Vanessa Marian

Interview by Madeleine Dore
&
Gracie Steindl Photography

Vanessa Marian: dancer & movement director

Full transcript

Full interview transcript

“Honestly, the main thing I’ve been working on for the last year and a bit is just being a student. Just learning with absolutely no outcome in mind. I feel like I’ve unlocked some sort of secret to life.” – Vanessa Marian

Madeleine: Being a learner, being a student, really is a secret and I think it’s one of the secrets to moving through a rut. There’s a quote from a TH White novel that I actually heard quoted in an On Being interview that said, “The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. Learn why the world wags, and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”

This weeks’ guest reminds us that one of the best ways we can learn and be a student is to embrace our failures and the steps. Dancer and movement director Vanessa Marian is quite upbeat in terms of describing her career as a succession of failures: trying to start an online homeware store and failing, trying to be an art director and failing, finishing her law degree but not wanting to pursue it. 

But even as she moved through these failures, when she didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life, she would take a dance class and learn something. Despite never thinking of dance as a “real career”, she started teaching again a few years ago and, through the skills and knowledge that came from trying her hand at many different things, Vanessa started Groove Therapy, which is aimed at making dance accessible to people from all walks of life.

Now Groove Therapy is a successful business with an online course, a series of beginner dance classes all across Australia, and also a talent and performance agency.

Vanessa is currently in New York being a student, being a learner, and in this conversation, we talk about the difference between being a big fish and a small fish and the beautiful nuances of both.

We talk about allowing businesses and ideas to grow without pushing them and we also speak a lot about going easy with yourself with your daily habits, and even finding the beauty in faffing.

But to begin, here’s Vanessa Marian on her approach to being a student, and what that looks like in day-to-day life.

Vanessa: I think it starts with your headspace and just where you’re at, so I’m very consciously in this state of wanting to grow and learn, and then, perhaps, a lot of the growth comes through osmosis. 

But, for me, there isn’t a goal. I was feeling in Australia that I had a lot of career success on paper and I didn’t feel like I was ready for that level of recognition or that level of acclaim, or whatever you want to call it, and all those opportunities. And that didn’t come from a place of imposter syndrome, it came from a place of truly believing that I wasn’t ready to be the big fish yet. 

And I came to New York, which is the best city to be a small fish, and I wanted to take dance classes in which I was the worst in class, try new genres. You learn so much in a city with such different people from different backgrounds, different socio-economic contexts. You’re on top of each other just by riding the subway. 

You learn so much just by being amongst that, even though you’re necessarily looking for it or looking to learn, and there’s such a difference between learning it through that experience and living side-by-side with people who are different from you to reading an article about it. I was really yearning for that, so that’s where I’m at in life right now, and it’s awesome. I can’t recommend it enough. 

MD: Yeah, it sounds like you’re putting yourself in your days fully to be there to learn from whoever’s around you and be open to it. I’m really interested in that transition though, to this big fish to little fish and that realisation that you weren’t quite ready to be the big fish. Was there quite a lot of tension to get to that realisation? To say, you know what, I’m not ready, I’m going to put myself back in the position of a learner and maybe say no to opportunities? How did you do it? How did you step back?

VM: It wasn’t anything that profound. It was just I wanted more from my life and I wasn’t getting it in my industry in Australia. When you go through pain and hardships, both as an individual but also as a community, it bleeds into the art and that’s been an insane invigorating injection for me to see process before you get to something creative and having it truly, truly come from this guttural pain, or even joy or identity, in the way that it comes about in New York. It’s really unique. It’s hard to describe.

MD: Yeah, there’s definitely something that shifts the complacency out of you, I feel, which can happen anywhere, I suppose. It’s about a life circumstance. But what I’ve wanted to ask you is you once described how Groove Therapy came to be as a being a result of a succession of failures, and so I wondered if we could rewind a little bit and look at how you got to that point and what those “failures” were that actually led to the success that is Groove Therapy?

VM: Failures. Where to start? One thing I’ve been super successful at is failing. I’m really good at it, and I still continue to do it. I think it started from a place of ego. I went to uni and I got a fancy few degrees and then I went to design school and I got a fancy diploma and I graduated from all of the above, and I dusted my hands after that and was like, all right, so the growing is finished, here comes the winning.

And that’s not really how life works. A certificate, especially in creative industries, really marks the point at which you go from learning to creative figure, and so from a very egoic place, I stepped out into the world, ready to just win at anything I put my mind to. 

Sometimes the reason we get into what we get into creatively is because we have an aesthetic or we have a certain creative taste in things and we want to express ourselves that way and we see our idols who are doing it the way we hope to do it one day, and, in my case, I saw other emerging artists that weren't quite pulling it off, and I would do it so differently.

And then I went out and tried to do a whole bunch of things. I was a brand manager for a while, a junior brand manager, I tried to start my own online homeware store, I was an intern for an interior designer, I've been a producer for a contemporary dance company, I've been an art director, and just none of it stuck or I got fired.

Unfortunately I'm just not good at working on things if I don't believe in it. It's definitely a weakness of mine. And all of that accumulated in my life and sort of reached this breaking point in which I got this tight chest, I couldn't sleep properly. I thought I'd developed adult-onset asthma because my mum has that, but I realised it was actually anxiety.

So I went back to dance class, which is something I've trained in and even worked on a professional level as since I was a kid, and never thought it was a real career. I just took classes because that's how I've always felt better about my life and about myself and about my sense of self.

And it's like it just turned this switch on in my life where jobs started coming to me in the dance world, and I was like, whoa, maybe I should go with this. But the reason I never wanted to be a dancer is because I don't vibe the industry and I don't vibe the aspirations that a lot of dancers are told they should have, so I decided I wanted other people to feel as good about dance as me, but they seem scared of that.

I didn't consider it one of those amazing, creative ventures, or that dream job, or any of those, like I was saying earlier, egocentric ideas of what my creative success would look like, I just opened up a local community hall. I didn't open it up, I hired it out, for an hour a week. Some weeks, four people would come and then, over time, more and more people came, and it's just naturally turned into this amazing, vibrant community of beginners who just have always wanted to learn how to dance.

MD: That's incredible. I love hearing sometimes what people would call a weakness in themselves and how you said that you're not good at doing something if your heart's not in it and how that's a weakness, but actually it could so be flipped as a strength because look what you've created when you do care about something. 

I read that you had the idea for Groove Therapy and got it all up and happening within a week. Is that right? Was it just a really quick gut feeling that this could work and I'm going to do it, and it's okay if four people come and it's okay if 40 people come the next week?

VM: That was an amalgamation of all my failures turning into a vast breadth of knowledge. Based on me having this failed online homeware store, I knew how to put up a Wix website, I knew how to make a really underwhelming, but perfectly passable, logo using free fonts on DaFont.com, or whatever it was.

Working as a junior brand manager, I knew how to art director a shoot and I did all of the above in the space of a week. And it wasn't perfect. I didn't have an online ticketing system at the time, you just paid cash at the door. I didn't even see it as a success or anything because it was so obvious to me.

Teaching people how to dance was something I'd been doing for I think seven or eight years at the time. It didn't feel like a big triumph in a way, because I was like, yeah, I know how to do this. I don't know how to explain it.

MD: Well, it's that beautiful thing of all the dots connecting, looking back. And also just starting small and imperfect and then seeing where it grows. And that's a lovely little segway into what your days are looking like that, because obviously you're looking after Groove Therapy and, at the moment, is that solely in Australia or have you brought it to New York City?

VM: I've very intentionally not taught here. The reason I haven't run Groove Therapy is because I have very stubbornly and consciously wanted to be a student and not a teacher, and I feel like that's been the best decision I've ever made. 

I didn't want to transition from Australia to New York, get excited by this new country, and get too cool for my amazing fam back in Australia and just neglect and let this beautiful thing that started fall to pieces. So I was very conscious about nurturing that and working out how this works long distance.

And I have the best team of dancers and staff who are running Groove Therapy and really building it into something even better than when I was there. I'm just not even important anymore. 

MD: Was it an interesting process for you to hand over your baby, so to speak?

VM: No, because I hire based on people I believe in. I handed my original Sydney class that, by the time I left, was heaving, weightless, all those things, and I handed it over to a girl named Rachael, who teaches to this day. It's not about me, it's about the community, so I'm more than happy. Rachael, Amy, Wynita, Lauren, Lani, just everyone that's taught for us, they're just so awesome in their own right.

MD: Oh, how wonderful to find the right people to bring something, a community, to life. It's so important. So your days are opened up for learning and being a student. Do you have a strong relationship with routine, or do you let the learning guide you?

VM: I love routine whilst being easy on myself about it. I start my day with a tea and, because I'm not perfect, often with an Instagram scroll, and I own that.

MD: It's nice to hear that you're waiting until you're upright with a tea to look at Instagram. Sometimes it's straight away in bed, so credit to you.

VM: Oh no, don't you worry, sometimes it's in bed. But, again, I don't beat myself up on that, which makes a huge difference. It's totally my secret right now. If I were to list all my habits and the things I do on paper, it sounds very idealistic and perfect.

So I wake up, I have a tea, some days I'll play a record because it's analogue and screen-free and I will choose something for my plants, and then I've got this stretch app and I try to stretch every day between 15 to 45 minutes. I tend to meal prep on Sundays, so even if I'm not actually prepping and freezing, which is actually not really what I do, I plan my weeks' meals and I'll be like, this is a busier day, and I actually know what days. And I have lazy but healthy meals ready to go at all times.

I actually even will just put an Instagram call out and people respond in droves. Pasta with some canned good quality tuna and chilli and stirring through rocket at the end with some cheese. And garlic. Lots of garlic. So something simple like that, and buying really good quality produce, and so having something like really nice bread, good quality avocados, and that's my lunch sometimes.

MD: Yeah, it can be so simple. When do you fit in things like going to the supermarket?

VM: Sunday mornings, or Saturdays. 

MD: So that's part of the prep?

VM: Yeah. So our weekend mornings, with myself and my partner Stefan, we're both kind of similar in that way, we like a household to run quite smoothly. So if we find that we partied really late on a Friday, then Sunday's... like we're flexible, but on weekend's we'll get our washing done, we'll plan out our meals, we'll buy that, and we'll clean the whole house, and that sets the tone for starting Monday again.

MD: I love it. But, as you say, it sounds quite idyllic on paper but it, in some ways, these kinds of habits help with the chaos.

VM: Absolutely, and we take our time with it and the last five days we've been on a really intense shoot. Some days have been 18 hours, so our house is trashed right now, and that's fine. And I think that's the trick. It's fine. It's trashed and I know, knowing both of us, either tonight after this, I'll go home and we'll do a big clean so we can start our day like that, or we'll block off half of tomorrow to do what we meant to do on the weekend.

Or we'll wait for the weekend. We'll be like, okay, we're going to live in filth for a few days and then we'll do our weekend thing.

MD: Yeah. Our lives have to be malleable. Imagine if you were trying to squeeze in the perfect plan and life and list amongst a hectic shoot. It's just very difficult to maintain. But your morning, you were saying that you put on a record sometimes, and then what typically happens?

VM: I have breakfast, I have my stretch. I start my day with a shower, brush my teeth. Just really typical things, and some days it just takes longer than others. And then I sit down at my laptop.

MD: So do you work from home usually, when you're not on a gig?

VM: Yeah, I work from home or sometimes I'll treat myself and go to a cafe, but if I'm going to go work from a cafe, I'll wait until after lunch, so I make myself lunch at home, then go to cafe and work for X amount of hours. And I found that, if I really sit down and I'm like, okay, this is my list of things. I'll usually do an email scan and then I'll write a list, I'll be like this is what needs to get done, I can probably get eight hours of work done in four.

MD: Yeah, and I'm actually always really fascinated by how much people work typically, and it's really difficult to measure, especially if you're a freelancer and there's different things happening. But if I look at most days, most days are three to four hours of actual work. 

The rest is kind of email admin or communication stuff or life admin. But the actual writing or the creative projects are sort of a three- or four-hour block. And it's kind of nice to know that it's about working efficiently, not longer.

VM: Yeah, that's exactly where I'm at, and that does not mean that I'm efficient all the time. Sometimes I'll take that long first half of the day, and then I'll spend three to four hours doing the faffing that you usually should spend an eight-hour day doing, and then get your three to four hours. So I've got really bad days like that quite often.

MD: But do you find there's a beauty in the faffing in some ways? Does anything usually come out of the faffing, or is the faffing part of the process?

VM: I just think, again, the secret is just go easy on yourself because no, in my case. It's like cat videos. Which do bring me a lot of joy, to be honest, but there's no need for as much of it as I do consume. There's a lot of scrolling. As soon as a tab is just taking more than .5 of a second to load, I'll pick up my phone, then I'll go into a vortex. I'm one of the most easily distracted people that I, or any of my friends, know.

MD: Well, that's a nice trophy to have. So with your planning, in terms of whether it's client work or maybe you're prospecting or the paid work, what kind of planning goes into that? Are you someone who keeps a schedule, a to-do list? How do you know what's coming up in terms of stuff that might have a hard deadline or strict hours attached to it?

VM: I write lists every morning and, even if I've written it a hundred times, I need to rewrite them every day. It just makes me feel really good about myself.

MD: They're so calming and centring.

VM: Yeah, and it needs to be pen to paper for me. And that's it. I mean, I have a team who are all millennials, so we work in a very millennial way, and it's interesting because now I'm reading all these articles in Harvard Business Review and these profound things that they've started to find from all these studies is just how we run.

So we Facebook video call each other at the beginning of the week, or I'll do a stream of consciousness. I'm like all the things we should do this week and the team divides it amongst themselves. That’s just kind of how we work.

MD: What about things like budgeting and managing that side of things? Is there any anxiety there or does it just run itself now because you've built it to a point where it's almost like a passive income? Or how does that work?

VM: It was a passive income, but now we just put a whole bunch of investment into building an online dance class platform.

MD: Yeah, which congratulations. That all looks really robust and amazing.

VM: Thank you. So that was a lot of money and a lot of time, and a lot of time working on something where you're not getting paid for it, so I haven't paid myself through Groove Therapy for a long time. But I've just had enough savings, so it's been sweet, and the movement directing work has been, I mean American budgets are fantastic, so that's been great.

But from a finance and budgeting and financial literacy perspective, I understand it all in theory but I'm not that good at following through. So the dream is to one day sort my life out and get an accountant to just do it all for me, because I just don't care enough.

MD: Which is fair enough. You've got so much to do in terms of your own creative direction. I wondered if you had any advice for people who are going through something similar, where you're building something that could potentially expand your business or lead to passive income, but requires a lot of investment and the payoff is uncertain or not straight away? How did you keep up momentum or actually continue to believe in it during that building phase?

VM: I've never spent, in life or in this business, outside of my means, so I have the savings and I have leftover, so that's been a big one. I've never taken a loan out or been in debt, but that's me. And I think sometimes some people's dreams just require that loan, and don't wait on it if that's your situation. So that’s the first thing for me.

The second thing for me is, I think if you really sit down and think about what I do, what Groove Therapy does, what it stands for, and how much joy it brings me, in theory, it's everything you could ever want from a career to fulfil you and I realise that it's not what fulfils me.

So I think that's why I don't stress too much about it not working out. My partner runs this movement called We're All Going to Die and it's about the idea that it's the only guarantee in life and to give you some perspective on how you're going to handle it. For me, we have this big We're All Going to Die neon sign in our living room and it just makes you think about love and the people you love all the time, and that becomes your priority all the time.

So I don't know, dancing is really awesome, it's a hobby, it makes me really happy, but if I were to die tomorrow, my biggest regret would be not calling my mum. So I think it's really bizarre to explain, but it shifts that perspective on how much weight I place on the success of something, but also I'm such an OG failure that, whatever. It just might not work. And I have the money in savings, so I'll be okay.

MD: Yeah, so it's always having that bedrock first, and then the remembrance of, I guess, our mortality can be the ultimate motivator and comforter simultaneously.

VM: Yeah.

MD: I love that. There's some research that's come out about why our brains are hardwired to forget that we’re going to die or to ignore our mortality, and so it’s nice to think of ways that we can insert it more into our day and actually remember that we’re going to die. Obviously there’s a neon sign in your living room that’s an obvious literal sign to remind you, but is there any other things that you might do to really be aware?

VM: To remember that we’re going to die or just to live life?

MD: Oh, both. I think they go hand-in-hand.

VM: I think human connection is the biggest thing for both of us. We have the most incredible friends and friends of friends and just good hearts in our lives. We’re both very lucky to have an amazing family. I think we have a biological privilege of whatever hormonal balance within us because I think we’re naturally very optimistic and happy people.

This doesn’t mean our lives are perfect but it means, at least in my case, I can’t speak for Stefan, but we seem to have good coping mechanisms and ways of dealing with stress. But my biggest one is that I dance all the time. I don’t even realise until I stop that I start to get grumpy or things really fluster me or make me upset, which is full of gratitude, I think is what it is. It becomes your default way of being and thinking, I think.

MD: Yeah. Oh, that’s so lovely. It’s so lovely also when you come across two people who found each other that clearly have such a strong match. I don’t know, it’s kind of making me feel very warm inside, hearing about your relationship. So I suppose if we move through your day, obviously lots of different things can be happening depending what’s on the schedule, but do you have any nighttime or evening wind-down routines?

VM: Most evenings are spent dancing and then I like to watch the Great British Baking show. When we cook dinner, we listen to music and we talk a lot. We love watching Netflix. We’ve both lived in households without TVs for many years since we left our homes, since when you’re in a shared house you can’t necessarily afford one, so we love decompressing with something that’s a bit mindless. And that’s why I like the Great British Baking show because it’s the perfect balance of reality TV, but you don’t feel follow inside by the end.

MD: Brings the joy.

VM: Brings the joy, yeah.

MD: I like that. And obviously you mention lots of friends that you love. What does your social life look like, or how do you find that balance between seeing friends and having that connection, but also having enough alone time?

VM: I think I must just be really selfish or something, in that when I feel like things are off-balance, which I think we’re both very in-tune, so if I feel like I’ve had too much people time. Another thing that I feel like I’m very lucky with is that I don’t have FOMO at all.

MD: Never had a trace of it?

VM: No, for the most part I don’t. There’s a couple of things where I’m like, ooh, you went to the Jimmy Kimmel Show? We were very happy about that and then the next day we found out Kanye was on it, and we were like aww, we should’ve gone to that one. So something like that.

MD: Yeah, the beauty of hindsight.

VM: So that kind of FOMO. Not like someone going to the coolest party right now and if I’m just tired, I’m just so… I have JOMO definitely.

MD: Oh, great thing to hone. I love it.

VM: I just love sleep and being alone, and I just naturally take it when I need. I love going on walks. Subway rides give me a lot of… I can be amongst people, but if I can just be alone with my thoughts then that’s plenty for me. 

I go to dance class all the time and that’s a commute plus dancing, and then our social lives are just, I mean, it’s New York, so there’s probably something to do probably every second or third night. So usually after dance, I’ll go meet people. Or if I don’t feel like it, I’ll just go home.

MD: Oh, it sounds flexible. I love it. So you love sleep. Do you need a lot of it, or can you get by on a little?

VM: I don’t think I need a lot. Is seven hours a lot?

MD: Well, as the sleep expert that I am, I think that’s average.

VM: Okay. I need seven. 

MD: I need nine, just to be completely open with you. I think that’s starting to get to a lot.

VM: Yeah, I need seven and then I’m perky for the day. So I’m usually asleep by midnight-ish, wake up by seven. When I lived in Australia, I slept a lot earlier and woke up a lot earlier. The place we lived before New York was the most opposite place to hear, which was Byron Bay, and we didn’t have Wi-Fi. You just couldn’t get proper signal where we lived in the middle of the Aussie bush with wallabies on our front porch, so we would naturally feel quite sleepy by 8:30, nine. 

We would wake up by like six, 5:45, go for a sunrise swim. But New York just isn’t conducive to that type of lifestyle, so we sleep later, and by later, I mean 7am.

MD: Is there anything else that you do to maybe wind down or fit in things like reading?

VM: Most nights, I’ll try a meditation app. I’m not good at meditating on my own. Recently, we went on a trip into nature and I slept so well because, even with my eyes open, it was so pitch black that I couldn’t tell which was which. So ever since then, I’ll just grab a t-shirt or anything, it doesn’t have to be fancy, and I’ll tie it around my eyes, and I sleep so much better when there’s not a single bit of light that gets in.

MD: Yes, me too. I’ve actually got so accustomed to having an eye mask that I feel like I can’t sleep because my eyes don’t feel closed if there’s nothing on there. Like the pressure and the softness. I can give you a link to the best eye mask.

VM: Okay, yeah. Because this is my other thing, I’m trying to be more minimal, but I keep buying things to be minimal. Do you do that?

MD: I think it’s the trap of it all, isn’t it?

VM: Yeah, I’m like, oh, I just need one good coat. And then I just need one undercoat for the days when… you know. And it has to all be amazing quality. So that’s why I’ve been holding off on things like an eye mask, but you know. I think I do want one.

MD: Well, look, I’ll send the link and you can decide but I hear you loud and clear that it could be more clutter. The t-shirt could suffice. This podcast is Routines & Ruts and it’s very much about how our days can look idyllic, but they can also be very chaotic, and I’m really interested to hear if you’ve experienced a bigger creative life rut.

VM: Pretty much my whole life up until 27 was a rut at the time and it was growth and learning in retrospect. It’s very interesting talking to New Yorkers who are very career-focused. The first thing they’ll ask you is what do you do? And I don’t like telling them that I’m a dancer or choreographer. 

I just say I kind of take dance or I’m training, and it just doesn’t go down well here. When they find out I run a company, they want to hear more about that. I guess by a New Yorkers definition, maybe I’m in a rut, but by my own definition, I’m just living my best life. So that’s where I’m at right now with perspective.

But on a day-to-day basis, I am just so easily distracted by anything and everything. I recently read this book by Cal Newport, Deep Work. Have you read it?

MD: Yeah, he’s got some great stuff. I’ve read Deep Work, but I haven’t read his new one, Digital Minimalism, yet but I’m keen to.

VM: I want to read that one too. I was already aware that I have the shortest attention span, but he really brings to light this idea of how fractured our attention is. And next to someone like Stefan, who has one of those routine type of lives that we blog about. He literally follows through. It’s weird. 

But next to him, I’m like this puppy with a hundred bouncy balls so I’m constantly being distracted the whole day.

MD: But, as you say, as long as you’re kind to yourself about it, you can get back on track. Have you ever experienced a period of no creation or feeling like you can’t create, or you can’t dance? Or is it always there as a joyful outlet?

VM: It depends on which way I approach dance. I dance for work and I dance for me, and they’re two very different things. If you ask me to choreograph for a project and I’m amongst people who take dance very seriously from the creative world, I get blocked very quickly because you’re creating from a place of ego and comparison.

For some reason, I’ve landed a lot of cool jobs lately where I haven’t been around other amazing dancers but have been asked to choreograph, so I’ve been able to explore. But then I make sure that I dance for no reason other than I just love it regularly. They’re two very different things. I don’t consider them together.

MD: Yeah, I can see how they’re so separate and I think that’s the same with any profession, whether you’re an illustrator or a writer, and that can present so much tension and sometimes one can take over the other and it requires a lot of, I don’t know, maybe openness. 

But with this idea of when you’re more to a brief and there could be this potential for comparison, how do you deal with that?

VM: I think I have amazing support networks around me and the thing that I love most about my friends and family and the people around me is that they never get through life from a place of their values and just being inherently good people. They’re a definition of what a good person is and that always puts into perspective how you can be feeling towards how great and wonderful this piece of work is.

So coming home to that is really big for keeping me on track, I think. I don’t really have friendships that have a weird malicious undertone, you know? I think that’s a really, really important one for me. And it doesn’t mean I’m immune from feeling inadequate from time to time, but for the most part I think I try to be self-aware of when it’s my ego.

MD: And then bounce back from it. Are you someone who can rattle off your values off the top of your head, like you know what they are? Or are you still figuring it out?

VM: Yeah, I think that’s a yes. I can’t always put words to them, but I definitely know how to listen to my gut on when something feels right or it doesn’t, and I think that comes from just being around really amazing people. 

When I say amazing, I mean that they range from being midwives in indigenous communities and have been for the last 40 years and they’re prolific, to occupational therapists that work with children of parents with mental health, and doctors, and lawyers, and astrophysicist, and amazing creatives, but also just people who will drop everything on the weekend to help you move house, or someone who will pick a flower for his wife every day. Just good people, irrespective of what their career title is.

MD: Yeah. I guess we can derive meaning in so many different ways in our lives and sometimes it’s really important to remember that life is varied and diverse and we can find our joy in various ways as well. And I love this idea of someone picking a flower for his partner every day. That’s beautiful. Anyone has access to that kind of creativity every day.

VM: That’s it. I also think people, I don’t know, I think we need to stop trying to make money from everything we love so much. So that’s my big one. People will be like, what are you working on? I’m like, oh, right now I’m so deep in Vogue and trying to learn that. And they’re like, oh, what’s that going to lead to? And I’m like nothing. I’m just going to hopefully be less average at it then I am right now. The end. You know? So having space for that and being so fine with that, which is not how I used to think.

MD: Yeah, so did that shift come, as you said, earlier with embracing this learning?

VM: Embracing learning and also just experiencing success, if you want to call it that, through Groove Therapy and realising that it wasn’t what made me happiest. What makes me happy about Groove Therapy is not the money it’s made or the cool articles or profile pieces we’ve done. 

It’s the fam. It’s having support. Like Amy and all the Groove Therapy teachers and the friendships we’ve created. I could honestly sell it tomorrow and I wouldn’t care in the slightest, but I would want to make sure that I’m still friends with all the people that are part of it. That would be the only thing that matters.

MD: Oh, that’s a lovely measure of success.