E133: Elevating Your Morning Routine

E133: Elevating Your Morning Routine with Alexandra Panagoulia of Batch Beauty Lab

Meet the founder of Batch Beauty Lab, business consultant, and philanthropist, Alexandra Panagoulia in this week’s episode of the Women’s Empowerment Podcast as she shares her high-vibe morning routine and the best practices for making our mornings better…

[2:13] Valerie LaVigne: Welcome back to The Women's Empowerment Podcast today I'm super excited to introduce you to our newest guest Alexandra Panagoulia. Alexandra is an entrepreneur and business strategy consultant with a strong passion for creating a positive social impact with a love for all things wellness and self discovery, Alexandra created batch beauty lab, a local natural skincare brand to promote confidence individuality and self care, naturally, a one woman show determined to make a difference, Alexandra is also passionate about helping young women pursue their passions through her consultancy white owl strategy, Alexandra dedicates time monthly to speak with aspiring entrepreneurs and help to guide them in the direction of pursuing their dream.

Wow, you are so cool.

I'm so happy to have you on the show and honestly I already know this about you, but reading your bio. I just feel like you are such an Aquarius, and I love this so much, a teacher, a leader, a philanthropist. You know you do so many things and you help so many people so I'm super excited to have you on the show today, super excited to absorb all of your knowledge and information. So thank you so much for being here.

Alexandra Panagoulia:: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited

VL: how we met was about probably about a year ago now, through a kind of like minded community of entrepreneurs in the make lemonade online networking community so I think it's really excited to, to see how kind of our relationship has grown over the last year, and we've kind of popped in colors to social media now and then, we've reconnected, more so recently, and one of the things I love about following you and watching you and learning more about viewing and getting to know you as a person, is that you have some really incredible, kind of like self care habits and rituals, and some of them are really similar. So I've been noticing that you've been walking a lot, and tracking your, your walks just like I have been.

AP: Every morning, I love my morning walks. I love walking in the evening too, but there's something about, you know starting your day outside, creating a call within yourself and just acknowledging and appreciating the environment that we're in, and I think that it's really powerful for me to start my day.

Greeting the sun or walking outside and just getting my body moving and waking up slowly and really special and I've been walking every morning.

More so, you know, the beginning of the pandemic, it was a great way to get outdoors and change the scenery and when I was working my corporate job. I was walking to the bus stop every morning, but I was definitely not enjoying my surroundings and I was running around and always rushing and I think that the shift from walking as, like, a means to get somewhere and rushing and it's really been different for me when I'm walking to enjoy it to create a ritual for myself and clarity within myself, and also a sense of calm so it's been great. It's been a great transition for me.

VL: Yeah, I love that I think what you said was really cool about how, you know, it's a, there's a new intention or a new purpose behind your morning walks and your morning routine versus what you were doing before. So for those listeners who haven't explored your website before or know much about you, you, you're used to working corporate and then the last few years, you started your own company, and why don't you tell us a little bit about what batch beauty lab is and how it transpired how its manifested over the last few years.

[6:30] AP: I would love to. And it's a really great question. So, my professional background is in business strategy, marketing and communications. And so coming out of university. I held many corporate typing jobs within marketing communications, so I've worked at tech startups and I've worked in corporate banking.

But while doing that, I've always had a passion for consulting and just helping people. And so, grow university I started a business called White owl strategy, and at White owl strategy I consult with business entrepreneurs on business strategy but also helping to refine their marketing and communication strategies and something that comes naturally to me and I really do enjoy watching people grow and watching their ideas transpire into businesses, and something that I always want to continue to do.

But when I was doing my master's, I had an opportunity to launch a business, and it was, it started in a school course actually so it was our entrepreneurship course, and I had the opportunity to think about what am I really passionate about and at the time, I was really passionate about living a holistic lifestyle and skincare and natural beauty is something that I've always been really interested in and I thought hey you know what, this is a great time for me to start exploring how I'm going to bring my passion for natural beauty together and beauty brands, my skincare brand. And when I was thinking about what that might look like at the time I was always hosting. Do It Yourself type workshops in my parents kitchen for skincare so do yourself skincare so we were making bath salts or body moisture bars and blending oils and I, that was my aha moment I was like, I'm going to create something where people have the opportunity to experience how great it is to blend and mix and create your own batch of product. And that's where I came up with bajri lab, and the original concept of batch beauty Labs is that you would find your own skincare so we have something very unique and original where customers are able to purchase a base plus booster combines the two to activate a formula, and essentially create their own bathroom product. And so, while I was in that, that master's program, I was working really hard behind the scenes on my business plan I participated in a pitch competition, and I actually got some funding to kickstart the business, and I use that funding to immediately find a chemist who was willing to work with me to create really great natural formulas that people would love.

And now here we are two years later, celebrated our 10 year anniversary of competence for the person who's using them and really celebrate individuality and people onto our website you'll see skincare for the bold and unique, and I find that in everything I do I really want to be bold. I want to be bold in my decisions and I want to embrace my uniqueness and I bought that to come out in our products as well and so that's a little bit of a batch beauty lab and how we got started.

[10:25] VL: That's so amazing. It's been such a short amount of time for this. This transition and this growth and like you said, like, it's not just your business and your lifestyle that's changed but also the smaller kind of habits that you're, you're focusing on, like your morning walks and how they changed from going to the bus stop to being more of this more of a ritual and really kind of opens up where do you use, you said you were grading the sun and slowly waking up but I think there's so much power, and so much beauty in kind of this, this new way of living that you have and how, you know, the corporate life was, I guess we could say and, you know, Jeff and correct me if I'm wrong, but the corporate life, I'd say it was supporting habits of, you know, check it off the box, get from point A to point B, where as this new business has never and batch beauty lab and the mission behind it is supporting a completely new way of living, and I'd love for you to share a little bit more about your morning routine can you take us behind the scenes maybe walk us through a morning into your life.

AP: Absolutely. And, you know, you bring up a really great point, my morning routine has definitely transitioned. And I think that once I had the autonomy to plan my own day and become an entrepreneur who's really invested in the business, I wanted to create a routine that allowed me to really be myself. And, you know, be an entrepreneur who's leading with clarity and purpose and intention. And when it came to creating my own schedule, I'm like, I'm going to create a ritual I need to create a ritual that's going to allow me to be myself throughout the entire day and that really is what my morning ritual is. And so, it's nothing too crazy, but I mean, it means a lot to me and I find that it just got me time in the morning. And so if I'm taking you behind the scenes. I first thing I do when I wake up is I open up my, my blinds. And I just love to embrace the day and greet the sun like I said, I am a certified yoga teacher so like do I really love doing sun salutations when I come out of bed, I just do one little sun salutation, you know, get the body moving, get the blood flowing, and just take some time to set an intention for my day so when I'm opening up the blinds and it's a sunny day or it's a really snowing morning I'm like okay so this is, this is the foundation of what we're dealing with in terms of environment so how am I going to set a positive intention for my day so that I'm going to be productive, how am I going to nourish my body and my mind so that I'm gonna be able to execute on what I want to achieve for the day. So taking time to just, you know, reflect and set an intention is definitely something that's really important to me.

After that, I, I am obsessed with the daily stoic like it's a book that was gifted to me by here here in front of me, it's by Ryan Holiday, it is essentially daily meditations that just, you know, provoke some thought into your day, and I read a page a day. And I think that's great for me to again set intentions. Think about things from a different perspective, and I really really do love to journal so it's something sent out to me that I'm reading then I'll journal about that. But I'll read my daily stoic, and then I'll pick up my five minute journal, and I'll quickly raise my gratitude list so what are the three things that I'm grateful for today. And what is my affirmation for the day so my affirmation today was, I am worthy and capable of achieving all of my dreams. And so, you know, writing an affirmation that is suitable for the day ahead or for not feeling, or just you know what I need to keep going, is something that really resonates with me. So, all of that takes about, I don't know, maybe the first 15 to 20 minutes of my morning and wash up. And I start my day with some more lemon water makes me feel really great. Shout out to my naturopathic doctor, Dr Sarah Duino for just, you know, instilling really great habits, and I think the lemon water is really great one. And then I go straight outside so change into my runners and I go straight outside for a morning walk and that's anything from 20 minutes to 45 minutes and just really enjoying like I said, environment, feeling gratitude, and again, because we built the intention that except for myself for that day, and really taking time to process okay this is what I have upcoming for the day, and this is how I want to show up for the people that I'm interacting with and this is how I want to show up for my business and this is how I want to show up for myself so taking that time in the morning to kind of be a little inverted and and how I want to show up in the world, it's really important for me.

BOOK: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday

JOURNAL: 5 Minute Journal

[16:23] VL: I love those books that you mentioned.So, is that so many great things I feel like I want to incorporate a lot of the little habits that you are doing. And then some of the things I want to highlight from what you said were the kind of going inward, that introverted time for you to or that introspective time for you to describe how you want to show up each day whether that was the intention or the feeling, or how you how you want to act. And when I want to know from there is, like, can you give us an example for maybe the one that you use for today of what your intention was, and then how does that tangibly relate to the actions you take for the rest of the day?

AP: So, a great question. So today I knew that I had a coaching call with a client, this morning, and I also know that prepatch PT lab, I have my first two hires actually serving this week. And I also was thinking about how I want to show up for the podcast today. So, this morning on my morning walk I really was thinking about the frequency that I want to be in for the rest of my day, I want to be really high vibes for my coaching client. I want her to feel confident about her business I want her to feel confident about the information that we're exchanging and, and I want to exude that for her. I want to support and show up for her in that way. And I knew that I wanted to be authentic. Today when you and I were talking and I also know that after this call when I delve into the work for batch beauty, love I want the new hires to know that I'm here to support them and to help them and to help them grow and that's really important to me. So when you're asking me like what did I do, what did I think about while setting those intentions, how did I decide that that's how I want to show up. I really started to think about, you know, the things that could impact that positive vibe and how I'm going to choose to handle them today. And so, you know, it's not that there's any predisposed situation or environment that I have in mind but you know things come up like a call runs late, or I I'm rushing because I'm actually always rushing but so this, this routine for me is like really great allows me to slow down and, and to gather my thoughts.

But I think it really is just a matter of creating your intention, determining how you want to show up, how do you want to show up in the world, and how are you going to react to things that kind of impede on your plans. And it's hard and it takes a lot of self awareness and it takes a lot of control to be able to decipher your emotions from your actions, but I think that if you could think that you could take time in the morning to set those intentions, and also, you know, determine how you want to show up and how you want to act if things don't go according to plan, just allows a smoother execution of your day when, when things do fall in line.

[20:20] VL: Yeah, that is a great point, and even just thinking of myself this morning, I set the intention to be calm today, and I didn't think too much, but I knew that I had a lot of things to do so.

from the studio to the podcast to my own consulting, there, there was a lot on the to do list. And I thought, Okay, I'll get an early headstart on the day. I'm going to go to the, I'm going to walk to the post office and deliver my packages first thing in the morning. And on my way and thankfully I figured this out very early on in my walk but on my way. I'm like, oh it's such a beautiful day. Wait a second, it's really early in the morning, Will the post office be open to take these packages, and luckily I had my phone on me and I looked at that and I'm like, no, they're closed, and then I turned around, I'm like okay well like you know I got a little walk in, and now I have to go to the next thing. And part of it was like oh this is kind of throwing me off because in a way I could have, I could have decided and chosen this this situation as, oh my gosh you're just wasting my time. And then I thought well this is just poor planning, and then for some reason I thought this podcast interview was an hour before it actually was so I was like, all set up here in my little closet, getting ready to do that episode and then I'm thinking that's great I'm not getting a notification on my phone that like, five minutes to go, and I will go like, Oh my God it's not for another hour, like, and I just felt like, again another Hiccup and I'm like no I didn't. I was so stressed out about my massive to do list this morning, but I didn't really consider the how I was going to incorporate my intention, and I mean it was it's happening anyway like I remain calm. I was like alright well whatever, go back to the desk, go back to what I was working on before. Then we'll just return here but it's like these little hiccups throughout the day. And you know, that happens sometimes, you know, we set the intention to be calm, we set the intention to be productive and some surprises come away, or we forget something, or we get a call or whatever, and I think it's important to remember that even if we don't get that full morning routine or even when those hiccups arrive at those speed bumps, we can always reset so I know that for this podcast episode I'm going to reset again and maybe I'll do that through a walk or inspiring me to take that action to go through a walk. So, yeah, I love that you're thinking about, you know what you have to do, how are you.

Probably the best kept secret and maybe it's not a secret, but I think it's one of the things that people often forget as entrepreneurs or business owners. We know going out into the world each day, not thinking about how you want to show up and break it down into something more specific. What are you going on today? If you are speaking in front of people, how do you want to show up for them? If you're working on your business, how do you want to do it? How do you want to be in your business? I think it's so important and I love how you are. How are you sharing that so thank you so much, it's just getting so much insight into my own into my own intentions and my own practices.

So you talk about, you know, really believing in achieving clarity, and a life and in business, and yes we can take it into something a little bit more specific and break it down into our day to day. But what about those times where, you know, whether it's maybe it's a lack of clarity. How do we find clarity when we're when we're having trouble with, with that focus. How do we turn off that outside noise?

[24:16] AP: Great question, and I'm a really really strong believer that your actions, the to align with your intentions, and so can make it perfectly clear, and by no means, I have, by no means perfected the morning routine but we're, you know, achieving clarity and it's a constant learning process, but I can see that I've improved on becoming very self aware, and I think that's something, you know, a tangible takeaway is, you want to align your daily actions with your daily intentions, it's really important, so if I want to be successful in business, I want to have an organized workflow and I want customers to land on my website and feel a sense of competence and, you know, like I want them to feel the emotion that I'm putting into my business, I need to make sure that my daily actions are aligned with with those intentions so daily consistent action. I think it is something to play here. You want daily consistent action towards your goal, and I think it's really important, and that daily consistent action needs to be aligned with your intentions, and once you can do that successfully, and you are so aware that what you're doing today does not align with the intention of being confident, powerful, strong, successful, whatever your intention might be called.

If your daily action, if you're self aware enough to recognize that your daily actions aren't aligned with your attentions.

You can make a change in your you'll be able to, you know, be one step closer to achieving your goals and achieving clarity so if my intention for the day is, you know, I just want to have a nice calm productive day and I'm running around and rushing and duplic sorry my actions are not aligned with my attention, and I'm aware enough to recognize that and so I take a step back, like you said my regroup reset, and that's okay. That's actually great it's a great personal development to be able to recognize when you need to take time for yourself, we need to reset. And, you know, take that moment to decide how you want to move forward.

And that is considered to me daily consistent action, that's something that I do, constantly to be able to maintain clarity, and when it comes to, you know, clarity, for my business when I am my most authentic self. That's when I get my best business ideas and that's when the ideas actually work in my favor. So if I'm thinking about something or want to do something but I'm not sure on how to execute it or you know I have this really great idea for a product to bring to market but something I, but I'm unsure I'm unclear on how to do it or even how to execute it's something that I really love to do is just take, take time for myself. So like you said, reset, go for a walk, do some yoga, do some journaling and get back to being my true authentic self, shut out the outside noise. And when I can come back to myself that I'm thinking about, you know my intentions or something that I want to execute on, that's when I get my best ideas, that's when they're working in my favor, that's when they're on my frequency, etc. And I think that if you have clarity within yourself. You can get clarity within other aspects of your life because you are truly authentically, moving forward, fearlessly and confidently yourself. If that is making sense or if I'm just rambling let me know but I think that the authenticity and originality and uniqueness that we all have within ourselves. If that's what creates our personality, those are our characteristics, and finding clarity and taking time to come back to that within yourself, allows for more clarity and other aspects of your life.

[28:35] VL: This is such a deep topic. But as we're talking about it I'm like oh my gosh there's so many pieces to this and there's so many layers to it, and I think the biggest thing, or I guess the thing that I want to amplify and what you're saying is, it doesn't need to be a huge thing that you do every single day it's the small thing that you do and what makes it so powerful is the time is the consistency that small thing over time. And it compounds and it becomes this transformation not overnight, and maybe this is the missing piece for people to say, you know, I want the successful business I want the you know the life where I feel good in my body every single day.

You know what you want, whatever the result is fill in the blank, and we're here doing the okay we did a morning ritual today. Okay, my intention this morning was to be calm. And then tomorrow we're like okay we're not calm anymore. Well this is where the work comes in, is that over time, we're building into this practice, and this goes for everything you said whether it's walking every morning or creating the sun or setting the intention or becoming more true and authentic to yourself. This is also compounding over time. This is also growing each day as you practice it and you know as you're speaking I can, I can speak from my own experience to like, the more that I connect to myself, the more that I make time for this important part of my morning or my day routine.

The more clear I get in my business and I spoke about this on the previous episode, or no, it was an IG live that I did this past week was that I was feeling like I was really struggling, and I'm thinking to myself, How can I not be making sales right now how can I be feeling so horrible in my body, and doing the work I was showing up every single day. I'm doing my routine, I'm speaking authentically like I could not be more real and more present than I am right now. But everything is going to crap.

And this is the time where we need to keep going and maintain that consistency, because I'm not even kidding you. A couple days later, I kept doing it showed up. Wasn't everybody not doing so great, this is what's helping me this is what I'm doing this is how I'm staying consistent. This is not setting intentions and showing up, and within a few days, I had two one on one clients.

I had, you know, the number of people saying like, how inspired they were about my work, how much they enjoyed a podcast episode. I mean, there just was like this, overflowing abundance of all of the things I was desiring and you know people listening to this could say like oh well that morning routines on so lash, and I would love to have the luxury of, you know, a one hour time for myself. And, and you can probably say speak to this too but like, start with passive and credible practice, it started with these little tiny practices that we cleared over time to create something that, that speaks to you, that supports you. So now I'm going off on a tangent and rambling, just so much to what you said that it has, you know these deeper layers of this deeper meaning to it where it's those small actions, small actions consistency I feel like are the three things that if anyone's listening to this podcast episode is going to take something away. These three words together that we need to remember.

[32:44] AP: Yeah, you bring up a great point and you know I have people reach out to me because I really love to document my daily walks on my Instagram or you know just share a little beautiful picture. The trees or the clouds, whatever it might be, but I really want to get out and do that. How do you do it. I have to wake up an hour and a half earlier, to start my day. My day starts at nine o'clock and I know my desk at nine o'clock I know I'm waking up earlier because it's really important to me to check that time and so I think that creating non negotiables for yourself. It's also really important, creating those non negotiables boundaries that allow you to establish that time for yourself, and it doesn't have to be an hour, it can be 15 minutes it can be 15 minutes when you wake up, it can be 30 minutes before you go to the bed but it's really important to take time for yourself. And that's something that I've learned throughout the years, and that's what I think drives me to want to be better and it motivates me because now I understand after, you know, achieving some of my own personal goals, that it's really the daily consistent action, like you said, that makes all the difference, but I wanted to touch on, on the point of something you said earlier, is that sometimes you just, You don't want to wake up and do yoga, or go for a walk or you're tired or you're this is your lens so many things come up, but I heard, I don't I don't remember why I did this but the point is is sometimes when you don't want to do something that's exactly what you need to do if your bodies so I don't want to go over, I don't want to go for a walk or stretch. Sometimes that's exactly what your body needs you to do, or if you know you're, it's fine to have those off days, but it's also really productive to challenge yourself to do something and build your mental endurance, especially when you don't want to do it and I find that there are so many mornings where I'm like, I need to press snooze or I'd love to have like an extra 20 minutes to just like curl up in bed. But then I'm like, You know what, I think my body wants to outside or if my body needs to move, or I need to achieve that mental clarity so I'm gonna challenge myself to get up and even if it's only for 10 minutes this morning.

So, I think, a point that I'd love to share with the audience is that challenge yourself.

And, you know, establish a mental endurance for things that you really really want in life and get them and challenge yourself and create a routine or create intentions and actions that align with what your dream is aligned with what you want to achieve. And I think that it all comes down to self awareness. And, again, sounding really repetitive but the daily consistent action

[36:02] VL: you spoke to so many great points and this year there are going to be days where we're like, I don't want to show up. I don't want to do work. And I will say, the sharing my walks on social media, and people knowing and messaging me and texting me and saying like oh like I went for a walk today and, you know, it's such a beautiful day You inspire me to get outside and that is holding me accountable for my own practices and so having a without social accountability or a healthy habit mentor like when I offer or just a friend. We can meet for those walks or have a phone call when it makes such a difference in maintaining the habit, especially when you're first starting out, you know, you start to lose a little bit of that momentum, well no, you're building momentum but you're losing a little bit of the inspiration and the motivation. So, yeah and you know what there is a little bit of discipline involved in creating any new habit, so whether that's waking up earlier, or, you know, really creating the space and physically putting into your calendar, I'm taking a break, and turn off your computer and turn off your phone when you're on those breaks I think it's really important.

And this is something that I resisted, really long time was discipline, and a routine. It was just so funny now because now I coach people with habits. And I have a very, very colorful schedule was very organized. However, in the, in for a long time I thought I was such a rebel, like, I don't need a norm clock, I don't need a schedule, I don't need to be anywhere doing anything at a certain time like that life is rigid. And what I was completely missing. Was that discipline, equals, freedom, and having these intentions having a you know a little bit more of an outline to my schedule and it's not like incredibly rigid there's there are scheduled breaks in there so some people would find that rigid because I'm scheduling my really it's a non negotiable for me at this time every day, I go for a walk or I turn off the computer or the screen or whatever it is, I spend time outside. That is actually allowing me to create a life of financial freedom of time freedom of just feeling what's important to me and my core value is freedom and for a long time I didn't realize how much the discipline of a routine was actually going to bring me to that place of freedom. So, you know I wouldn't, I always like to encourage people to not hate it until they try it and see if it works you'll learn and experiment with yourself and really give yourself that time. So what would you recommend for someone starting out, what would you recommend, where they start and how long they try their new habit, some checkpoints maybe take us through that little bit.

[39:03] AP: Great question. I would recommend to do something that makes you feel good, makes you feel good, you should be doing it. If it's going for a walk, like we were saying, or journaling or doing a little bit of movement or stretching in your bed or even meditation I love meditating. It makes you feel good, and if it's a habit that you want to start, then you should consider doing it. And you're the habit expert here, so I want to say. I hear that it takes 21 days to form a habit, is that right?

VL: It depends on the person.

AP: Yeah, right. So, I would say. My recommendation would be to do something that makes you feel good, do and at the same time every single day and do it for four weeks three to four weeks, and hold yourself accountable. I love that you brought the accountability point up because that's a really really great point. And if you can have an accountability buddy, or, you know, create a mental contract with yourself like I'm not going to go to bed. Unless I wrote one page in my journal. And you make that a mental contract with yourself and an agreement that, but you really want to stick to that I would recommend doing something like that. I know that before I go to bed before I put my head down on the pillow. I always write three great things that happened during the day, and I keep my, my pen in my notepad beside my bed and I know that that's just an agreement that I have with myself before I go to bed tonight I want to acknowledge three great things that happened today. And so, you know, just to kind of sum up the recommendation, it would be do something that makes you feel good, preferably a habit that you want to start doing for three to four weeks, do it the same time every single day doesn't have to be can be something like one minute meditation or two minutes scratch or whatever works for you.

Guaranteed. If you can do this to it, you'll feel so good you will have a new found confidence in yourself because you're sticking to something that you've agreed to, and you're the only person that can create positive change in your own life. And I think that there's going to be time for it's going to be challenging and it's going to be difficult to stick to your goals but again going back to the point that it's challenging, then you need to do it because it's, it's helping you grow. And I think that that's a really great takeaway for the people listening here today.

[42:00] VL: You made some excellent points for sure. It is such a powerful part of personal development, to overcome challenges to celebrate those wins and that success and that transformation that's happening. And it can be hard to see that over, because it's so small but over time. There is a difference, and there is a transformation there but sometimes we don't always see it because we're the ones taking that one step in front of the other, the people who aren't on the journey with us every single day, they see the transformation from day one to day 30 or however many days you've been doing it for so I think it's really important to look back and to celebrate the strength that you've built over time right and to, to record those wins every day. Love that. Love your, your gratitude journal practice. This has been so wonderful and I feel like you're such a breath of fresh air and love that you shared your morning routine with us, and kind of some of the tangible tips and and the reminders and they inspiration for us to get started with our own time, and your new routine to really create clarity, through, through these habits so thank you so much. Can you share with us, where we can find you, where we can follow you and how we can support your business?

WEBSITE + SHOP | www.batchbeautylab.com

10% OFF use the code EMPOWERMENT10

INSTAGRAM | @the.alexandra.marie @batchbeautylab

RAPID FIRE ROUND

1. What are you currently reading? What’s your favourite book?

How to WIn Friends and Influence People

The Story of Steve Jobs

2. What do you love most about being a woman?

I love, that's a really great question. There's so many things, It's like how do you choose. I was, I What came to mind is just I love how openly emotional I am but I don't know if that's exclusive to being a woman, but I think that there are a lot of times where women find themselves in situations where they're like, Oh, they're not taking me seriously or, I'm being told I'm too emotional, but that's happened to me, and I embrace it, it is who I am and that is what makes me authentically me, and it's what it's what adds character to my life into my story and, and I'm proud of that.

3. What does empowerment mean to you?

Really great question. What comes to mind is being empowered means being confident in what you're doing and feeling supported by people around you, or even yourself, and showing up for yourself, empowering yourself, you know, having a willingness to learn, Having a beginner's mindset is super super important to empowering yourself to achieve things that you thought you couldn't do, or to, you know, show up in the world as somebody who you want to show up as an being that human that's making a positive social impact in the lives of others around you. And so empowerment to me really means taking the power back from external factors, and moving forward confidently and fearlessly in your beliefs to achieve, you know, what's important to you.

4. What are you currently working toward?

So many things. I have a laundry list, okay, of aspirations, but something I think is really, that's really important worth noting is. I like, like you mentioned, I'm really, really passionate about helping others achieve, confidence, and she their business goals and their dreams. And so something that I'm currently working on in batch beauty lab is creating a program where I could be just the business in general is going to help young entrepreneurs kickstart their businesses as well and that's something that's really important to me. And over the next few months, keep an eye out because there will be a program that's rolling out, that has to do with creating positive social impact within the community, but also helping young entrepreneurs achieve their goals.

VL: Okay, you feel like world domination is maxed out so incredible. Well, Alex, thank you so much again for being on the show is an absolute pleasure to speak with you always, and I want to acknowledge you for one taking the time to speak with me today and to for all of the incredible work that you're doing. You have impacted my life positively and I know that you're changing so many people's lives so many people's businesses. It's really cool to to see all of the kind of facets of what you do and your skill set and your talents, and how they, they really do support people and, and women and I'm so excited to see all of the rest of the things that you create, and you share with everyone. So thank you again and I really appreciate everything you've done.

AP: Thank you! Oh this is so fun and fun fact this is actually my first podcast, so thank you for having me. And I'm really excited for what's to come, and as always I'll be following your journey and your daily habits and I look forward to what's to company to.

Podcast Host

Valerie LaVigne

Valerie is the creator and founder of Valerie LaVigne Life and the Women's Empowerment Show. She helps busy and empowered women create healthy habits so that they can become the best version of themselves and transform their lives. Learn more about Valerie here!