Honey for your Soul

In a world where it seems we can constantly tell ourselves lies while scrolling through another's instagram that we are not pretty enough, skinny enough, rich enough and so on, there are the Ashley Petrone's out there that bring you back down to reality and just make you smile. 

At least that's what Ashley did for me. 

It is my job to spend countless hours searching for influencers. This can range from your typical mommy blogger or fashion blogger, to reality TV stars and so on. I find that I have to be oddly critical of who I align Soul Honey with. If I run a company that is all about putting positivity and goodness into the world, I want the people that the company aligns itself with to do the same. 

The influencers I have personally always connected with where the brutally honest ones. The ones who didn't just show you their highlight real, although fun to see, but were vulnerable with what they were going through in life. They share the good and the great, while being realistic about the fact that sometimes life is just hard. And at the end of the day, they just make you smile. You feel as if, in some odd way, that you have found a friend in them. To me, those are a few reasons why I think this age of influencers is actually quite amazing!

Now, insert Ashley Petrone again. 

I was scrolling through my suggested feed on Soul Honey when I came across this stunningly gorgeous mom with her beautiful curly haired girl. I wandered over to her page and fell in love with her photography, lifestyle and writing right away. At the time, Ashley, along with her husband Dino and their three children were living in an RV on their plot of land in San Clemente, California. Awaiting zoning rights to build their dream home, they sold all they had and lived the simple life. Ashley shared the kids love for running up the hills of their land, nights outside roasting s'mores, the struggles of 5 people living in close quarters with one bathroom and so on. I found every post or story Ashley uploaded, I was more and more inspired. Inspired to decorate in a different way. Dress a different way. Think and have a new perspective on what is a want in life and what is a necessity. And of course, how to let your hair down and just have fun! If you follow Ashley, you will know that she is constantly dancing and singing with her family. It is just the best! 

Most recently, Ashley and her family have packed up and headed to Northern California. Her husband, Dino, got a new job and as Ashley shared so openly, they held out open hands and were ready to take on anything that came their way, even if that meant moving away from family within a few short weeks. These past few weeks, Ashley has moved her whole family into an apartment and as of Friday, a new home. Started renovations, getting her kiddos into school and so on, all while designing a collaboration with us. 

Yeah, I know, she really is wonder woman. 

You rarely see a sponsored post on Ashley's feed, which is another reason that I think she is so raw and real with those who follow her. You know that if Ashley shares it, she really does love it, rather than just wanting a quick paycheck.

I had sent Ashley product in the past and often saw her wear it, which is why I was crossing my fingers (and okay, maybe I said a prayer or two!) that she would agree to collaborate with us. Much to my delight, she said yes!

Ashley chose the quote, "Simplify your life." by Henry David Thoreau. The full quote being, "Simplify your life. Don't waste the years struggling for things that are unimportant. Don't burden yourself with possessions. Keep your needs and wants simple and enjoy what you have. Don't destroy your peace of mind by looking back, worrying about the past. Live in the present. Simplify!"

From the design, to colors and the product, both the t-shirt and the sweatshirt were completely designed by Ashley.

My hope is that the words she chose will be Honey for your Soul and maybe even encourage you that sometimes less is more in life. 

Give Ashley a follow @arrowsandbow and snag a shirt, or two, while you are at it.

P.S. Ashley will be donating 10% of her profits to Child Hope Services. 

Thanks for reading friends.

xx,

Abby - Founder and CEO

I woke up this morning to this poem from my Dad. I get quotes from him occasionally and I just love it. Whether it is applicable to what I am going through at the time or what has happened in the past, they are always a great encouragement to me. But, this one in particular hit me. I have learned that in life, and most certainly in business, bumps in the road are inevitable. Hard things happen and there is so much in life that is out of your control. But, if my dad has drilled one thing in my mind recently, it is resilience. He has always taught me that you can never beat someone who doesn't give up. I hope this poem is both a reminder and an encouragement for you, as it was for me. Hang in there and don't you dare quit!

xx,

Abby - Founder and CEO

It's one of my favorite weeks of the year! The week our Fall collection is released. Every year this is our biggest overhaul of the website. Meaning, we discontinue old product form the past year and revamp with all new releases. It is both completely exciting and utterly terrifying. But all in all, it is the best feeling when product I have worked on for months ahead of time is finally out for every one to see. Below, I am going to go through my favorite new products and why I love them!

The Madi  

The Madi muscle tank is a new style for us this year. I have wanted to make a shirt like this for the better part of a year now. My vision was to have a product that could be worn to your favorite workout class, but then easily transitioned to a comfy day time look. This muscle tank is longer than most shirts we make, as many women like the length to cover their bum while in workout leggings. My personal preference for styling The Madi is tying it in a cute front knot with high waisted jeans. I started wearing this top to the gym before the new product was released and I got so many compliments! Trust me, you will too. 

The Blair

The Blair sweatshirt is one of our most beloved styles. It seems like every Spring and Summer when we discontinue this product till the Fall, customers are begging for it to come back. We have revamped the style this year and I believe it is our best version yet! You will never want to take The Blair off! (Wash this product inside out and it will wear like brand new!)

The Lucy

The Lucy t-shirt has only been around for 6 months and it is quickly becoming my favorite top we have ever made. I love the versatility of wearing it with my favorite workout shorts or dressed up with booties and jeans for an adorable day date look. I wanted a t-shirt that looked effortless, as if you threw on your boyfriends oversized shirt, and I think we achieved just that with The Lucy! This is a staple. 

The Tatum

The Tatum has only been around for 6 months as well and I just love it! The Tatum is a twist on our old Tobi style. Made with different fabric and no waistband, I love the fit of this shirt. Tucked in jeans or worn with leggings, this shirt will give you that comfy casual look you are looking for! Also, this shirt is perfect for those warm blooded folk that get too hot in a fleece sweatshirt. This is for you!

My hope is that you love this Fall collection as much as I do! There really is nothing better than a cozy Fall day in Soul Honey!

xx,

Abby

Founder and CEO 

"Sometimes fear does not subside and you must do it afraid." -Elisabeth Elliot 

It's Saturday evening as I write this and I just arrived home from a piano recital. (Yes, I am 22 and just had a piano recital, HA!) Now to give you some context, I started playing piano a year ago for my dad. He bought us a piano when I was younger and none of us learned, so I decided it was going to be my New Years resolution. And if you know me, when I set my mind to something, you better believe I am going to accomplish it, or at least try to accomplish it. 

This past year every Friday morning at 8 am I have had a piano lesson. Bright and early I would wake up to get an hour of piano in before work. And much to my surprise, I came to love it. There have been months where I practiced more than others, but I found that like anything in life the more work you put into it, the better you get at it. So, I practiced as much as I could in my spare time. It sounds funny, but it amazes me the sound that my fingers can make. How learning a run and chords can make the song sound so beautiful. And most of all, I have loved what a challenge it has been both physically and mentally. To me, learning the piano was a terrifying thought, which is exactly why I chose to do it. 

Now, fast forward to today, my piano recital. I was playing Amazing Grace and all throughout the week I felt super confident, until today. This morning as I was practicing I could just tell I was off. Maybe it was nerves, maybe I was not rehearsed enough, I am not quite sure what it was, but I just didn't feel super confident about the song. I have a pretty good memory so it was unusual that I couldn't remember runs and was messing up on the easiest parts. Thus, I was pretty anxious about the recital.

Fast forward to arriving at the recital. Now, picture this with me. I am in a church full of families with children 15 and under, seriously no one except a 41 year old woman was there to play. These children all have years of experience under their belt, recitals they have played at, school talent shows and so on. My hands immediately got sweaty, my heart racing and I must have looked like I was going to pass out because my mom kept saying to me, "breathe." Let's just say, I was a hot mess. I end up playing my song and about half way through, I blank. Like completely freeze. So, I restart the song, and AGAIN I freeze. My nightmare was coming true. Not only was it embarrassing enough to get up in front of everybody and announce that I was 22 and playing a song after the 4 year old because everyone else there was better than me. (HA!) But to then mess of TWICE, I mean for a perfectionist this was a nightmare scenario. I end up playing the song pretty well the third time through with only a few mess ups, but oh well! 

Now, keep in mind this happened about two hours ago so I am writing this in part to hopefully give someone encouragement, as well as really just to vent. I was sitting there feeling pretty dumb. How did I mess up that bad. Then about half way through the recital a 14 year old boy, who is incredible I might add, got up there and did the same thing. He messed up twice and ended up playing perfectly on his third try. As the recital continued many others did the same thing, making me feel a lot better. (I know, it is sad I felt better when others messed up, but I will be honest and say it did, human nature I guess) Then, the last boy goes. Now I had never heard this young boy play, but I had heard my piano teacher rave about him. And I mean RAVE. So, I was super excited to hear him play. Then, it happened, he messed up TOO. Now, in all fairness, my piano piece was about 2 minutes and his was some hard Star Wars song that he memorized that was played at an incredible speed for about 7 minutes, but same thing right. :) In that moment, I felt for him. He was the last to go and I am sure he felt awful. Everyone was there waiting to see him play and he messed up. He handled it really well, picked up where he left on and played the end of the song to near perfection. 

Now, as I was sitting there, I chuckled to myself at first how I put way too much pressure on myself for a silly recital. My mom said it best to me that no one expects perfection. How could we, nothing and no one is perfect in life. Even the best piano players, like the young boy that messed up, are going to have their off moments, their moments of weakness and so on. However, the thing that shows the most courage is putting yourself in situations where you are scared. Where you have maximum fear, your heart racing and you do it anyway. 

For me, this is something I am really big on. I purposefully put myself in positions where I am really fearful. From skydiving to hikes with huge drop offs (terrified of heights), moving to LA at 18 alone and starting a company (terrified of failure), and most recently a piano recital (major perfectionist). We all have our own fear, but I was reminded today that what makes like worth living is facing that fear. It's not letting your life be defined by it. To go to the piano recital, try and fail and yet keep trying until you conquer it. 

I guarantee that young boy was disappointed in his performance, as I was, but what we remember most is not the mess up, but when he conquered his fear. That to me shows great character. 

While driving home this quote I posted on Soul Honey's account a while back kept playing in my mind. "Sometimes fear does not subside and you must do it afraid." 

So, if you get anything from this rant of mine, I hope it is that we should face our fear. To push our comfort zone, big or small. 

I absolutely never want my life to be defined by fear and my hope is that you choose to live that same way. Great reward can come from the most uncomfortable of situations. And it really just makes life more fun!

And as I write this, I keep thinking of my biggest fear. That crippling, nightmare, cold sweats fear I have.... SHARKS. Thinking I should go cage diving, what do you think? 

Push your fear aside. Piano recital or cage diving, just do it! 

Have a great weekend.

xx,

Abby

Founder and CEO - Soul Honey

What I have learned most this year is how to invest my time wisely. This can be applicable to anything in life. Your time at work, time with friends or family, time off traveling, etc. To make a long story short as I will write a blog about it sometime soon, I invested about 10 months of work into new products that ended up being manufactured completely wrong. This resulted in me losing not only my 10 months of hard work, but a lot of money. To put it in perspective, I describe it as spending a year at college working on your final thesis paper or project, only to have it fail due to circumstances that were completely out of your control. 

Now before you start feeling bad for me, don't, because that's not the point of this post. To repeat myself, I plan on going into what happened earlier this year in another post in the hopes that someone can relate to it and possible learn from what I went through. But, back to the point of me writing this. 

As I started to get over what happened, the main thing I kept reflecting on was the way I managed my time. How I should have invested more time into looking into other manufactures, rather than just a few. How I should have gotten more opinions. How I should have been more cautious with the investment and so on. Now, even though what happened was completely out of my control, at first I was really disappointed in myself for the amount of time that I had, in a sense, wasted on this. But, my opinion changed recently on a recent trip I had out to L.A. I was there for a few different meetings regarding different aspects of Soul Honey. In one of the meetings someone said something that I really resonated with. He said something along the lines to this, "Invest the time into finding the right people to work with. Once you do that you won't have to waste your time micromanaging them, as you can rest assured you hired the best. Thus, giving you more time to use and invest in on different aspects of the company." Now he was telling me this relating to a certain aspect of Soul Honey, but it got me thinking....

After a few weeks of thinking about what that meant, to essentially invest my time wisely, I realized we should do this with everything in life. From the work we do, to the people we spend time with and so on. We should use every day to the fullest. Now, that was a completely round about way to get to the real reason I sat down to write this post. 

My family and I have a good friend who was a successful baseball player for the Angels. Every time I saw him for the better part of last year he told me about this podcast called, "How I Built This." He would encourage me to listen to it and every time I saw him a few weeks later he would ask if I had done so. The answer was the same every time, that I would get around to it sometime soon.

Now flash forward to this year. I got back form those meetings in L.A inspired and energized. I had been really down on all this time I had lost and was motivated to not let that happen again. Whether it was a week day or the weekend, I was going to carpe diem, gosh dang it! 

So, the day came that I decided to turn off my music and turn on the "How I Built This" podcast. Because if I had a 30 minute drive to the print house, as much as I love singing Taylor Swift at the top of my lungs, I could use that 30 minutes learning from other entrepreneurs. It was one of the best decisions I have made recently. I find myself wanting to drive the long route home just so I can listen to the podcast longer. I have learned so much in these past few weeks, I am kicking myself I didn't do it sooner!

So, all that to say, use your time wisely. Listen to and learn from the right people. Don't wait the better part of a year to take someones advice, try it out immediately. 

If you are business minded or simply just like learning from interesting and inspiring people, I can't recommend these podcasts enough. I am leaving a link below, as well as some of my favorite companies I listened to. But if anything, I hope this post motivates you to not waste your time. To use it, but use it wisely. A simple change, like listening to a podcast, can inspire and motivate you. I encourage you to give it a try. 

And don't worry, you will still catch me on the freeway jamming out in my car, but most likely it will be jamming out to some amazing entrepreneur I am listing to. 

Thanks for reading!

xx,

Abby

Founder and CEO of Soul Honey

              _________________

How I Built This - With Guy Raz (https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this)

-Wholefoods

-Warby Parker

-Bumble

-Honest Tea

-Southwest Airlines

-LaraBar

-Patagonia 

-Ben and Jerry's

Just to name a few!