Thinking About Podcast

I did my own wedding makeup in Greece last year, which I admit is a bold choice for someone who wanted it to survive a million photos and one very hot day.

And the only reason why I had the audacity to do that was that, before I left, I sat down with Chris. We went through my enormous makeup basket, and she taught me how to work with my own face, using mostly products I already had. Can you believe that for my wedding makeup, I only had to buy THREE new products?!?

Chris has spent more than 19 years in the beauty industry, and after a stint in corporate, came back to what she truly loves, helping people feel like their most confident selves. She's multi-certified across skin therapy, brows, and makeup artistry, which means she sees the whole picture of a face rather than just one part of it.

In this episode, we get into everything from what it really takes to do bridal makeup (sometimes waking up at 1:30am!!!) to why your skin isn't as bad as social media wants you to think.

We even get philosophical because, yes, beauty is so much deeper than you’d think!

In this episode, we’re talking about:

• What most people don't see about the bridal makeup industry
• "Good skin" has become an impossible, filtered, AI-generated standard
• The specific ways TikTok and Instagram have distorted how people shop for products
• Consistency, not constant product-switching, is the key to skin health
• Why a $600 skincare haul can damage your skin barrier
• The relationship between skincare and makeup
• Building beauty confidence from the inside out, and why the most important relationship in your life is the one you have with yourself
• Rapid-fire beauty favorites

Let's Connect

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review and sharing it with someone who could use a little more mindfulness in their life. Your support helps Thinking About reach more listeners and grow our community of thoughtful, intentional individuals.

Continue the conversation with me on IG / Tiktok @thinkingaboutpodcast and @kirstimcnabney. Follow along on Substack for more conversations on the things that keep us thinking.

Connect with Chris

Follow Chris on Instagram

Check out her website

Find all her important links here

This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz.

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Erin Rothstein reached out to her old painting professor the same day we recorded this episode. He's the one who told her, years ago, that she'd need to paint 100 bad paintings before she ever made one masterpiece. She said the impulse just hit her that morning: she wasn't sure if he even knew the impact he'd had on her, and she wanted him to know. It's the kind of lesson she's turned into a whole philosophy for her life, one she keeps returning to any time the fear of being bad at something starts creeping back in.

Erin is an artist known for her incredibly detailed hyperrealist paintings, but her new book, Watch Me, coming out this November, goes so far beyond art. We got into confidence versus self-trust, how other people's limits so easily become our own, what it actually means to build in the dark, and why being bad at something might be the whole point. This one made me think differently about what it means to build a life that feels like mine, and I think it'll do the same for you.

In this episode, we’re talking about:

• The difference between confidence that's performative and self-trust that's real
• Why courage feels terrifying every time, even when you've done it before
• How to tell the difference between someone's actual wisdom and someone's fear getting projected onto you
• What it means to "build in the dark”
• The professor who told Erin she had to paint 100 bad paintings to get to one masterpiece
• Approaching 100 galleries and getting two yeses, twice, and how she keeps rejection from becoming evidence that she isn't good enough
• Letting yourself have the tantrum instead of pretending rejection just "rolls off you"
• Why Erin believes everyone is creative, and where most of us lose touch with it
• Ambition then versus now, moving from "watch me make this happen" to building from the heart
• Her recent experiment in silence, and what an hour-long walk with nothing in her ear taught her

Let's Connect

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review and sharing it with someone who could use a little more mindfulness in their life. Your support helps Thinking About reach more listeners and grow our community of thoughtful, intentional individuals.

Continue the conversation with me on IG / Tiktok @thinkingaboutpodcast and @kirstimcnabney. Follow along on Substack for more conversations on the things that keep us thinking.

Connect with Erin

Erin's website

Erin on Instagram (@erinrothstein)

Erin's book, Watch Me

This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz.

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I've been going to the library a lot lately, picking books off the shelf based on vibes, the way I used to when I was a kid. It's a small thing, but it's felt like proof of something I keep noticing everywhere lately: we've spent the last decade making everything more convenient and more digital, and now we're all trying to find our way back outside.

This week I'm sitting down with Leanna DaCunha, an event producer and co-founder of Outerstellar, a creative storytelling studio specializing in event and video production. Leanna's spent the last eight years building her career around the simple belief that events are one of the most powerful ways to tell a story and build a community. She's produced everything from brand activations to sober curious meetups to her own 30th birthday party over Zoom during lockdown.

We get into why IRL is having such a moment right now, what actually makes people feel like they belong the second they walk into a room, and why brands might want to spend a little less time creating for the internet and a little more time creating for the people standing in front of them.

In this episode, we're talking about:

• Why IRL events are booming right now
• How Leanna designs events with introverts in mind
• What it really takes to host events beyond the highlight reel
• Why some of the smartest brands are pulling back from influencer-only marketing and turning toward community instead
• The shift toward more analog, tactile event experiences
• How to get people to show up (not just buy a ticket)
• Leanna's advice for anyone thinking about hosting their first community event
• How Leanna stays creative in an industry where everyone wants to copy whatever's already working

Let's Connect

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review and sharing it with someone who could use a little more mindfulness in their life. Your support helps Thinking About reach more listeners and grow our community of thoughtful, intentional individuals.

Continue the conversation with me on IG / Tiktok @thinkingaboutpodcast and @kirstimcnabney. Follow along on Substack for more conversations on the things that keep us thinking.

Connect with Leanna DaCunha:

Follow Leanna on Instagram: @leannamariarlee

Outerstellar: Leanna's creative studio

Outerstellar on Instagram

Subscribe to her Substack

Links from the episode:

Creative Courage by Welby Altidor

One of Us by Elizabeth Day

Sweet Tooth on Netflix

This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz.

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I spend a lot of my time thinking about content and how exhausting it can be to constantly create new things to stay visible online. It's something I talk to clients about all the time, which is part of why I wanted to sit down with my friend Guadalupe, a Pinterest strategist and the founder of Haus of Horizon.

While so many of the platforms we use every day ask us to post more and feed the algorithm, Pinterest works differently. Your content keeps getting discovered for months, even years, after you post it!

We're all looking for ways to make our marketing work harder without us having to work harder ourselves, and this makes Pinterest definitely worth exploring.

In this episode, we’re talking about:

• Why Pinterest works more like a search engine than a social media platform
• What matters (and what doesn't) when it comes to keywords, boards, posting frequency, and metrics
• How to repurpose the content you're already making instead of creating something new for Pinterest
• Setting up your account the right way: boards, keyword placement, and claiming your website and Instagram
• How far ahead to plan for seasonal content, product launches, and holidays
• Is AI content taking over Pinterest?
• What a realistic testing timeline looks like
• Who Pinterest isn't the right fit for

Let's Connect

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review and sharing it with someone who could use a little more mindfulness in their life. Your support helps Thinking About reach more listeners and grow our community of thoughtful, intentional individuals.

Continue the conversation with me on IG / Tiktok @thinkingaboutpodcast and @kirstimcnabney. Follow along on Substack for more conversations on the things that keep us thinking.

Connect with Guadalupe:

Check out her website, where you can find her Pinterest Strategy Audit

Follow Guadalupe on Instagram

Follow her on Threads

Links from the episode:

Tailwind - Pinterest scheduling tool

Metricool - social media scheduling and analytics tool

Pin Inspector - Pinterest keyword research software

Passion Project by London Sperry

This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz.

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Three years ago, Gabrielle Scout told me something I've quoted probably 500 times: when you don't know what to say, think about the woman you were two years ago and create for her. It's advice I still lean on every time I sit down to figure out what we should talk about on this show.

So when I realized it had been three years since that first conversation, I knew it was time to bring her back. Life has changed a lot for Gabrielle since then. She became a mom, left her marriage, sold her house, stepped away from parts of her career, and rebuilt her business almost entirely from scratch.

Gabrielle is the founder of Scout's Agency, a leading podcast visibility firm that's booked nearly 6,000 interviews and executed over 400 podcast tours for founders, authors, and thought leaders. Client results have included six-figure launches, thousands of books sold in a single month, and quarter-over-quarter revenue growth. She pioneered the podcast tour model seven years ago, long before podcast guesting became mainstream PR. She's also Editor-in-Chief of REVUE, and her work has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Business of Fashion.

In this episode, we're talking about:

• What Gabrielle would tell herself three years ago, after her business, marriage, and home all fell apart at once
• The visibility gap: why the most qualified women are often the most invisible, and what it has nothing to do with
• The three lies that keep women from pitching themselves as podcast guests
• Why Gabrielle believes the audience isn't actually the ROI of a podcast tour
• The story behind her pitch template
• What makes a guest memorable
• The difference between being "authentic" online and just being honest

Let's Connect

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review and sharing it with someone who could use a little more mindfulness in their life. Your support helps Thinking About reach more listeners and grow our community of thoughtful, intentional individuals.

Continue the conversation with me on IG / Tiktok @thinkingaboutpodcast and @kirstimcnabney. Follow along on Substack for more conversations on the things that keep us thinking.

Connect with Gabrielle Scout

• Scout's Agency website
• Scout's Agency on Instagram
• REVUE on Substack
• The Emotional Entrepreneur (book)
• Free pitch template
• Gabrielle's original episode on Thinking About

This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz.

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The person I'm about to introduce you to is the reason you're listening right now. She's the one who takes the messy, beautiful, rambling conversations that happen in this little corner of the internet and turns them into something worth pressing play on. She's also the person I picture every single time I sit down to do a solo episode.

This week, I finally got Adrienne Cruz behind the mic and not behind the scenes, where she usually lives. Adrienne is my podcast manager and a podcast launch strategist who helps online business owners create the shows they’ve been dreaming about. She doesn’t call herself the Fairy Podmother for nothing!

Whether you've been saying "I want to start a podcast" to yourself for six months (or four years, like me), or you already have one, but need to get excited about it again, you’re gonna want to tune in to this one.

In this episode, we're talking about:

• What keeps people stuck before they ever hit record — the overwhelm, the tech, the fear of commitment, and the "why me?" intrusive thoughts
• The difference between an audience and a community, and what it really takes to get people to feel like your podcast belongs to them too
• Why your download numbers will mislead you
• The mentor text method: how studying your favorite podcasts the way Adrienne once taught her students to study essays can completely change how you approach your own show
• How to build a sustainable podcast when you don't have unlimited time, money to outsource, or the energy to play by everyone else's rules
• Insider language, giving your community a name, and the small things that make listeners feel like they're in on something
• Whether it's still a good time to start a podcast (YES)

Let's Connect

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review and sharing it with someone who could use a little more mindfulness in their life. Your support helps Thinking About reach more listeners and grow our community of thoughtful, intentional individuals.

Continue the conversation with me on IG / Tiktok @thinkingaboutpodcast and @kirstimcnabney. Follow along on Substack for more conversations on the things that keep us thinking.

Connect with Adrienne Cruz

Follow Adrienne on Instagram and Threads @adriennecruzpod

Website: adriennecruz.com

Grab her freebie, The Podcast Starter, to create a unique podcast concept

Check out her podcast launch group program, Saturday Morning Launch Plan

Sign up for her newsletter, Sounds Like Brunch

Blog post: How to Build a Podcast Community of People Who Love Your Show

Links from the episode

SpeakPipe (website for listeners to submit audio recordings)

Podcasts mentioned: Good Hang with Amy Poehler, Diabolical Lies, Wild Geese, My Favorite Murder, Point of the Story, Giggly Squad

Podcasting Business School

Bunny by Mona Awad

Widow's Bay on Apple TV

Obsession

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There are certain people you meet and you just think, “I want everyone to know this person exists." Jess Janz is one of those people. She's an author, community facilitator, and the founder of Dinner with Strangers, a concept she started in her friend's hair studio in 2017 with one simple rule: no work talk. Since then, she's hosted over 60 dinners and connected more than a thousand people!

She also has a book coming out July 14th called The Table Where We Meet, and if the poems she shares on Instagram are any indication, it's going to be the kind of book you press into the hands of every person you love.

In this episode, we're talking about:

• How Dinner with Strangers started with crock pot meals, no tickets, and a hypothesis about what happens when strangers can't talk about work
• The reasons behind the "no work talk" rule
• What over 1,000 dinners have taught Jess about human connection
• The questions that never fail to get people connecting
• What it really feels like to hold space for a room full of strangers, and the adrenaline crash that comes after
• Rethinking small talk ("lighthearted" doesn't have to mean "shallow")
• What writing The Table Where We Meet revealed to Jess about art, witnessing, and why we need each other
• One small thing you can do today if you're craving more real connection in your life

Let's Connect

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review and sharing it with someone who could use a little more mindfulness in their life. Your support helps Thinking About reach more listeners and grow our community of thoughtful, intentional individuals.

Continue the conversation with me on IG / Tiktok @thinkingaboutpodcast and @kirstimcnabney. Follow along on Substack for more conversations on the things that keep us thinking.

Connect with Jess Janz

Follow Jess on Instagram: @jessjanz and @withstrangersco Pre-order The Table Where We Meet Subscribe to her Substack

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I read something on Substack recently that I haven't been able to stop thinking about: our grandmas didn't optimize everything. How have I never thought of that?!?

I'm someone who has fully bought into optimization — the Garmin, the protein goals, the sleep scores… I love checking things off and feeling like I’ve succeeded. And yet somewhere along the way, I started to wonder: are we actually living better, or are we just living from a distance?

I'm currently in what I can only describe as a whimsical, choose-your-own-adventure spring, and something shifted when I was in Guatemala and forgot my Garmin. I was just moving, eating, resting, and doing a sunrise hike that nearly ended me. And I felt more like myself than I had in a long time!

In this episode, I'm talking about:

• Why I think we're living in peak optimization culture and what it's costing us
• Learning to trust yourself again after outsourcing all your data to devices and apps
• Moving and eating intuitively — what that actually looks like for me right now
• Why not knowing my sleep score is genuinely making my days better
• You're allowed to take a break from optimizing

Let's Connect

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review and sharing it with someone who could use a little more mindfulness in their life. Your support helps Thinking About reach more listeners and grow our community of thoughtful, intentional individuals.

Continue the conversation with me on IG / Tiktok @thinkingaboutpodcast and @kirstimcnabney. Follow along on Substack for more conversations on the things that keep us thinking.

Links from the episode:

The Substack post about grandmas not optimizing

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Somewhere along the way, eating (one of life's greatest pleasures, tbh) started to feel like something to manage or optimize. I can’t be the only one who feels exhausted by all the conflicting advice out there.

So this week I invited a guest who I've worked with personally — holistic nutritionist, personal chef, and Reiki healer Amanda Michaelson. Amanda's entire approach is built around what she calls a heart-centered lens: leading with compassion instead of shame, and helping people reconnect to the wisdom that already lives in their bodies.

And let me tell you, after sitting in her group program sessions (all of which ended with dance sessions!) and watching something shift in me around food and confidence, I knew this conversation needed to happen.

In this episode, we're talking about:

• The gap between knowing and doing, and why filling it starts with compassion, not discipline
• What "heart-centered nutrition" actually means in practice and how it shapes the way Amanda works with clients
• Why confidence with food isn't about having the right information, but learning to trust yourself
• How to approach your nutrition without falling into restriction, shame, or all-or-nothing thinking
• The six foundations of health (whole foods, sleep, movement, nervous system regulation, joy, and community) and why food is only one piece of the picture
• Blood sugar balance: what it is, why it matters for women's energy and mood, and what a balanced meal actually looks like
• Amanda's "comeback" framework for returning to your healthy habits as quickly as possible
• Reiki, intuition, and slowing down enough to actually hear what your body needs
• Why dancing is one of the most powerful somatic tools around

Let's Connect

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review and sharing it with someone who could use a little more mindfulness in their life. Your support helps Thinking About reach more listeners and grow our community of thoughtful, intentional individuals.

Continue the conversation with me on IG / Tiktok @thinkingaboutpodcast and @kirstimcnabney. Follow along on Substack for more conversations on the things that keep us thinking.

Connect with Amanda:

Follow Amanda on Instagram!

Check out her website

The Glow Up (mention Thinking About, and Amanda will honor a 10% discount for listeners of the podcast!)

The Aliveness Practice playlist

Note: The Move the Needle Masterclass happened before the episode was released!

Links from the episode:

Bluetooth eye mask

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Right now, it seems like everyone is pregnant. And just writing that sentence takes me back to the years when everyone around me was getting engaged, buying houses, and starting families.

Meanwhile, I was starting a business and quietly wondering if I was the only one not following the same path. And of course I wasn't, but that didn't make it any less hard.

In this episode, I'm getting into the very real, very human feeling of being on a different timeline than your friends. We don't talk about this enough, and I think we should.

In this episode, I’m talking about:

• The Christmas I was convinced I was getting engaged
• Why grief and joy can coexist, and all the forms grief actually takes
• Why you're allowed to have the "but" and who you should be sharing it with
• Not putting all your eggs in one basket when it comes to friendship, and finding your people for each season you're in
• Protecting your peace at milestone events while still showing up for the people you love
• The milestones you're discounting because you're too focused on the ones you feel like you're missing

Let's Connect

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review and sharing it with someone who could use a little more mindfulness in their life. Your support helps Thinking About reach more listeners and grow our community of thoughtful, intentional individuals.

Continue the conversation with me on IG / Tiktok @thinkingaboutpodcast and @kirstimcnabney. Follow along on Substack for more conversations on the things that keep us thinking.

Links from the episode:

Pathpal Grief Summit

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