Last week, Nichelle and I went to Asheville, NC with the AMAZING Red Dress team, an online women’s clothing brand. I’ve been personally shopping with them since HIGHSCHOOL – and they were one of my collaborators when I FIRST started blogging, so I feel like they are really my home team. 

The drive from Athens to Asheville is super easy – it’s only about 3 hours. This time of year is basically like their Super Bowl as the leaves start changing and everyone is gearing up for the holidays right around the corner!

Nichelle and I did a wine tasting, a Land Rover tour, and took some amazing content photos. 

Be sure to tune into Episode 43 from our Season 4 Launch of Life with Loverly to hear all the things to include in your Biltmore tour too – as well as learn details around the upcoming Red Dress Dream Drop for her next clothing line!

Seriously, if you get the chance to visit the Biltmore this season, Nichelle and I couldn’t recommend it more. We didn’t want to leave 🙂

And then, also in Episode 43 is the real MVP of the digital space right now: Mallory Ervin.

If you’ve ever wanted to make a change in your life because you feel you aren’t living into your full potential, this episode is for you.

Mallory is a best selling author, podcaster, and youtuber. Her career began on the Miss America stage, took a turn into 3 seasons on the Amazing Race, and then she navigated her way to Youtube where she has now cultivated a following totalling over 700,000.

Mallory is here to break down the meaning behind her brand’s mantra: LIVE FULLY, and how we can stop living a FINE life and start living a FULL one, right here, right now.

Mallory overcame an addiction to prescription pills after her time in the Miss America Pageant and is now here to help all of us lead a life of fullness, not just of comfort.

What I love about Mallory and this conversation is how vulnerable she is about her lowest points of life, and also how she consistently fights to keep her values at the forefront of all her decisions. You know how life gets so busy that it’s hard to know which way is up and which way is down? Well, we’ve all been there – especially as moms. Mallory gives so much wisdom on this episode around how to navigate living your life in alignment with your values, even when things get overwhelming, so you can keep feeling like YOURSELF in your everyday.

We also chatted about:

• Mallory’s biggest advice for those wanting to break into the blogging industry, 
• How to identify ‘red flags’ in your life, and
• Where do we begin to live fully starting TODAY.

One of my favorite parts of this episode is at the end when Mallory breaks down a metaphor on how to make sure our priorities actually stay priorities in our lives. At some point in time, you’re probably going to drop a ball, but the way Mallory explains how she evaluates what it means to ‘drop the ball’ in her own life has helped me so much since this conversation. 

There are so many golden nuggets in this episode and I seriously can’t wait for you to tune in.

Buy Mallory’s book here!!

Want more Life with Loverly to help your personal growth? Check out my conversation with Life Coach Jenn HERE!

This podcast was transcribed using Descript. Please forgive any typos or errors.

Brittany : Hi, friends. Welcome to the Life with Loverly podcast. I’m Brittany, a wife, mom, and lifestyle entrepreneur here to help you discover your best daily style and encourage you to try new things When getting dressed each day, I took a tiny following on social media and turned it into a community of over 1 million amazing women, and I am so glad you’re here.
I’ll be sharing my heart with you beyond the 15 seconds on Instagram. So we’ll be diving into things like personal growth, friendships, motherhood, marriage, and of course — the business of blogging. Really, this space is here to serve as your go-to resource to building a life you adore while sprinkling some kindness to others along the way.
Grab an iced coffee and let’s do life together. I’m Brittany, and this is The Life with Loverly podcast.

Hi friends. Welcome back to Life with Loverly.

Nichelle: Hello.

Brittany : Nichelle and I just got back from a few nights away in Asheville, North Carolina with the Red Dress team, and it was so beautiful and fall like, perfect.

Nichelle: It was like a postcard everywhere you turned.

Brittany : It really was. The view out of our room, when I did a video after, I had my breakfast laid out right there and some coffee, and then I panned up out the video, people were responding, being like, this looks like a postcard, or this looks like a painting on the wall.

Nichelle: Yes. It really was. And then the next morning when we woke up, the fog over the mountains. Oh, I just took your breath away.

Brittany : The trip was just a few days. We drove up Sunday because Asheville is only three hours from Athens. So it was a really easy drive and we drove up Sunday morning and came back Tuesday night.
So it was very quick and packed and I think we were both like, do we really need to go back?

Nichelle: Stay another night?

Brittany : I know also, I think we do need to go back because I’ve heard the spa at the Grove Park in is like one of the top in the world.

Nichelle: Yes. Apparently you have to make a reservation ahead of time, so don’t go anticipating you’ll be able to get into the spa because that’s not going to happen.

Brittany : Months. And apparently somebody was telling us that this time of year is the Grove Park ends Super Bowl because everybody wants to come experience the sunsets and the fall foliage. And it was, it just was so colorful. At night. They have all these different spaces to sit outside.
Everybody was out there just having a cocktail, celebrating life, and like watching the sunset at night. It was so fun.

Nichelle: Yeah. Asheville was way more packed than I anticipated when we got in Sunday. I Mind you, it was the weekend, but it was busy all the restaurants, the people on the street walking their dogs.
And then when we got to the hotel I was like, something’s going on. But we experienced exactly what that was. It is peak time and it is just beautiful.

Brittany : Yeah. So we went to Asheville with Red Dress which if you’re not familiar with them, they are a women’s clothing brand, an online shop where you can buy.
All different beautiful pieces. They are actually local to Athens. They do not have a storefront anymore, so they are all online, but they’re like headquarters and their distribution center, everything is here in Athens. And I have personally been shopping with them since high school. So my relationship.
Diana, Kristen. Everybody at Red Dress has gone back for 10 plus years and it’s been so cool because they were one of the first brands that I really collaborated with when I started out and it just always felt my home team brand because we both live in Athens and because of that we’ve had the opportunity to travel with them like several times this year.
Diana is such a visionary. She is the creator and mastermind behind everything that happens at Red Dress, and she’s so brilliant and it’s so cool to see just the difference of her brand compared to other boutiques or women’s clothing brands, and what she puts into every piece that is created is truly so interesting.

Nichelle: And what CEO still has their hands that deep in everything that goes on in their brand?

Brittany : Yeah, it’s really cool because I think I said like visionary a few times, but like her vision for each collection and what she has really started doing, she’s calling them dream drops, and it’s based off of a place that she visited or something that she did at some point in her life.
And she’s creating a collection of clothing based off of that experience or a trip. So for example, earlier this year, we went to Beverly Hills, and that was where the first drop was, and I was the guest of honor on that trip. So a lot of the pieces. Once they were being designed, they had me in mind and they had my brand in mind as somebody who would be like aligned really well to help promote this collection, which I was very honored to be part of the first dream drop, and it was so magical.
Things about that were just next level. Her vision came out in the clothes and just the whole party was set up to just be so amazing. Plus, we had such a good time. Being in Beverly Hills, and so that’s why like every piece that she’s like creating, that gets shipped out and sent to somebody you are wearing a legacy. When you think about it like that, there’s so much more meaning and excitement behind it.

Nichelle: Yeah.

Brittany : I love being part of a story and we went to the Biltmore, which was actually your first time, right?

Nichelle: It was my first time and it was actually so much fun. Diana actually was walking in front of me at the Bilmore, and she was shocked too.
She was like, it’s your first time. I was like, yes. She was like, I get to show you all of the reasons why all of these pieces mean so much. Her collection was based off of the Biltmore

Brittany : Yes. So last year she and her family went to the Biltmore in September, I think she said, and she just got all this inspiration for a fall collection. So the whole time we were in Asheville, we were all wearing pieces from the collection, which I think was really cool.
And we were in the Biltmore. She was like, oh, and Kristen, your shirt is based off of this rug. And it was like the same colors there were similarities. Or Christie, your dress, I got inspiration from it from like this tapestry and it was just so cool that somebody had a vision, put it pen to paper, made it happen, and then produced it and we were wearing the clothes while we were there.

Nichelle: Hold onto your pants, girls, because when you see the Christmas collection that’s about to come out, that she got inspiration from the Biltmore on.

Brittany : Yeah.

Nichelle: Drop dead gorgeous.

Brittany : Yeah. Which also they were putting up some of the Christmas trees and so that was so much fun to get a little taste of Christmas. While we were walking around, it was so beautiful and the history, we were all learning so much about the times, the Vanderbilt family, everything. It was just so interesting. And then we went and ate lunch and they have a lot on the Biltmore property. Like you could go spend days there.
They have two hotels. So you really, truly can go spend a lot of time. But we did a Land Rover driving experience. Which is so fun at first.

Nichelle: Wasn’t it hilarious when we started, we were like, this is so lame, because we were going like four or five miles an hour. We were like, this is not what we expected.

Brittany : And I think none of us had any expectations. So we were just like, we were thinking it was going to be more of like the Land Rover commercials where they’re like flying through mud. And then they take a sharp turn. And so when these guides are like, okay, so like we’re going to be outside walking you through guiding you here, like we’re really not going to be going that fast.
We’re all like, okay, what? Oh my goodness.

Nichelle: It was so much fun. Of course I was like, let me edit it. Let me drive.

Brittany : Of course Nichelle was like, I’ll drive first. It was so fun because we were tipping the car using all of these like features within, we were in a Range Rover.
The other, there was like a Discovery and I think the Defender. We had a little taste of everything, but it was so much fun.

Nichelle: Wheels off the ground, that kind of tilting. It was amazing.

Brittany : And we had Christie in our car who is like our music loving. Queen and so she, we were just jamming out and it was so much fun.

Nichelle: It was.

Brittany : That turned into like we were ready to go out afterwards.

Nichelle: we were, so after that we did a little wine tasting, which was a great experience. It was great wine.

Brittany : Yeah. We did that through the Biltmore and we did, it was like a chocolate and wine pairing and this, I don’t know if he was a sommelier or if he was What his actual title was.

Nichelle: No, he said he was the director of all programs.

Brittany : Okay. Yeah. So at the bilmore. For all of the wine tasting related programs. . And that was really fun, just like telling us about drinking red wine and how to drink it. What to pair things with. It was very informative and I feel like there were tidbits that I’m like, okay, like good to know.

Nichelle: Yeah, for sure

Brittany : This goes great with this type of food. Or if you want to eat a piece of chocolate, have this wine paired with it. And that’s like a great dinner dessert or whatever.

Nichelle: Exactly. And then the beautiful sunsets, we got to experience that both nights. Just seeing the sunset on the back of the grove in.

Brittany : Yeah. Everything. So pretty. And then of course, like Nichelle and I were shooting reels and getting photos and it’s just such like a content creator’s dream. The backgrounds. And it’s so funny because I feel like even though I’ve been doing this for over six years, I still love the styling of the outfits and taking pictures and. I thrive on that. So yesterday it was freezing cold up there. We had this outdoor picnic and it was so much fun. We all made the best of it. And then later Nichelle and I were shooting a few things and we were both like, it is so cold out here, but it almost was like getting us going. We were so motivated I still think that’s so important as an entrepreneur and following your dreams and doing, creating business or wherever you are in that you can still be motivated by it. So many years later and I feel like it’s important not to lose that.

Nichelle: Oh, for sure. And surround yourself with people that are just as excited about it as you are.

Brittany : Absolutely. It was amazing. We had a great time. Huge shout out to Diana and Kristen and Christie and everybody at Red Dress who always has made working together so easy. We just love supporting the brand

Nichelle: and them as just a partner. Just people they’re amazing people and thank you guys so much.

Brittany : I feel like they’re truly my genuine friends. Those were all people who were at my celebration earlier this year and like I can’t imagine them not being part of my life. I just love how this business has given me such lifelong friends throughout this whole process. So just wanted to say a quick, thank you.

Nichelle: Yes, thanks ladies

Brittany : to our amazing team. Okay speaking about amazing women, I have an exciting guest that I’m about to introduce. Then you guys are going to hear on the podcast today. She is truly, So inspiring. We brought on my friend Mallory Ervin and if you aren’t already following her on Instagram, you need to pull your phone out right now and give her a follow.

Nichelle: Give her a follow. Yeah. We’ve been following Mallory’s journey online for years, and you finally got to meet her when you were up in Nashville a few weeks ago.

Brittany : Yes. She’s Even better in person.

Nichelle: So Mallory is a Kentucky grown, Nashville living dreamer who had a roundabout way of arriving to her career as a YouTuber, influencer, and now a bestselling author.

Brittany : From her time in the Miss America pageant to being a three time contestant on the Amazing Race. Mallory turned her passion for sharing her love of fashion, beauty, and life into a platform for impact. Today she runs a global lifestyle brand she founded in 2016 where people go crazy over her exclusive merch line. Her sweatshirts are so cute. She hosts the Living Fully Podcast and launched her best selling book with the same title last year, I Truly loved my conversation with her. I walked away feeling so inspired. We chatted about how she started in the blogging space, her biggest advice for those wanting to break into the industry and some of the her most proud moments of her career.

Nichelle: Yes. And Brittany, the second half of the conversation was, Such a treat to listen to.
Gosh, when you two started talking about her road to recovery after her addiction to prescription pills and how to stop living a fine life and start living a full one. I was doing a little internal clap for you two. My favorite part of the conversation might be at the end when she went through her metaphor of how she prioritizes the right things in your life and how we all can too.

Brittany : Yes, I agree that I, that is something I like took away immediately from our conversation and started putting into practice. So I’m so excited for you guys to listen to this conversation with Mallory because there are truly so many golden nuggets to dive into. Here is my conversation with Mallory Ervin

Hi Mallory. How are you?

Mallory: Hi Brittany. I’m so excited to be here. Having a podcast myself I love being on the other side of it. It’s like a being a fish out of water .

Brittany : I know. What are we going to talk about ?

Mallory: I know you get, throw me some curve balls today and like I can’t control it.

Brittany : I do have a question to kick us off actually, because I know you are so busy right now with that sweet little Sunday.
She is just so precious. But it made me think if you could describe your last seven days in one word, what would you say?

Mallory: Oh my gosh. I always describe them to other people as like insane. I’m going to try and find a specific word of my last seven days. This is probably cliche because I talk a lot about fullness, but I would say full.
And here’s why I say full , because not only are they like, it’s full of things. Kids come with so many appointments and gymnastics and all the things and schedules and not sleeping. Like I never ever sleep. But last night I like wrote this Instagram post and I was like, my first book. I wrote about living fully.
I feel like I’ve mastered that art. I know like we’re going to talk about that today, but I feel like I truly figured out the way that I live my life to the fullest. I feel like the next phase of my life is going to be finding fulfillment, which is also about fullness. So like full just feels right for this week.
I’ve got a lot of shifts in my business, right? A lot going on in my family, but I’m also really trying to find fulfillment because honestly, I have everything that I ever wanted in life, even though it’s insane and crazy. Full is my answer.

Brittany : It reminds me, you know how people will say I’m living out the prayers.
I once prayed. And that is what you’re living right now.

Mallory: You’re in the prayer. I wrote about it in my book. I said, don’t let your blessings become your burdens. The blessings, the things we ask for and begged for, and prayed for in our lives. Like we get them and then we complain about them because they’re too much.
Right.
You gave me too many at one time.

Brittany : It’s funny. Yeah. My oldest daughter, we did IVF to get pregnant with her and now,

Mallory: oh, how did I miss that?

Brittany : She’s three.

Mallory: And that’s Collins?

Brittany : Yeah, Collins. And then Hazel was our little surprise of six months after. It is crazy, but sometimes Collins will just be driving us crazy or just sassy attitude.
And Chris and I will look at each other and we’re like, we prayed for her and we paid for her. So like we did this to ourselves.

Mallory: You had a buy her. Yeah, .

Brittany : Which when you think about it like that, this was really on us.

Mallory: Yeah, it’s really on you, but it is, it’s a way to take a step back.
And I’m sure you can remember those days like sitting in those fertility clinics. I had not, same thing, but similar in the kind of realm. I got pregnant with Ford and Shepherd in two seconds and it was so easy and everything was fine. And then I got, I had four miscarriages after Shepherd before I got pregnant with Sunday.
Gosh. And I had to go. The ringer with seven different doctors. I had just a million different opinions on what was going on and finally arrived at this baby. Like naturally. Thank goodness I didn’t have to endure, I know that’s a hard thing to endure IVF but it was a road and I look at her sometimes and I think back to being just on my knees, like in a church, being like, please let this one stick. And then you’re up in the middle of the night and you’re just like, oh, .I don’t know.

Brittany : Figuring out that middle road between being appreciative and Being aware of like your current state, like it’s okay to be in that state too.
Such a wild ride. I’m sure we’ll get into some more family conversation, but I would love to just hear a little bit about your journey into blogging and vlogging and being on YouTube and. I guess how and when did you first get your start in this industry?

Mallory: So I came here in a little bit of a, maybe a different way than I think a lot of people do.
I actually I’ve been in, I would say, entertainment of some form my entire life. So I started singing on stage at a big capacity at six. I was making CDs and I was opening for. Country music acts and stuff like as a young child, I always thought I would sing country music and I loved performing and like being in a public setting.
It was just the thing that I was passionate about and I always did, and I always thought I would do. and my life went in a different direction than country music when I won Miss Kentucky in 2009, and then I was a runner in Miss America in 2010, and in the year 2010, I literally walked off the Miss America stage and I did two seasons of a reality TV show that was on CBS at the time, or still on CBS called The Amazing Race.
And it’s a, if people listening to this podcast don’t know it’s you race around the world doing all these challenges for a million dollar prize if you win. I lost three times. That’s beside the point. , I won a lot of cool prizes and I visited like 1 billion places, but it was like literally the time of my life.
It was amazing.

Brittany : Yeah. What a cool experience.

Mallory: And I went with my dad.

Brittany : Oh, that’s cool.

Mallory: The ultimate special thing.

Brittany : Didn’t he just hike the highest peak?

Mallory: Not only did he hike the highest peak, he’s hiked the seven highest peaks in the world and summited like Everest and all those things.
Only less than 500 people in the history of the world have ever summited. all the seven summits and he just did his last one. He’s totally insane, so that’s where like I get some of that, but like some of it, I’m like, are you totally nuts? That sounds fun to you, but hey, happiness. But, so I went from singing country music to Miss America to reality tv.
And then, if you read my book that like I was at my mountain top then like I was at the peak of the things that I wanted, like I was on national television I’m from a very small town. I was on the peak of the mountain, I was on the top. Like I couldn’t have imagined this coming from this tiny town, like achieving all this stuff at 25.
I was really young and that’s where my story took a big turn, and it’s a really pivotal part of my life and my journey, and one that ultimately led me to where I am now for two reasons. One, because like it saved my life. What happened next, because I developed an addiction to prescription medication and I went to treatment for six months.
No one knew that story until I wrote my book last year. But when I got out of treatment, if you would’ve told me when I was standing on the Miss America stage, like this shining star, that I would end up in a treatment facility like I’d never done illegal drugs in my entire life. And if you would’ve told me that, that’s where I was going to end up in a few years?
Life is just sometimes the things that God serves you up, you just don’t expect them. It was certainly the thing that I needed and that changed my life. When I got back from treatment, I wanted something that was in the public eye and I needed a career. I needed something like a way to make money and I was like doing makeup on the side and I was still doing some appearances and different things from my time in reality TV and Miss America and things like that, but I was like, how can I build a life on something next. And at the time, people were starting blogs and I said, okay, I’m going to start a blog. And everybody in my family was freaked out because they were like, oh gosh, all this public stuff like sent you down the wrong path before. And I was like, no. Like I’m, I’ve got it together now. I’m going to try this again.
And I did that, and that was about six years ago, five or six years ago. So I started the blog and then a few weeks after I started a YouTube channel. And it really took off. And then Instagram and podcast and book and merchandise line and here we are today,

Brittany : it’s so amazing everything you’ve accomplished though, can you believe in that short, like less than 10 years? All of that was able to happen.

Mallory: I lived a hundred different lives in 10 years. Like I’ve never been afraid to reinvent myself, which I think leads me down crazy paths. And I also just love to do totally different things. So I would never have thought, I would’ve thought I would be in fun different places, but I could have never expected where I would be in this very moment with the things that I’m doing right now.

Brittany : Going back a little bit, because I know a lot of people are just interested in your story on like how you’ve gotten to where you are today, from the start to now, and what would you say is one of the hardest things that you had to overcome revolved around creating content in the early days?

Mallory: Overthinking,

Brittany : I think that I agree with you there.

Mallory: Overthink putting, just putting it out there. I wanted to start this blog and I thought, oh, I need professional pictures. I need a professional website and I need this type of camera. I had $0, so I thought in order to get started, I have to obtain all these things.
If you have a cell phone, that is all you need to do what we do. You in fact, and this is a bold statement, but I stand beside it. You could get to our level with a cell phone.

Brittany : Absolutely.

Mallory: You don’t need a single other thing. And I think in the beginning, I’m typically not an overthinker, but I just, I literally was like, I’m just going to , whatever. I’m just going to do it. I had an old camera, I just started shooting on that. I just got through it. I bought a piece of sequin backdrop fabric from like this fabric store and put like string lights on it and started doing YouTube videos, taught myself to edit, taught myself to upload to YouTube. And you quickly realize as you start gaining traction that you don’t need all those things.

Brittany : Right.

Mallory: So I think that is the biggest obstacle to people and I think there’s probably 1 million people listening to this podcast right now that are think. Yeah. Like I can’t get there where you and Brittany are. And I say, yeah, you can.

Brittany : Absolutely.

Mallory: Don’t overthink it. And there is space, like there’s not a maximum amount of bloggers on the internet.
Like we’re going to get too old one day probably. You don’t want to watch us anyway. There needs to be a new generation .

Brittany : Exactly. Trust us. It’s so crazy because I think back on. Things that I used to think were such a big deal or I would put so much effort into it and I was like, who was that really for?
Because I could have done that so much easier, so much faster without all this worry in my mind. About how it was going to do. And it wasn’t even relevant and I feel like that’s, so many people are starting out, like you said, with only their cell phones and they’re doing so well because they’re relating to so many people.

Mallory: If this is not a sign to you, if you’re listening to this and you want to get into this space to dip your toe into the water, like what are you waiting for? But everyone starts somewhere and I really think that right now there’s a sweet spot for the micro influencer because a lot of brands and partnerships like don’t want to work with influencers as large as you and I.
And the micro influencer, honestly, is having a huge moment right now. So you can almost be at an advantage for being smaller than us. If you think about it that way, I think it’s, it’s a less intimidating.

Brittany : Absolutely. I have friends who are micro influencers that are killing it, and I’m like, dang, sometimes I’m like, can I go back there? It’s just so different and I think that’s whenever people ask me like, what can I do to get in this space? Or What is your advice? I’m like, it is so different from when we first started out. There’s like you said, there’s so much just on your phone alone that can get you going. You just have to do it. Just try it.

Mallory: Yeah. The thing is if you start and you only get to 1000 followers, but you really like what you’re doing, there are ways to make revenue at a couple thousand followers. But you just have to figure it out. Just don’t stand in your own way.
That’s like my biggest advice always to everyone and to myself as TikTok glares at me from the horizon.

Brittany : So switching up gears a little bit, I want to talk more about your brand’s mantra and your first book, Living Fully. I love your whole vibe around this book and your attitude about living fully, but I want you to explain a little bit about the difference between living fine and living fully.
I think that would be like a great starting point for our listeners.

Mallory: Yes. Thank you and thank you for saying that about, like I said, this brand was a hard fought thing to birth, and it’s the thing that I’m the most proud of that I do is the things that center around the living fully content.
So I am a firm believer that the absence of bad is not a qualifier for a good life. I think so many people think as long as nothing bad’s happening, as long as like everyone around me is fine and nothing’s going wrong, that everything’s good. That is the opposite of what I believe. I believe that’s part of it, of course.
But two things like bad ushers in some really great things like it did in my own life and like I still see it today. But the other thing is like we were not just meant to live lives like, okay, like the water serene, the boat’s not rocking, so it’s fine. At least I’m not going to drown. And that is just the opposite of living fully.
There’s just so much more life left to live. So when I went through what I went through in my life. I had lived a really good life until then. Minus like where I got out of control there like for a couple years before I ended up in treatment. I lived a great life. I grew up on a farm with 24 first cousins.
I was the oldest and it was this ideal, amazing childhood. I was valedictorian in my class and, I was a shining star in my community. I had a really good life, an amazing family, parents that were still married. It was great. Then I went through what I went through. On the other side of that, what I realized was had I not gone through what I went through, I would’ve just been living a life that was like good.
All the good things were happening and it was great. I was fine. Everything was good, but a full life is not absent of those knock down drag out things and in fact like that’s what births a full life. So on the other side of that, I learned a lot of things and one of those things was so many people want to avoid pain to such an extent, and they value comfort to such an extent that they would rather be fine, then have a full amazing fulfilled life. Like why open door number two? Cause I know what’s behind door number one. What if I told you behind door number two is like the most amazing life you’ve ever lived? Yeah. There might be like a hard thing behind door number two too, but are you really going to keep opening up door number one?

Brittany : Like at what point do you like want more for yourself?

Mallory: Exactly. And I think that’s something that is hard fought to learn that. Sometimes you have to be forced through door number two and forced through a hard thing like I went through or your husband went through, or I’m sure you’ve gone through.
IVF is not for the faint of heart. But I now choose door number two in my life. I do not choose the comfortable and the fine and the don’t rock the boat. As long as everybody around me is happy, I’m happy. That’s not the way I want to live my life. So I wrote this chapter in my book called Fine as the New Rock Bottom, because when there’s like a red flag kind of blaring in your face of an addiction or of a child with an issue or of someone having an affair, like when these bad things happen to you.
It’s really easy to say, okay, I’ve gotta make a change. Like I’m going to die or someone’s going to leave me, or something’s going to happen to my child. You have to make a change. You’re forced, right to make a change. Now, if you are just fine, if your life is mediocre, it’s not bad, but it’s not fantastic.
If you’re like right there in the middle, that’s rock bottom two, because that is the hardest place to make a change from, because you can get a little lazy and you can get a little comfortable and you can live your whole life like that. So I’m a big fan of taking the big leaps of opening the new door of doing those things because I will not live my life fine.
I won’t do it. And I think it takes some awareness of that. There are probably people that are listening to this podcast that are like never really thought about it like that. Like maybe I am just living, like valuing comfort over a fuller life. And if you’re a person that is thinking that, I want to encourage you, because it’s a very simple shift.
It’s literally just valuing a fuller life more than you value. The little comfortable life that, that you could live for the rest of your life. So I write about that in the chapter and I write about it’s a lot about awareness, which a lot of people might be having right now or have had before in the past.
But then it’s choosing again and again to break free of that, and to not continue to choose comfort over and mediocrity a bigger life that might include hard things, like I said, but will include so much more fulfillment. And like an example, some people are like, what are you talking about?
Okay, so brushing conversations under the rug. I think that’s a huge one. Brushing conversations, especially like with a spouse. I think that’s a really important relationship in your life. Or maybe it is a career move. Like maybe you just feel fine in your career. You’ve got your 401K and you’ve got your health insurance, so you think.
I’m sticking this one out for the rest of this one life that I have to live. I’m going to work here even though I’m miserable. I’m not saying be irresponsible, but I’m saying if you want to make the move to the other city, or if you want to find the job that you’re going to have to take a leap. You don’t leap right into the higher level of the job.
those are the decisions that you make to live a full life versus a fine life. But man, like when you make those decisions and make that leap and you get on the other side, you’re like, Okay, this is it. I can promise you that.

Brittany : Going off of that, how can we identify some of these like red flags that we might have in our life, or where would we begin today to start living more fully?

Mallory: You have to assess, you have to take a moment. So many people are living their lives a hundred miles an hour. So many people, their job is their whole entire life. So they’re literally just like working all the time that they can’t even think about, life, themselves, their spouse, their future, whatever.
You have to pause and assess. You have to take a moment and put your cell phone down and stop mindlessly scrolling on an app at night. And you might have to get out a journal in a pen and think, am I happy right now? Am I in the job that I want to be in right now? Is this a relationship that I want to have with my husband right now?
Are there things I need to speak with my parents about or my child about? Is there a person at work that I’m like working for that makes me feel awful? And could there be an opportunity at another place? . But you have to pause and look at your life. There is no way to get to a fuller life without assessing your current one.
So I think awareness is like the first place to start and once you start having that awareness, And you stop. The answers will be right in front of you and they’re going to look different for different people. Some people might need to, move out of a career that they’ve been in for so long. Some people may need to start communicating with a spouse different.
Some people may need to like get healthy and exercise. It could be different things for different people. Some people may need like a community. I don’t know what that’s going to look like for people. So I can’t tell you the answer. But I can tell you assessment and like taking a second and like even a pen and paper writing things down.
If this is a simple thing, I’m thinking off the top of my head. If you were to for 10 minutes every night instead of being on your phone or watching the Jeffrey Dahmer documentary, I don’t see how in the world people are watching that. It’s so weird. And instead of doing those things, , take out a pen and paper and assess your life right now, and the answers of the things that you need to do to break free from the current life that you’re living in, the current state that you’re in will be there.
The second book that I have that’s coming out is like a gift book, so it’s like a journal that you write in. It’s mostly like concepts from living fully, but I wanted something that you could like think of these five things, write them here. So like I help people to take that step, but it’s easy to take that step on your own.

Brittany : We actually just did something very similar to this. In my business and in Loverly Grey, I’ve got, Seven employees who work here and it’s amazing and I’m so thankful.
But in September, it just felt like we were all going so fast. We had questions and I literally was like, we have to slow down to speed up. So we took two weeks off of social. We weren’t creating any content and we were doing behind the scenes, just getting a bunch of things right, reassessing the way that we’re doing things.
Do we want to keep doing them that way? Do we want to try something else? And it was so powerful and meaningful and I’ve wanted to keep it going. Like I could have gone a month of just back planning and coming up with ideas, but it really took us having to take a step back to figure out what’s going to be next and where we wanted to go.
Yeah. So it’s so true.

Mallory: Yes. So you just did exactly what I’m telling people to do. I try to think of words of the year and like it was family. And family’s always my word. We are just, we are all in it together here all day, every day. Like my husband watches my kids we are here.
We’re just, we got a lot going on. Yeah, we got a lot of kids, lot cousins, lot of aunts, uncles, grandparents, family’s always it. But if I had to choose a second word, I think I would choose simplify. And I think that there’s such a beauty in simplifying a really complex thing because you and I are in a space where there is no ceiling.
If you want to go out and make more money, if you want to go out and post more pictures, do more content, start a podcast, write a book, whatever, you can do it. And as a person who’s an overachiever and one that wants to move really fast, the hardest thing for me is not to create the 1 billion things. The hardest thing for me is to not.

Brittany : You’ve made so many good points here. I just did this with my business, but I want to take this assessment with my personal life too. Cause I feel like while they are so tied together, there are definitely times where I’m like, am I living my fullest life, my best life right now?
How can I make it better? It’s interesting because I think what somebody else might think on the outside, oh, for sure she’s living her best life, but on the inside I’m running a hundred miles an hour, not getting to see my kids as often as I would want to. There’s all these different things.
And so while it might look a certain way, I don’t know. I feel like there’s a, an assessment that I could be going through myself honestly right now.
I love your example of the glass balls versus the rubber balls. Can you explain that metaphor? Cause I really think this will resonate with a lot of people listening.

Mallory: Yes, I can. So I originally heard this concept, I think someone like the CEO of Coca-Cola or something like, talked about the beginning of this concept in a commencement speech a billion years ago. But I was doing a podcast, one of my first couple podcasts back in 2019 with one of my friends, Jessica Turner, and she brought this to my attention and basically it’s In life, you’re juggling these like balls that you juggle. Some of them are glass and some of them are rubber. And if you drop a rubber ball, what does rubber ball do? It bounces back you, it’s back in rotation. It’s not a big deal. If you drop a glass ball, what does the glass ball do? It falls to the floor, it cracks. You keep juggling like it cracks again, eventually the glass ball, if you continue to drop it
will shatter and will break. And will be all over the floor in shambles and you can’t necessarily put that back in rotation. So she introduced this concept to me and I was like, what the thing is for me is when I’m mislabel the glass balls and the rubber balls when I treat my family, like they’re a rubber.
Or when I treat my house and my schedule, keeping my house cleaner, like whatever it is as a glass ball, that’s the most important thing. We’ve talked about awareness a lot and slowing down and being aware of how you are treating the things in your life when you’re treating something as, Hey, my kids, they’ll always be here.
They don’t care if I keep losing them. Their rubber ball, they’ll bounce back. No, they’re a glass ball and if you continue to drop that glass ball will break. And so for me, a big shift in my life has been to correctly label and then fiercely protect the glass balls versus the rubber balls.
And I have to reassess that and relabel them all the time because you can’t keep going back to the store and buying more glass balls. Can’t get more children and actually you can’t get more children. You get another husband too, but I don’t want to have to keep going back to the glass ball store.
That takes a lot of work and a lot of money.

Brittany : Exactly. Yeah, no, that’s so important. We’re all juggling things, but then we don’t realize what we’re dropping. So when you really start to think about it in that way, it’s okay, wow. Like I actually do want to make it to my kids’ practice because that’s important to them. Really starts reprioritizing things in your life.

Mallory: Yeah, like everybody always talks about oh, I dropped the ball on that and I was like, oh, let’s describe the balls a little bit. Which one did you drop? It’s fine to drop that. Okay, you dropped the ball, like bringing the cookies to school, not a big deal, right?
But like you dropped the ball and like how you treated your child in the parking lot, were you on your cell phone or were you talking to your child about, have a good day, like that’s the ball that you don’t want to drop.

Brittany : So on this season of the Life of Loverly podcast, I’m ending all of our conversation by asking my guest, what was the most meaningful act of kindness someone has extended to you that had a lasting change on your life.

Mallory: I feel like very blessed to have so many people that have really made a lasting change throughout my life. But I’ll tell you what’s something that I’ve experienced in 2022. I did a book tour for Living Fully in February, and I just announced that I was pregnant a couple weeks before. I didn’t know what the baby was, neither did anybody follow in me, but I would stand in book signing lines for five hours some days.
And in those lines, people would bring me baby gifts and they would come to the front of the line and they’d have this gift in here, and they would say, I know you’re having a girl. Or they would say, I just love Shepherd. If you have another boy, it’s going to be fine. And they would give me this gift and it would be a onesie, or it would be like something for the nursery, or it would be something with a rainbow on it because people knew that I’d had some losses before this baby.
And at the end of those book signing lines, I would just have this table of stuff that people that didn’t even know me personally had brought for my child, and what a cool thing it is to be an influencer, to be someone in this space. That someone feels so close to you, that they bring you a gift for your unborn child, and that they are excited for you to have that baby and that they cannot wait to know what the baby is and what you name that baby. I just think that those are the acts of kindness that remind me of what a gift it is. To be in this space. And it’s life changing. It’s the dream job for so many reasons, but really and truly for that, and that changes my life. Those conversations and those little gifts

Brittany : And the connections you make with these people over similar stories or I feel like you get a lot of advice from people, but some of the things that I needed in a really difficult time for me and it was coming of such a place of like love and this works for me, you should try it. And like it helps.

Mallory: It’s like your Google it’s like, oh my gosh, this is wrong. And then I have 10 moms be like, do this. And like I’m not just asking you that question to be like, oh, connect with me and let me make you think I’m listening to you. I listen to you. Like I need your advice.
I need you to tell me what to do because I don’t know what to do. And so I agree with you in that. I have listened to so many pieces of advice from people probably as much as people have listened to pieces of advice from me that I’ve given people. So it’s a cool two way street.

Brittany : Absolutely. That’s one thing I think in this space I’m so thankful for is around the community, but just as much as we’re giving advice, we’re taking advice back.
And that’s not everybody’s norm. No other job is your day to day.

Mallory: I think it’s a real gift. It’s probably a gift to a lot of other people. I can speak as a person that, like I said, has followed you and admired you from afar and finally got to meet you in real life at the party.

Brittany : I know that was so much fun.

Mallory: That’s why I’m like so totally obsessed with getting everything right, and writing the best books and doing the best podcasts and stuff because I want to serve the people that oftentimes serve me and that have given me this life that I have.

Brittany : I am so thankful that you came on the podcast today.
There are so many excellent nuggets of information and things that I’m personally going to go do in my life.
I was listening to one of your podcasts earlier and was already like, oh my gosh, I need to share that like little blurb with my followers. Because you just have so much knowledge. So I’m so happy that you are here, everybody.
I will leave Mallory’s information on how you guys can follow her and the link to her book in the show notes below. So absolutely check her out on Instagram and check out her book. I have it and it is amazing.

Mallory: Thank you so much, Brittany. I really appreciate you having me on. Like I said, I followed and admired you for years, so you’re just as great in real life as you are on the internet.
That’s always great to find out. So thank you. And thank you for everybody that listened today. I, it was just as much of an honor to be on, so thank you.

Brittany : Hi, friend. If you’re loving the show, will you go find that follow button on your podcast app? This will ensure that you won’t miss a single episode. I love having you in this community. Until next time!

This season of Life with Loverly is produced by Elizabeth Evans Media Productions.