The Couragemakers Podcast

This week I’m talking to the fabulous and my now-friend Katie Vaz. Katie is an illustrator, author, and graphic designer living in Upstate New York with her husband, Joby, a puppy named Tater, and a cat named KittenFace. She is the author of the adult coloring book Don’t Worry, Eat Cake (which was featured on Canada's Biggest Bestseller List at Chapters Indigo), the book Make Yourself Cozy: A Guide for Practicing Self-Care, and more recently The Escape Manual For Introverts, which was just published on August 6, 2019 (all three by Andrews McMeel Publishing). She also designs her own line of greeting cards, prints and other stationery products, which are sold both online on Etsy and in brick and mortar shops across North America. She also works as a freelance illustrator and graphic designer with a variety of clients on branding, packaging design, and illustration projects. Katie’s work has been featured on sites like BuzzFeed, Woman’s Day, POPSUGAR, Real Simple, and HuffPost. When she’s not working, Katie likes to spend her time cooking and baking, tending to her plants, reading fiction - Harry Potter is her favourite), learning embroidery, and walking her puppy Tater. Today’s episode is just a really refreshingly honest conversation about the struggles that so often accompany being a creative woman, from self doubt and comparison to owning the things that make you different and dealing with expectations and disappointments. We have great discussions about making space for the unexpected, focusing on your own work and not comparing your work to others, external versus internal motivation and the power of recognising and exploring your fears. We also dive deep into owning your experience as an introvert and highly sensitive person and finding like minded people. If you ever wanted to be a fly on the wall of a really intimate and vulnerable conversation between two creative women who are just laying it all out there, this is the perfect episode for you! And if you struggle with people pleasing, anxiety and imposter syndrome, let this episode serve as a reminder that you are never alone. I am sure that you will, as I have, fall in love with Katie and really enjoy this episode! So enjoy the show!   About Katie Katie is an illustrator, author, and graphic designer living in Upstate New York with her husband, Joby, a puppy named Tater, and a cat named KittenFace. She is the author of the adult coloring book Don’t Worry, Eat Cake (which was featured on Canada's Biggest Bestseller List at Chapters Indigo), the book Make Yourself Cozy: A Guide for Practicing Self-Care, and more recently The Escape Manual For Introverts, which was just published on August 6, 2019 (all three by Andrews McMeel Publishing). She also designs her own line of greeting cards, prints and other stationery products, which are sold both online on Etsy and in brick and mortar shops across North America. She also works as a freelance illustrator and graphic designer with a variety of clients on branding, packaging design, and illustration projects. Katie’s work has been featured on sites like BuzzFeed, Woman’s Day, POPSUGAR, Real Simple, and HuffPost.   Things We Talked About: making space for the unexpected putting your blinkers on and focusing on your own work comparison and social media external versus internal motivation expectations we put on ourselves reframing fear as fuel the power of recognising and exploring your fears keeping a list of scary things you’ve done imposter syndrome experiencing life as a highly sensitive person Katie’s advice on people wanting to create something but it feels too big and too scary find beauty in the mundane meeting like minded people   About Meg & That Hummingbird Life I’m Meg and I’m the host of Couragemakers and founder of That Hummingbird Life. I’m an INFJ creative and multipassionate who has a bit of a notebook and post-it note obsession, loves foot-stomping country music and likes her hot chocolate with way too much chocolate. I started Couragemakers because I wanted to create a platform for passionate and unconventional women to have honest conversations and to share their stories, struggles and dreams. The intention behind this podcast is to inspire and encourage creative and mission-driven women to live a wholehearted life and follow the beat of their drum.   When I’m not recording episodes, writing bullshit-free, very vulnerable and encouraging Sunday emails to fellow couragemakers (join the party here!) or making new friends with the wonderful guests, you can find me working on all manners of magic over at That Hummingbird Life. THL is the online home for unconventional creatives and multipassionates who want to show up unapologetically and intentionally as who they are, and really own, live and share their many stories. It’s made for couragemakers who have so much great shit to give the world and want to leave their mark but have too much self doubt standing in the way!  

Hello Couragemakers! This week I’m chatting to Lucy Elliott - THE most colourful and fun chocolate bars I have ever seen. Lucy is the creative director and founder of Creighton's Chocolaterie.   She is a product designer, chocolatier and lover of all things colourful   (especially if food is involved!). From a young age, Lucy's dream was to have a career doing something she loved. At school, she came up various fun and colourful ‘products’ that she'd sell to friends and family, including a self-published cake cookbook, a range of greetings cards, band merch, jewellery… the list was endless but had one thing in common: everything was created & designed by her. Lucy lives in Leighton Buzzard with her husband, daughter and dog In today’s episode, Lucy is diving into her story, from how she has been running creative endeavour of one kind of another since being a child to how she founded Creighton’s Chocolaterie. We have so many great discussions about creativity in this episode. We dive into the power of creating the things you want to see in the world and creating with blinkers on, the need to have other and completely separate creative outlets when you put a lot of your work out there, the surprising relationship between impatience and perfectionism and how Lucy keeps her creative fires burning. This is a perfect episode for you if yo’ve ever struggled with the idea of creativity and business coinciding together, if you struggle with self doubt and you need a massive shot of inspiration. There are so many wisdoms of nuggets in here and I know you’re going to take so much from this episode! Enjoy the show!   About Lucy Lucy is the creative director and founder of Creighton's Chocolaterie.   She is a product designer, chocolatier and lover of all things colourful   (especially if food is involved!). From a young age, Lucy's dream was to have a career doing something she loved. At school, she came up various fun and colourful ‘products’ that she'd sell to friends and family, including a self-published cake cookbook, a range of greetings cards, band merch, jewellery… the list was endless but had one thing in common: everything was created & designed by her. Lucy lives in Leighton Buzzard with her husband, daughter and dog , I'm usually covered in paint or walking my wonderfully weird cockapoo Merlin.

Hello Couragemakers! I couldn’t be happier to be sharing the conversation I had with today’s guest. This week I’m talking with wonderful human who is Eli Trier. Eli is a community builder for Quiet Revolutionaries. She helps introverts with big dreams to get connected and build thriving, engaged communities around their businesses, so that they can make a massive impact, find their dream clients, and make their corner of the world a better place. She specialises in creating powerful, strategic online community projects and loves every minute of her work (even the boring bits). Eli lives in the wonderful city of Copenhagen, Denmark and when she's not working you can find her curled up with a book, painting, or hanging out with her husband Lars. Eli’s runs the group program love>numbers group programme which is all about getting connected and building a network of your right people. Applications are currently open - you can find out more by visiting , I'm usually covered in paint or walking my wonderfully weird cockapoo Merlin.

Hello Couragemakers and welcome to another episode and a Couragemakers first, because today I’m interviewing two wonderful women! And we’re diving into everything related to money, and if you’re anything like me, it might surprise you to find that you can have a hell of a lot of fun talking about money! This week I’m chatting with Martha Lawton and Alex Lemon, hosts of the podcast Squanderlust: part s elf-help, part comedy, part confessional, Squanderlust is a very different kind of personal finance podcast and talks about the emotional side of money, why our actions aren’t always as good as our intentions and what we can do about it. Martha Lawton is a former financial advisor is turned freelancer who helps organisations improve support for vulnerable people with money issues. She has facilitated hundreds of workshops about budgeting, borrowing and saving and helped thousands of people think more clearly about their finances. Martha loves learning recipes from around the world, spending time with her husband, her friends and her sister and crocheting. Alex Lemon is a former chartered accountant turned freelance editor. She works in content and communications for charity campaigns, marketing, web services, data visualization, digital policy and, lately, books. which makes sense when you know she was a journalist before she was ever an accountant. Alex enjoys swing dancing, learning Korean, reading and thinking about Life, and how to get better at it. We chat about so many juicy things in this episode, from why money is such a complicated topic for women, the history of women having their own money and the shame we often feel, to the joy of money and how to get really playful with it. We have so many great conversations about the rarely spoken about emotional and psychological sides of money, and Martha and Alex have so much great advice on what to do if you find talking about money simply plain scary. It is so refreshing to talk about money in a playful and joyful way, especially as I think it’s fair to say we have a somewhat complicated relationship with money as creative and multi-passionate women. As someone who tends to find talking about money pretty scary, it was amazing to find that there are ways of talking about it that actually feel good! Martha and Alex are so generous with their experiences, so brilliant at uncovering the shame that comes with money and I guarantee that this episode is going to make you curious about how you can reframe your relationship with money! I know you’re going to love this one, so enjoy the show!   About Martha, Alex & The Squanderlust Podcast Martha Lawton is a former financial advisor is turned freelancer who helps organisations improve support for vulnerable people with money issues. She has facilitated hundreds of workshops about budgeting, borrowing and saving and helped thousands of people think more clearly about their finances. Martha loves learning recipes from around the world, spending time with her husband, her friends and her sister and crocheting. Alex Lemon is a former chartered accountant turned freelance editor. She works in content and communications for charity campaigns, marketing, web services, data visualization, digital policy and, lately, books. which makes sense when you know she was a journalist before she was ever an accountant. Alex enjoys swing dancing, learning Korean, reading and thinking about Life, and how to get better at it. Martha and Alex are hosts of the podcast Squanderlust: a podcast about the emotional side of money, why our actions aren’t always as good as our intentions and what we can do about it. Part s elf-help, part comedy, part confessional, Squanderlust is a very different kind of personal finance podcast! !   About your host, Meg Kissack + That Hummingbird Life    I’m Meg and I’m the host of Couragemakers and founder of That Hummingbird Life. I’m a coach for creative and multipassionate women, a writer and INFJ creative and multi-passionate who has a bit of a notebook and post-it note obsession, loves foot-stomping country music and likes her hot chocolate with way too much chocolate. I started Couragemakers because I wanted to create a platform for passionate and unconventional women to have honest conversations and to share their stories, struggles and dreams. The intention behind this podcast is to inspire and encourage creative and mission-driven women to live a wholehearted life and follow the beat of their drum. When I'm not recording episodes, writing bullshit-free Sunday pep Talks to my wonderful Couragemakers community or working 1:1 with coaching clients, I'm usually covered in paint or walking my wonderfully weird cockapoo Merlin.

Hello Couragemakers and welcome to another fabulous episode of The Couragemakers Podcast! The week I’m so excited to chat with Mai-kee Tsang. Mai-kee is a Launch Strategist, Copywriter, Podcast Host & Coach who helps purpose-driven entrepreneurs to build their authority in business, and discover their Brand DNA so that they can thrive when they launch their signature courses. Outside of her 1-1 client work, she hosts The Quiet Rebels Podcast which is a dedicated space to help her listeners to create the courage to own their voice, message, and worth in both life and business - without having to be the loudest person in the room. And when she’s not in work, you can find her trying to solve the Rubik's cube and resisting the call of her freezer to dig into Salted Caramel Ice cream. In this week’s episode we’re really diving into the world of people-pleasing, shrugging off what other people expect of us and finding your intuition. Mai-kee shares her the journey of from struggling with what she wanted to be when she grew up to starting her own business, how she learned to listen to her intuition, and how she became friends with fear. We have a great conversation about the difference between internal and external validation and how imagination can be wielded as a source of good and how Mai-kee’s life changed when she stopped people pleasing. This is such a practical episode and I love how Mai-kee shares a wonderful exercise on how to use your intuition to make decisions and the advice she has to give if you’ve ever been rejected by your community. Before we begin, I want to let you know that this episode contains a very brief reference to sexual assault, so look after you and do what you need to do. If you struggle with people pleasing, putting boundaries in place, letting go of other people’s expectations of you or you struggle to connect with intuition, this is the perfect episode for you! Enjoy today’s show!   About Mai Kee Mai-kee Tsang is a Launch Strategist, Copywriter, Podcast Host & Coach who helps purpose-driven entrepreneurs to build their authority in business, and discover their Brand DNA so that they can thrive when they launch their signature courses. As a Launch Strategist, she’s at the front lines during course launches from start to finish. And with 5 years of coaching under her belt, she’s able to dig deep to understand their true desires and fears of her clients’ customers - to turn it into empowering copy. Outside of her 1-1 client work, she hosts The Quiet Rebels Podcast which is a dedicated space to help her listeners to create the courage to own their voice, message, and worth in both life and business - without having to be the loudest person in the room. When Mai-kee is off work you can find her trying to solve the Rubik's cube and resisting the siren call of my freezer to dig into the Salted Caramel Ice cream. Happiness for Mai-kee is working towards a life free of regrets in my relationships with family, friends, partner, work and health. , I'm usually covered in paint or walking my wonderfully weird cockapoo Merlin.