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

Hi Kandice, thanks for joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

In early 2020, I found myself struggling to balance parenting, business, and my personal life with the uncertainty of the pandemic looming. I re-committed to my self-care and creativity practices as a way to cope and feel better. I noticed how much everyone around me was struggling to manage stress and deal with “zoom fatigue.” I wondered how I could help others to find their own creative self-care practices to ease the overwhelm we were collectively feeling.

I decided to plan a virtual micro-retreat for 90 minutes on a Saturday morning. I had been on enough Zoom calls and webinars to know what didn’t work. I wanted to reimagine how virtual spaces could feel more inviting and inspiring. I let my creativity roam and curated music, photos, quotes, and journal prompts around a theme related to self-care. I invited people in my network to join me for a free wellness event and 12 women said yes! That Saturday in late May, women from Houston, Chicago, and Los Angeles joined me for this inaugural event. I was so nervous because I had never done anything like this before. The retreat was beautiful and was filled with laughter, aha moments, and connection. People commented that it didn’t feel like they were on Zoom and felt excited about prioritizing their wellness going forward. I planned the next event and then another and have not stopped.

I am now pivoting my business, which was originally consulting, to something that I have been passionate about all along: empowering women of color to practice self-care in their own unique way. I have gotten a certification with the Chopra Center to provide even more relevant resources to my clients. I am proud to have designed and facilitated over 30 wellness events with 300+ participants from various sectors and backgrounds since I had that one original idea.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a writer and well-being teacher who loves helping busy women practice self-care in fun and sustainable ways. I came into wellness because I burned out a lot as a teacher and entrepreneur. I spent the better part of a decade finding ways to take better care of my mental and physical health so that I could live a happier life. In 2020, I founded K. Cole Wellness to create experiences for busy people to practice self-care in creative and playful ways. K. Cole Wellness has designed wellness programming for a variety of clients including Wethos, Code for America, The Rooted Collaborative, Maryland Legal Aid, Grant Thornton LLP, and the annual The HerWay Retreat. Earlier this year my book “The Joyful Woman’s Guide to Self Care” was published by Hybrid Global Publishing.

My wellness workshops are engaging, fun, and real. What I share comes not just from proven approaches, like Ayurvedic Health, but also from my own lived experience of incorporating wellness into my busy life. I work with groups, companies, and organizations that want to find ways to support the well-being of their members or employees, especially if those people are women of color. I am not prescriptive in my approach and my workshops are not boring! I bring traditional and alternative wellness approaches to life in creative ways. This is about making space for people to notice where they are experiencing overwhelm and share simple ways to improve their well-being over time. My motto is self care all the time!

I offer the following services: Virtual and in-person retreat design and facilitation for groups; Ayurvedic Health workshop series; and 60-minute wellbeing refresher workshops; Joyful Self Care book club (based from my book)

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

It has come from people who have actually worked with me or organized a workshop/event for their organization. Once people experience my approach and ways of engaging, they are eager to share my services with others in their network. This doesn’t always happen right away, so consistently cultivating relationships has helped me to be ready when referrals do come my way.

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

Growing up I was the child who had a checklist and a plan (I am Virgo so this should come as no surprise). I followed a plan and executed what was the typical run of life events: go to college, find a career, get married, have kids, and so on. When I became an entrepreneur, I quickly learned that there is no perfect plan for making a business successful. It took a lot of time for me to accept that I was going to have to pave my own way and no business advice, course, or coaching was going to be a magic pill to prevent that trial and error that is a reality of being an entrepreneur.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kandicecole.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kandicecole/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kandicecole/
• Other: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/kcolewellness

Image Credits
Terron Cole HerWay Retreat