Women In Wellness: Katie Fink of Mind Body Soul Market On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing

An Interview With Candice Georgiadis

Trust your intuition and put on ear muffs for the naysayers. As I’ve taken this journey and leveled up, not everyone has been a cheerleader and joined me for this next chapter — this is OK and perhaps they will re-emerge in a later chapter of my story.

As a part of my series about the women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Katie Fink.

Katie Fink is a corporate leader in retail tech, angel investor, and the founder of the new Mind Body Soul Market.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?

I wasn’t always spiritually awake. I spent 2 decades as a corporate entrepreneur at a Fortune 100 retailer, but career success and a picture-perfect life doesn’t always translate into a thriving soul. A grueling schedule, amazing young kids, the family disease of addiction, the ending of a marriage and a habit of putting everyone else’s needs above my own as I became a single parent, left me with a broken body, a foggy mind, and a disconnected soul.

I vividly remember the day I surrendered it all and asked the universe for help. My answer came in the form of a local women’s circle. That’s where my path to wholeness began. Those first steps felt unfamiliar and intimidating. As I became more experienced in the worlds of reiki, astrology, women’s circles, feng shui, crystalline DNA and other spiritual wellness practices, I learned how to nourish myself back to wholeness by tuning inward and became the person that my friends and colleagues came to when they were ready to dip their toes into the mysteries of the universe and manifest their future realities in the quantum.

After a decade of learning, my guides showed me the vision for Mind Body Soul Market: a welcoming, and uncensored space for healing, nourishment, and growth. At that moment, I knew that my purpose was to provide others with easy access to trusted brands and experts, so they could find their path to wholeness and shine their light!

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?

In February of 2020 during a meditation at a local women’s circle I received the upload for Mind Body Soul Market and when sharing the vision for it with the circle, I remember thinking wow that is full body chills cool, but how will I ever do that with working in Corporate America. Fast forward to March of 2020 and the world shifted just enough that those hours I would have been commuting suddenly became free.

It took me two years to build mindbodysoulmarket.com and during those two years the biggest gift was all the amazing co-creators that came into my world to bring this big vision to life. When we trust our visions, magic truly happens! I love the Glennon Doyle quote, ‘The braver we are, the luckier we get.’ — I referred back to this quote countless times and will continue to as we embark on our soft launch phase!

Can you share a story about the biggest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Early in my corporate career I had an opportunity to take an expat assignment in Duesseldorf, Germany –

I had just completed my MBA in Entrepreneurship from Babson and was excited to put all my new knowledge into action. Fast forward to a few weeks on the job and my colleagues and I were not speaking the same language. My team was from all over Europe with different backgrounds and perspectives and in order for us to function we first had to build trust. This experience opened my eyes to a new way of engaging with humility and vulnerability as the first steps to building trust which is the foundation of success.

Let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?

Mind Body Soul Market is a collective of lovingly curated healers, lightworkers, coaches, priestesses, mystics and many more all with soul missions to support individuals on finding their path to wholeness. I’m a big believer that the right soul teachers come into our lives when we need them the most.

One of our beautiful vendors and dear friend, Sarah Jenks shared a story with me recently. She was talking to a friend’s 8-year-old about what she was learning in school. The young girl shared she was learning about bees, she went on to describe something very cool. She said the bees are focused on finding the nectar and fly to a beautiful flower, while filling their cup with this beautiful nectar they also get a little pollen on their butts and when they fly to the next flower for the nectar they are also pollinating it.

When we fill our cups with the nectar that lights us up we can abundantly give from the overflow of our saucer. Many of our vendors on mindbodysoulmarket.com have helped me personally find the nectar that fills my soul and now I can shine brighter and that is truly the essence of this community — when you’re filling your soul, your light shines bright and lights the road for others to follow. This is a gift I have received and now I understand my soul mission is to help others find their path back to wholeness and shine bright!

Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing? Please give an example or story for each.

My lifestyle tweaks are generally all available at no cost.

1. Everything looks better after a good night’s sleep. This is advice my dad shared with me early in life and to this day I almost always use the 24-hour rule when making key decisions.
2. When I’m getting in my own way and need a shift in perspective I start walking outside — works every single time.
3. Commune with nature — swim in the sea, hike in the woods, learn from the animals, hug a tree (even in cities you can find a patch of land or a tree).
4. Label your water with words or affirmations to remind yourself of the next version you are becoming.
5. Sunshine is like chicken soup for the soul!

If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?

Choose integrity over acceptance. Every time we compromise our own integrity, we give a tiny bit of ourselves away to another. Coming back into my wholeness has entailed getting really honest with myself as a former people-pleaser.

I recently was enjoying the day in Boston with one of my girlfriends and we popped into a shop where she tried on a long peach dress and asked me how it looked. It did not flatter her in color or style and for a split second I reconsidered if I should share my gut response, in an effort to make her ‘feel better’ — I chose the truth and she was fine. In fact, I also noticed in that same moment a phenomenal outfit on the mannequin behind her that was in the perfect colors for her and she walked out of the store beaming with confidence about her new purchase. The path of integrity does not always grace us with quick and beautiful outcomes; however, it does provide us self-love, self-trust and inner peace.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?

1. You need a tribe outside your business! I was fortunate early in my entrepreneurial journey to be speaking with Sandra Campos who opened my eyes to the world of Masterminds. She kindly introduced me to FYLI, a wonderful female mastermind community that creates cohorts of women from different industries to support each other with master classes, accountability and networking. Often you hear founder journeys are lonely and I’ve found it quite the opposite with having my FYLI tribe on my side to lean on — there is laughter, tears and countless shared successes to celebrate together!
2. Trust your intuition and put on ear muffs for the naysayers. As I’ve taken this journey and leveled up, not everyone has been a cheerleader and joined me for this next chapter — this is OK and perhaps they will re-emerge in a later chapter of my story.
3. Ask the universe for help. Co-create with the soul of your business. On this journey I’ve learned my business has a soul that needs to be listened to and I am simple the conduit to deliver its purpose.
4. Courage is required. You will have moments of doubt, for me the doubt can show up sporadically and at other times come in waves. I’ve noticed the big wave of doubt usually comes right before I take a big step … a new hire, a tech investment, a launch. In these moments I’ve learned to lean into the discomfort and let the old ways die to give space for what is ready to be birthed. Big dreams require getting comfortable and courageous with a continual death/rebirth cycle.
5. You will transform.

Sustainability, veganism, mental health and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?

Mental health. Our society focuses immense energy on seeking achievement and acceptance that we forget what truly lights us up. When I meet new people, I often ask them to tell me about their passions and notice that this question perplexes many. Along our journey’s we can lose ourselves in the race of life — buy a house, get a dog, have children — sometimes we forget our essence, what do we truly love? What did you love as a child? Finding my way back to childlike joy has been remarkable to my own mental health. As a kid I loved to play in the woods, visiting a stream with friends, making flower potions, getting very very muddy. Rekindling the spirit of my inner seven year old in nature has been transformative!

What is the best way our readers can follow you online?

You can find us at mindbodysoulmarket.com — we would love to connect with you on any stage of your journey to wholeness!

Thank you for these fantastic insights!