Welcome back!

Today I’m excited to interview website designer and marketing expert Kali Edwards.

Kali is the founder of June Mango Design, a creative studio that works with healers and holistic brands. Her own experience with acupuncture led her to work with wellness entrepreneurs.

I think you’ll like her because she has a lot of perspectives that resonate with East Asian medicine, including the power of rest, flowing with the seasons in your business and your life, and more.

She also offers a pretty unique service in which she builds and launches your website in just five days – the Go Live in 5!

In this episode, we talk about:

  • How to avoid the comparison trap in your marketing (especially social) and in your business
  • What patients are really looking for the moment they land on your website
  • To niche down or not niche down?
  • How to create a business that supports the season of life you’re in
  • What success means for Kali and why it should be fluid over time
  • And much more

Hope you enjoy this episode!

Show Notes:

Episode #46: Building a Business That Supports Your Life with Kali Edwards

Transcript:

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (00:04)

Welcome to the Acupuncture Marketing School Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Grasek, and I’m here to help you get visible in your community, take marketing action with confidence and get more patients in your practice and more money in your pocket every week. We both know you’re a talented, passionate acupuncturist and that acupuncture has the power to change lives. So let’s dive right into this episode and talk about how you can reach more patients.

(00:34)

Hello there. Welcome back. Today I’m very excited, it’s the first interview here on acupuncture marketing school. Thank you so much for your patience with my hiatus. I’m really glad to be back here with you and today I’m very excited to be chatting with Kali Edwards, who owns June Mango Design, which is a creative studio that works with healers and holistic brands. Kali’s focus is helping any wellness entrepreneur build a beautiful website that evokes emotions and connects deeply with your ideal patience. She has some really wonderful insights into new perspectives on marketing as well as ideas on building a business that supports your life, how to escape the comparison trap in your marketing and your business, and so much more. I had a lot of fun chatting with her. I hope that you enjoy it. Without further ado, here is Kali Edwards.

[MICHELLE] (01:40)

Hello, welcome.

[KALI EDWARDS] (01:44)

Hello, thank you for having me.

[MICHELLE] (01:47)

Absolutely. So nice to have you here. I am so excited to chat with you because I think your business and your approach is really going to resonate with my audience of acupuncturists. One of the things I love that you talk about on your Instagram and your website is, well, there’s lots of things, but one is that you need rest in order to be really creative, and there are different seasons for that, and that is very much a Chinese medicine concept.

[KALI] (02:17)

Yes, for sure.

[MICHELLE] (02:18)

Have you built websites for acupuncturists before? I know you’ve done work for so many kinds of wellness entrepreneurs.

[KALI] (02:26)

Yeah, a handful of acupuncturists are in my repertoire, so to speak. I feel like the helpers and the holistic brands is my jam. I feel like they are the ones who’ve helped me, so now I want to help them.

[MICHELLE] (02:38)

Gotcha. I was going to say, how did you realize that the wellness people are such a great fit for you?

[KALI] (02:46)

That’s a good question. I think because like I said, they help me so much, also they get excited whenever I write blog posts about rest, like you just said. So I feel like, we feel like we sort of jive but I think it’s also that I, when I feel like I can get behind what folks are doing in their business, I’m going to do a better job of representing that through the design. So I have like a better understanding of that and understand again, like even from the client’s perspective, like having gone and gotten acupuncture myself or having gone to therapy myself, I can work with the therapist and the acupuncturists and give them that perspective of what is the client’s, like what’s the client looking for and how do they view your brand and your website and all that stuff.

[MICHELLE] (03:34)

Yeah, I think acupuncturists in particular, and this may be true for all wellness entrepreneurs, we are really worried about asking someone to help us with our marketing and have them create something that feels really pushy or salesy that is just not a good fit for us as individuals, for our brand, for our audience, or even like our industry. I think we often assume if I hire somebody to help me like create a marketing plan and they’re outside the acupuncture industry, what I’m going to get is like the thing I always think of is, I love him, but like Gary Vee just shouting things, like a marketing message that’s so intense and loud that it doesn’t vibe at all with what we’re trying to accomplish or who we are. So I think it’s so important to have people building out your marketing or helping you that either have had acupuncture or I think that’s actually not a requirement, but who at least understand that the approach is probably going to be a tiny bit different and that I personally think a lot of acupuncturists are introverts and we love the authentic, genuine marketing that really speaks to people instead of just shouting and being loud.

[KALI] (04:51)

Totally

[MICHELLE] (04:52)

So I think that is really nice.

[KALI] (04:54)

Yeah, as a fellow introvert, I totally get that.

[MICHELLE] (04:56)

There’s so many of us.

[KALI] (04:58)

I know, there’s so many of us. We’re so proud and strong, we’re just quiet. I think that that’s actually a little bit of a misnomer with marketing too, and maybe he’s sort of giving Gary Vee, well, while he has a plethora of knowledge on many things, maybe is in some ways giving marketing a little bit of a bad rep. When I think of marketing and really like positioning too, I tend to think of it more as like positioning, as explaining how you can help people and if you frame it that way, I think it can stop feeling so salesy, pushy, icky, and instead it’s like, people need your work. Like people need your help, but they may not know how you help or how to find you or what you cost or all of those things. So if we can reframe it’s almost like a mindset shift, then really what you’re doing is you’re just helping people let you help them basically and I think that’s a helpful way to reframe.

[MICHELLE] (05:54)

I’m so curious what you think about this. It’s one of the things that I teach in marketing is to think about your potential patients’ struggle currently or their symptoms, whatever they’re having a hard time with right now, and also to imagine the outcome that they want and feature that in your marketing. For example, maybe they’re having trouble with their digestion and they have specific symptoms, and often the outcome that people want is they want to remove the symptoms of course, but they want the symptoms to be gone so they can have more freedom in their life. So the way that I think of this, because I love marketing, I’m really immersed in marketing, like, this feels really good to me, like this is an awesome way to approach your marketing, but occasionally I’ll have people tell me that they’re freaked out, that it feels manipulative. Like I’m trying to get so much into the patient’s brain to like, make them do what I want. And this is a really weird angle for me. I’m always surprised when it comes up because I agree with you that in order for people to use our services, we have to like talk to them with words that are going to really make a difference to them, like land with them in a certain way. And you do that by speaking to their experience and the outcome that they want. So I’m curious if you run into that with your wellness people that you work with, and what do you tell them?

[KALI] (07:21)

That’s so interesting. I actually haven’t heard that fear come up. Usually what I tend to hear is almost the opposite and just like, I don’t even know where to begin. Like, I don’t even know, what you said is such a wonderful way, again, of framing it where it’s like you go down to like the symptom, but then you bring them back up to this high level of what that actually means. Like, yes, I want to have better digestion, but why? So that then I can go and feel freer and less burdened out in the world and just live my life. So that’s sort of, again, what I’m trying to do too is speak to like that emotional, whatever the pain point is, and then again, communicate how I can help you, how this person can help you work through that. But to the point of it being manipulative, I don’t know, I just don’t see it that way, I sort of feel like, again, it’s just manipulation would be like in order to like gain something on your end alone without helping, I think. And ultimately don’t you think, I mean, you are helping. I mean, that’s part of just inherent in your job. So I think again, that maybe that’s a little bit of a mindset shift and also maybe just to remember that everyone is their own person and they don’t have to work with you if they don’t want to. So you’re not going to control the outcome there. It’s not like you’re brainwashing them or something. So I think it’s probably fine to just communicate it the way you said.

[MICHELLE] (08:44)

Yeah, and you have to communicate it in some way, and you might as well do it in the way that’s most effective, which is to get to know your ideal patient really well and be able to feel like you’re inside their brain. I agree with you. I think that is how you help more people. And marketing is really only manipulative, like you said, if people are getting something out of it that they’re not putting in work or they’re being purposefully dishonest. I find that so many of my acupuncture students are worried about being dishonest in their marketing or coming across that way, but the truth is, I have literally never seen marketing from an acupuncturist that truly feels gross and false. It’s just not how we operate and I think that because we’re so self-conscious about it’s like almost impossible to create that marketing. You’re already so self-aware.

[KALI] (09:45)

I think that’s right and I think, it’s a little bit again of like people giving it a bad rap. I tend to think of, when I think of truly icky marketing, I tend to think of someone, let’s say someone who’s telling you how to make more money and the way that they make money is by selling you something that tells you how to make money. Do you know what I mean? There’s a lot of people out there that that’s sort of their business model. They sell you this program that will help you make more money, and that is the way that they make money. So have they actually use their tactics to make money, I don’t know. It’s sort of that weird tricky icky space. But what an acupuncturist is doing is the service that you provide is an actual helping thing. I mean, it’s a literal body mindful experience that is going to address specific issues and so I don’t think all you’re doing is communicating to people what it is that you do. And if you don’t communicate it to them, they may not know and that could be even as far as like, they may not even know what acupuncture is or how it works. It’s not sort of as common obviously as western medicine in everyone’s mind. So it’s just a little bit more of, you may have to explain and like you said, sort of get into the mind of who this person is so that you can help them. So that’s how I think of it.

[MICHELLE] (11:05)

I’m so curious about your business, June Mango. I feel like, did you work in corporate before you went off on your own and …

[KALI] (11:15)

No, I worked at an advertising agency, so I’ve always done graphic and web design.

[MICHELLE] (11:20)

And what made you decide to open your own business?

[KALI] (11:24)

Well, so I worked, I was doing web design and graphic design too, so branding, but mostly web design for sort of a small PR firm and we would build these websites and one of these, the websites would take forever. One of the websites I remember took almost two years to complete. I was like, this is ludicrous. This just makes no sense. It makes no sense from a business perspective, for the PR firm, it makes no sense from a business perspective for the client. Like at some, at a certain point, you’re just, no one’s getting anything out of that. It happens so frequently that these projects would take so long and I just thought, this is silly. It doesn’t make any sense. There are way better ways, platforms and processes that we can use to get people a website more quickly.

(12:12)

I think a website too tends to be a bottleneck for a lot of people in launching a business or rebranding or branding for the first time. It’s a hard thing and especially if you don’t have a lot of technical expertise, there’s just a lot of pieces that go into it. I felt like I think frankly I think I could do this better so I left and I started doing that. Again, I think because my personality tends to be like the helper on the tech end, I tend to be a little more of like a hand holder and helping people through some of those snags. And then the process that I created is called Go Live in Five, because we do it in five days, which is way different from two years, obviously.

[MICHELLE] (12:54)

I don’t even know how that’s possible. Tell me about that.

[KALI] (12:56)

Yeah, so it’s basically, it’s just, I always say it’s sort of like I’m this weird mixture of like an art nerd and like a very type A personality and I basically like made a business baby out of that. So it’s sort of like, I just naturally work that way and I’m really system oriented and really meticulous, but also very creative. So we like use the system and then these processes that allow me to just make sure that everything like gets up and running in that amount of time, but also tap into my helper nerdy, holistic self and sort of handhold, like I said, for those who don’t, we as an acupuncturist, you just don’t know anything about web design, just like, I don’t know anything about acupuncture. We need to help each other. So that’s basically what I do now and I feel like it rips the bandaid off, so to speak, and helps unlock that bottleneck, which can always, not always, but often trips people up.

[MICHELLE] (13:58)

Yes. So that means that you are like doing an intake with a client and like getting their feedback on their message and their branding, or do they already have branding complete and then you build out the website in five days from there?

[KALI] (14:14)

So what I do is I like to get everything ready beforehand. So sometimes they’ll come with branding in hand, sometimes we will do like a full deep dive and do the branding and the strategy and the messaging and all the things. Sometimes they maybe have been in business for a while so they have a pretty clear strategy and idle customer base and then maybe would just need to do like a logo refresh and then dive into design. But a big part of the way that works is getting stuff ready beforehand so that we can really concentrate and dive in during that week.

[MICHELLE] (14:48)

Gotcha. That’s amazing. I’m thinking of all of the websites that I’ve put together over the years, and I don’t do coding, it’s like WordPress and widgets for days, but I’ve never done anything in five days. I really agree with you that it’s, the website is a sticking point for so many acupuncturists because like you said, we don’t have any training in that and it just takes so much time to figure out how to do it correctly. I uploaded WooCommerce to my clinic website a couple of weeks ago and was like a hair’s breath away from crashing my site. And that shouldn’t even happen. WooCommerce is easy, but I didn’t really crash it. I accidentally changed the landing page and didn’t realize that it was nonsense for like three days. So sometimes I feel like even though people are reluctant to spend money on branding and marketing and website building, they’re like, I could do it myself. It saves you so much time and energy and headache and stress. It just makes so much sense to pass that off to someone like you who has been doing this so much that it’s like you have, like you’re saying, your strategy, it’s streamlined. You know what hiccups to expect versus if I had to build a new website from scratch, I know it would take me two months at least to get it, to get my act together to get all the pieces and make sure that like this piece isn’t going to break this piece.

[KALI] (16:25)

Totally. I think it’s worth mentioning too, that I understand that not everyone can just run out and hire a web designer. It’s okay to start in a place where you put together your own site. Sometimes we need to start in that space and then elevate when you’re ready. But yes, I think it’s completely true and I think it’s an investment because it’s an investment. So in other words, you’re investing in yourself and I think that your website is such a workhorse for you. It’s your sort of online handshake before people ever walk into your space in your physical space or meet you in real life, they’re often coming to your website. So if you can communicate the vibe of who you are, of how you help, of what you do, of who you work with, you can get all of those things really clear and looking really professional. It’s going to do wonders for your business and your business growth. So all that to say maybe you don’t do that when you first start out, maybe you do build your own website and just let it live online and not be the best website that’s ever existed in the world, but know that if you want to grow and expand, probably investing in a website is going to be one of the best things you can do.

[MICHELLE] (17:38)

Yes, I usually tell my marketing students, especially the ones who are actually still in acupuncture school, that they have either time or money to spend on marketing. And in the beginning when you just graduate and you just hung out your shingle, you probably have a lot more time than money. So in that case it makes sense to bootstrap everything that you can because you have a couple months to sit and pour over all of your website options and your branding and like you can just, you could drown in all the details. And for people who like that, that’s super, but eventually you’ll sort of hit this tipping point where it’s tied between your time and your money. It’s like you have just enough patience where you, like you’re really hitting your stride and you have a lot less time to devote to your marketing and now you actually have some extra income to put towards your marketing. So it’s like once you hit that tipping point, usually people can realize like, okay, if I want to strictly spend my time treating patients, I’m at the point financially where I can ask someone else to do it for me and just have it be efficient and taken care of.

[KALI] (18:51)

Totally. I think that’s right. The time and money thing is so true. I think like the more you’re, the longer you’re in business, the more I’m constantly asking myself, okay, what can I set up so that it’s taken care of for me? How can I almost remove myself from my own business in some ways? Because at a certain point you don’t have as much time, so getting those systems in place. And your website can do so many things for you. You can set up your schedule, you can book clients directly on your website, obviously you can do all of your marketing on your website. You can get inquiries, you can do forms, you can do so many things. Again, that’s just taking that time away from you having to do that face-to-face or whatever that looks like so that then you can actually see more patients.

[MICHELLE] (19:36)

Yes. So I’m curious about maybe some tips that you have for us for our websites, when someone lands on a website for a wellness person, like what is the question that they want answered?

[KALI] (19:54)

I think the number one question that anyone is asking when they land on your site is, how can you help me or can you help me? That’s sort of a really straightforward question and one that you can answer in a lot of different ways. So thinking through, if someone literally asked you that, let’s say they walked into your space and they said, how can you help me, and if you can answer that question on this site, well, that’s really going to help you help them. What I think of doing is putting a positioning statement directly on the homepage and a positioning statement is sort of an industry branding term for who you are, what you do and who you help. So if you can answer those questions on the homepage of your site, that will help people then be able to narrow down the different types of acupuncture that you offer, if you do cupping or if you do any of these other things or if you’re working specifically, maybe you have a passion for helping digestive issues or something like that, you can work in information about that.

(20:52)

So again, just answering that question, can you help me, how can you help me, kind of who you are basically I think is, that’s the big question that people are asking. And even to, if you want to get really deep into it, putting that in your content and your messaging on the site so then you’re going to show up in more search results for those questions. So thinking through even like what is it that someone is searching for? What if I was a client or potential patient what would I be searching for? Again, maybe that’s not thinking through like what your more industry term is. Maybe I’m not going to google cupping but I might Google muscle pain or something like that, or alternatives to muscle relaxers or something like that, you know what I mean? So something that they might be searching for and you can, once you can think through what that is, you can put that directly into your copy and text on your website and again that will help with your SEO and that’s sort of a rabbit hole, but just another thing to think about when you’re, when you’re thinking about like what are they actually looking for and how can I share and showcase that?

[MICHELLE] (21:55)

I love that. I’m curious, do you usually encourage your clients to get really specific with their target market instead of can you help me? Like yes, I do acupuncture. What if, is it more effective if people are like, can you help me with fertility and the answer is yes, like niching down?

[KALI] (22:15)

I think, I’m a big fan of niching. I think people get a little scared to niche because they think, as I’m sure they think, oh, I’m going to exclude all these people that I might want to work with. But I think two things happen when you niche. One is you actually become seen as an expert in that specific niche and so that’s helpful. Then those people who have been worked with you for fertility, we’ll refer other people to you for fertility and you’ll become known as the fertility expert and so you will naturally have to market even less because You’re getting referrals. That’s number one. Number two is people really want to work with you and maybe they don’t need to come to you for fertility. They probably will still work with you, and not everyone, some people will look at your services and say, oh I don’t know if I do have digestion issues, maybe they can’t help me. But if they really want to work with you and you have a lot of excellent reviews, and again, if it’s a referral and somebody’s like, well I don’t have fertility issues but this, they said that this acupuncturist was amazing, like maybe they help me with my digestion issues. Again, I think that it’s not necessarily going to stop everyone who is not interested in that niche from working with you.

[MICHELLE] (23:25)

I’m so happy to hear you say that. I think that’s, is that like the fourth or fifth time I’ve said that already in 20 minutes? I feel like I have this little mini argument with my students all the time where I’m begging them to niche down. In some countries, maybe it’s Australia, you can’t say that you specialize or something like that. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t position all of your content and your brand to focus on a specific conversation like fertility or pain or digestion. So even if you can’t say that you specialize, I still think it’s important to really narrow that down, but people are so afraid that they’re going to be scaring other people away. And for me, even in my own practice outside of all the people I’ve worked with, I find again and again that even though I say I specialize in cosmetic acupuncture, half of my practice is still pain management, digestion, anxiety, urinary issues, all the classic stuff.

(24:27)

And I really think it’s they get those good reviews, like let’s say someone sees me for cosmetic acupuncture and is telling their friend about it and their friend’s like, “Oh, I heard acupuncture can help for headaches. Do you think I can go to your acupuncturist?” They’re going to look it up or give me a call and probably still come see me because they already trust me more than an acupuncturist that they’ve never heard of, because their friend comes to see me. I very rarely feel like my cosmetic centered website is scaring people away. I even put, I put a little section on my homepage now that was like wondering if we only treat cosmetic acupuncture? The answer is no. We see a huge variety of people, but everything else is focused on natural skincare and natural products you can use, download our free skincare guide and what is Derma rolling and blah blah blah. I wish people could lean into all the benefits of niching down and how much more effective and efficient that makes their marketing while also releasing that fear of I’m going to scare people away.

[KALI] (25:35)

Yeah, totally. I think what you did is, even what I was saying before, you sort of answered the question that they’re asking, can you help me? So you’re saying yes, I can help you cosmetically, but maybe someone is asking, but can you still help me if, and you answered that question, you literally said, yes I can. Here’s a small, almost like a disclaimer, yes, I can still help you. So I think that’s wonderful and, oh shoot, I had another thought and it was so good but I just lost it.

[MICHELLE] (26:01)

It happens to me all the time. I actually have another question for you, because sometimes you talk about the comparison trap on Instagram and I’m so curious, I think the comparison trap really prevents a lot of acupuncturists from committing to their marketing, especially on social media, but in general they’re like, oh, the person down the road from me is killing it with their content creation and their website and it’ll take me years to accumulate that blog or whatever. How do we move forward and just escape that comparison trap and do what’s right for our practice?

[KALI] (26:34)

That’s a great question and it actually reminded me of what I was going to say, which is that one of the other benefits of niching down is that you can pick and choose what you actually like to do. So if you’re thinking like, how do I niche down, like how do I decide, just check in with what you actually like to do. And I think that, then to answer your actual question, the way that you avoid the comparison trap is to check in with your values. So what are the things that are most important to you in running your business? So for me, a value is staying small actually and helping people who help other human beings being genuine. I’m not necessarily trying to grow and become like a gigantic agency or something that’s just not a high value for me. I want to have time to spend with my kiddos, for example.

(27:22)

So checking in with your values will help because it will remind you. Again, for me, let’s say it’s like, oh, I don’t need to have hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers because it doesn’t actually benefit my goals when I think about what my goals are related to my values. And also just remember that what you said is probably true. So maybe they are killing it, but they might be five years ahead of you in business. So give yourself some grace and know that they may have had more time to grow a following, spend time on marketing all of the things, so just coming back almost into yourself and remembering like, oh, okay, this is what I know to be true about me. This is what I know I want for my business and my life and I’m going to almost like focus inward rather than focusing outward on what other people are doing.

[MICHELLE] (28:10)

And you talk on your Instagram account as well about that idea of building a business that supports your life and not the other way around.

[KALI] (28:19)

Totally.

[MICHELLE] (28:20)

I think a lot of times when not just acupuncturists, but small business owners in general, think about what it means to be successful we are imagining like the pinnacle of whatever the thing is. And sometimes it’s really overwhelming, especially if we are still really small and we just are intimidated by that giant gap between the business we’re running and the business “society says” we should have. It relieves a lot of stress and pressure when we come back to what do I want for my life and what does that mean for the way I set up my business.

[KALI] (28:58)

Totally. I think it’s redefining what success means for you because I think that culturally our culture has defined what success is for or what we, what they think it should be for us, which is maybe making lots of money, having maybe a really large business or a large Instagram following. For me again, and for many people I think that’s not actually the definition of success that we really have. Like if we think we, if we looked inside ourselves, we would say that doesn’t feel true for me. I want to stay smaller. I want to only make enough money so that I can take two months off of the year and go travel. Or I want to create this business where I’m just really helping women because I had fertility issues myself and it’s just something I’m really passionate about and if I can make sure I’m helping them, that is going to feel like a success for me. So it doesn’t just, again, checking in with yourself and setting that from your own truth rather than from what you feel like you should be doing, I think that that will be helpful.

[MICHELLE] (29:57)

One thing I used to struggle with is that, so I really love to exercise outside and I live in upstate New York and we just had daylight savings time, so now it’s dark at 5 o’clock. So I used to feel guilty about changing my office hours based on the season so that I could spend time outside during daylight hours. It makes a huge difference in my mood, especially in the past like three years. After a certain point I was like, why do I get so worked up about not wanting to change my office hours and like, well, because I feel like a real business would just be a set number of hours during the weekday and that’s it. Don’t just change them on a whim that’s not professional or legit. I’m like what? For my mental health and happiness, I want to be able to take a break in the middle of the day or usually I have Wednesdays off so I can work on my marketing business.

(30:53)

And part of that is building in like, okay, what am I going to exercise outside or have days where I get to leave early, which is very early now in order to be able to walk outside while it’s still daylight. It’s like nobody’s even watching or paying attention. Like nobody cares. Every once in a while, a patient will be disappointed you don’t have evening hours on this day. I’m like, no, because in my mind I’m thinking like, because I get to work and it’s dark and then I leave work and it’s dark and no one should have to do that. The whole point of running your own business, I hope, is that you can make it be what you need it to be and give you that freedom and support for your real life, like you’re saying.

[KALI] (31:36)

Absolutely. I love what you said when you said a real business would do X, Y, and Z. Isn’t that so funny as if you’re not a real business?

[MICHELLE] (31:46)

Rude. It’s a rude thought that I have in my mind all the time.

[KALI] (31:50)

I know, I know. And where did it come from? It probably came from something that you’ve seen somebody else doing and maybe many other people doing. So we have to break these cycles and habits and ways of thinking where we feel like we’re supposed to match something else that we’ve seen. It’s okay to be doing something different, especially if it’s something that, and for yours in particular being able to exercise and move your body A is just amazing and good for you and makes you feel good, but when you feel good, you’re going to be better at your job, et cetera, et cetera. So you get to decide what that looks like for you and ultimately they’re going, like, your patients are going to benefit too. So again, there’s a little bit of a mindset shift that maybe can happen there. I think I’m big into mindset shifts if you can —

[MICHELLE] (32:34)

Yes, me too. Chapter two of Acupuncture Marketing School is mindset videos, which are some of my favorites, maybe not my students’ favorites, but they’re so necessary.

[KALI] (32:45)

They’re hard, they’re hard. We get these neural pathways, yeah, we get these neural pathways that are really deeply ingrained. So we got to give ourselves some grace a little bit too, but just the first step is recognizing, oh, this is a thought that maybe, where did it come from? Is this actually my thought or is this coming from somewhere outside of me? If we can just start by recognizing it, that’s the first step.

[MICHELLE] (33:05)

Yes. I have one more question for you and it dovetails beautifully with this whole conversation. I’m so curious what success as a business owner means for you?

[KALI] (33:17)

Oh yeah, that’s a great question. Like I said, I do, I’m happy to stay small. I’m not trying to grow an enormous conglomerate design agency. And there is nothing wrong with that, but for me, that’s not sort of my goal. I have two young kiddos and I just had a baby in March, so you even said this in the beginning of the podcast, but I tend to think of things in seasons too. So right now I’m in a bit of a season of motherhood where my business maybe is not in the backseat, but it’s got to ride shotgun with my motherhood. That for me feels like as long as I have enough time to spend with my kiddos and help the people that I want to help in my business, that I feel like that’s a pretty high level of success for me. I’d also like to pay my bills. That’s wonderful too. But I don’t need to have anything wild and extravagant or lots of crazy growth right now. I think it’s also fair to say that my version of success for my business might shift and change outside of this season. So giving myself a little bit of space to reevaluate what success looks like for me is also something that I just keep in the back of my mind.

[MICHELLE] (34:26)

Oh, I love that so much. Thank you for sharing that. So where can everyone connect with you, your website, Instagram?

[KALI] (34:35)

Yeah, so junemango.com is my website. You can find tons of information. I have a bajillion articles like you said, on things that are super wonky, web design related and other things that are a little more holistic like the, what you mentioned about rest. So a lot of stuff over there. I’m also on Instagram, but because of the comparison trap, I try and stay off it, so you won’t find me on there too much. But my handle is @June Mango Studio.

[MICHELLE] (35:01)

Very nice. Well, thank you so much for being here.

[KALI] (35:04)

Thank you so much for having me. So wonderful.