IAM225- Millennial Blogger and Wellness Entrepreneur Explores The Science Behind Different Self-Development Interests

Nia is a 27-year-old, millennial blogger and wellness entrepreneur from London. With a background in medical sciences, she writes on a variety of topics – mainly startups, mental and physical health and biohacking. You can read her articles at niafaraway.com or find her at @niafaraway on Instagram.

• CEO Hack: Reading and meditation
• CEO Nugget: Failure is a state of mind and everything is about perception
• CEO Defined: Creativity, experimentation and outlook

Website: https://niafaraway.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/niafaraway/

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Transcription:

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:26

Hello, hello, hello! This is Gresham from the I AM CEO Podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Nia Davies from niafaraway.com. Nia, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Nia Davies 0:36

Hi, thanks for having me. Yeah, it's good to be on it.

Gresham Harkless 0:39

No problem. Super excited to have you on and what I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Nia so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. Nia is a 27-year-old, millennial blogger and wellness entrepreneur from London. With a background in medical sciences, she writes on a variety of topics – mainly startups, mental and physical health, and biohacking. You can read her articles on her website and find her at @niafaraway on Instagram. Nia, it's awesome to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Nia Davies 1:06

Yeah, definitely.

Gresham Harkless 1:07

The first thing I wanted to do was just ask you a little bit more about what I call your CEO story. What led you to start your business?

Nia Davies 1:12

Yeah, so I started my business about a year ago now. And it's not launched yet. It's due to come out spring, summer of this year. And what kind of inspiration that is I've got this traditional background when it comes to health and wellness. Because it's a health and wellness startup, we're selling self-care products. And in this last year, I've really made self-development and self-care, my focus, but I noticed that it was a lot of holistic practices that I was turning to so things like yoga, sound therapies, and ritual intention, I really started to see all of the benefits from those. And coming from this traditional background. And with quite a traditional family. It's a little bit controversial. So I wanted to create a brand that really educates the consumer and marries this holistic with traditional together. It's like a marriage of East and West.

Gresham Harkless 2:03

There you go to find a perfect happy medium, it sounds like

Nia Davies 2:06

Yeah, and it's a marriage of my heritage as well because I'm half Eastern and half Western. So it's a bit it's a part of me.

Gresham Harkless 2:13

Oh, there you go is a reflection upon us. So that's, that's awesome that you've been able to kind of marry those two together. And I heard you mentioned sound therapy. What exactly is that?

Nia Davies 2:20

Yeah. Sound therapies are things like Tibetan singing bowls and Gong baths. So it's kind of like a meditation, but you focus on the sound. And you can feel sort of the reverberation and the vibration going through your body. Joe Rogan did a good podcast where he talked about it. And I think it's called chromatics, or something where the sound makes really cool patterns through the fluid that it hits. Yeah, you can look into that. It's really interesting.

Gresham Harkless 2:46

Yeah, it definitely sounds like you know, it's funny because I've had this app that I use, it actually helps you to go to sleep funny enough. So it will play bells and stuff. And I don't know the science behind it. But I was told that because of the way the bells rang or when they rang or something like that it basically has an interaction, I guess, with your mind and your body. So it kind of triggers certain things that help you to kind of relax.

Nia Davies 3:08

Yeah, like it has a healing effect. I can't remember the scientific term for it from metrics or whatever I said is definitely not it. But there's some cool science behind it.

Gresham Harkless 3:17

Nice, nice, nice. So, I appreciate you for sharing that with us. And I wanted to ask you a little bit more about what you're doing on your website and your blog, and all those awesome things that you're doing. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Nia Davies 3:28

Yeah. So with the blog, niafaraway.com. That's kind of a millennial lifestyle blog that looks into the science behind some of these things that I've been trying. So most recently, I've written about alternative practices and how they have also written about some of the random alternative practices that I try. I did Cambo the other week, it's this Amazonian frog medicine, you put it into these little burns on your skin and it massively bolsters your immune system. Yes, it's a lot of little things like that, that I look into and want to share, if I found them good.

Gresham Harkless 4:03

Nice, nice, nice. So you said, like the blog, I guess kind of has laid the foundation of the company that you're building and the website that you're building as well to correct

Nia Davies 4:11

Yeah, so the blog just started off as me exploring all my interests. And then I realized that I have a huge interest in self-development. And self-development is a part of self-care. So that how that's how that became part of the brand, the self-care brand.

Gresham Harkless 4:26

Nice, nice and what's the brands gonna, what's the brand gonna be called?

Nia Davies 4:28

So the brand is called Yugenial, it comes from the Japanese word, Eugen, and it was sort of the start of my, I guess, self-healing self-care journey, and that's why that's got that name.

Gresham Harkless 4:39

Okay. Okay. All right Nia. Could you I guess, tell us a little bit more about the company and the website that you're building too?

Nia Davies 4:45

Yeah, so the company is called Yugenial. It's a self-care brand that sells wellness products, things like from skincare to biohacking supplements and oils in terms of the website, it's linked to my blog and the blog is all about millennial lifestyle, self-development, self-care, and the science of alternative practices and bringing them into the mainstream.

Gresham Harkless 5:07

Okay. Okay, and how did you come up with the name?

Nia Davies 5:09

So Yugenial comes from the Japanese word Eugen. And it means a profound sensation of the universe. So it's a slightly spiritual brand. Because one thing I do think in the West is that we've got this modern secular society that places such an emphasis on the physical and the physiological, but not so much on the traditional on the psycho-spiritual. And I think we've lost a lot of value in those kinds of things. So that's why I've got this spiritual element to the brand. I think that's a big part of self-care and self-development. And it was inspired by my time in Indonesia, where you can really see the cosmos and there's so much less light pollution there.

Gresham Harkless 5:45

Interesting. Yeah, I absolutely love that. The fusion of kind of two different things, I believe that you get something special when you're able to kind of fuse those two different ideas and bring them together into something kind of remarkable. It sounds like this is what you're building as well.

Nia Davies 5:58

Yeah. Because it seems like especially in approaches to health, things are becoming very polarized. I mean, they're becoming polarized in all industries at the moment. And what makes sense usually is what's in the crossover and sort of agreeable compromise in the gray area, rather than any extreme ends. So it's about marrying the two polarized ends of health and approaches to self-care.

Gresham Harkless 6:20

Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. It's funny, I read this book, years ago, it was called opposable mind. But it was kind of that exact concept where you have two different tensions, so to speak. And when you're able to bring them together, kind of like I guess, peanut butter and jelly is the is this way to put it together, we're able to bring those two things together, you have something that's really great that you put together. So it's great to hear that you're doing that.

Nia Davies 6:40

Yeah, thanks. No, I completely agree.

Gresham Harkless 6:43

Awesome, awesome, awesome. And now I want to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And this is what you feel kind of distinguishes you or your organization, you might have already touched on this, but what do you feel kind of sets you or your organization apart?

Nia Davies 6:52

So I think when it comes to the industry, I'd say our brand is kind of like Goop meets Deciem. So Deciem is very scientific, very just fundamentals and Goop is very much like saying that they're both as equally important as each other. And it's the best of both worlds when it comes to the rational and the irrational and the modern and ancient approaches to health and wellness. So I think that's what separates us.

Gresham Harkless 7:17

Nice, nice, nice. No, I absolutely love that. Just bringing those two things together again. And what I wanted to do is switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app or book or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Nia Davies 7:33

I think I found the two best things for me have been reading and meditation meditation I try and do every day when I wake up for at least 10 minutes, I've got the Sam Harris app, which I think is one of the best. And then in terms of reading, I just love self-development books and books on sort of spirituality. So Rupert Sheldrake, Brian Weiss, Tim Ferriss, Tim Urban, that kind of thing.

Gresham Harkless 7:58

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, self-development is so huge. And I love the fact that you touched on it a little bit earlier, where you said self-development is part of self-care because I think sometimes you can forget that when you're not developing yourself, you're actually giving yourself love. And you're actually, you know, showing yourself attention and putting your own oxygen mask on, so to speak.

Nia Davies 8:13

Yeah, exactly. I think self-care has got this reputation of just being about beauty products and bath products suitable for yourself and growing as a person, which leads to everything else in your life. Really?

Gresham Harkless 8:25

Absolutely, absolutely. I would definitely agree with it. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice. Or if you can happen to a time machine. What would you tell your younger business self?

Nia Davies 8:38

I think one thing I'd probably say is that failure is a state of mind and that everything is about perception and perception is something valuable. I think that would be the most useful thing for me to know, way back when

Gresham Harkless 8:51

Absolutely no, that's huge. And I love that because a lot of times, and I've heard this a lot, you hear this a lot, that failure is a way to get to success. And it's kind of all in how your mindset kind of views that and what we kind of look at failure as quote unquote, as if it's not the end, if you don't stop, then it becomes a learning lesson, not necessarily a failure.

Nia Davies 9:08

Yeah, exactly. I think when they happened at the time that the failures that I had felt like the worst thing ever. And now looking back, I only see them as learning curves, or I see them as benefits that happened because so many good things did come out of them. But it's just that you don't really get to see what those things are at the time. So it's just recognizing that it is a state of mind. And it's temporary. And it's a mindset thing.

Gresham Harkless 9:31

Absolutely. And as being so close to it that I myself have experienced the same thing where something bad happens. Oh my oh my gosh, this is the worst thing that could ever happen. But a lot of times it happens for you not necessarily to you so it redirects to the path that you want to be.

Nia Davies 9:45

Yeah. And it's easy to see that in hindsight, but it's when it's happening, not seeing how but knowing and having faith. That is the case.

Gresham Harkless 9:53

Exactly. Exactly. Having the end able to trust is huge. So I definitely would agree with that. I appreciate you for sharing that with us. And now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is a definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So, Nia, I want to ask you what does being a CEO means to you.

Nia Davies 10:10

For me, I think the most important thing is it means creative freedom. So I'd say that CEO stands for creativity, experimentation, and outlook.

Gresham Harkless 10:20

I love that created you say creativity, experimentation, and outlook.

Nia Davies 10:24

Yeah, those three things.

Gresham Harkless 10:26

Awesome. I love that it definitely spells back to being able to kind of build and create your own and chart your own path, as we kind of talked about today. So I appreciate that definition in that perspective, as well, too. So Nia, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out. What I want to do is pass you the mic just to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and our listeners know. And then of course, how best they can get ahold of you.

Nia Davies 10:47

Yeah, so anything additional, I guess I share most of what I'm interested in and what I wrote about on my blog, which is niafaraway.com. And you can find the business Yugenial, on Instagram, so you can get notified when we launched. It should be around spring or summer.

Gresham Harkless 11:06

Awesome, awesome, awesome. And we'll have those links in the show notes as well. So Nia, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out. Definitely, you know, looking forward to the launch. And hopefully, we will have you back on when you launch to hear a little bit more about what it is that you're doing as well and how that's progressing. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Nia Davies 11:21

Thanks. Yeah, that'd be great. We should definitely catch up sometime down the line.

Outro 11:25

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co

I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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