We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sensi Graves a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Sensi, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Alright, so one thing we think people don’t talk about nearly enough is investments – either time or money. What’s one of the best or worst investments you’ve made and what did you learned from the experience?

The best investment I’ve ever made has been in myself. I remember when I used to be afraid of spending $100 on myself, now I spend high 4-figures a year on personal growth and self-development. It’s that important. You are the best investment you can make. What’s standing in the way of growing your business? You are. What’s stopping you from leveling up? You are. What’s holding you back? You are. That can hit like a punch to the gut, but the truth is that you are the problem, and you are the solution. When you take radical responsibility for your life, you can make some big changes. Because when it depends on you, you know you can do something about it. You shift from a victim to a badass executor. And when you start investing in yourself, you tell the Universe that you are worthy.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Sensi Graves Swim is a sustainable swimwear company for kickass women. We make fashion-forward pieces that are designed to move in. I’m a professional kiteboarder and my need for bathing suits that stay put, combined with a desire for stunning pieces, is what sparked Sensi Graves Swim.

I started the line when I was 23 years old and was working as a kiteboarding instructor in North Carolina. I sketched a few designs, ordered some fabric from New York and found someone to sew my first samples. It took a long time to actually make suits that worked exactly how I wanted them to!

Our company produces cutting-edge sustainable swimwear for kickass women.
Most women’s swimwear falls into one of two camps, either functional or fashionable. Sensi Graves Swim is a performance swimwear line that designs pieces that are both supremely functional and fashionable while encouraging body-positivity, self-love and women’s empowerment.

While growing my swimwear company, I’ve also been traveling around the world as a professional kiteboarder; competing and doing photoshoots. My life looks really shiny on the outside, but for the longest time, I didn’t feel like a badass or as shiny as my life looked. Despite running my own business and competing as a professional athlete, I didn’t feel successful or good enough. I didn’t feel proud of myself.

Through years of introspection and personal development work, I’ve come to feel proud of myself. And I’ve come to the realization that you are never going to feel like the successful, badass that you are unless you feel like a successful, badass today. I am supremely passionate about sharing this wisdom and helping others feel worthy.

Therefore, in addition to running my swimwear company, I help expand others’ ideas of what is possible by mentoring entrepreneurs and speaking on confidence and mindset as well as creating content that uplifts, empowers and inspires. I focus on helping women (and men!) feel good in their bodies, feel great about themselves and go out into the world and be awesome.

Today I am most passionate about inspirational speaking and I travel to speak on confidence, mindset and business. I help people feel like they’re enough now by sharing the story of becoming a pro kiteboarder and starting a business before I believed that I could.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

When I first launched my business, I was 23 years old and I really had no idea what I was doing. And when I first launched my business, my swimwear was not as good as I hoped. I struggled with the quality with my partners, I was inexperienced in manufacturing and therefore the process was cumbersome. And as a result, my first few runs of suits were less than ideal. And well-meaning people would tell me this. They would give me feedback on the fit, the quality and what they’d like me to improve. And I would take this really personally. I didn’t take their feedback constructively, I took offense to it. I let it mean something about me. Like, if they were saying my suits were bad, then I was bad. Like I’m trying so hard and it’s still not good enough. WAhhh, I suck and I might as well not try. If we got a negative review, I would be super bummed out. If someone tried to give me advice on the fit and quality, I would get overwhelmed. I’m tryiiiiinnnnggg became a well-worn phrase.
And then, something clicked. I had this mindset shift that feedback was my friend and that the results didn’t mean anything about me, it was actually the process, the uncovering, the growrh and the journey that was important.
Something that really helped me with this was this idea that nobody knows anything. This idea was first introduced to me in a speech by Marc Randolph the founder of netflix. In his speech, he took the audience through his origin story at Netflix and from when he first launched and they weren’t really making money and they weren’t quite sure what we going to work in their business and he expalined how their strategy revolved around testing faster and faster and iterating and iterating until they finally stumbled upon what ended up being their winning platform of unlimited long-term dvd rentals by mail. His whole business was based on “we don’t know what’s going to work, no one knows what’s going to work, let’s just try a bunch of stuff”.
Nobody knows anything is something we should all be telling ourselves because it’s so freeing! It opens each of us up to being ok with trial and error. It allows for and encourages mistakes and it let’s us experiment with our ideas. Think about it, if you go into something and thinking oh it’s for sure going to work and it doesn’t?… it leaves you crushed and disappointed. But if you go into something thinking “well I truly believe that it’s going to work and I’m going to put my 100% behind it but we’ll see”, you take some pressure off of yourself. This mentality gives you permission and freedom to try and fail and then get up and try again. You don’t have to take failure so personally, it doens’t mean anything about you. Commit to the vision but be flexible to changing, pivoting and constantly be looking for new solutions. Because no one really knows anything.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

Badass women Untamed
Big Magic

Body/ Psychology
My Grandmothers Hands
The Body Keeps the Score
Mindset
Becoming Supernatural

Nature/Connection to Earth
Braiding sweet grass
The last hours of ancient sunlight
The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible

Mindset
You Are a badass
Atomic Habits
The Mountain is You
Everything is Figureoutable
The Power of Intention

Life
The Art of Gathering
Crazy Sexy Kitchen
Own The Day

Money/Career
I Will Teach You To Be Rich
The 7 Spiritual Laws of Success
Money: Master the Game

Contact Info:

• Website: www.sensigravesswim.com www.sensigraves.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/sensiswim instagram.com/sensigraves
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sensiagraves
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sensi-graves/

Image Credits
Debbie Jean Hollomon, Arlin Ladue, Eric Duran,