This week, Courtney and AntiBeauty founder Benjamyn Gardner dive headfirst into de-stigmatizing success, beauty, and in living confidently in the beauty of who you are.
Check out AntiBeauty's Website, and Instagram to learn more!
Want to engage with Courtney Nicole? Check out Courtney Nicole's LinkedIn, Sidecar Solutions, and Nonpareil Coaching for next steps.
This week, Courtney and AntiBeauty founder Benjamyn Gardner dive headfirst into de-stigmatizing success, beauty, and in living confidently in the beauty of who you are.
Check out AntiBeauty's Website, and Instagram to learn more!
Want to engage with Courtney Nicole? Check out Courtney Nicole's LinkedIn, Sidecar Solutions, and Nonpareil Coaching for next steps.
Hello and welcome to the podcast, What Our Parents Didn't Teach Us. This is a place where we will be creating space to discuss all the lessons that we've learned along the way that have led us to where we are today. We'll have conversations with entrepreneurs and freelancers and people from all over the world about what it means to be successful. And the things that we've learned that we hope to pass on to you. I'm your fearless host, courtney Nicole. I'm a coach that currently resides in Denver, Colorado with my wife, two dogs and plus or minus 27 plants. And I can't wait to talk to you. Welcome everyone to the podcast What Our Parents Didn't teach us. I'm here today with my friend, Ben. Ben is coming in from Perth, Australia. So yet again, we get to enjoy a wonderful accent. I just, I have a weak spot for accents. They make me very happy. And we are here to discuss success today, both in our lives and in the lives of people we know. So Ben, tell us a little bit about you
Benjamyn Gardner:hi everyone. My name is Ben. As Courtney said, I'm from Perth, Western Australia. It's 9:00 PM at night here. We've got some thunder and rain happening outside, which is surprising for Perth. Normally it's really hot here. So I'm the founder of a beauty company called anti-beauty, uh, We're the world's first anti-beauty company. But I'm sure during this conversation that we'll hear a little bit more about that.
Courtney Nicole:Yes, indeed. What prompted you to start a beauty industry?
Benjamyn Gardner:So I've been working in the industry for a really long time. I used to be a makeup artist for about 15 years. I'm not really practicing that anymore. And I just found that there's a very large lack of representation for a lot of people in the beauty industry. And I also believe that it's not necessarily a beneficial industry to mental health. And it's something that I've struggled with personally. And I know that my friends have, so I wanted to do something about that.
Courtney Nicole:That's awesome. Yeah, I think there's a lot of the beauty industry that is just taken for granted. I think it's evolved with our culture and we haven't taken the time to re-examine it and see if it still benefits what we're trying to do. So I think it's great that you took the initiative and just said, Hey, how can we come at this differently? What do you think is your favorite part about the work you do?
Benjamyn Gardner:Oh, this is this is the whole reason that I went into this career that I've chosen. I love seeing people's lives changing. So you've got two sides to the story. So if you look at traditional beauty marketing is designed to essentially shame people into feeling negative emotions to purchase products to make them more beautiful. I personally believe that our beauty is found in our differences. So it's something that we really try to promote. And just seeing people come into their own skin and really appreciate their own beauty is something that's amazing to me.
Courtney Nicole:Yes, for me, my self esteem always was more mentally than it was physically, but as I've had friends over the years and watching them come alive, when you realize that who you are just being, who you are is absolutely beautiful, I think has been, It's just very life-giving to me. And being able to see that story again and again. So I can't imagine all the great stories that you have.
Benjamyn Gardner:It's amazing. Like it's the best feeling in the world. You sometimes have people come to you who have really low self confidence and that's, I think a sign of the times. There's so much pressure in social media and just in life in general, to be perfect or to be what the standard of beauty is. And seeing people really explore their self and realize that them being different is what makes them beautiful is yeah, it's so beautiful.
Courtney Nicole:That's amazing. Yeah. I think that people have a standard and an expectation for what they think success is as well. And one of the main themes of this podcast is just discussing success. So how has your idea of how success applies to you, how has it changed over the years, being a business owner, doing different things.
Benjamyn Gardner:So I used to think success was dollars in the bank and figures and attention and followers. And now my definition of success is making a change and seeing that people are appreciating what you're doing and that you're benefiting other people, not necessarily yourself. That's the most important part of success to me, for sure.
Courtney Nicole:Yeah, that's beautiful. I think success shouldn't be an island thing. You know, you can successfully do something by yourself, but when you see the ripple effect and see others buying into it and also seeing their lives elevated in ways that you've never seen before is when you start to get traction. Do you feel like your business has been successful?
Benjamyn Gardner:So Anti Beauty actually only launched about seven months ago, and we've already been awarded most innovative skincare brand of 2021 and won a few awards. And I'm seeing within the past few months, it's rapidly increasing in size. The name anti-beauty takes a little bit of explanation for people to understand what it actually means. But now that they do, it's really picking up and it's, it's just beautiful to see people who are really seeing their own beauty. Yeah. It's amazing.
Courtney Nicole:That's amazing. And for you yourself, how do you feel like it's changed your idea of success.
Benjamyn Gardner:I definitely have been humbled by the experience. I've been in business before. So the previous business that I was successful in is actually my sister's business. It's a Gothic furniture company called Haunt. And, same thing with anti- beauty was targeting a real niche. And with that company, we saw success in dollars and we saw success in massive viral and cult following online. This company though is my baby and it's, it's definitely changed the way that I look at business just in general. I'm far less focused on making money. I'm far more focused on changing lives now.
Courtney Nicole:Oh, wow. I like that. Yeah. I think a lot of people don't stop long enough to figure out why they're doing it. I've had a couple of clients when they say, oh, I just want to be successful. And if I nail them down and I'm like, what really is success to you? A lot of times you'll find out that you're already doing it. You're already seeing success. I think it's probably similar. I am not as familiar with the beauty industry, but I do feel like if you can just accept that you are beautiful the way you are, then anything else is just fun, it's experimenting, it's humanity. And it's really just a wonderful picture of evolution in ourselves.
Benjamyn Gardner:Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's one of the most important things to me is that beauty isn't about appearance at all. I don't think my opinion of beauty is that it's within all of us. And. That's I think, where the company and also the success of the company is coming from. We're not trying to sell an ideal of beauty. We are trying to create a environment where people feel safe and they feel like they can be themselves and just be free. And that's such a liberating thing for so many people.
Courtney Nicole:That is great. Man, there's just so much opportunity in the world. If we change the way we think about things, change the way we think about beauty, think about success, think about wealth. I think that unlimited potential opens up for us.
Benjamyn Gardner:I think that there's definitely still a lot of an antiquated view on our successes. And I think that this podcast is really good in showing all of the different types of success that people can experience and seeing the way that different people classify success is a really interesting thing as though well.
Courtney Nicole:Kind of shifting the conversation to your parents, or to those that were in a leadership role in your early development years, how do you believe they define success and how has that impacted your journey towards it?
Benjamyn Gardner:So I was quite lucky to be brought up in a family with a little bit of business success. So my father was a successful businessman. He's written quite a few books about selling. He definitely had the mindset that success was in dollars. And he's unfortunately no longer with us, but I believe that if he still was, that he would start to see the value in the lives that he changed. Cause he definitely changed a lot of lives as well. The one amazing thing my parents taught me was resilience. And just to, if you've got a goal and if you've got a vision, just keep going, no matter what the limitations that are put on you or the roadblocks that come in front of you are, you just gotta keep going.
Courtney Nicole:Resilience, I feel like for me, in my understanding of it, was this thing that like, if you get attacked, you still come back up. You know, I would say like a Phoenix might be a really good example of a resilient creature. No matter how many times they go into flames, they still keep rising again. So you're talking about resilience. And the way that you're explaining it is really beautiful. I want to dive into it a little bit. You said keep pushing through, even the roadblocks and things like that. How do you handle roadblocks with resilience?
Benjamyn Gardner:So, this is quite an unusual statement to make, but I'm very fortunate to have experienced quite a lot of trauma in my life. So, from that I've risen from the ashes. And now I feel like nothing can really stop me now. But it is purely about believing in yourself. I know that I had, especially with this brand that I developed, because of the name and because of what we're actually trying to do, there was a lot of pushback. A lot of people saying that concept will never work." But you know, just believing in yourself and believing in what you're doing is, you can be unstoppable if you've got that faith in yourself.
Courtney Nicole:Wow. Yeah, it's like resilience in the face of resistance. What would you say was the first lesson that you learned um, most clearly, the value of resilience.
Benjamyn Gardner:I would say just being un abashedly yourself. During my life, I've always been a little bit left of field compared to a lot of the people that I've known. I might classify myself as a little bit of a weirdo and I'm really proud to be one and.
Courtney Nicole:Yes weirdos.
Benjamyn Gardner:Exactly. Um, And I think through that, I've been very fortunate to find a tribe of people throughout most of the parts of my life who have been of the same mindset. And keeping those people in your life I think is really important as well.
Courtney Nicole:So if we explain life like a box, right? And this is just a picture that's popping into my head. And I just want to chew on it a little bit. But if life is like a box of what our existence is, I would say trauma is anything that expands that box. It expands the way you see things and what you come to expect of the world. So I think everyone experiences trauma-it's just what level. And I think, aggressive, big T trauma, they say, stretches the box too far, too fast. So. When I think of resilience and perseverance, I think of the people that are at the edge of the box, that are experiencing pretty constant trauma or expansion of their worldview and still continuing to exist. I think the inclination or the temptation to a lot of people just to leave the box. You experience something and you're like,"Nope, I don't like it." And they either try to re shrink their box and go back to things that they knew before the trauma, or are they just don't like boxes anymore and they try to exist in this floaty space where there are no rules. I think we need rules. Nature has rules and laws and we as humans have moral rights and wrongs, and boundaries really help us to exist there. So I wonder what other words exist around the border. If we've got persistence and we've got perseverance, we've got resilience. What other things do you think you need to exist on the edge here? And they're usually only words that you experience when trauma happens.
Benjamyn Gardner:I was going to say something that is totally, probably not what you would mean, say generally with trauma, but passion. Uh, I think you need to have a fire within yourself. It is really difficult to be resilient, especially if things continually happen, like nonstop. And it is really difficult to just keep going despite that. But I think that if you've got a good internal support network within yourself, which is something that you gain from trauma, a lot of the time you have to. Nobody else can experience the way that you're feeling, except for yourself. You can try to explain it to people, but I think that you really need to look within. And that was probably one of the biggest lessons that I had to learn as well. To not try to rely on other people to fix the trauma that I've experienced, but rather sharing my story with people has helped other people and learning from other people about their resilience and the way that they've experienced trauma and they've experienced life. I think just seeing that balance between. Those three different things in life. There's obviously with everybody's life, there's ups and downs, then it's just seeing the balance and being able to see over that next hill is I think one of the most important things. Yeah.
Courtney Nicole:Yeah. I love your view on trauma and just saying that it doesn't have to be something that's debilitating. That you're actually proud of it. Because if you take a trauma that a lot of people are familiar with, perhaps, in war, if you lose your legs or lose a limb, a lot of people are familiar with that type of trauma. And they see the value when that person comes back and shares their story, especially to other people who are also amputees. Those kinds of things we see in society. But I feel like as someone who still has my legs, that I still feel a little bit sorry for them. But I wonder what would happen if we could change our response to the sharing of trauma, to the experiencing of trauma to a"wow! What can you do now?" Because if we were, if we believe the movies, people that are missing their natural born legs can have super power legs. You know, if you can have legs that are machines, you might even have more potential than you did before. So how do we get excited about people's trauma and their healing journey without being insensitive? Especially if the trauma is something more aggressive, like sexual abuse or any kind of other types of abuse that are happening from willing participants.
Benjamyn Gardner:Yeah. I think that it's it would definitely be beneficial to society to change the way that we view trauma. It's going to be easier said than done. Traumatic experiences are traumatic for a reason. And you definitely, I think sometimes need coaching on how to see the beauty in that. But I think that one of the main points is in regards to, for example, losing your legs. A lot of the stories that I've seen, and I can't speak from first, you know, I'm, I don't have any physical trauma, luckily. But I've seen so many people that have come out the other side of that thinking what is my life going to be now? Like I've lost everything that I've known and because of losing that, you have to re learn life essentially, then re look at the values in your life and I guess be grateful for what you do have. And I've experienced so many stories that people that have experienced things that I would say a far worse than the trauma that, everything's subjective, but I believe far worse than the trauma I've experienced and seeing them. Push forward in life, and we will bring up the word resilience again, just being resilient. It's insane the way that people's mindset can change after an event like that. You can either go down a positive route or a negative one. Unfortunately, I believe that generally society pushes people more down the negative path in regards to a trauma response. But that's something that I think could absolutely be changed. Yeah.
Courtney Nicole:Yeah. When I think about like I mentioned, the amputee, a lot of trauma happens in war. And that just seems to be one of the easiest examples in the real world to grasp. Because people at least have heard enough stories about it that they're familiar. So if you think of even other trauma that happens in your life, like I said, maybe it was abuse, maybe it was, abandonment, whatever has happened. If you think of that in a war sense, assume that the day you take your first breath on this earth, you are in a battle and you're going to face depression and you're going to face opposition and you're going to face a lot of things. You also have people on your side. You know, We come in with the ability to have love and joy and hope and all this other, right. But we are in some sort of light versus darkness battle. And when you come in with that experience and that expectation of what trauma will be, then we're ready to help each other. And I think those are some of the barriers and some of the forced frameworks that need to be dismantled. Be it around beauty, or success, or anything else is this expectation that we're here and that things that happen are just bad. And we hope it doesn't happen. I think it's going to happen. And if we can change our expectation to this will happen. You will question the way you look. You will question what you've accomplished in life. You will, all these other things, and then traumatic experiences will happen that will reframe it. And then you'll have to ask all the questions again. If we prepare ourselves for the battle, then we can find more camaraderie in it. Because I have never found more pure and intense camaraderie than that of people that have been through a war together. Like when you see the bond that they have. So what if we could start to find that bond just in everyday life with people that we work with, people that are in our families, understanding we're all in this battle for life, for hope, for love, for beauty together, then we could empower each other. And I think trauma is the experience, resilience is the tool that we learn to wield. And the bigger the trauma, the bigger the tool, and when we can empower others to do it in their lives, we could see the tide of the world shift from traumatized, sitting in a corner, afraid to get up. To, no, I know I can do this because I don't have another choice. I have to do this.
Benjamyn Gardner:Yeah, exactly. I a hundred percent agree with that. I think that in society we do have that training in our minds that a traumatic experience is going to be a permanently bad mark on your life when it doesn't really need to be. And I think that there's a lot of shame that comes with that as well. People expect to not be able to tell their story for fear of being shamed, or for fear of being embarrassed, or people not understanding what they've been through or judging them. And I just think that happens, in a lot of things in everyday life. But with open discussion and being honest with each other and understanding that we all go through negative things. And life is subjective, so what might be traumatic for me might not be for another person. And you can't really judge that or judge someone based on what they believe trauma is. I think that having that open discussion could absolutely change the world. I believe just open discussion in general and being able to tell people how you really feel without fear of being shamed, or a fear of rejection, or anything like that would be a really positive step. And for example, the internet has given us a little bit more of an out. Um, people uh, as you would know, are quite willing to say things on the internet that they might not say in person to someone. And that can be a positive thing as well as a negative. There's definitely a lot more of an outlet, I think now, for people to be able to have shared experiences. A lot of groups online for people to be able to see that there are other people that experience similar things to them and look at the way that they've dealt with it and learn positive coping mechanisms. And in saying that, what is a positive coping mechanism and what is the negative one? That's subjective also. So.
Courtney Nicole:Well, I think coping mechanisms, especially this controversial idea that they could be positive, I think if you've ever been on a subway train and you spread your legs a little bit further, that's a coping mechanism. No, that's not how you should walk, or stand, or exist in the world wholly. But when force is in play, and you're not expecting it, and you need to be able to steady yourself, then I would say, using your legs to do so, even in a funky stance is beneficial and is healthy. And there's nothing wrong with that. You just need to take it in context. So Yeah. You can have a coping mechanism of eating a cookie. You just can't eat cookies all the time. If you can't cope every once in a while, you need to change the way you handle life. So I think coping mechanisms are contextual. And we need to stop worrying about whether or not I'm going to become addicted to sugar if I have this cookie, probably not...
Benjamyn Gardner:yeah. And in saying that I think there's a stigma around the words coping mechanism as well. People generally will say something negative in response to coping mechanism, but I believe that a coping mechanism could just be speaking to your friends, or art, or expressing yourself or, yeah, absolutely. There's so many positive coping mechanisms. But yeah, I think people get really held down by the mindset that doing this certain action might be perceived as negative. So I shouldn't do it. I believe do what makes you happy. Do what makes you feel comfortable and feel safe. And I think that's a good rule just generally in life. To really look at your life as your own and not really worry about what other people are thinking of the way that you cope with things. A lot of people, I think, feel shamed by the way that they react to certain things. But, we don't go through school and get taught how to deal with trauma. We don't go through school and get taught that life isn't going to be perfect. For anyone, no matter how much we want it to be. And I'm going to be quite open and honest. I've done something called dialectical behavioral therapy. And it was a very intensive retraining of some of the negative thought processes that I had ingrained in my mind from a very young age. And I wish that they taught that in school. Um, It was life-changing. It was probably one of the best things that I've ever experienced. It totally changed the way that I see the world. And the lady who created the therapy actually has borderline personality disorder and she couldn't find something that really worked for her. So she developed it herself. And is now helping, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people around the world. And it's really it's just beautiful. And my mother has said the same thing that it should be taught in schools to everyone. It just, it teaches you resilience. It teaches you how to look at things, not just as black and white, but look in the gray areas and see beauty in negativity. Yeah.
Courtney Nicole:Yeah, full circle. I feel like I could probably do a follow-up podcast to this that's just called de-stigmatize it because I just, it keeps coming up. And I think that success has been stigmatized. I think failure has been. Shame, abuse, trauma, all that beauty. All of it has just gotten. This vibe around it that makes it feel like people cannot approach it and cannot discuss it. And that's something I try to do personally in my own business and in my own life with friends is just say what's the thing you can't talk to anyone else about. Let's talk about that. Because if we don't talk about that, that will be your ceiling. That will be your limiting belief. That will be the thing that holds you back and it may be traumatic to discuss it. But whatever we've got to do to get you through to the other side is worth it. Because true success, true beauty, true abundance, and true freedom are just on the other side. And you're right. It's not just a decision. You really do have to do the work. You have to do it mentally. You need to find a therapy protocol that works for you. You can do neuro-linguistic programming. You can look into this dialect option, but one way or another, you have to decide that getting to the other side is worth every bit of pain you will go through to get there. It's painful to bodybuild because you've got to build muscles that didn't exist before. Like"life is pain, highness," I think they say in Princess Bride. You know. I always try to slip in at least one really cheesy quote. But it is. Life is pain. And there will always be pain. So choose the pain you want to encounter. Choose the stretching that you want to encounter. Because it's going to happen one way or the other. So it may as well be on your journey to greatness, to beauty, to a life of fulfillment and freedom.
Benjamyn Gardner:I totally agree. And it should be on your terms as well. Not on anyone else's so
Courtney Nicole:yeah. Decide where you want to go. And talk to people about it. And get excited about it? It doesn't have to be this, I'm going to be successful, but I don't want to tell my dad because he never made as much as I'm about to make and all of the frozen perceptions and the expectations we have around this journey just need to be shattered. So that's why I'm so grateful for the work that you're doing. Because we're shattering little beliefs and shattering that around beauty, I think is huge. Huge.
Benjamyn Gardner:Something that keeps popping up or has been popping up relatively recently: I'm a very blunt and blatantly honest person, and I over share everything with everyone. And I'm quite happy to be that person. But I often have people say to me, don't say that. Be careful what you're saying, be careful about what you share with your business, be careful about this, be careful about that. And I'm like, my company's called anti-beauty so I don't think there's any thing that I could share that would be too much of an issue, but I think just being open and authentic is so important. I, I can't be discussing this message with people and then be faking life. I would prefer to be very blatant and open and honest, and hopefully there's people out there that will see the journey that I've experienced and see the beauty in the positivity that you can gain from being unabashedly yourself. Just being you, and really not caring what other people think. I think that's something that we really get stuck on as well in life is worrying so much about what other people think. And I definitely was that person. And I'm not going to say that I'm not anymore. Everybody, I think still has those issues with self-confidence, but you know, it's just about trying to reframe that in as positive a light as you can. Yeah, I think there's definitely a lot of progress that's being made in that light. I saw a tweet from Lil NAS X that he put off yesterday. I have to write it
Courtney Nicole:Okay. All right, let's have it.
Benjamyn Gardner:forget it, but he said,"stop waiting for other people to tell you that you're amazing. You decide that you're amazing. And then wait for everyone else to catch up." And that's something that like, when I saw that I loved that. It's so true. No matter what's happening in your life, believe in yourself, keep pushing you're going to make it.
Courtney Nicole:Love that
Benjamyn Gardner:yeah, you don't need to compare your success to other people. Just being happy within yourself is the definition in my mind of success.
Courtney Nicole:I would also add on to that don't even wait.
Benjamyn Gardner:Yeah, exactly.
Courtney Nicole:Decide that you're amazing and assume everyone else just hasn't caught up yet. Like maybe they will, maybe they won't, but if you're waiting for them to catch up, you're already limiting yourself again. So just decide where you're going and get started. My dad would do that when it was time for all of us to let go to an event, we were notoriously late and he really liked being on time. So we had two cars in the family and he would just be like, I'm leaving at this time. And anyone who wants to come can come and anyone who doesn't can come later or stay home, or I don't care, but this is when I'm choosing to go. I was one of five children, so it was always interesting to see who would get it together. And we changed and alternated but eventually I learned what it took to be on time because I really enjoyed spending time with my dad. So, doing it for that purpose was neat, but Yeah. he just was like, I'm going. So come or don't. I love that just in general.
Benjamyn Gardner:I love that as just a philosophy for life as well. I'm on this journey. You can come along with me if you like or not. So yeah. But that's very true. Yeah. Don't wait for anyone else. It's all about you. Yeah.
Courtney Nicole:To that point, I think we are about at our time here, but if anyone wanted to come on a journey with you, what is probably the best way for them to get in touch?
Benjamyn Gardner:So our website is antibeauty.com. But our socials are@antibeautyinternational. So probably at the moment, Instagram is where we're focusing most of our attention. And I would absolutely invite anyone to contact me about anything. It doesn't have to be about your skin. Doesn't have to be about beauty. If you want to hear more about my life or the way that I've coped through things, or if you need help with anything, Antibeauty is actually just supposed to be a safe space for people to feel comfortable within themselves. If you've got something that you want to share with someone, and you don't know who you can uh, you need an ear to listen to you contact me. I'm here. I'm on the opposite side of the world, but I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
Courtney Nicole:We can. still make it work, even if it's 7:00 AM where I am and 9:00 PM where you're at, we'll make it work. I would say maybe someday you'll have an allies program AntiBeauty allies where you can be mentored or partnered with people. And I see you being a great connecting force for that. So I can't wait to see all of the places you go. And I know we're going to stay connected. We'll probably have you back on the podcast so we can keep de-stigmatizing the whole world.
Benjamyn Gardner:absolutely. And I'm so grateful that you invited me on. It's been wonderful and I would love to come back. There's so many things that we could discuss. Yeah, anytime
Courtney Nicole:Perfect. Thank you. so much. And we will see you next time.
Benjamyn Gardner:Thank you.
Courtney Nicole:Thanks so much for joining us for the podcast today, and I hope you learned some valuable lessons that will help you on your journey to success. If you're interested in coaching with me, you can check out Nonpareilcoaching.com. That's NONPAREILcoaching.com. Courtney Nicole can be found on most social medias. You can also slide into my DMS on Instagram@courtandwhiskey. If you're interested in being a guest on this podcast, you can check out our website it's just the acronym for what our parents didn't teach us.com. www.WOPDTU.com to be a guest on the podcast. You can find us wherever you find your podcasts. Don't forget: the universe is conspiring with you.