Welcome to the very first episode of the Rooted Business Podcast — a show for women entrepreneurs who want to build a sustainable online business without sacrificing their wellbeing.

Hosted by Jess (operations + project management expert) and Rachel (marketing strategist with 10+ years of experience), this podcast is where intentional marketing meets optimized systems — all rooted in mindset, energy, and long-term growth.

In this episode, we share:

1. How we met inside a manifestation Instagram group during 2020
2. The role mindset and community played in starting our businesses
3. What a “rooted business” really means (hint: think yoga, foundations, and aligned growth 🌿)
4. Why hustle culture is outdated — and what to build instead
5. The 3 core pillars of a sustainable business:
6. Optimized operations
7. A true marketing ecosystem
8. Entrepreneurial mindset & wellness

If you’re:

1. Just starting your online business
2. Pivoting into entrepreneurship
3. Growing but feeling overwhelmed
4. Craving sustainable success instead of burnout

This podcast is for you.

We’re here to help you build a business that is profitable, aligned, and deeply rooted in purpose.

Subscribe and join us as we explore marketing strategy, backend systems, mindset work, and the real behind-the-scenes of entrepreneurship.

We’re rooting for you. 🌱

Welcome, everyone, to the first episode of the Rooted Business podcast.

I'm Jess, and I'm thrilled to be here with my incredible co host, Rachel.

Yes.

I'm so excited.

This is the start of such a beautiful journey, and I literally, I can't wait to share, like, what this means for both of us.

But, like, with everybody else that's going to be listening to, it's going to be so beautiful.

Yes, I completely agree.

But before we dive into the nitty gritty of the rooted business, let's start by introducing ourselves and share a little bit about how we met.

Because I think it's kind of strange but also kind of normal for the times we were in at that time.

Yeah.

So you and I actually crossed paths in a very random sense.

Like, I would say universe aligned, maybe is the proper way, but we ended up somehow in a manifestation, affirmation, Instagram group chat.

And if that doesn't kind of give you guys a little bit of insight into how we both are as far as, like, the spiritual side, things like that, but it ended up with us literally just speaking out our intentions, our affirmations into voice notes on Instagram.

Like, I don't know.

Do you have a different experience of.

Yeah.

I remember this kind of randomly coming across this random post from somebody, and they had said that they were going to follow.

I think it was Gala Darling's, like, her morning manifestation ritual, and she was looking for people to join in with her.

I can't remember when exactly we started this, but it was either.

Right before.

I know.

Yeah.

It was probably, like, right.

Yeah.

Like, right in the middle of COVID I don't even know if I was back at work yet because I had got laid off to the pandemic.

But I think I started when I was away from work.

But then it was just a crazy thing.

We found this group, and every morning.

I'm not consistent in any.

Anything, but for some reason with this group, every morning I would make my coffee, I would go sit outside on my porch, and I would just speak my intentions and my manifestations into the world.

And I think it quickly became apparent that Rachel and I shared a lot of the same values, and we were kind of in the same point of building our business.

I actually don't know if you had how long you had been in your entrepreneurial journey, but I know I had just kind of started and was just getting a couple of clients when we first started talking, but it was crazy.

But when I look back, I'm so grateful to have had that group because there were probably at some points, if I wasn't being held accountable by this free group, I would have given up and I would have just gone back to my corporate job and I wouldn't have kept pushing.

So I'm super grateful that I connected randomly with these people and that I was able to find that group.

Yeah, I mean, I think it just kind of speaks to how a lot of people.

Maybe I don't want to use the word failure because I don't believe like, in that, but I think the start a business is scary and it's hard.

And I think having a community, whether it was just, like, universally placed in front of us, it helped so much and it kind of allowed to detach that trust or that fear and kind of place it in.

It's fine.

We're going through this all together and, like, it'll be fine.

Like, I think that was like my mantra, like, going through the first year of my business, I guess it's fine.

It's going to be fine.

Yeah, it was.

It was a lot about, like, learning to trust yourself and learning that you can push through the obstacles.

But I totally see how if you didn't have that support, like I said, I probably would have given up, but a little bit more about me and Rachel.

Our backgrounds complement each other perfectly as well, which kind of also drawn us together.

Prior to going off on my own as a freelancer, I have a project management background and I've always kind of been tech savvy.

While Rachel has a ton of experience in email marketing and just marketing in general.

Yeah, 10 years in the marketing space makes me kind of feel a little old, but I know that the majority of my time has been living in this marketing strategy sphere, which I think is really going to help this podcast and our knowledge kind of blend together.

And ultimately, it's kind of what led us to have this conversation.

Like, the few times that we have gotten on calls to kind of discuss projects and, like, products and offerings that we could do together, we just saw like, oh, my gosh, this is such a balance.

So I think it's gonna be really exciting to kind of, like, share the lessons, the insights and both sides of our brains and how they operate with everybody that's gonna listen to this.

So it's going to be exciting.

I think it's become really apparent too, like you said with building this, what our different strengths are.

I'm definitely more tech and ops, and Rachel is just a genius when it comes to marketing.

So I'm Excited to see how we continue to work together and grow.

Our ultimate goal with this podcast, or the intention of starting it, is to empower entrepreneurs to create sustainable businesses while prioritizing their wellbeing.

And I guess that kind of leads into what is a rooted business, why we chose this name, and what was the intention behind it.

So want to start off, Rachel, what does rooted business mean to you?

Yeah, I mean, I think rooted business kind of goes.

I think when we were playing around with certain areas, it was that beyond the hustle mentality.

So it was like harmonizing your hustle was kind of the vibes that we were trying to pull into this.

Really being able to build a community that's supporting you throughout your ebbs and flows of business.

And anybody that tells you that business is all sunshine and flowers, like they're.

They're trying to sell you a pipe dream here, because that's not the reality of it.

So really understanding that having a business that's sustainable, that is built for longevity, is about nurturing client relationships.

It's having intentional marketing strategies, and at the bottom line, it's honoring your energy, honoring your values, and understanding that no matter what pivots or evolutions are happening, that you can kind of stay grounded and rooted in all of that.

Yeah.

So it's funny, I already had the Instagram handle for this because rooted business was a concept that I'd been thinking about, and what that came from, for me is I am a practicing yogi.

I love.

I'm a certified yoga teacher.

I love my yoga practice.

It keeps me grounded, it keeps me sane.

It's my therapy.

And there's so many times when I'm on my mat where I feel the connection between business and yoga just, like, happens.

Or I can find, like, a metaphor that my teacher is using in a business.

So when I think of a rooted business in my brain, I'm literally thinking about tree pose and, like, how to successfully execute a tree pose.

And it really starts right at the foot, right at your foundation.

And I look at that as, like, your client, who you're serving, how you're serving them, what transformation you're providing them, and then your why.

And then once you're grounded in that foundation, you can continue to move up to the body, and then you're at your core.

Right.

And for me, that's thinking about your core values, how you want to show up your core energy in there.

So you are grounded into your foundation.

You're pulled into your core, and only then can you kind of begin to like expand your branches and branch out.

So that's visually what I see when I say rooted business.

And I hope that didn't sound too crazy or so.

Woo.

No, that was so.

I mean.

Yes.

Woo.

But that's so beautifully put because it's so.

I don't know, I think like if anybody that just think about that affirmation practice or the manifestation practice that we started our businesses apparently like around.

Right.

Like that is the same kind of foundational mirroring of having that tree pose in your yoga practice.

It's strong, it's steady, it's trusted.

I think it's so beautiful.

Yeah.

So.

But I also think that we need to know all of the universal alignments happening here.

Right.

Like the fact that you had the handle, that's one bizarre.

But like, wow.

I think totally aligned to how we even started our business journeys in the sense that like we just randomly ended up in this thing that became such a strong pillar in our business of really kind of leaning back into a steady practice, a morning routine, like balancing our, you know, the mindset side of business.

Cuz I think that first year was really hard for me.

I was.

We're just blindly trusting here.

And I think that it's, you know, the, the universe was guiding us through this whole thing to come to this moment where we're at right now.

Like, I think that that's still totally true.

Yes.

I always say I did not manifest the pandemic, but I.

Right prior to the pandemic, I was in Bali, I was on a yoga retreat.

And I was just imagining a world in which I could go and have the freedom and flexibility to do those things more often.

And then I came back.

I was the first employee in my company to have to like quarantine and the entire world shut down.

Two weeks later, I'm laid off and I'm trying to figure out.

So I feel like the universe just gave me this like, nudge, this is what you're gonna do.

And that entire year, thank goodness I went to Bali because I felt like very grounded in my spirituality at that point.

But like I had the trust to be able to like keep going and taking the next step and taking the next step because yeah, it, it was scary.

I remember when I first landed my first big client, I literally freaked out and cried and like talked her into paying me less.

Like it was.

Shut up.

It was like crazy.

So I feel like it just takes so much trust in yourself and I'm so proud of us and everybody who's taken that leap into entrepreneurship for.

For doing it.

Yeah.

So no matter.

I guess let's say if you are just starting your business and you're kind of feeling those exact same thoughts, like stick around and kind of keep listening to what we got to tell you here.

And then if you are also have had the same journey that, like, we've had, where it's been kind of a roller coaster and it's been kind of this, you know, journey of trust, I hope you resonate with a lot of the things that we're going to talk about as well, which I think I. I think this kind of sets us up for the next thing we really want to share, like what you can expect from this podcast and from these episodes.

So.

Yeah, so when we were coming up with the concept for this, we really started off by defining what are the pillars of a rooted business?

What do you need to have established?

And what we came up with was optimized operations, a true marketing ecosystem, and just the importance of mindset and wellness for entrepreneurs.

So through that, we're going to be sharing personal stories, our tips, our strategies, and just kind of a conversation like me and Rachel would normally have about what we're seeing in the online space, what we're experiencing, and hopefully sharing that in a way that inspires you and helps you reach whatever harmony you're trying to find in your business.

Yeah, I think it's going to be a super fun journey, but I also think there's going to be some really fun, interesting, hot takes that both you and I have experienced throughout this online journey.

You know, like, got some.

Got some things we don't agree with.

So I think it's going to be pretty fun to kind of like, chat through a lot of these things, but also give really valuable, useful tips and strategies too, both from the op side and from, like, marketing strategy.

We hope you enjoyed this first episode.

Please subscribe and join us on this journey.

Together.

We are all on this mission to create a deeply rooted in purpose business that protects our wellbeing.

Make sure that you stay tuned for our next episode.

I believe we're diving into marketing.

Yeah.

And I hope to see you there.

We're rooting for you.