This month I sat down with Thrive Global, a wellness company founded by Ariana Huffington and owned by The Medium, to discuss female entrepreneurship. We talked about my backstory, my company and what I’m grateful for. I even shared who I’d have lunch with out of everyone in the whole world! Check it out below:
“I think it’s very hard for female entrepreneurs to accept help. We feel like we’re supposed to know it all, do it all — and also keep the house clean while we’re at it! I wish I had accepted help sooner. I wish I had opened myself up to trusting and empowering women earlier on in my business, because it is our main focus now and I cannot picture it any other way.”
I had the pleasure of interviewing Tara Mackey, the founder and CEO of The Organic Life, a successful holistic and sustainable living platform. She is a widely recognized social media personality with over 500,000 followers and millions of blog hits. She founded the organic beauty company Genetix Skincare and is the #1 best-selling author of Cured by Nature and WILD Habits (May 2018). Mackey, who has a background in psychology and genetics, left a coveted position at Weill Cornell Medical College in 2011 to travel to California to explore natural healing, yoga and meditation. That same year she began utilizing holistic techniques to heal her chronic illnesses, going cold turkey off of fourteen daily medications, and healing herself naturally. She’s an expert on building better habits and is on a conscious quest to move humanity in a more sustainable, healthy, and holistic direction.Recognized with numerous awards and nominations for her entrepreneurship, Mackey was named “a powerful voice in the smart, sexy, sustainable movement” by Coco Eco Magazine.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! What is your “backstory”?
I was diagnosed with my first medical label and put on my first drug at the age of 13. By 24, I was on 14 different Rx drugs. In 2011, after a series of tragic events lead me to the conclusion that I needed to “start over”, I came off the Rx drugs I had been prescribed for my skin, mood, anxiety and pain and started to treat myself naturally using herbs, supplements, food, exercise, meditation and mind-strengthening techniques.
Once I found that these strategies actually worked to treat the ailments I had been medicating for so long, I started sharing them on my blog, The Organic Life. One engaged blog reader turned into a hundred, which turned into a thousand… and we now have over a million eyes on us. This turned into the inspiration for my first book, Cured by Nature, which became a number one bestseller. My second book, WILD Habits, also touches on the subjects of personal growth, self-improvement and natural healing. My blog became a company in 2015, The Organic Life, LLC.
As a bestselling author and founder of my award-winning little company and blog, The Organic Life, I’ve has been researching, testing and writing about organic living and green skincare for nearly seven years. My own journey started in my mid-twenties, when I began facing painful, cystic acne. I realized that not only did none of my dermatologist recommended products work to treat it, but I also realized that they contained high levels of toxins and fillers that further irritated my skin.
As a biologist, I knew that were better, natural way to treat my skin issues. After experimenting in my kitchen at home, I found incredible natural remedies that worked not just to treat — but they worked to cure my skin problems — completely!
I moved across the country to California and started meditating daily, educating myself on health, eating whole foods, treating myself naturally, composting, taking supplements and herbs, reading empowering books and gardening. Within mere weeks, I was looking at a completely different person and I was living a completely different life.
I am the healthiest and happiest I’ve ever been and my work makes me super excited to get up in the morning. I am living in my dream home in my dream city with my dream job, after just a few years — mere months — of listening to my heart and soul. I’m very passionate about sharing what’s truly possible for others, no matter what they’re going through!
Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that happened to you since you started your company?
My Dad passed away in 2014 and I decided to take a break from my blog to focus on healing. About six months later I went back home to New York for the very first time since the funeral. Because of the break I had taken from my blog to heal, I wasn’t blogging daily at the time, like I used to be.
It was a scary situation for me to be there without him for the first time, and I was a ball of emotions.
The day after I landed back in New York, I opened up my laptop in my hotel room in the morning to check my emails. There, I saw one with a subject line that I couldn’t ignore: Tara, Have You Ever Thought About Writing a Book?
I opened it. It turned out to be an inquiry email from my first publisher Skyhorse, truly asking if we could get on the phone so that I could share my story. I did, of course! That conversation turned into my first book deal, and my first bestselling book, Cured by Nature.
It turns out they had found me through my blog! So, even though I had taken a “break” at the time, all of the hard work and years I had put in blogging before then actually paid off in that one triumphant moment. I feel like it was the reward I received for honoring myself and what I needed personally at the time, as well as a confirmation that hard work eventually truly does pay off!