joins The Lipstick Gang to share her journey as a young female entrepreneur, how she got her start in make-up, the incredible experiences she's had so far, the funny anecdotes and the cautionary tales. Not satisfied with just building a beauty empire, she also speaks passionately about her different charity initiatives from working with women's shelters and children's orphanages to co-creating a line of sandals for the Spark-a-Change foundation with her partner. She shares her philanthropic goals and the importance of paying it forward, encouraging others to also help "Do Moor" and donate their time, love or effort to those in need. A true inspiration.

Finally, Natasha also opens up about the importance of mental health and self care - sharing the lessons she's learnt through the ups and downs of starting and running a business, as well as the challenges she experienced in 2020, including being hospitalised for over a month with COVID-19.

You can find out more about Natasha Moor Cosmetics at natashamoor.com and follow on Instagram @natashamoorcosmetics and @natasha.moor

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Mommy vlogger, parenting YouTuber, sugar-cookie baker and mum of three, Andrea Wada-Davies seems to have lived at least 9 different lives. Growing up on a potato farm in rural Idaho, she pursued a law career before doing a complete career flip and going into the entertainment industry and pursuing her passion for content creation.

Andrea joins The Lipstick Gang to chat about her unique experience growing up in quiet and rural surroundings on her family's working potato farm. She reminisces about childhood memories from fishing and helping with the potato harvest to driving around the country with her family to watch her dad pull tractors competitively.

As a fourth-generation Japanese-American, Andrea offers honest and sometimes raw insight into the experiences her grandparents, parents and siblings faced growing up as Asian-Americans in a rural part of the United States. We also get into a deep-dive about the challenges of celebrating cultural heritage and racial identity, discussing how we keep our Asian traditions alive and thriving as we raise multi-cultural and mixed-race children (of which, she has three gorgeous little ones).

Finally, Andrea talks about how she started her YouTube channel, her first proper "viral" video, getting the whole family involved and why she loves vlogging so much.

Subscribe to Andrea's channel on YouTube and Instagram and also find her amazing custom-sugar cookies bakery, Cookies on Thames on Instagram. 

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New Zealand-native Jasmine Smith is a lingerie designer and businesswoman. She launched lingerie brand Raven & Rose in 2014, designed for the whisky-drinking reckless womxn pushing the boundaries of traditional femininity.

Jasmine redefines sexiness with a minimal and gender-fluid aesthetic, which has translated to Raven & Rose featuring in publications from Playboy to Women's Wear Daily and being worn by international artists including Rupual's Drag Race season 7 winner, Violet Chachki.

Jasmine joins The Lipstick Gang to chat about the setbacks she faced when starting her business, including how she lost it all and had to build the business up again the first time around thanks to a fraudulent business agent.

We dive deep into what defines "sexy", her thoughts on the role lingerie and overt female sexuality plays in feminism as well as her inspirations behind her designs. She even goes into detail about how she came to name intimates from her second collection after her husband's ex-lovers.

As a mompreneur, Jasmine shares how she manages to balance family life with running a business, as well as her top tips on getting stuff done. Hint, it comes with a lot of organisation and scheduling.

You can follow Raven & Rose on their official social media account @ravenandrose or shop online at ravenandroselingerie.com.
Jasmine's designer account is @jasmine.x.smith

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