We recently connected with AnaLisa Garcia and have shared our conversation below.

AnaLisa , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

I started making candles as a form of self care. Being a healthcare worker and single mom during the pandemic had caused me to become extremely overwhelmed. At that time, I desperately needed a way to take care of myself mentally to get myself through each day. The entire process of pouring and mixing candles, along with creating custom fragrance blends is very calming and therapeutic.

Making the decision to turn my self therapeutic hobby into a business happened when I realized I needed to figure out a way to work from home as a single mom dealing with the continuous struggle of reliable childcare.

One year prior to the pandemic, I made the decision to move two thousand miles away from my entire support system in the Midwest, to pursue greater opportunities for myself and my son in California. I never dreamed of being an entrepreneur, but it looked to be a creative solution to my difficult situation. The hospital job required overnight and on call hours that I simply was unable to fulfill due to living in a one person parenting household. I had a sitter call out on me for a week resulting in me having to miss work. I consistently found myself on thin ice with my employers and the anxiety of it all was too much to deal with.

I started out my business as a side hustle while working full time, but as orders picked up I was able to work my hospital job less and less hours. I eventually went down to part time and then not too long after and with lots of hustle, I was able to quit my day job completely and become a full time entrepreneur (and work from home to be with my son and eliminate the childcare struggles like I had set out to do.)

Ambitious Vibes Candle Co is centered around women empowerment. Each candle has an empowering label on the back with the intention of providing daily motivation and empowerment to one’s space. Surrounding myself with positive quotes and affirmations is a part of how I motivated myself to push through each day. I would like my candles to provide that same encouragement to other women.

The messages I wrote on each candle all came from a part of my story. The Brave candle is inspired by my move from Wisconsin to California as a single mom pursuing bigger dreams. Strong represents the many low points of my life where I simply just pushed to survive each day, and did. Beautiful is about my insecurities and the positive words I need to tell myself on a daily basis. Ambitious is about my pursuit of become a successful small business in order to stay home with my son. And Powerful is the last candle added to my line. Powerful was written after looking back on my life journey and realizing all that I have accomplished and all that I have to look forward to accomplishing now that I know what I am capable of.

I love seeing women read the messages on my candles as it resonates with them. Or them knowing exactly who they want to gift that specific candle to based on what that message says. The entire mission behind my business is that when someone purchases my candle it’s to empower themselves, or to give the gift of empowerment to someone else. And it fills my heart with so much joy to see it.

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

I have always been an ambitious person. My head was constantly filled with big dreams like moving to New York to be a successful backup dancer for a famous celebrity, or becoming a big time fashion designer. I just always knew I wanted to get out of my small town and do something big, somewhere big. But I also struggled with depression pretty severely and not ever feeling “good enough”. It caused me to turn to heavy drinking and lots of bad decisions. I created a pretty toxic environment for myself. Leaving my hometown allowed me to have a fresh start. The only reason I changed my life is because I became a mom. I realized I didn’t love myself enough to fix my life, but I knew I needed to change for my son.

Looking back on my life journey I am very proud of how far I have come. My entire perspective on life has changed. I no longer carry so much of that anger and toxic way of thinking like I had. Actually, this entrepreneurial journey has really helped me to develop confidence in myself that I never had. I allow myself to look back to where I was mentally back then and see how much I’ve changed. It gives me the confidence to know that I am capable of anything I set my mind to.

This life journey is the reason I want to help others fill their minds with positive words of empowerment which is my brand’s main focus.

I aspire to find more ways to offer inspiration to women through my brand, whether that be with more product offerings or other avenues of reaching more women, such as podcasting.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Part of being self-employed is giving up the stability of getting a paycheck every two weeks. I’ve had to learn to trust in myself that I will do the necessary work to keep the income coming in to pay the bills. It can be very scary at first but it also builds something in you that motivates you more than ever to make it work. I gave up a very good paying job for the freedom of having my own business. Sometimes the overwhelm would have me thinking, “what if I just went back to work?” But then I think about how I am able to take my son to school every morning and pick him up every afternoon and talk about his day. I’m home for every dinner and bedtime. I even joined the PTA in order to be more involved in his school. Running a business is HARD work, but I wouldn’t give it up especially because of all of the time I get to spend with my son.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I’ve struggled with feeling “not good enough” for much of my life. Moving from a small Midwest town to California, I had a hard time feeling like I fit in. From my small town perspective, people in California were living these ambitious, successful, adventurous lives. I was very scared to open up to anyone for a long time, feeling like I couldn’t relate to them. I was embarrassed about being a single mom and that I was here alone.

Running a business kind of forced me to start networking and talking to people. Little by little I started opening up and telling my story, finding that people were actually intrigued by me and my journey. The more I spoke up, the more confidence I gained. I started doing podcast appearances and speaking events. I have gained so much healing just from having the courage to speak my truth.

I’ve had to unlearn all of the negative thoughts I had about myself. If any of those negative things people have said to me throughout the course of my life, or any of the negative things I made up to myself, if they were true then I would have never even gotten myself to where I am today. I am worthy and I do belong. I brought myself through many difficult struggles to get here. And I am capable of so much more. This has been the most important mindset shift I’ve had to gain.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.AmbitiousVibesCandleCo.com
• Instagram: @ambitiousvibescandleco

Image Credits
Natasha- Healers Edition