June 2021 Covergirl: Body Positivity Activist & Influencer Sarah Nicole Landry
What are the most important things you want your daughter to know and why?
I want her to be curious, always. Curiosity breeds learning, creativity, openness, and opportunity. Curiosity builds bridges and relationships. Her whole life will be determined by her, I hope. Curiosity is the part I want her to hold onto, no matter what her life looks to be.
What values drive your ambitions?
Authenticity in everything I do. It can be so easy to get caught up in money, growth, and appearance. If I'm not authentic to myself and don't hold integrity in everything I do, I won't feel ambitious, I won't feel successful, and I won't feel grateful.
What did your entrepreneurial journey look like? What advice would you give to young women starting out?
I started blogging close to 13 years ago, in the pits of motherhood. At the time, I was living 6 hours away from friends and family and was a stay-at-home mom of two little girls living on a very, very tight budget. Starting out for me was incredibly scrappy. It was googling how to code a blog. It was starting a small shop on Etsy and creating products to support and fund my blogging. It was networking. It was staying up until 11 p.m. –– waking up early before the kids –– and using every single nap time there was to make it happen. It was a decade before it was ever really a business structure. It was a decade of doing it because I loved it and had just enough hope that it could be more. My best advice for starting out is to just start. Don't get caught up in what you should call yourself, your niche, who you need to be, or what anybody else is doing. And don't get bogged down by the days and years of slow growth or lack of acknowledgment of the work you may be doing. It's the stick-to-it-ness that leads to that overall success. Every bit of what you do is an opportunity to learn and grow upon what you do.
How important is a support system to you? What qualities do you look for in people who are in your inner circle?
Support systems are everything. You can be surrounded by so much support in this job but still, feel incredibly lonely. I have a very tight inner circle. They know my best and my worst and allow me to navigate fully through it. My community is also the best that there is. Truly. They've allowed me to grow and change as a human being and often pushed me forward in exactly the way I needed.
Tell us about a moment in your career that you will never forget.
My very first official speaking gig. When I looked towards the audience, I saw this line with hundreds of people in it. When I got off the stage, I realized they were there for me. They were people in my community that I'd never met before, but that had interacted with me daily for years. The hugs. Oh, the hugs. It brought my online world right into my arms. I felt incredibly grateful at that moment. □
