angishields, Author at Business RadioX ® Page

Michele Aikens with ClearSight Coaching & Consulting

February 6, 2025 by angishields

High Velocity Radio

Michele Aikens with ClearSight Coaching & Consulting

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Michele Aikens, MA, ACC is Lead Coach of ClearSight Coaching & Consulting, Inc., bringing over 30 years of experience in leadership development, communications, and team dynamics.

Known for her insightful, empathetic approach, Michele partners with leaders and organizations to navigate challenges and foster growth with clarity and purpose.

Her coaching style combines strategic vision with a genuine understanding of human resilience, empowering clients to pursue meaningful transformation in their personal and professional lives.

Aikens is also a storyteller. She is the author of three dramatic plays, two screenplays and five books, including the most recent, “Consider The Possibilities: Pursuing What Matters Most.”

Michele Aikens is certified by the World Business Executive Coaches (WBECs) as an Enhanced Practitioner in the Accelerating Coaching Excellence program, and as a certified practitioner from the Global Team Coaching Institute (GTCI).

Michele has coached teams and leaders from organizations that include: The Obama Foundation, ThredUp, U.S. Cellular and others.

Connect with Michele on LinkedIn and follow ClearSight on Instagram.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon and you guys are in for a real treat. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with ClearSight Coaching and Consulting, Michele Aikens. How are you?

Michele Aikens: I am great. Thanks so much for having me. Stone. I’m looking forward to a great conversation.

Stone Payton: Well, it is a delight to have you on the program. I got a ton of questions, Michele. I’m sure we won’t get to them all, but I think a great place to start is if maybe you could paint a little bit of a picture. Give us a little primer of mission purpose. What? What are you really out there trying to do for folks?

Michele Aikens: Oh, wow. Mission and purpose are two of my favorite words. Um. Mission purpose, I think, are interchangeable. They are the reason you exist. Whether you are an individual or a company or a team. Your purpose is why you’re there. And if you drift from that purpose, not only do you not meet those outward goals, but you start having those struggles inside. When a person is disconnected, or when a team is disconnected from who they’re supposed to be.

Stone Payton: Now, how did you find yourself in this line of work? What’s the what’s the Michele backstory?

Michele Aikens: Well, here’s the Michele backstory. Um, my I have a background in advertising. When I was when I had a, quote, real job in the 90s, 80s and 90s. Um, my background was in advertising. And then I started with a company, a magazine, a national women’s magazine, and it did really well on a shoestring budget because this was just a hunch, I guess back then they called them startups. Now there’s a name for it. Um, but after five years, the magazine was too expensive to continue because it had become successful. But the sales hadn’t caught up with them yet. And so, at a the middle of my life, I found myself without a job and never having, quote, failed at anything before I went on a two year journey of self-discovery and redefining and also being a nerd. After some considerable study, I came out on the other end of that as an executive coach. That’s the short the cliff notes.

Stone Payton: So I gotta know what was that transition like going from from that comfort zone, that arena into. Yeah, you’ve got a you’ve got to hone and practice your craft, but you’ve also got to run a business and get clients right. Was that intimidating at first?

Michele Aikens: Yes. It was intimidating and painful. Uh, because I had always even though I’d helped launch a magazine, I always had an employees mindset. And so now when you’re launching your own practice, well, first, it took you two years to figure out that that’s something you could do. Um, but once you launch your own practice, you’ve got to learn some things, like how to sell what you’re good at. And being a child of the 60s, I was raised as a young lady to be nice and not talk too much about myself. Well, that doesn’t help you when you have to sell your business. And so I had to relearn some things. And, um, I am the better for it. And so helping others, other women who might be like me, other corporations or businesses or things that have to shift. Learn to speak a different way about what they do well is it’s a skill. It’s a learned skill.

Stone Payton: So let’s dive into the work a little bit. Everything from the the medium that you use the mechanism to specific groups that you’re trying to to serve. I know you specifically mentioned women just a moment ago. Let’s dive into the work a little bit.

Michele Aikens: Okay. Well, I am an executive coach and I have some specialties, but one of the areas that I really focus on is executive women, senior leadership, C-suite types. Um, because that navigation to the C-suite can be fraught with a whole lot of minefields on the way up that to the naked eye. Other people don’t see them, but there’s always there’s usually a little girl inside that executive saying, uh, that’s not where you belong. And so it’s it’s getting that mindset, like I talked about learning how to talk well, about what I did. It’s the same thing. We have to grow as leaders in stages. And sometimes those stages get accelerated and you feel out of sorts. So I work with, um, executive leaders. I also work with teams, leadership teams, because those conflicts that come within a team can not only shut a fuel down, but if they’re managed right, they can create innovation. So those are my favorite things to do.

Stone Payton: So yeah. What are you finding the most rewarding these days? What’s the most fun about it for you?

Michele Aikens: Right now. Well, this is I’m really having fun doing this right now. When I lost my, uh, job in 2009 and got redirected into coaching, I started tinkering with a program called Rewriting the Script. And initially it was just for people who wanted to redefine themselves after a big loss, maybe a job loss or a significant relationship. And because I’m so fascinated with movies and storytelling, I used script writing procedures to outline this course. Well, that was in 2011. Just recently, I have launched a corporate version of rewriting a script, rewriting the script to help individuals and teams navigate change. And watching these leaders go cut, that’s not the mindset that we want to want to use here is a lot of fun, so I’m having a real fun time with that right now.

Stone Payton: What a marvelous framework. I bet that really does lend itself to individual exchanges, but also with groups. And you’ve got that peer to peer dynamic and people are offering up, you know, they call scene or cut or whatever. What a great framework. That is fascinating.

Michele Aikens: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. And to watch the the person who cast the vision has to be the, the producer. But the writer can tell him this script doesn’t make sense. And the director says this is not going to work with the actors, and we’re not talking about a story. We’re talking about your team. But because they step out of their normal roles, there’s some safety, there’s some innovation, there’s ways of looking at things that you may not have considered before, because we’re not in the normal roles that we play. It’s a lot of fun.

Stone Payton: Yeah. So going back to actually writing the book, committing the ideas to paper, I’m interested to know what that process was like for you. Did some of it come together really pretty easily? In other parts more difficult, or was it a pretty smooth road? What was that experience like?

Michele Aikens: Well, if we’re talking about rewriting the script, um, part of my depressed phase after losing my job was I watched movies over and over stone. But after I got started to feel better, I started asking myself questions like, I wonder what happened to that character. And consequently, I wrote a couple of screenplays. So sequels. And so this whole idea of telling your story, crafting it and whatnot is what what created the idea of Consider the Possibilities, which is the latest book that I wrote that talks about how to pursue what it is that you really want to pursue, even though you may have been stuck in a way of being for a long time. And I wrote it for people over 50, because a lot of times that’s when we get stuck.

Stone Payton: So do you find in some of your work that you are trying to serve people who are, who maybe have fairly recently really hit a roadblock or or had a major disappointment, or there’s a big shift. So they’re just they’re really looking for some direction and are maybe a little bit rudderless. Is that part of the do you find that sometimes?

Michele Aikens: Yes, I’m finding it a lot. And particularly with older executives, they may not have hit a rough patch, but they see the rough patch coming. Mhm. And what do I do. What am I going to do. And if I may offer, this is one exercise that I do with them. I say look at the worst possible outcome that all of these fears that you’re magnifying look as straight in the eye and ask yourself then what? Because by the time we’ve asked ourselves. Then what? A few times what happens is you realize the same resilience that made you successful in the last thing is still there. You might have to tweak it a little bit, take the glasses off, clean them out and see in a different direction. But you are still the same person who was successful in the last ventures. You can make it through this. Yeah.

Stone Payton: So how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a practitioner like you? Do you have to get out there and shake the trees a little bit? Or is it the kind of practice where it’s largely based on someone’s had a success and success and they refer a colleague or a or a peer like the business side of the business, especially the front end of that pipeline. We sales guys call it sometimes. What’s that like?

Michele Aikens: Yes. Tell me about it. Well, I am I coach for a national executive leadership organization, and I have five groups of executives that I meet with every month. But then after that, because I’m this creative tinkerer nerd type, I started playing around with other things and I’ll introduce them to somebody that I’ve coached in the past because I never I’m very aware of conflicts. And if if I’m tinkering with something, I said, hey, what do you think about this? And, um, sometimes there’s a bite. And in case of rewriting the scripts, there’s a few bites. And so that kind of sends me in the direction when I was training, uh, in coaching, and I trained with Doctor Chant. Who’s in Georgia? Where you are, I think. Yeah. And my, one of my team leaders said use everything that you have in your coaching. That’s not normally what you hear. And so I got permission early on to play. I got in trouble in kindergarten for coloring outside the line. I thought, there’s all of this nice space. Why can’t I color that? Well, in my book, I say we need people who know how to color inside the lines. They build the train tracks, they make sure the train stays on the tracks. But we need people who color outside the lines because they build the cities that the train tracks run on. And so being free to play allows me to present something to clients and potential clients. That’s unusual, that’s creative, in ClearSight. Our mission is to help leaders and their teams embrace change with courage, compassion, clarity, and creativity. So I like to play, and that’s part of how I sell.

Stone Payton: Well, I can tell that you do. I mean, I can hear it in your voice. So if I’m an executive in A and I and I have a even a high performing team, or maybe they’re not, how do I begin to know what are some signs that, hey, maybe me and my team, we need a need a coach? What should I be looking for?

Michele Aikens: Well, I would look for conflict that doesn’t get resolved in a healthy way. I have a workshop that I do. It’s an introductory workshop. It’s called Why is Your Team Fighting? And yes, we look at six possible reasons. Because I’m a I’m a credentialed team coach too. We look at six possible reasons that your team could be fighting, and those things range from not being clear on why we’re a team to problems with the leadership. And there are things in between. And so we look at why your team is fighting. And if it is not something because it’s there’s a saying teams the process to a team is forming storming norming and performing. And so storming is a part of the team building process. But if those storms don’t get resolved in a way that is healthy for the team members and productive for the goals, then we need to look at how the team is learning and how we’re dealing with conflict.

Stone Payton: Now, when you may back to kind of making this transition too early, going in this in this coaching consulting career, did you have the benefit of of one or more mentors that sort of helped you navigate this, this new terrain?

Michele Aikens: Oh, here’s a funny story. Yes, I had one mentor, and, um, his name was Ken Cheatham. He’s he’s passed away a couple of years ago, but we had an online radio program. I used to have a blog talk network on the talk radio show. And so Ken and I had a program about sales because I needed to learn about it, and I assumed other new business owners needed to learn about it. And so in the meantime, I’m running this digital magazine, and there’s a man who wants to come into our market. But he was locked out and he was in the health and beauty business. So I start calling all of these hair salons and beauty houses and all of this to try to get his products in there so that he would take out an ad in my magazine, and Ken watched me do that for about two weeks, and he said, you know, you are selling advertising space and giving away something that’s much more valuable. That is what set me on the path of looking differently at how I managed what was in my hands. So no, it was not easy. But I had a great mentor who walked with me, um, all the way.

Stone Payton: Now, you made the decision pretty early on. I’m under the impression to to become formally credentialed, like you went through a certification process with a with some type of organization, didn’t you?

Michele Aikens: Absolutely. The International Coaching Federation and I took that approach because first of all, when I first was approached with the idea of being a coach stone. I’m sorry. This is my profession now. But back then, everybody was calling themselves a coach, and I was like, this is a hustle. I did not want to be a hustler, so I did, I did, and so I did the due diligence I researched. And then when I decided I was going to pursue it, I studied coaching for two years before becoming credentialed. I know you can get there, people. You can get credential, you can get certified as a coach in some programs over the weekend. I did not want that. I wanted to if I was going to do this, I wanted to give my clients the best benefit of my experience and training that I could, which means, um, x number of years later, I am still studying, um, in credentialing programs a few times a year. Oh, wow.

Stone Payton: So yeah. Well, and I guess, or my observation has been in my career that competency can be a moving target. Right.

Michele Aikens: Tell me about it.

Stone Payton: So it’s important to continue to sharpen that saw and learn new things and be exposed to new techniques for achieving maybe some of the same purposes, but, uh, no, that’s absolutely to be commended. So, uh, passions, interests, pursuits outside the scope of the the work. A lot of my listeners know that I like to hunt, fish and travel. Anything you have a tendency to nerd out about that’s outside the scope of this work.

Michele Aikens: Oh, nerd out about. Boy, did you use the right word there? Uh, my husband calls me a collection of useless facts. I enjoy learning new things, but what I am, in fact, one of the ways I spend my downtime. I am currently working on a futuristic dystopian novel. Uh, because it gives my brain another place to play? Of course I like comedy and love dancing, but the nerd part of me likes science fiction.

Stone Payton: I am so glad that I. You just don’t ever know, right?

Michele Aikens: You just don’t know.

Stone Payton: Well, before we wrap, I would love to leave our listeners with a couple of, um. I call them pro tips. Just a little something to be thinking about noodling on and look, gang. The number one pro tip is, uh, reach out and have a conversation with with Michele. But, um, maybe if you’re up for it, maybe a tip on what I’ll call both sides of the work. Right. The practitioner side of the work. A tip, because some of our listeners are practitioners as well. Uh, you know, a tip on actually executing the work, but maybe also a tip or something you feel like you’ve learned or do or don’t on the business side of running the business, that would. If you’re up for it, I’d love to leave them with a couple of things to chew on.

Michele Aikens: Okay. And and they’re actually related. Well, here’s something that’s kind of unrelated, but from the nerd portion of the brain, there is a book called Brain Rules. And the author lists rules that talk about how our brain functions when we are stressed or in, in anxiety. Our brains don’t learn. Well, that’s rule number eight. I believe in the book, stressed brains don’t learn the same. And so if you are forcing yourself to do something that is hard and it’s creating stress, um, I’m going to encourage you to back away from that now from the business side, which and I’m learning, I never considered myself stone. It’s funny, I didn’t consider myself a real business person for a long time. I was just a coach. Here’s the business. Um. Business. Inside I’d give. Find what makes you spark. Because it is the thing that sets you apart. There are a lot of coaches, probably hundreds of thousands. In fact, I read a couple of years ago that it’s the fastest growing profession. So whatever you’re doing in business, you’ve got to find a way to distinguish yourself from the competition, from the non compete people. You’ve got to find a way to stand out and work that spark.

Stone Payton: Well you’ve clearly done that haven’t you.

Michele Aikens: I’m trying but. But I’m having fun, which I didn’t before, but I am. I am blessed enough to have fun doing what I do for a living.

Stone Payton: Well, I can tell. And this conversation has certainly been fun and enlightening. What’s the best way for our listeners to tap into your work? Learn more. Maybe have that conversation with you. Let’s leave them some coordinates. Whatever is the you feel is most appropriate for so that you can connect with them.

Michele Aikens: Well, that would be wonderful. Um, our website is clearsight-coach.com, and there’s methods for contacting me in there. Um, or if you want to just bypass the website and get in contact with me, you can reach me at lead coach at Clearsight. Coach.com. Um, I’d love to have those conversations with you, um, or with any of your listeners, because I believe that helping people find out what makes them spark benefits the rest of us in the world.

Stone Payton: Amen. Well, Michele, it has been an absolute delight having you on the broadcast. Thank you for your insight, your perspective. Thank you for your enthusiasm and your encouragement. It’s been a very inspiring exchange. You are clearly having a great deal of impact on so many and we sure appreciate you.

Michele Aikens: Well, I appreciate being here, Stone. Thanks for having this conversation with me.

Stone Payton: My pleasure. All right. Until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Michele Aikens with Clearsight Coaching and Consulting and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you in the fast lane.

BRX Pro Tip: Develop a 90 Day Business Transformation Program

February 6, 2025 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: Develop a 90 Day Business Transformation Program

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BRX Pro Tip: Develop a 90 Day Business Transformation Program

Stone Payton: Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, I know even though I spent some years in the change management business transformation space in a previous life, when I hear that phrase and a lot of people hear that phrase, you know, it sounds like a big, hairy, multi-quarter or multiyear undertaking. But it really doesn’t have to be that way, does it?

Lee Kantor: No. I think it’s important to kind of break your year down into 90-day chunks of time. And then, if you can take one of these 90-day chunks of time for your own business, and productize it, and create a 90-day business transformation program that’s tailored for growth for your prospects or clients, I think that’s a good idea. I think that’s a nice service to have within the different services you offer if you’re a business coach or somebody in the professional services world.

So, think about, do you have any thought leadership that you can use to build some sort of a structured curriculum that has weekly goals, that has regular accountability check-ins? If you do have something along those lines, I would think that it’s important to kind of pull it out and productize it because once you create this kind of program, you can offer both group coaching, you can do one on one coaching from this. And then, that way you can have a different type of offering depending on whatever the prospect or client needs.

And then, it’s important that no matter where you do when you’re doing this type of a program, to make sure you have some sort of a way to track progress in order to show how effective the program is at helping your clients achieve whatever their desired outcome is. So, when you are developing any type of program like this, have some sort of way to keep score, so they can see what life was like before they went through this transformation program and what life is like now that they’ve completed it.

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BRX Pro Tip: Develop a Q1 Focused Email Campaign

February 5, 2025 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: Develop a Q1 Focused Email Campaign

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BRX Pro Tip: Develop a Q1 Focused Email Campaign

Stone Payton: Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. You know, contrary to what I, at some point, really was beginning to feel, email and the power of email marketing done right is not going anywhere, at least, for a while. What are your current thoughts on leveraging email to grow your business?

Lee Kantor: I think it’s so important to productize things, and I think that email marketing is a great way to share what you’re learning with your people. I think a place to start is some sort of a first quarter focus or this quarter’s focus and then develop an email campaign that includes weekly tips, motivation, accountability, support. Plan out this kind of 12-week email series. I would theme it depending on what’s important to you or what your superpower is. Include actionable tips, include success stories, include motivation in every single email. And then, offer some sort of service program or resource to people who are subscribed to this list. I think email marketing is still useful, and it’s something that every professional service provider should be doing.

Lilly Powell – Residential Interior Designer

February 4, 2025 by angishields

Houston Business Radio

Lilly Powell - Residential Interior Designer

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Lilly Powell is a passionate and vibrant interior designer known for bringing warmth, creativity, and positive energy to every space she transforms.

With a deep understanding of the psychological impact of colors, she helps clients create homes they truly love—whether it’s refreshing a living space, designing functional home offices, or preparing a house for sale with the perfect neutral tones. Her journey into interior design was serendipitous, but once she realized her natural talent could become a thriving career, she never looked back.

Beyond design, Lilly is a devoted wife of nearly 20 years, a proud mother to her 13-year-old, and a loving pet parent to both a cat and a dog. She values family, friendships, and meaningful connections in all aspects of life.

In her discussion with Trisha, she shared insights on color psychology, home office transitions, and a memorable kitchen and bathroom makeover. Her mission is simple: to make every client feel truly at home in their space.

Connect with Lilly on LinkedIn and Facebook.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Trisha Stetzel: Hello, Houston. Trisha Stetzel here bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio. It is my pleasure. And by the way, another guest introduced to me through BNI network, which is really fun and interesting. Uh, it is my pleasure to have Lilly on with me today. Kirby and Z interior designs. She and I have had the opportunity to catch up a couple of times before, and she does amazing work. Lilly, welcome to the show.

Lilly Powell: Thank you. Pleasure to be here.

Trisha Stetzel: I’m so excited. We had some really good conversation before we started recording today, so I can’t wait to really dig into the details. So Lilly, if you wouldn’t mind, just give our audience a little background and how you got into interior design in the first place.

Lilly Powell: So I was asked the age old question, what do you want to do when you grow up? And I was about 30, a little late to the game. Um, we had adopted a baby, and, uh, it was something, you know, I wanted to be a mom first. So I decided interior design was in my blood and my passion and, uh, you know, started working for a firm and realized that I was working too many hours to be a mom. And so I decided to go out on my own and voila! Kirby and Z was born. And so we’ve been in business for ten years now, and the baby is 1314 now. So yeah, she’s a big girl.

Trisha Stetzel: Goodness, Lily, by the way, 30 is not too old to be asking yourself, what do I want to be when I grow up? Because I’m still asking. I’m way past 30. Uh, I know that you have a passion for this particular industry, and I want to focus on a couple of couple of areas that I’m curious about. Uh, we’ve talked a little bit about color and the psychology behind that, and it sounds like it’s really important when it comes to decorating, whether it’s in your home, in your office, or even in a corporate space. Tell me more about color and the psychology of colors around decorating.

Lilly Powell: So I have done a couple of talks for a real estate agent and, you know, some friends and just kind of diving into the color. If you go into a dentist office like a pediatric dentist, they’re going to have these vibrant colors because they want these kids to kind of feel comfortable and still happy go lucky, you know, when they’re coming into the dentist office because it can be scary. Um, and so it’s just one of those things that’s kind of like, you tell me who your friends are. I’ll tell you who you are. It’s the same principle. Who, who and what you surround yourself with is going to evoke a feeling. And so a lot of times, I will walk into a place, for example, hospital. And, you know, I see these bleak colors and in my mind I’m just like, wow, they should have brighter colors, you know, to help these people get through whatever they’re getting through here at the hospital. And so it is it makes a difference. You know, what you surround yourself with, whether it be at home or in your business. One of the things that I do like to do with a lot of my clients is when they are decorating their bedrooms. A lot of times we’ll make those colors a little more, a deeper color. Why is that? Well, because that’s where you’re going to bed, right? It’s time to calm down. It’s time to bring your blood pressure down. And some of these colors have shown, you know, to do that. So it’s important.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. Oh my gosh. So I get in this corporate environment or hospital environments what those colors should look like. So from I want to dive back into this, this home environment where the bedrooms should be dark. What about like kitchens or living rooms. Is it about your personality? Is there like a color palette that you suggest more often than not? What does that look like when helping a client pick out colors?

Lilly Powell: Uh, it is going to depend a lot on the client themselves. You know, I’ll ask them, like, you know, what colors do you like? And a lot of times they will say, oh, I like all colors. And my response is, okay, we’ll do purple with green polka dots. Okay. I don’t like green and purple. Okay. What color do you like? And so it’s my job to like, drill down. You know what? What do you like? Where do you live? So if you come into my house, it’s, um. I have two chairs that have teal and pink and lime green, and so that’s where I like to live. So if you’re going into a kitchen and it’s your personality, you know, to be bright, you go with bright blues, bright yellows. You want something a little more subdued than you would go, maybe, you know, with like a navy countertop. And a lot of times, you know, it just depends on the client. And that is one of the things that I pride myself in as a designer is listening to what the client wants, not necessarily me being the designer, you know, picking for the client. It’s it’s about listening.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, I love that. And I love that you said purple with green polka dots or whatever it was, right? Like, okay, maybe I don’t love all colors. Yeah. Uh, so I have a question for you. For those of you who can’t see us on video because it’s only audio. I sit in an in an office with no color, uh, because my walls are all cedar. So what? What does that say about me, Lily?

Lilly Powell: You’re okay with living in Cedar?

Trisha Stetzel: I love that. That’s funny. It is just. Yeah. Just to be clear, it’s a tiny house, so I’m not painting the cedar. But I do have some really cool paintings. It’s all filled with brightly colored, uh, music. Artwork. Uh, so that probably says some crazy things about me, right?

Lilly Powell: And that’s what it is. Your personality comes out through what you surround yourself with, and people don’t realize it sometimes. Um, I did have a, you know, a period in my life where I wasn’t as happy and I did, you know, battle depression a little bit. And that was around the time that we moved into this house. And I had a friend come in and she said, you know, this house doesn’t look like you. And I kind of took a step back and I was like, oh, that’s because I was not in the right space when I decorated. And so I decorated to where I was at in my life. And it was the weirdest thing that she she was able to point that out, but I was able to take a step back and be like, oh, we need to redo this. And now we’ve got, you know, the pinks and the blues and the lime greens that you know, I’m talking about. And so it does it, you know, it it matters. It really does.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah I can see that. Where colors really bring your personality to life. Meaning things that make you happy, right? And it really brings out the best in you. Even just thinking about the clothes. So it’s just as important to think about the colors in your house as it is, ladies, to pick out the outfit that you love. Right. You’re going to go in your closet and you’re going to pick out an outfit and wear a certain color. You know which colors you like and which ones you don’t. It’s just as important to have that surrounding you in your, um, home and even in your office. So I’m curious, Lily, um, what types of clients do you typically work with? Is it home? Is it office? Is it home? Office? What does that look like for you?

Lilly Powell: So I mostly do residential. Occasionally I’ll have an existing client ask, you know, hey, can you put some stuff in my office? But it’s mostly residential that we stick to. Um. The demographic. We did some research and come to find out that it’s mostly, uh, women. Uh, I think it was over the age of 40 and divorced men. Very weird. But those are my clients that I’ve been drawing to me. Uh, and so, yeah, those have been my clients. But, you know, in between, I’ve had families starting, um, you know, couples starting new families where we do a nursery. We have, um, you know, a library shelf built into an existing office for, you know, all the clients are now working from home. So it just varies.

Trisha Stetzel: Oh, wow, I love that. I know you and I had a longer conversation the last time we met about, uh, all of these, um, most of them are women. The people that I engage with that are moving from office to work, from home, and they’re sitting in a place that’s not actually their office. And how great would it be to engage with someone like you who could help them through the process of really turning that into a place that they can grow their business. Like, that sounds amazing. Yeah, that sounds like so much fun. So the most it is interesting that your clients are women over 40 and divorced men. So if you’re listening, uh, Lilly might be your gal, right? Uh, especially for those of you who have started working from home. And by the way, just from a business perspective, you need to fill your office with things that make you happy and excited and the things that are going to help you flourish. And I know that, Lilly, you could help folks with that. Um, really get that office into a space where they can grow, right? You don’t want it to be a place where you dread going to the office, even in your own home, right? Yeah. Um, so talk to me about why having someone like you with your skills on my team is important. So why would I hire an interior designer in the first place?

Lilly Powell: A lot of times it is less expensive to hire me than for you to go out and buy furniture out on your own.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay.

Lilly Powell: Shocking, right? So a lot of times you go into a furniture store and their ceilings are going to be either 22 foot ceilings or it’s a giant store. And so you find this wonderful bed that looks amazing. You buy it, you get it home and you realize, oh, my ceilings are nine foot ceilings. And all of a sudden you have this enormous bed taking up the entire space of your room, and you have room for nothing else. And so a lot of times that’s where I can come in and just consult and just be like, okay, this is a great bed and everything, but let’s see if we can find something that actually is to scale for your house. And so I do have one client in particular. She hired me for that reason. And she told me she’s like, I know that if I do not hire a designer, I’m going to end up spending more money because I’ll get it to the house. It’s the wrong shade. It’s the wrong size. It’s whatever. So a lot of times it’s just easier to have that person that does this for a living to come in and just say, hey, this is going to work. This isn’t going to work. Let’s see what we can find. Um, that, you know, that’s going to make you happy and still give you what you want.

Trisha Stetzel: Um, yeah, I love that. My bed’s way too big for my bedroom. Lily, I might need one of those. Uh, well, and, you know, just just to give myself a little credit, it was because we moved from one house to another house, and we had that bed there, and, well, it doesn’t exactly fit here. It fills the room, which is. Okay. Um, let’s. I know that most of your clientele, uh, as you mentioned in your study, are women over 40 and divorced men. But I also know that there’s another area that you specialize in which is aging in place. Can we talk a talk a little bit more about that? What does it mean and how do you help?

Lilly Powell: Absolutely. So aging in place is exactly what it says aging in place. A lot of my clients are baby boomers that are now empty nesters, um, retirees. And a lot of times the choices are they either move to a facility where, you know, um, aging, uh, I forget what the name of the facility is anyway. A facility where they can, you know, grow older. They have assistance if needed, or they have to downsize to a smaller house. And a lot of times I can come in and I can just help them by opening bathroom doors, you know, to fit a wheelchair or a walker if needed, later on in life. I can reinforce the walls so that we can add grab bars to showers and bathrooms, stairwells, you know, different areas of the house, um, install different kind of flooring. That’s not going to be so slippery so that, you know, as they’re shuffling, shuffling along, which happens, it’s going to happen. You know, most of us, they don’t slip and fall. I even went as far as installing a heated floor for one client, which is in Houston. She’s like, yes. I was like, all right, let’s do it. So we did it. And recently we did. Um, we installed an elevator for another client. Same thing, aging in place. It’s a four story house. She doesn’t want to move. And we did research and we looked at all of our choices as far as, like, you know, this is where you can move to or this is where you can stay and this is what we can do. Price point I brought in a real estate agent to help her. You know, this is how much your house will sell for. This is what we’re going to buy for, you know, your new facility. And we just went through the whole process with her and helped her make that final decision, you know, to remodel and install an elevator. So, you know, that’s it’s just it makes me happy to see her, you know, in her little elevator. And she had a party and brought all her friends over. And so it’s it’s very cool. So. Yeah.

Trisha Stetzel: Wow. You do so much more, Lily, than than just help people with colors. It’s amazing. And so for those listeners who know me well enough, you know that I have, um, uh, lots of energy that I put into, uh, my grandmother and my mother and I. These things are so important, Lily. You know, there are studies that say our seniors who are getting older and older fear losing their independence more than they do actually passing away, which is this space that you’re in, which is aging in place and helping them be able to stay at home and keep their independence is so important. We have so many baby boomers, um, living right now, uh, who are in that difficult place, right? Can I stay here or do I need to go to a facility? So in that, in that space as well. So you do some can we call it remodeling. Like what. So aging in place you’re doing a lot more than just interior design. So can you really describe all of the services that you can provide for your clients.

Lilly Powell: Well let’s see let’s pull out the list. So yes I do pick out colors, um pillows, which is, you know, the basic interior design stuff. But we do, uh, go in and we can remodel kitchens and bathrooms. Those are typically the things that we’re remodeling a lot of times, um, it’ll start with, hey, you know, I need a new color for my bathroom, and we just it kind of just escalates and moves into, you know, let’s just do a remodel. And so that’s definitely something that we provide. So it’s it’s a little bit of everything. Um, but our niche and what we started doing ten years ago was truly interior design. Wallpaper, paint, selecting tiles. Me going into a tile store is like a kid in a candy store. Like, I love doing it. Or even picking up paint. Everyone’s intimidated by it and I’m like, it’s just paint. Like you don’t like it. We redo it. So. And everyone’s, like, scared of it. I’m like, no, don’t be afraid. But that that just painting is one of the simplest things that you can do to your house to just, like, juice it up. And people are very scared of it. And I’m like, no, that’s like the easiest thing you can do is paint a room. And the best thing is, if you don’t like it, redo it. You know, it’s just paint.

Lilly Powell: You can paint over it, right? Use a different color.

Trisha Stetzel: So, uh, that brings up another question then, Lily. What? What is your bet? What’s your biggest piece of advice to someone who may be selling their house in the next six months?

Lilly Powell: Uh, selling a house in the next six months. Mm. This is tricky. I do have real estate agents that bring me in to prep the house and stage it. Sometimes we do staging with the client’s their own furniture. We don’t bring any furniture in. But one of the things that we do tell them is if you are one of those people like me that has various colors in your house, you’re going to have to paint it back to a neutral color. Why is that? Because the people that come in to possibly buy your house, they need to be able to envision themselves in that space. So you have to take away all of who you are. Right. Because we’ve surrounded ourselves with the things that we love and that we like and that bring us joy, that includes colors. Uh, we have to take those out and allow someone else to visualize themselves and their stuff in this new home. So.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, and that’s hard. But we’ve also made the decision that we’re going to sell our house. Right. So when we make that decision, then we’ve got to put something more neutral, I’m guessing on the walls, so that it when people come in to look at the house, they can see themselves there without your big red wall or your big yellow wall or whatever color that you love right in there.

Lilly Powell: Red or blue or whichever.

Trisha Stetzel: Oh my gosh, Lily. So I’ve done some crazy things. We had a yellow wall with, uh, purple handprints on it. When our son was younger, I had a bathroom that I painted purple. I’m talking about purple with, um, blue sponge over the top of it. I am not afraid of.

Lilly Powell: My own heart. I mean.

Trisha Stetzel: I’m not afraid of paint. Uh, although it is hard to cover up when you use those dark colors. I’m just saying. Now, paint has come a long way. Uh, you know where it does cover up those dark colors and, you know, way more than way more about that than I do. So if listener if if we’ve got some listeners that are really interested in connecting with you. With you, Lily. Just having a conversation. Want to know what it is that you do, or maybe even want to talk to you about services. How can they find you?

Lilly Powell: I have a website. It’s a glorified business card. I have pictures on there and a little bit about me. If you want to go in there and read, it’s WW, Herbie and Z and z.com and you can find all my information there.

Trisha Stetzel: Fantastic. I’m going to put that in the show notes as well. So if you happen to be in front of your computer listening, you can just click and go directly there. You can even comment in the social posts where you’re watching this and get a hold of Lily. You can just do it at Lily and I’m sure it will pop up and tag her. So, Lily, uh, as we get to the back end of our conversation today, I would love if you would share one of your favorite client stories.

Lilly Powell: So right now, top of the list is a young lady that we installed the elevator for, and we went in and she just knew she needed to update her kitchen and her bath. And like I said, we slowly started talking about, you know, aging in place and what that’s going to look like. And we went from a I think it was a just basic white kitchen. I don’t even remember what color it was at this point, to a beautiful blue with brown doors, stained brown doors, cabinets and kitchens, all new appliances, new beautiful backsplash. I just got a picture. They installed the chairs yesterday. Her dining room chairs. We installed an elevator so now she can go up and down. So yeah, that that makes me happy. And when I see things like that, that keeps me going. So yeah, I love it.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that. So was it an easy decision for her to go with blue in her kitchen?

Lilly Powell: No, she it was one of those things. When you hire me, we have to build a trust, because I can walk in there and I can visualize what it’s going to look like, and not all my clients can. And so we’ll, you know, we’ll do renderings and I can show you more or less what it’s going to look like. But it’s one of those things that you have to trust that I know what I’m doing, and I know what it’s going to look like when we’re done. And she did tell me she goes, Lily, I’m a little scared of this floor. I said, okay, you know what? You don’t like it. We’ll just repaint it. And that was kind of like, oh, okay. And so we went with it. But she loves it. She’s happy with it. And, you know, it brings her joy. The house looks completely different. It’s very bright and vibrant. She’s happy.

Trisha Stetzel: That’s amazing. All right. Kirby and z.com. Right. That’s where folks are going to find you. They can look up pictures. They maybe soon can see the blue kitchen if you put it out there and even connect with you on social. Are you on social media where people can find you as well?

Lilly Powell: Yes, we are on Facebook and Instagram. Same thing. Kirby and Zee.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay, fantastic. Lily, I’m so glad you came and joined me today. This was so much fun.

Lilly Powell: Thank you for having me.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. You may have to come back and we can talk about, like where how our furniture should sit in the rooms. Like, how is it really zen and does it work for people? Right. I’m just saying, I think that would be a ton of fun.

Lilly Powell: Anytime.

Trisha Stetzel: Thanks so much again, Lily, I appreciate it. Anybody who would like to connect with Lily, please check the show notes. Or you can just go to Kirby and A and z.com to connect with her and see the beautiful work that she’s already done. That’s all the time we have for today’s show. Join us next time for another exciting episode of Houston Business Radio. Until then, stay tuned, stay inspired, and keep thriving in the Houston business community.

Branding Beyond the Logo: Crafting Your Story as a Woman Entrepreneur

February 4, 2025 by angishields

Women in Motion

Branding Beyond the Logo: Crafting Your Story as a Woman Entrepreneur

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In this episode of Women in Motion, Lee Kantor interviews Asha Mody, founder of Mindsy, a branding studio in San Diego. Asha shares her journey as an immigrant and her mission to empower women entrepreneurs through strategic branding. She emphasizes the importance of a clear and intentional brand strategy, distinguishing between a logo and a brand. Asha discusses common branding challenges and offers advice for building a purposeful brand. She highlights her commitment to supporting women in business, sharing success stories and practical tips for entrepreneurs to achieve brand clarity and authenticity.

Building a brand isn’t just an exercise in creativity—it’s an act of intention. Asha Mody, the visionary behind Mindsy Studio, is on a mission to transform the way we think about brands. With over 10 years of experience and a track record that’s as impressive as it is diverse, she’s helped women-led businesses, startups, and INC 500 companies craft brands that don’t just look good but feel right.

Asha’s philosophy? Brands should be rooted in purpose and mindfulness. Her approach blends soul and strategy, stripping away the noise to uncover the essence of what makes a brand unforgettable. As a Strategist and Design Director, she’s worked magic across diverse industries—from plant-based food and natural beauty to health, coaching, and sustainability-focused businesses. Asha has elevated wellness brands to cult status, coached founders on mindful scaling, and brought clarity to the chaos for countless entrepreneurs.

Recognized by GDUSA and World Packaging Design, Asha doesn’t just create logos or taglines; she sculpts stories that resonate. Her secret? Deep human insight, strategic clarity, and a mindfulness-driven creative process that puts authenticity front and center.

When Asha isn’t crafting impactful brands, you can ﬁnd her breaking a sweat with her two teenage boys at the gym, painting intuitive mixed-media masterpieces, or traveling with her life partner to discover creative coffee havens. Each experience fuels her passion for mindfulness and storytelling, helping her weave even richer narratives for her clients.

As a keynote speaker, course creator, and startup advisor, Asha has shared her expertise with communities worldwide. Her ultimate goal? To empower 1,000 women-led brands to scale their dreams while staying true to their values. Whether it’s breaking into Whole Foods or redeﬁning an industry’s narrative, Asha builds brands that stand for something—and people remember them.

Connect with Asha on LinkedIn.

Music Provided by M PATH MUSIC

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios, it’s time for Women in Motion. Brought to you by WBEC-West. Join forces. Succeed together. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Hi, Lee Kantor here. Another episode of Women in Motion. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, WBEC-West. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Women in Motion, we have Asha Mody with Mindsy Design. Welcome.

Asha Mody: Thank you,Lee. Thank you. I’m excited for the show today.

Lee Kantor: Well, I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Mindsy Design. How are you serving folks?

Asha Mody: Mindsy Design is a branding studio in San Diego, California, and we help empower women entrepreneurs to design their branding, packaging and strategic approach to launch their product and services in the market.

Lee Kantor: So, what’s your backstory? How did you get involved in the branding business?

Asha Mody: Oh, that’s interesting. I grew up in India and came to the United States 20 years back. And when I came here as a minority immigrant woman, I didn’t have the working rights. So, I invested myself in educating myself for ten years, fighting my rights from… at White House. And finally, I got my immigrant working right ten years back. And I started working in a company as a graphic designer, where I saw that CEOs, CMOs, sales team, everybody is on very different pages, and they design just pretty looking design, doesn’t create the impact what company wanted to create. So, I learned about brand strategy. I got C-level Certified Brand Strategist and how design can create impact and meaningfully by aligning their purpose and their mission and vision on the one page. So, that’s why I designed because I believe that we can create a meaningful impact if we have all intentional strategy and we can communicate clearly with the audience, which, really, they need to hear.

Lee Kantor: Now, is that a mistake that you find, especially with young entrepreneurs or maybe not young by age but young by being an entrepreneur, is they confuse maybe their logo with their brand. Like, they don’t really understand the brand stands for something a lot more than just what their logo might look like.

Asha Mody: Yeah. So, I like this question a lot. The logo or tagline, it’s just the one part of the brand. It’s not the brand. Brand is something. It’s your gut feeling. I ask this question, when you are not present in the room, what do people say behind your back? What is the gut feeling that you are creating it? That’s called the brand. For example, owners, founders, or sales team or marketing team, they cannot be always in the store selling your product, right? So, when you are not present, what do you want to create the feeling behind your back? That’s trust. That’s authenticity. That is the brand, when people feel really connected and they feel to join your tribe.

Lee Kantor: And brand is something that even if you’re not mindful about it, it’s still happening, right? So, you might as well be mindful about it.

Asha Mody: I agree, because if you are not mindful and intentional about it is a secret of crafting the brand messaging and how it resonated. Like, if you are not intentional about it, you are living somebody else’s brand. You are hiding and not able to communicate, what are your core values, why you stand for it, what is your vision and purpose to make a difference in this world? So, the secret of cutting through the noise is by storytelling, we do it. And messaging, we create that to really resonate with the audience. So, it’s generally brand get lost. They feel the messaging is not about shouting or shouting or being loud, but it’s about connecting on a deeper level with the audience.

So, that’s what we do at Mindsy Design. We believe every brand has a story of worth telling, and it’s just about uncovering it intentionally and what makes it connected with your audience. And we start this by understanding their users’ fears and desire and aspirations, and how can your brand or product goes in their life and make their life more easy? And we do that kind of a matchmaking connection with the brand and right audience. So, if they are not intentional and conscious about sharing their story, which really connects with the audience, they are actually living somebody else’s brand. And then, they feel overwhelmed and stressed that, “Oh, this is not bringing ROI. This is not the way I want it,” and they feel disconnected with their own brand.

Lee Kantor: Now, do you ever have meetings with folks and maybe even leaders where they think their brand is one thing but their audience or their clients or even their employees think it’s something else? There is a disconnect between what the leadership either thinks their brand is or aspires for their brand to be, but the reality of how people are seeing it today.

Asha Mody: Yes. That’s all we call in a brand DNA. We design it. It’s CEO, have a brand vision to get the company on one level but, sometimes, consciously or unconsciously, it disconnects or not able to communicate with the internal team or external team or, for example, distributors or supply chain. Everybody is on different page. So, the brand wants to make one leap progress. Instead of getting the growth, they start getting tangled in the small obstacles more because they don’t know how to clearly find their voice and communicate that with the audience. So, when we do the strategy, find the intentional brand strategy, everybody stays on the same page for the communication, either it’s visually or verbally. But authenticity, the clarity is the one… Is at the core of the brand. We try to communicate.

Lee Kantor: Now, what are some symptoms that a company leader might be seeing right now that they’re not connecting the dots, that, “Hey, maybe we have a brand clarity issue,” or people aren’t really clear on our mission, but there are symptoms, there are things happening in their business every day that maybe they’re not kind of clocking, like, “Hey, this could be a brand problem. We don’t have that authenticity or that intentionality yet, and we have a problem. We got to fix that.”

Asha Mody: Yeah, this happens. Like, major with my clients, they realize it that their marketing efforts, their time, energy, and they’re spending on ads but it’s not bringing ROI to business. For example, we did a recent seaweed brand, and it was really beautiful and meaningful brand where women and entrepreneurs goes in ocean, take out the seaweed and make spices and collaborate with local farmers. And it’s such a great product for reversing carbon footprints. But they were not able to scale in on the national level. It was… they were struggling with their sales. People were not picking or the packaging was not popping out of the shelf and going in the car. So, that’s how if pretty-looking design, but it’s not creating impact or connecting with the audience, it cannot bring the ROI to business.

So, we actually did entire rebranding it. For example, we clearly define their position, how to stand out in the crowded market. We saw the blind spot that the audience don’t even know… have enough education about how to use seaweed or how to use this product in my daily kitchen in United States. People even didn’t know about that it’s growing in the local Alaska Ocean, West Coast ocean. So, those are the missing pieces we found that why brand is struggling either with the sales, not connecting with the audience, not able to bring the messaging clearly, and everybody is not on the same page. And what happens with that ripple effect? Brand loses the trust.

We are in the highest speed of digital market. So, when people are scrolling to your product, or on the shelf in the store or on the website, they cannot get connected or stop in a three seconds of time to pick up your product from the shelf or stop to scroll and buy your product online. So, because there is a mismatch, there is no clear communication. So, really, we do the Brand Awakening workshop, where a workshop where we guide through this process is to get the clarity, uncover the root problem, and how can you build the bridge between your brand and the audience by authentic voice on every touchpoint, and strategize the position so you can stand out in the competitive market?

Lee Kantor: You bring up an important point, I think that the strategy has to be done first. You have to do the work at the strategic level. You can’t just throw a bunch of tactics at something or even storytelling, you know, content pieces at something. You really have to get the strategy right in order to get everybody kind of seeing and saying the same thing.

Asha Mody: Exactly. So, in shortly, if I say this, the strategy word is very, sometime, gets heavy too. But it’s like finding the soul of the brand. If you are not finding the soul of the brand, the brand body is dead. So, you need to find out the soul of the brand. Why you are doing what you’re doing? For whom you are doing? What it means to them? It’s just the metrics you are trying to achieve the sales or really you want to make a difference in people’s life. What is the purpose of your brand? What is the vision and mission? So, finding that clarity, which really wakes you up at night 2:00 and run for your brand, which inspires your team to work for your business and brand without even asking them. They will go and become your hidden ambassadors.

You know why people go at night at 2:00 and wait for Jordan shoes or an Apple iPhone? Because they trust in the brand. They really believe in that brand that this will make my life better. Like, for example, Steve Jobs, nobody knew that we need 60,000 songs in our back pocket, right? But he knew that this product will make people’s lives better. That’s a need. And he crafted his product and services, his product, which now people really trust it, wait for the line no matter. Sometimes ups and down goes, but they have a strong tribe build for them.

So, the point is about the strategy and messaging. Everything needs to feel cohesive and build the trust between you and your audience. It’s finding the soul of the brand and the design is the outer body of the brand. Then, the strategy and everything comes together. How your brand needs to walk and talk, how it needs to behave, and that everybody on your organization start going in the one North Star direction. And then, after that, it makes a meaningful impact for people and planet.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there any advice you can give an entrepreneur? Maybe they’re not ready for you and your team yet, but maybe they aspire to be entrepreneurs or they have a small business right now, are there some steps that they can be doing themselves right now to kind of build that brand with a soul?

Asha Mody: Yes, definitely. I think I’ve noticed the biggest mistakes, how can they avoid it if they are not ready. At least, trying… They try to do… Trying to be everything to everyone. So, the most successful brands embrace specificity. Like what is the specific? They know who they are, who they serve and communicate that boldly. So, this is why I feel if they are not ready, at least, find that clarity and they can definitely go on my website and download the brand discovery workbook. And in that, they can do by themselves. If they are not ready, they can at least have the clear answers for this question: Who are we? Why we are exist? Who are our customers? And how do we make their life better? And communicate with the clarity. So, at least, they will not get overwhelmed and waste their time, effort, energy, money in the wrong direction. At least, with the intention and conscious action, they will make a progress to build a brand they want.

Lee Kantor: Now, why was it important for you and your brand to be part of the WBC-West community? What did you hope to get out of it and what have you gotten out of it?

Asha Mody: So, for the WBEC-West community, I think my brand, Mindsy, stands for mindfulness. It’s an intentional approach, and I’m on a mission to build a thousand women brands. And why I do that? In my childhood story, I have seen my mother as an entrepreneur and my father passed early age, I saw her as a struggle to build her own business. And as a minority women business and immigrant, when I came to this country, I didn’t have right to work for ten years. But by God’s grace, now, I’m working from ten years. But I saw, as a woman entrepreneur, how it is hard to struggle to get rights, to build the dreams and vision what we have in the life. And that’s why I opened… I have this branding agency, which is with the very mindful approach, that woman entrepreneur has dreams, and they just need a good partner and support to bring that dream and vision into real life. And I’m on a mission to do that, so they feel less overwhelmed and stressed to build their businesses, but they have clarity to invest their time, money, hard-worked money, and get the impact or get the impact they want to make in this world, and bring their dream in the real life to thrive.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there a story you can share about maybe a client you’ve had where they came to you with a struggle? You don’t have to name the name of the organization but maybe share what problem they had when they came to you and how you were able to get them to a new level.

Asha Mody: Definitely. So, for answering this question, for local hot sauce brand, it was a garage-made brand, but she was working 9:00 to 5:00 in an organization. It was her dream to create that product and bring it her grandmother’s recipe as an innovative product in the market. And what happened was we did the strategy, find the right audience. What is the uniqueness about her product and service? How would people… she can stand out in the company. We did entire strategy session and created the Brand Awakening Roadmap. With that, she started building her product. From garage sales zero followers to zero sales, now that brand won a metro food pitch competition and she’s in more than 267 stores. She came on the TV show. And now, she’s about to come to the Costco.

So, seeing that from zero sales and zero followers, she had intention to make that much income what she makes in corporate, and give up that job, so she can invest her fulltime energy in her brand to create the purpose she wants to create for upcoming generation and the recipes her grandma had create. So, seeing this kind of story, the people, we have only one life and we want to live for the dream what we have. And seeing that success that women entrepreneurs are now thriving. And she built her own business, and she’s very ambitious, and getting success, and seeing her doing that makes me makes me really fulfilled. So, I think I’m creating a very micro contribution in women’s world to get where they want to be through the mindful approach and design and packaging design.

Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned you want to serve a thousand women-owned business brands. Is there anything that we could be doing to help you? What do you need more of today?

Asha Mody: Definitely. We have something we do as a Brand Awakening Workshop. This is for the women entrepreneurs who are on the startup or midlevel. This workshop brings very clarity to find the root problem and give them the plan, which is doable for them. There are so many agencies, and they can give you a multi-million-dollar plans, right? But what if that woman entrepreneur has a small team, and they don’t know how to excel in their own business? So, we give them the brand, what you need to stop doing and start doing with this clarity to achieve your goal where you want to see in three years yourself. And we reverse engineer and make that plan for you. We call this as a Brand Awakening Roadmap. It’s a 90-minutes interview with the founders and whoever is a decision maker, and we give them this plan, so they can run away with that and apply by themselves but if they need help, we help them build their brand with the clear intention and strategy.

Lee Kantor: And if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what’s the website? What’s the best way to connect?

Asha Mody: The best way to connect on my website, www.mindsy.design or LinkedIn or Instagram DM. They can definitely book a call from my website for 15 minutes per call. If we are a great fit for them, we can solve their problem, then only we intentionally collaborate. If we are not a good fit, we recommend the right person for them. But this is very conscious and intentional approach. It’s like a matchmaking, we say, right? So, they can book a call from my website or DM me on LinkedIn, and we would love to help them.

Lee Kantor: And the website again is mindsy.design, M-I-N-D-S-Y dot D-E-S-I-G-N.

Asha Mody: Yes. It’s Mindsy M-I-N-D-S-Y dot design.

Lee Kantor: Well Asha, thank you so much for sharing your story today, doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Asha Mody: Thank you. Thank you, Lee. Thank you for inviting me. And I’m very grateful for WBEC-West for giving this opportunity on behalf of women… rocking women entrepreneurs and lifting this ecosystem, I’m very grateful to be here.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Women in Motion