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Speaking Of Curves: Ashley Nell Tipton Pivots from Plus Size Fashion Designer to Host with The Love
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Oct 31, 2024
Heyyyyyyyy, boo! Welcome back to our Speaking of Curves Series. Each Tuesday and Thursday, we interview various plus-size business owners in this space. This series is all about how we can support and learn more about them, especially, NOW! Today's guest? Is the uber sweet, talented, and inspiring, Ashley Nell Tipton! And does she have some news to share! Join us at 12 pm EST/ 9 am PST as we chat with her and hear about her pivot, journey, and what you can expect next from her! See you soon, grab a cup of coffee or tea, and bring a friend!
View Video Transcript
0:05
hello hello hello welcome back to speaking of curves i'm marie denae the creator of the kirby
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fashionista and your host of this little series that we're doing so every tuesday and thursday we're here
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to really show love and show support to our indie designers business owners influencers creators
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in the plus size space so that you can you know know and learn how to support them
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maybe you've never met the designer behind maybe you've never had a chance to listen to someone speak or get
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interviewed but we're here really about like how do we support especially now what are those pivots how are people
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pivoting what are they doing so as you're joining in today i want to make sure that you let us know where
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you're tuning in from um let us know if this is your first time like go ahead and don't be sh
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don't be shy make sure you drop like your city or your country or your state like we're kind of interactive here right so
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as you're talking as we as you watch and as you listen to our interview today please make sure to ask questions
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please make sure to let us know um you know your thoughts or your comments as we're talking because
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this is a conversation so are you guys ready for our guests
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because i'm so geeked i have known this woman since like 2012
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i believe like that's a long time dude 2012. and i have watched her journey from
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designer um emerging designer full figure fashion week in 2012 wow to the winner of um
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project runway as the first plus size winner plus size designer at project runway she's since gone on to
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create capsule collections closing jewelry patterns um
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she's collaborated with quite a few different brands and today miss ashley nell tipton is going to be
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talking about her pivot and how this pandemic has shifted
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um you know kind of her thoughts and her focus and her values and we've been talking about that this
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whole time with different designers even myself like what we're leaning more into
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and kind of finding our own silver linings throughout this so as you guys are saying hello hey y'all
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let's look at first time texas baby hello jazzy faye hey boo welcome um let's see hello miss
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ruth hello danielle um do me a favor as you guys are joining in make sure you share make sure you use
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some love and welcome miss ashley nell tipton hello ashley hi everyone
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thank you so much marie for having me this is so exciting and like hearing you talk
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about how long we've known each other you knew baby ashley
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or just coming into one so how are you today like for reals how
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are you today i know it's early over there on the west coast right you got me up early no i'm just kidding it's about nine o'clock
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here um this is normally the time that i'm getting into the office drinking my espresso with my protein
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shake they started i'm actually in my studio with my team right now and
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we are just in the how do we want to say this mask
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right now we're in the works of just producing creating and i'm just in this
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really really happy place right now and i'm enjoying every moment of it i
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know that we're going through a pandemic and i think the best thing we can do
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is make ourselves happy knowing that like we don't have control over what's going on around us but we have control
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over ourselves that's real that's real i mean is there's different ways i have learned
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probably in this biggest journeys learning how to give myself grace and really learning how to be grateful
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for like some of the smallest things i think we were always so busy before go go go
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go go go go and then like you know now with everything being on pause like it's
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forcing us to kind of go inwards look towards ourselves and this is kind of the pivot of the this is beginning of
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the pivot for you now like many other designers that we've talked to on the show like they've gone into masks
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but not only did you go into masks you also started you know really um participating and like giving
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back to the community like can you talk a little bit about that yeah most definitely um our first focus when we
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heard that there was this virus going on and everybody
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anxiety their nerves has gone up because we thank you from oh i love
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the comments on the bottom um everybody didn't know what was happening and my first concern
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was how can i help everyone through this process of change the unknown
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um the fears um so as a team we all sat together and really
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thought what can we do to bring um calmness to the community especially where i live
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you know especially that we don't know what this virus is doing and we had work happening in china in november
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and we heard that their trip or the work was being canceled and we knew
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that something was happening across the world that was going to slowly start to
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trickle down and we were already thinking like we
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need to change our business we need to change our focus because you were in preparation mode
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like you knew something was coming like i'm hearing different tidbits so you were like okay how do i get ready
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for rather than just sitting back and you know kind of being like what's happening so you were
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proactive yeah definitely because i already felt like my head was above waters with my business with
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my career everything and i just felt like there's something is going to happen i mean
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us as a team we we felt it in our gut that we knew something was going to happen and that
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didn't change with the times that we were going to sink and we really felt like we needed to
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pivot and change our company as the world was changing around us and we really felt like okay if we have all
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this fabric here we might as well use it because clothing right now is not a priority
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our health is a priority right and so we started creating masks and
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we didn't think nothing was gonna really go anywhere with it and overnight once again overnight success
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is something that i'm very familiar with our world's changed here and we started
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creating masks people started losing their jobs my family and friends were losing their
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jobs because of the epidemic and we were taking everyone in my mom and
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dad were working with us help make mass my brother my cousins aunts and uncles friends
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everybody was here affair it was it was the most
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i've always wanted to experience working with my family and i'm glad that has andrew's looking
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at me right now and i've always wanted to give that opportunity to my family to be like this is a family business
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i'm on a mission i'm trying to get my sister here from california like she don't know maybe
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i'm like that is my goal to be able to be like and here's payroll off and here's your offer
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like that is a goal like i'm not there yet but i want my sister on my teeth yeah and
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you know that your family and your clothes the people close or the people near you
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have the best interest for you and it's if you can work with them huh sometimes
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sometimes yes we've had our conversations about business and it's a lot but it was a fun
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experience and i'm glad that i could help my family and friends during that time and now we've grown to be this
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small company this very intimate small company family here with a strong team we know
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exactly what we're doing and every time we get together and have a meeting
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we're constantly strategizing building goals and conquering
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them together and then being able to like reflect and look at what we did and how we got here
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right and you know that's important i think there has been tons of reflection tons of like kind of
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taking inventory of self inventory of things important around you like there's this has been like a whole lot
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you know what i'm saying like people like looking at their spouses like do i really like you like you know so it's like this whole
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like i'm saying you see this right girl i walked in this year in a
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relationship and i am now out of a relationship
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well my point exactly i mean you're evaluating
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everything and you know it's like and you're holding those things dear to you so you went from uh you know you saw this
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coming you were proactive you started doing masks you started donating masks now
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how did that make you feel in this pivot like did you feel like yes miss danielle miss danielle
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said choose your circle wisely exactly yes yes um but did you
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feel that um like how did you feel did you feel empowered were you worried or were you kind of
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just along for the ride and see what happens i felt empowered because as long as i've
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known myself i know that i will enjoy doing something when i'm giving back
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when i'm making other people feel good so knowing that we were making masks
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in helping people stay healthy it there was nothing that could bring me
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down it just made me so happy like it fulfilled me and it made me go into this role
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of you can't let everything bother you you're one person you can't
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um how do i want to say this like running a business and doing production
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in my studio and being in charge of 10 15 people it taught me so
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much taught me how to work with different personalities how to talk to people how to communicate like
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it was just my mind was just so focused on trying to
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get this production right to fulfill 500 orders a day that i didn't have anywhere any other
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space to think about anything else but accomplishing what was in front of me and it felt so good because
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i was no longer worried about what people were thinking about me what people were saying on social media
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about me um or why am i making masks why am i trying to profit off of this
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like all these things and i was like at the end of the day i don't care what you say because i'm doing something that
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one fulfills my heart and two is helping others so like listen so the fact that you said
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this we're gonna stay here for just two seconds yeah so you know there's this point of
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realization because you know like i said i've known you for a minute this like we've known and we've had
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very personal conversations with the heart movements and and that journey of seeing you know
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because there is a moment like we're here online like you're hyper visible you you know
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everyone feels like they know your life or they know you and it's hard to kind of like
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ignore like those um you know those those criticisms and
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those call outs it's hard to ignore those so the fact that you have shown like
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your growth right that you know initially like this is this is part of your journey like you have shown
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and and if anything do you feel like this kind of you fell more into or you sat more into who you
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are and where you want to go because of this pandemic like it allowed for you to be like
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this is my journey this is who i am yeah it allowed me to own everything i felt like this is
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i guess you could say like the silver lining like yes we are going through this but it's up to you what you make it and i've
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seen so many people gonna go into depression during this time and i think
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it's more than anything it's a huge wake-up call for everyone to finally stop
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realize what it is that you want and what you want to do and just appreciate life so much more
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and realize that what you were doing before doesn't have to be the same thing that you're doing
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now and change is okay change is not bad but you know change is scary for a
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lot of people of course it is it's you know friday the 13th is like you know people are like afraid
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of it because but it was really about change like if you look at the number 13 it means change and so like
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even for me i lost my job on friday the 13th in 2009 in march right
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i was like oh my gosh if the world is over then i realized it was change and a lot of times people
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associate change was bad when change is growth change is like you're closing one chapter of a book and you're
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opening another um and you know sometimes like i i'm a virgo i am inherently a control
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freak and i have a capricorn moon which makes me hella ambitious and hella serious and let's go get it i
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have to learn how to literally let things go like okay well let's take a look
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control exactly so for you in this process of learning how to let
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go learning how to you know stand and own who you are like how does ashley see herself today
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a stronger person like
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going through this going through the filming of our love you show
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and seeing where my weaknesses and my strengths have been through this
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whole pandemic and growing our company
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it just made me see how much i've done and how much stronger i am and how
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i can push myself and what do i enjoy doing um it's just been this whole
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learning experience which i have enjoyed every minute of it um
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and yes the the unknown is scary and i'm so thankful to have andrew my
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manager next to me to talk to me and walk me through these things that i'm
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scared about and how it's because i simply make these ideas that aren't true in my head that
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allow you to build fear around it um let me let me pause you for a second there
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because i learned in therapy this is what my therapist had me do she had me find the lie and replace it
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with the truth because oftentimes like you know we take something that someone
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said to us or something that someone has said that you know you've done or they have like trust
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like whatever you have formulated this lie and made it a truth but she had me
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sit down and like identify these lies and like replace them with with my
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truth that walking through that process is hard as hell
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so for you to sit here and say like you know you've gone through this journey and you're learning how to like
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i'm so freaking proud of you because it's hard it is it is
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and we have to talk about it more because a lot of people think that they're by themselves in this process i think
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the first time i had shared with someone that i was like going through depression they said marie it is okay to not be
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okay that was like the most freeing thing
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which now that we're talking about talking about it which is the whole reason for this pivot
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of where ashley 2.0 is today thank you 2.0 i mean you know so where
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ashley is today you are now launching a new project called the love you show yes
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so can you talk a little bit about like why you felt like you wanted to start this show
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or do you feel like kind of what we're like talking about kind of has led this to it right now
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is the perfect timing for this show to be happening um
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ever since me and andrew decided to start working with each other about four five years ago this has been
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our dream but me ashley was not ready for it there was
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a lot of lot of things that me and andrew had to work through me
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personally before i can share my journey and to self-love
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basically this show this whole show is me and andrew talking about
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how i've learned to self-accept self-love and just love me for who i am and
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be happy in life and this whole show just basically shows us how our mind works
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and how we think of things and where they come from right and how we approach
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them um every episode is a new lesson we just launched
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um our first lesson which is about life experiences and how they changed
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our thinking since then so a couple of the topics that i talk about is being called fat and how that changed
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my mind um going on to project runway having weight loss surgery
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um there's just so many life experiences that i've gone through
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or how do i say this events life events that have happened that have
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changed my thinking and why i've allowed those things to change my thinking and how it's
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prevented me from doing a lot more things that i've always wanted to like being fat
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has in the past has stopped me from dating people going on roller coasters
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going on a trip um is this because is this because of how
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you saw yourself as fat yes you you thought that being by
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by having fat right by having more adipose having being being larger you felt like
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you didn't deserve all of these other things i didn't i didn't deserve it or people were not
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going to accept me or people were going to shame me it was just all these ideas that i built
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up in my head and once i understood the process of my thinking and how i needed to stop it
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it was the most freeing thing ever it's like i finally
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quit my full-time job
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and so this is exciting so you know it's interesting is i'm hearing you speak
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like you know you're using a lot of different words that i have learned in therapy and one of the things that i
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um was also challenged with would you speak of like these events um
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you know we are our own worst critics sometimes you know you create these head you create these thoughts in our head we
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um you know tell ourselves these lies but one of the things that my therapist had
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said she goes marie when you criticize yourself when you judge yourself who voice do you hear
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and that was something for me where i had to walk it back it wasn't my mom
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it wasn't it wasn't my grandmother it was another female figure who had inflicted a lot of harm on me
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right and so i had thought i was past it i just adopted her voice in my head
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so it just like shaped how i moved and for you you're talking about these
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life experiences and like how they how you move how you pre you know it's interesting how we
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internalize like different life events traumas um or having our feelings
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hurt and how we move differently and how we shrink ourselves like we we go through
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life making sure that we never get hurt like we got hurt before
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or we like we just go through life trying to make sure that that event doesn't happen again it really
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hurts when your own family members that shames you that your family would be on your side
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oh girl you'll never make them happy believe me me being someone who has always been
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overweight and then for me to have weight loss surgery and still not be what they want
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me to be i had to let go of all that i was like i didn't do this to make you happy
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and i think it's about learning how to find your voice in those moments right because what you
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just said i didn't do this to make you happy like learning how to advocate for
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yourself like your voice may shake and quiver when you're standing up to your mom
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mom this is not for you this is for me like you learn it's like these baby steps right you
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really have to learn like i love you but i love me more and it's okay to be selfish selfish is
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not a bad thing especially when it comes to protecting your own sanity protecting
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your yours your your livelihood your space your mind and so these are the
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conversations that you're going to be having on your new show the love show yes and the
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love you show my bad you yes it's the emphasize on you because you're telling yourself that
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you love you right now when can we like so tell us a little bit
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about like when um and how people can like when are you doing your shows like when do they debut
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and where can you find them so you can find my love you show on the ashley nell tipton channel
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it's in a separate little playlist or just a show on the side that i have on my channel
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that we will be releasing new episodes every friday at 2 p.m west coast time so about
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five around five east of east coast time um so we have already pre-filmed about
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seven eight episodes you're official like you're hella fancy and official get a girl
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i mean we let's say when did we have our strategy meeting i want to say
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in may andrew we had a strategy meeting in may and we had worked with this
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amazing um mentor of ours robert fritz who's an author of the book that i referred to a lot on
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my channel called um identity and we sat down and had a skype meeting
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with him and told him hey like our business is changing we have all these
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goals and we have these things that we want to accomplish how can you help us maintain
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what we have but still grow as a company and focus on these two different things
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that are two different books but somehow how they integrate together
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right in may we said by october we want to have
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10 videos by september we want to launch our youtube channel and we want
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to be able to release like we had everything set up of like when we want to launch how many and just
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be ahead of time so that we can really give you the best information you can
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and not allow it to be overwhelming because this work is a lot
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and the first step you just have to do is just be okay and open to learning
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and when you learn the lesson recognize it but don't be harmful to
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yourself for like recognizing the things that you've done just change them this is beautiful
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you got a new hair a new attitude show like you've really it leaned
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the hell in into this pivot especially now given the whole you know given the world
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right and so if you were to give some advice to another business owner who's trying
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to figure out you know how to make the most of this situation
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what advice would you give to them do something that makes you happy because
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others will see it um and they will believe in it and they will believe in you
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um i think i think that's the main thing because if
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you're doing something that you don't enjoy doing people aren't going to have the same enjoyment
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to it um and
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i think it's just being happy with yourself i think it just all comes from you forget what everybody else thinks
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forget about what people think you should be doing or how you like all those things um
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right i think that was a huge wake-up call because i had gave myself this job
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of always making people happy and trying to be the best at what i do
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and i was like nobody's watching ashley like why are you why are you giving yourself this job
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when nobody's tracking for you like just do what makes you happy
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and that's it like i can't believe how much i consumed my mind about worrying
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about what other people were going to think about me or why aren't you designing anymore ashley
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well because that doesn't fulfill my heart anymore like when i started
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designing plus size clothing i was designing it because there wasn't this field like there wasn't
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enough clothing and now that five years has passed and we have so many options which i'm so
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proud of this plus-sized community i'm okay to say that i can move on and do something else now do you think
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or do you have do you have you shut that door completely or do you think it's just more of a temporary like
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right now this is what's like making you wow i who who am i to say
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that i'm not gonna design anymore like i think you
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you limit yourself when you tell yourself you're not a designer anymore like it's i can't think that if you're a
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creator like you're a person and so i can't really say that i stopped
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designing because i'm still designing mass like i'm still
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doing something that i enjoy like yesterday i was just sitting here
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thinking of new ideas to mask for rbg and
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i had just watched her documentary the other night and i was just inspired by who she was and it's like
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knowing who you are and what you're good at making yourself happy so um
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i know a lot of people think that i'm not designing anymore i'm just not designing plus size clothing at this
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very moment but i'm designing masks i'm designing merch for my love you
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show i'm designing new functional products that
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work for our everyday lives because now we have to wear a mask where do we put our mask after we're
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done using it let's make a bag that can fit in your purse or in your pocket
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like i love figuring out stuff and i always would call myself a macgyver like
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you just give me some materials and i will figure something out so we started creating
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mask chains so that they go around our neck and we don't lay our mask on the table for
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glasses exactly for glasses but now you have them for masks
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what
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