There have been a handful of stand-out “crazy” moments since quitting my 9-to-5 in March of 2020 and launching my business the following month. Some have said I am crazy for starting a business in the middle of a pandemic, which is probably true.

Few crazy moments can compare, however, to unintentionally going somewhat viral because of the one and only product review I’ve ever written.

My approach to blogging focuses on people-first. I’ve written a lot of human interest articles and personal narratives. Even my “listicles” and how-to style content is highly individualized and homegrown. Because of the strong ethics behind my brand, as well as my core values, I do not participate in affiliate marketing or content sponsorship of any kind.

Writing a product review felt a bit off-brand for me, but it came from a place of radical transparency. I thought it was important to share, with brutal honesty, in hopes of helping others.

In July 2021, I decided to try Lume deodorant and write about my experience.

A full year later, in July 2022, I discovered my review was the #1 organic Google search result for the phrase “brutally honest product review” and I was blown away! It is still the top result for that specific keyword phrase to this day.

What surprised me even more than that, was the influx of reader responses I received: literally hundreds of messages from total strangers flooded my inbox, seemingly out of nowhere, thanking me for sharing my experience. There were weeks I’d received up to 20 messages every single day, many of which were deeply personal.

The messages ranged from truly bizarre (“…as a blonde I tend to smell like brown sugar naturally…”) to borderline TMI (“My coworker, who is male, has an overgrowth of a certain bacteria on his skin…To engage in sex activities of any kind with his wife he has to shower, clean under his fingernails and brush his teeth and tongue because she always feels on the verge of a yeast infection or thrush. No spontaneous stuff happens for them.”

It got to the point where I stopped responding. I was completely overwhelmed.

It was also clear that, while I had such a high degree of engagement, the people writing in were not necessarily the right audience for my personal brand and style services.

Some folks agreed with my assessment and others were more critical, but the fact that a single piece of content reached so many people was bonkers to me!

That particular blog post remains my most-read to date.

It can be viewed here: https://www.maggiegreenestyle.com/blog/brutally-honest-product-review-lume-deodorant

I am Maggie Greene, the Chief Everything Officer of Maggie Greene Style, which I describe as an ethical microbusiness on a mission to transform how people see themselves. I’m a cisgender, pansexual woman, a recovering marketing professional, and a trauma and abuse survivor.

My 20+ year career in marketing and communications was hardly linear, and small business ownership was never part of my plan. But, when the pandemic hit, I realized just how short our time on this Earth is. So, I asked myself, “if the world is about to end and tomorrow isn’t promised, what do I want to do for the rest of my life?” The answer is my business where I specialize in personal brand and style.

Some people say I was born with a gift, and I now know that’s true. My gift is being able to zero in on what makes a person unique, and showing them how to maximize those assets – in person and online – by supporting them on everything from their wardrobe to their LinkedIn profile.

I grew up a child of addicts, in extreme poverty, with limited resources, in a small town in the rural South. For as long as I can remember, I had an affinity for three things: clothing, shoes, and accessories. That blossomed into a love of people, psychology, and human behavior. My work is truly a marriage of all those things with a particular focus on serving body and gender diversity.

My business is built on a strong desire to leave the world a better place than I found it, to help others see what is unique and powerful about themselves so that they can show that to the world – without fear of shame or judgement, without guilt, and without feeling like they have to make themselves smaller or more palatable.

The core values on which my business is founded are transparency and responsibility, sustainability, and radical authenticity. All of these play out in everything I do. I believe in the importance of choice and empower my clients to make decisions based on what is best for them. I do not offer cookie-cutter solutions. Each engagement is highly individualized and is as unique as my clients.

I work with entrepreneurs, leaders, and individual contributors of all body types, across the gender spectrum, to help them create clarity and visibility for themselves in their career and beyond. My signature secondhand-first approach to sourcing helps counter consumption culture and reduces global fashion waste.

Some of the most popular services I offer included boutique, personalized personal brand and style support programs which range from three to twelve months in duration. In those programs, often delivered virtually, I provide a safe space to unpack and unlearn “rules” and narratives that act as barriers. Unlike typical personal stylists, I don’t focus exclusively on clothing but rather one’s relationship with their wardrobe. I believe that personal style has no size, age, or gender.

And, in my work, there is a big difference between fashion and style. I see fashion as the systems, the messages, the marketing, the rules. Style, in contrast, is a whole other world with limitless possibilities. Fashion is transactional, disconnected. Style is personal, connected.

For personal brand clients, the work I do is similar, in duration and format, and we focus on identifying their vision, voice, and story to help them see and show up as exactly who they are, no matter the context. I see brand and style as intimately interconnected, the latter as a kind of pillar for the former. It’s not unusual to explore both concepts in conversation with clients, and I’m able to talk through them seamlessly. I provide them with a portfolio of resources, templates, and insights to help them find their Dream Job or, in many cases, create it for themselves as a side hustle or small business.

I’m most proud of the moments when a client lights up with what I call “electric joy,” a visible and visceral sensation that accompanies being their most authentic selves. It’s more than a light bulb – it’s a full body experience. For some clients, that is experiencing gender euphoria for the first time. For others, it’s saying No when they have spent most of their lives saying yes to things that no longer serve them.

There’s also a great deal of pride that comes from the fact that the majority of my clients have come to me by personal referral. That speaks to the level of care I put into all of my business relationships. It’s the best compliment a small business owner can receive, in my opinion.

When I started this business, my goal was to help ONE person in a big way. Today, almost three years into this adventure, I regularly receive messages from clients and community members saying my work has changed their lives for the better. To someone for whom impact is my motivation, that makes my heart sing!

To learn more about my story and my business, I would encourage you to check out my recent manifesto of sorts, as published on my blog (https://www.maggiegreenestyle.com/blog/allow-me-to-reintroduce-myself-hi-im-maggie) and check out my FAQ page (https://www.maggiegreenestyle.com/faq).

In my most formative years leading up to puberty, I lived with an abusive relative whose favorite pastime was criticizing and humiliating me.

One of the things I heard regularly was, “it’s school, it’s not a f*cking fashion show.” As a young, creative, curious, intellectual child who loved all things style and personal expression, that cut me to my core. It singled out what made me special, and turned it against me. As if treating school like a fashion show, or wanting to show up as my radically authentic self, was inherently wrong.

I felt shame for being who I was, shame in my body, and I longed to be invisible to avoid that pain.

This is one of many messages I internalized that continued to haunt me into adulthood.

Those internalized messages shaped an insecure, people-pleasing, performative, and inauthentic version of my true self which I didn’t discover fully until well into my 30’s.

In part, because of the abuse and trauma I experienced, I developed a set of survival skills that became barriers to my version of success as I grew up. Making myself smaller, less visible, quieter, more agreeable created such internal conflict there were times I didn’t trust myself to walk without tripping and falling. I still experience chronic anxiety, even today.

What I’ve learned through all of this is that on the other side of discomfort is personal growth. Once I was out of that environment, free to make my own decisions, I began challenging myself intentionally. That included confronting lifelong fears in a direct way. For example, I took a course in college on public speaking because it terrified me. I did the same with a physical education course called Outdoor Adventures.

The first time I went live on Instagram, solo, I removed my makeup live on-camera and talked through the feelings associated with that process. It’s as if the challenges I experienced growing up honed my resilience as a kind of superpower. I no longer have to use it to survive, but I stretch those muscles as often as possible, because it keeps me learning, growing, further leaning into self awareness and away from guilt and shame.

Every time I write and share something deeply personal online, something that is so *me* or make myself visible in any big way – I get this shaky feeling, a butterflies-in-the-stomach sensation I call “glitter guts.” It’s the same physical feeling as I experienced as a child in the face of danger and fear. The difference is now, I lean into that feeling. Because I am safe and empowered, I know only good things can come from pushing myself further.

Someone I trusted and looked up to used to tell me often “you can’t get above your raisin’s” – a statement that implied a person’s success is dependent on and limited to the circumstances in which a person is raised.

I grew up believing I was destined to be married, pregnant, and barefoot, like that was the best I could hope for as a woman growing up in Small Town, Kentucky. It taught me to feel less than for wanting something more or different for myself.

For a long time, I felt culturally, socially, and professionally limited because I come from poor, addicted, uneducated, toxic, patriarchal roots.

Most of the women in my immediate family, and for generations, were codependent narcissists who passed on their generational trauma to me. That meant the narratives I learned about womanhood came with a host of unhealthy expectations and standards which were in constant conflict with what I knew to be true deep down.

Still, I subscribed to those beliefs for decades. I willfully held myself back because I felt tied to that legacy, as if leaving it behind would be an insult or personal affront to my heritage.

Today, I know better.

I am proud to say I am the first woman in my family to graduate college, to own a home, launch and grow a business, and to -by choice- not get married or have children. Considering half my family is Mormon, the other half is Conservative Baptist, and their idea of the perfect woman is one who obeys and procreates, I would say my circumstances didn’t dictate my potential whatsoever. Myth debunked!