We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Benita Conde. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Benita below.

Benita , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

In the spring of 2017 I was, in relation to my beliefs at the time, in a pinnacle role at a pinnacle agency, making a solid salary and was fulfilled in certain aspects of the role but ultimately, found aspects of the experience lacking. I was also 10 years sober at the time and after years of inner-work realized that I was still playing out “workaholic” tendencies in my professional life. I felt called to make a change, a big shift. I had also been developing a deep belief that LOVE was the element missing from the business world, and more specifically from my experience, creative businesses. I do not mean a cliche version of love. I’m referring to the deep, RADICAL, unconditional love for self and others that is required to live in more peace and productivity with the world. These two elements, the big shift and the belief that love was missing from creative businesses led me to a quantum shift and to the name of my business. I resigned from my full-time role, without a new role lined up, I purposely jumped without a plan! I hired life coaches, I gave myself three months to explore, to rest, to clean out all elements of my life that were no longer aligned, to spend time with myself, family and friends. Two months into this process, and after a deep meditation, the idea for and the name of my business appeared very clearly from my heart and in my mind. I would take all of my almost two decades of experience in talent management, talent development and recruiting and I would develop my own coaching practice, supporting creative people! It could be called CREATE RADICAL LOVE and I would hold space for people and they designed and created their own radically loved lives, just as I had been doing for myself. I launched the business officially in October 2017 and I’m thrilled to be celebrating six years of this growing, flourishing service to others – and the most fulfilling professional experience I’ve had.

Benita , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My first expression of a radically loved life came in the form of a professional ballet career. I knew by the time that I was 8 years old that I wanted to be a professional ballet dancer and with laser focus I set out to do just that. I moved to NYC at 17 years old to train at the Joffrey Ballet School and I danced professionally until I was 22. The first time my intuition spoke to me loud and clear (telling me that I was no longer living a radically loved life) was when my body could no longer keep up with the demands of that profession and a voice deep inside told me to get up and leave the studio – and I did.

I then transitioned my love of the physical body and how it works into a career in the fitness industry where for 5 years I was a personal trainer and general manager of health clubs in NYC.

I now look back and see that the fitness industry wasn’t creative enough for this very creative being and so following a classically NYC winding path I found my way into project management at a dot com start-up and was mentored by a creative director who had come from the advertising industry. He suggested I look at working in advertising agencies as a next step and it was another radically loved life moment. Managing a creative group of people, making really interesting work felt like moving through the choreography of a ballet – having all of the shifting parts dance as one – and this was a huge a-ha moment for me and sustained me for the next 17 years.

I had the honor of working at some of the most respected advertising agencies in the industry including, Fallon NY, BBH NY and Anomaly NY. I also had the honor of working with some of the most talented and hardworking people I’ve ever met in my roles covering project, resource and talent management in addition to recruiting. In addition, I spent five years at the respected global talent placement firm The Talent Business where I got to work with thousands of creative people and hundreds of creative businesses looking for world-class talent. I will be forever grateful for these opportunities as they shaped very beautifully my understanding of supporting and nurturing creative minds and hearts.

After having my son and spending my last seven years in the industry witnessing how the harshness and competitive nature of an already fear-based industry was only increasing I started to ask myself, “where is the love in creative businesses today?” And that gnawing question stuck with me until I was at a place where I was able to listen to that deep intuitive voice and once again make a shift and redesign my life again in a RADICALLY LOVED way.

In July of 2017, I left my role as Director of Creative Management & Talent at Anomaly NY. I purposely left without a next job in place, hired coaches and took a couple months to cultivate a calling.

Create Radical Love and my individual coaching practice was born in late August, set in motion in mid September and officially launched at the beginning of October 2017. It is the most rewarding professional experience of my life. I see people change in front of my eyes. I see them become excited again, start to love themselves and their lives and start to make decisions based on what aligns intuitively rather than making decisions based on fear and constructed beliefs that are likely not their own. I work with clients remotely across the globe. I also work with individuals and creative businesses in person locally in the Richmond, VA area as well as in person from time to time in NYC. I also travel to clients for workshops or coaching kick-off sessions. I can see the power of transformation happening for so many and the ripple effect those changes have beyond each individual is mind-blowing.

It is important to note that I have also been on a spiritual journey my entire life. It’s taken different forms along the way. Following different teachers and belief systems, following the process of being in my body and finding clarity and enlightenment through physical activity (running, yoga, SoulCycle, Pilates, strength training, dancing, etc.) and working to create a clean physical vessel through experimenting with food and diet. I continue to explore what it means to be a conscious human across multiple inspiration points and through various modes of meditation. There are various other personal aspects to my spiritual exploration, including many years on the sober path, but what’s most important to know if you’re considering working with me is that my definition of spirituality is wide open – I don’t believe in any one religion (though I’ve participated in a couple as part of my own exploration) or any one teacher or practice. I do believe that there is something bigger than me out there (energy, light, universe, love, nature) and when I tap into it and listen, very powerful things happen. I believe that we are all connected by the infinite energy of the universe and we can either flow with that powerful energy or against it. Trust me, flowing with it is the most unbelievably powerful experience – but we have to know how to get out of the way and trust it and I have found that it’s helpful to have support as we step into that beautiful current.

I am also now very heathy. I am drug, alcohol, caffeine and mostly sugar and animal product free. My chronic health issues such as eczema and IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) have resolved themselves. I have a spiritual practice that includes meditation and yoga in addition to resting, walking, exercising, writing, reading, listening to and experiencing content that inspires me. I prioritize the things that I love above all else and I’m very focused on time with my family, schooling our son from home, friends and being present for my clients. We have fun, we laugh and we explore. Travel is very important as well. If it’s exciting to me or a member of my family, we explore it. Life flows and is no longer compartmentalized!

I offer wholistic life, career, executive and business coaching + consulting to individuals, creative businesses and educational institutions globally. I offer a few different approaches to individual coaching clients, a range of coaching and consulting + workshop services to business clients and have coached students and created workshops for educations institutions. I’m available for speaking engagements as well. These experiences have been and continue to be some of the most rewarding of my life and I’m grateful to each person and organization who show up, bravely open to becoming more aligned with their truth and to creating radically loved experiences for themselves and others.

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 had to unlearn a lot to start my own business. I wouldn’t necessarily call them lessons I had to unlearn but BELIEFS. I was full of limiting beliefs from years of working in a hyper-competitive, hyper-critical, hyper-perfectionistic industry. Over a few months time, with the support of coaches, I was able to debunk the following beliefs:

First, I believed that I wasn’t creative after 17 years in roles supporting creative people. I was conditioned in that environment, within that system, that certain people were “creative” – but not me, I was a creative operations/talent person – not a creative. Turns out, I am creative – and have been my whole life – ha! I was a dancer from the age of three, I have vision and ideas and can create what I desire. I had to step away from that system, start to dance again, remind myself of my creative truth (PS – we are all creative beings) and give myself permission to create – from that freedom, a business was created. It was wild to see all of the old, limiting beliefs fall away and have the truth appear!

I also had to unlearn beliefs around perfectionism, urgency, not-enoughness.
It turns out that I can show up with a clear but gentle service offering, do my best but not strive for perfection, create in time frames that work best for me (create clear boundaries and expectations) and know that I am enough regardless of outcomes. Who knew? It’s been incredibly confirming, healing and empowering to show up in ways that work best for me and have the outcome be some of the most powerful creations and work of my career.

I came to realize as these limiting beliefs came up and were proven untrue, that I no longer needed to be motivated by traditional external validation and rather, am much more fulfilled when creating in my gentle and aligned ways for myself and my clients.

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

To run a successful business that supports me and my family in terms of financial abundance, I also had to unlearn my limiting beliefs around money. We are so conditioned in life (via family, friends, educational institutions, banking institutions, professional experiences, the government, etc) to believe that money is a real, hard, fast, tangible element – that the numbers in our accounts are equal to our self worth, are a measure of our “success”, keep us safe, etc. But guess what? Money is just a construct, it is only what we believe it to be, it only has value if we assign it that value (for example, the stock market is built on belief, more than anything else). If we believe that money is what sustains us, that it alone keeps us safe, then we are making it our higher power, giving our power away to it and we are for sure in for many days of fear and suffering. To unlearn this limiting belief, I hired a financial advisor, who had healthy and balanced beliefs about money, to educate myself on the areas where I felt unclear and less confident, I read the book, Busting Loose from the Money Game by Robert Scheinfeld and started to approach money from a place of appreciation – for it’s flow in and flow out. It took a couple years of shifting into this approach and moving through the financial ebbs and flows of having my own business before fully releasing anxiety around money but I am happy to report that I now live in so much more peace, appreciation and trust around the flow of abundance flowing into and out of my life and business.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.createradicallove.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/benita_conde/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benitaconde/
• Other: I am also the co-host of a radio show and podcast called What We Know, What We Don’t streaming live from KWHV radio Fridays at 2pm ET and also can be found on all podcast platforms. https://www.wwkwwd.com/ It is a show for good, where we explore a range of topics in a safe, humble space (honestly sharing what we do and don’t know about a person or topic) – rather than so many of the spaces we see sowing right/wrong thinking and division. The last few episodes have been incredibly powerful – we are grateful to all who listen!

Image Credits
Headshot: Nick Davis The image of me outside: Kelly Marshall The image of me meditating: Syvonne Kozuch Images of me speaking: Don Mears