The Loew Down

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You've built something that helps everyone else, and you still don't know who to call when you're the one who needs support. 
 
You tell yourself you're fine, you push through, and you assume everyone else has this figured out in a way you don't. 
 
• The moment a Hamilton therapist realized her own burnout was showing up in her body, not just her mood 
• Why even someone whose entire career is helping people find support still has trouble finding her own 
• The 45-second practice she recommends to anyone who has no idea how they're feeling day to day 
• What she wishes more business owners understood about the difference between being tired and needing real support 
• What she wants to be recognized for in the Hamilton small business community, after almost two decades in practice 
 
This isn't a framework from a course. This is a Hamilton therapist who built two practices from the ground up, telling you exactly what she tells her own clients. 
 
If this one hit home, hit follow so the next conversation lands in your feed automatically. 
 
Content note: this episode includes an honest conversation about mental health and past 
hospitalization. 
 
Resources Mentioned: 
Instagram: @ccpsychotherapy 
Website: carlycrawfordfyvc.com 
 
The Loew Down | Because your story matters. 

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You built something people love walking through the door for. Scroll through your Instagram and you'd never know it. 
 
You've been posting consistently, maybe even trying the trends everyone tells you to, and it still isn't bringing anyone new through that door. 
 
• The real reason your view count might be lying to you about what's driving customers in 
• Why one Hamilton small business owner tells his hospitality clients to skip the trending dance completely and what he has them do instead 
• The difference between content that gets views and content that gets you remembered 
• Why he deliberately works with fewer people on purpose, and what happened right after he did 
• What he wants to be known for in the Hamilton small business community (hint: it's not “the social media guy”) 
 
This isn't a framework or a course. It's the real advice one Hamilton agency owner gives the food and hospitality brands he works with every day. 
 
If this one hit home, hit follow so the next conversation lands in your feed automatically. 
 
Resources Mentioned: Instagram: @socialby_andybWebsite: socialbyandy.com 

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Ever hit a wall as a small business owner with absolutely no one nearby who's been through it before? You Google it, you ask around, and you still end up piecing it together completely alone. 
 
Here's the relief: it gets figured out. Cailen's story is exactly what that looked like for her, coffee cart, permit fight, and all. 
 
• The city rejected her original plan, again and again, over months and what she had to build from scratch to finally get approved 
• The moment she realized there was no one local she could call for advice, and what she did instead 
• How a customer's syrup swap turned into her best-selling matcha 
• The very first event that pulled a six-hour line, except for one 200-strong uninvited guest 
• What she said when asked how she wants to be recognized in her community. Not the answer you'd expect from someone running a coffee business 
• 
She's doing this from a repurposed horse trailer parked in Hamilton. This isn't a framework, it's what actually happened. 
 
If this one hit home, hit follow so the next conversation lands in your feed automatically. 
 
Resources Mentioned: Pinkies Coffee Co. Instagram & Facebook: @pinkiescoffeeco Greenbelt Coffee (local roaster, Parkdale) Small Bites Baking (baked goods partner) 

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You know that feeling of facing something scary in your own body, completely alone, with no one there to tell you it's going to be okay? You've probably told yourself that's just what it costs to build something alone.

Here's what that isolation turned into for her:

• A pelvic floor injury at 28 that nobody warned her about and what she says would have changed everything if just one person had said the right thing at the time.
• The pregnancy complication that came from something every new mom does without thinking twice and what it revealed once she finally listened to her body.
• A one-hour conversation with an AI expert that changed how she runs her clinic, her conference, and her podcast and the systems she built because of it.
• A photo of herself running into the ocean at 51 that she could barely get through without tearing up on the mic and what it taught her about needing other people.
• What she said when we asked what she wants to be recognized for in our community not the clinical answer you'd expect from 25 years in the field.

She built this as a Hamilton small business owner, one patient at a time. This isn't theory, it's what happened.

If this one hit home, hit follow so the next conversation lands in your feed automatically.

Resources mentioned: Blueberry Therapy blueberrytherapy.ca IG @blueberrytherapypelvichealth Kristen's podcast: The Hole Shebang AI coaching: Callan Faulkner / The Uncommon Business 

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Our season finale, and what a conversation to close on.

Katie from Cake & Kale is a Hamilton-based custom cake and wedding cake artist, a mom of two boys with a third on the way, and someone who has spent years being radically honest about mental health while building a business that runs entirely on precision and detail. She lives with OCD, anxiety, and depression. And she makes wedding cakes for a living. She went full-time in 2022 and has been figuring it out, out loud ever since.

In this conversation we get into what Pure O OCD actually looks like when you're mid-build on a wedding cake, the summer before her wedding when a panic attack brought her to the darkest thought she'd ever had, and the cat named Butters who somehow showed up at exactly the right moment. We also talk about what it looks like to run a business at 60% capacity, why she made hiring decisions before she needed them, and the guilt of not enjoying pregnancy when you're expected to love every second.

Find Katie at @cakeandkale on Instagram and at cakeandkale.ca.

Because your story matters. 🎙️

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Ayaan Ali built Fiore Med Spa in Westdale Village, Hamilton and she did it her way. Two and a half years in, she has a team of five, a waitlist of clients who found her after something went wrong somewhere else, and almost nine years of experience in a field where a weekend course is still considered the gold standard.  

In this conversation we get into what it takes to hold a premium position in a market flooded with discount Botox ads, what a vascular occlusion is and why it matters, the green flags and red flags every client should know, how she built and trains a team she trusts with her name and her patients, and why she started offering GLP-1 weight-loss injections and exactly how she does it differently.  

She said three words in this episode I have not stopped thinking about: time is tissue.  

Find Ayaan at fioremedspa.com or https://fioremedspa.janeapp.com/ and on Instagram at @fiore.medspa

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Elizabeth Den Hollander was six months into her career as a registered massage therapist when her mom was diagnosed with stage 3 cervical cancer. That same day, she took over the clinic. She kept it running for nine years, treating clients, building a practice, and navigating grief in the in-between, while her mom fought. A year after losing her, Elizabeth opened Painted Brick Wellness: a multidisciplinary wellness collective in downtown Hamilton, Ontario, where six independent practitioners each run their own business under one roof.

In this conversation, we get into what it looked like to hold a business together while saying goodbye to the person who built it. Elizabeth talks about the Coco framework of grief and what it means that her mom’s clients are still receiving care. We talk about the collective model, what she calls a path that was chosen, and why she built something bigger instead of carrying on alone. We close with the question we ask every guest: what do you want to be recognized for in your community?

Find the Painted Brick collective at @paintedbrickwellness and paintedbrickwellness.com. The practitioners: @rmtelizabeth, @rmtzoe, @inertia.pw, @msmith.osteo, @urbanholisitichamilton, @myocaresolutions. And Elizabeth co-runs @outdoorsypals — free community hikes and coffee around Hamilton, open to everyone.
Because your story matters.

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She walked into rooms nobody invited her to. Cold called every single day selling a technology most people had never seen. Heard no more times than she can count. And kept going anyway.

Alex Graham is the founder of Me-Tour, a Hamilton company building 3D virtual tours for businesses, schools, and healthcare spaces. Think Google Street View, but for the inside of a building. She started it during COVID with no marketing background, no social media, and no blueprint. Just a stubborn belief that this technology mattered and that accessibility is a standard, not a feature.

She auditioned for Dragon’s Den, two days after catching the stomach flu from her toddler, and kept going when it didn’t pan out. Then she landed Mohawk College. All four campuses. With a popped rib.

We talk about what it actually takes to sell something nobody understands yet, why she cold calls every single day, and what she told a room full of business owners about networking that I haven’t stopped thinking about since.

Find Alex at @me_tour_inc and me-tour.ca.

Because your story matters. 🎙️

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She's spent two decades in pediatric medical and mental health and she still has to convince parents she's worth paying for.

Michelle McVittie is a certified child life specialist and parenting coach behind Mom the Manager, and the recurring parenting expert on CHCH Morning Live. She works with families navigating ADHD, anxiety, and strong-willed kids — the ones therapy waitlists can't always reach fast enough.

We get into the real gap nobody talks about: she's not covered by insurance, even though a therapist with a fraction of her experience often is. We talk about the shame that keeps parents from picking up the phone in the first place, and the thirty-second introduction she's built so specific that people remember her name in a room of strangers. We also ask her the question we ask everyone — if she started over tomorrow, what would she do differently.

Find Michelle at momthemanager.ca and on Instagram @momthemanager.

Because your story matters.

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Amanda Gurman spent years being the person other women called when they finally had something they needed to say out loud. She's the host of the Honest as a Mother podcast, a three-time bestselling co-author, and the founder of Her Truth Press — a publishing house she built from scratch in Hamilton, Ontario for women who have been carrying a story they were told to keep quiet.

In this conversation we get into all of it. How she went from suffering through postpartum depression in silence to building a platform that has given hundreds of women permission to tell the truth. Why she walked away from the self-publishing model she'd used for three books and built her own company instead. The moment she stopped calling her identity crisis a midlife crisis and renamed it a breakthrough. And how she gets women to share their most vulnerable stories in print — with their real names on the cover — just by showing up as herself.

We close with the question we ask every guest on The Loew Down: what do you want to be remembered for in your community? Her answer is eight words. And it's the whole episode.

Find Amanda at @amanda.gurman and Her Truth Press at @hertruthpress.

Because your story matters.