Part 2: Maggie Sellers Shares the Resources She Uses in Business and Life

0:00Welcome back to Female Founder World. This is part two of our conversation with Maggie Sellers. if you missed the first one, please go back and listen to it because you're going to need some context before we jump into this one. We're going to cover your resource recommendations and we've got a few different categories that I want to cover, but because, you know, everyone listening to this is someone who is entrepreneurial, ambitious, let's start with your recommendations around career, work, business, things that have helped you be the best version of yourself in that area. Yeah. I think the first thing is a journal, get yourself a blank journal, writing it every single day.

0:34You can do free form or you can actually go. We have a ton of resources for like journal prompts. That's like, like, cause I think when you focus too much on what other people's thoughts are, other people's opinions, I actually, I have a saying every morning, create, don't consume. So like you actually should be focused on yourself more than you're focused on everything else out there. So I think that's the number one thing. I do read very specific newsletters every single morning. So there's stuff like tube filter, which I love for social media, what's going on in that landscape. There is morning brew, which I love from like a business news perspective.

1:06I also have somebody in my life where most recently, like we send things back and forth to each other over email almost every single day, articles, things that are coming up. So find a buddy, call them like your information diet buddy, where when there's something relevant, you're sending them links that you think that they might like and vice versa. I love that. Obviously your newsletter, I love, and I love that we've like started collabing on stuff, which has been really fun. And then I think also like my interest truly from an investment perspective now, and just like also what's going on in the cultural zeitgeist is I love BOF.

1:41So like fashion, beauty, I do think that the reports and the perspectives is what gives me a lot of inspiration to create content. So BOF, WWD, I also truly love getting, I have a lot of investment bankers in my life. So I love getting like their POV on the markets and just kind of like what they're seeing from potential acquirers and what there's interest in. Mostly I focus on investment bankers that do like middle market or food and Bev beauty. And then being a fucking good consumer. Like I love being on TikTok. I obviously have rules and regulations for it for myself. So it doesn't get out of hand.

2:16I also think going and studying people in person, like go to the mall, go walk around Sephora. Like what are people gravitating towards? Like I, instead of learning about the 13 year olds at Sephora through BOF, I learned about it through being at Sephora, watching 13 year olds, like totally destroy a store. So I think like, don't forget that there's just an element of being a consumer and your own interpretation of it versus a reporter or a journalist, like telling you that that's what you should think. Tech crunch. And also the reporter is giving their own interpretation of exactly what they're doing.

2:47So why shouldn't you do the same thing rather than just parroting what they told you? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And then I will say little fun fact about me. I have dyslexia and like a few learning challenges. So I am not good with all these like processes and my team will try to set up like notion and count and all these things. I just get a piece of paper and I write everything. And then I'm very lucky now to have an assistant who at the end of the day takes probably 25 pages of notes and types it and organizes it for me because having so many systems and things and like that just also got really overwhelming for me where I was like, yeah, I don't, that's not how my brain works.

3:24My brain is kind of all over the place. I'm a creative. That's just what it is, what it is. I'm going to drop in another recommendation there for a community slash they do courses. It's called Holisticism. Have you heard of that? She's based in LA and their community are a lot of people who work in like lots of like tarot card regions, astrologers. But really the idea is they are building systems for squiggly brains as the trademark that they use and just the way that she kind of like structures her content and creates these programs and templates that I think most of the world has just like left out this group of people and that if you're someone who just thinks that normal systems don't work for you they have really good resources that just like okay well this is where your brain works this is the way that we can help you organize that so you're not just you know I love that having 50 different notebooks with like half of them filled.

4:13Yeah. I also have. Yeah. I have that too. Yeah. Okay. More recommendations. What about the second and last category I wanted to ask you about is wellness, beauty, health, your own mental health. What are you doing? What are you loving? What do you recommend? Yeah. So I actually recently just switched up my entire routine. So I noticed something about myself. I have really, well, it's actually gotten a lot better since I did this, but I used to have the most crippling anxiety. I woke up, I was stressed and I went away to Europe for the last month. And I realized the time zone was the craziest mind fuck for me because it was like, you know, you hear these successful people, 5 a.m.

4:49club, even if it only had four hours of sleep, then you're in your workout, you're working. OK, so if you do that in L.A., you are still so far behind. And my team is spread out like we have two people that work in New York and Toronto. So I'm like getting emails, emails. I was just so overwhelmed. So when I went away and I was ahead, I was like, wait, this is working for me. So now my new morning routine is I get up immediately. I get on my laptop, which probably makes a lot of people throw up, but I'm working. Literally, I haven't even brushed my teeth yet. I'm drinking water and I am working for two hours.

5:24Once I feel like emails are cleared out, I have a good understanding of what's come in. I kind of know what my plan is going to be for the day. That's when I go, I get ready. I go enjoy a walk. I have a leisurely coffee. I call my mom. Like these are all things I never used to do because from the minute I woke up, my cortisol was spiking. I was so stressed. Now it's like I'm doing a lot of work, take a break, a lot of work, creative, take a break. And then I work sometimes at night as well. That has been a complete, complete 180 on the success of my business, my productivity, and my mental health.

5:59I love that. Also totally resonates with me. I've been spending a lot of time in London. I'm trying to spend more time there of the summer. And when I wake up, I wake up like 5am with my baby, midnight in New York. They're not even online yet. So I've got a couple of hours where I can check the emails from last night. And by the time I'm online and at my desk at nine, again, like the U.S. isn't even awake yet. Our entire business is based in the U.S. And I just feel like it's so much less than, I can't force myself to go to the gym knowing that I have a thousand emails in my inbox and things to action and like urgent tasks I need to get out.

6:33it's so much more just like lean into the way that you feel just like sort it and then take your break like sometimes anxiety is there for a reason I know and I think like that's also what's the hardest thing and it's so hard to give like blanket advice because I do think it's custom some people are really good at like managing that type of thing where it's like they can push themselves to go to the gym I used to but I didn't realize how much was weighing on my mental health because I was like looking at everyone successful saying that their morning routine and their morning time was the most important thing.

7:04And I think so it's around figuring out like even just little things. Like I put my phone on do not disturb now for the majority of the day so that there's not messages coming inbound. I took off all notifications for social media. So I only really go in when I see some. So I think it's little things. And then I also did get from a health perspective, I think it's little things. I go for a walk after I eat every single meal, 10 minutes. Best way to digest, then there's not food sitting in my stomach. I also kind of cut out every single drink other than water and coffee I do drink coffee but less I'm kind of on a matcha train okay but one coffee a day for sure yeah but I used to be at like three or four oh wow yeah so I'd be spiraling if I had spiraling yeah and then the other hack that I learned from somebody that's recently come into my life is around sleep the importance of sleep I black out curtains now I used to have my I used to think oh I'll wake up circadian rhythm to the light.

7:59No. Blindfolded mask. Fine if you're going to bed when the sun goes down. You don't need to wake up when the sun rises, Maggie, if you've had four hours of sleep. Mouth tape and white noise. Getting the best sleep of my life. My aura ring has never been happier. I love it. Maggie, thank you so much for chatting. This has been so amazing. Thank you so much for having me. I'm such a fan, so I'm so excited when this comes out. I just wanted to jump in and end the show with a quick thank you and shout out to all of our paid business besties subscribers for$9 a month business besties bypass literally years of networking by getting access to all of the people that you need to build your dream business besties get access to exclusive in-person meetups in cities all across the us australia and the uk you get access to our group chat and you get to bypass the wait list.

8:48You also get invited to exclusive monthly group business coaching call sessions where you can speak to experts and founders and ask them all of those questions that you just can't Google. It's$9 a month. You can cancel anytime. Head to bestie.femalefoundaworld.com or click the link in the show notes for more.