Speaker 1: 0:28

Hello and welcome to Chelsea Liu, my dear, dear friend and a past client, chelsea. Hello, hi, zivina.

Speaker 2: 0:36

So lovely to be here today.

Speaker 1: 0:38

Thank you so much for being so brave and jumping on this beautiful podcast that I've started and hopefully sharing your story today with our listeners. Before we dive into your whole story, can you please just tell me well, tell the listeners who you are, what you do, and we'll just take it away from there.

Speaker 2: 0:57

Yeah, of course. So my name is Chelsea. I live in the Kapiti Coast. We have a beautiful wellness center in Pika Pika called Remind Rituals where we do fire and ice sauna sessions, we do breath work and wellness space things so retreats, uh, massage or holistic beauty therapy and it's just a space and a haven that I just absolutely love and I'm so lucky that I get to call this work.

Speaker 2: 1:25

I'm a mama of a beautiful daughter, lily. She's two years old, so juggling that work-life balance at the moment. Um, so that's been quite interesting that. Um. So I've been in this space for over 20 years. I've been a beauty therapist and massage therapy and then it just sort of went down this beautiful path of I just wanted to keep healing and keep feeling better and keep expanding on what I do. So I guess the real nitty gritty of my love for what I do and in my life would be where my journey started at the yoga teacher training at Krishna Village in Byron Bay, just living and breathing anything to do with the holistic wellness space and hoping to draw this in for my beautiful clients and getting people out of the big smoke and coming out to Kapiti.

Speaker 1: 2:22

I guess people come to you full of stress and you know, leading the lives that we're leading right now is just constant go, go, go, go, go, go go. And then they come to you and it's like, ah, just breathe. And honestly, I'm just absolutely honored to have come across you on this journey. Let's rewind back when we first met. We met about four years ago I think. I think it was around.

Speaker 2: 2:53

Four and a half years, yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:54

Yeah, yeah. Do you want to tell that story? How did you come across me?

Speaker 2: 2:59

I was trying to buy land in the Kapiti Coast, but this was right in the COVID peak and everybody was also trying to get land in the Kapiti Coast. We just came back from a year and a half sabbatical living in France and Australia and when we landed back here I wanted to get land in Kapiti. I'm from the Horofunua. My heart was just really in Kapiti Coast, but it was also the place where everybody wanted to be and I had.

Speaker 2: 3:33

Oh, I looked you up, I found you just from Googling and you were in the community the community pages, the Kapiti Coast community pages for being a mortgage broker. And that's exactly how our journey started. Yeah, and just an absolute shark at making it happen, making our dreams come true. We got declined from one or two banks and then, with Zeeb and Nassau's help, we crossed the threshold to be able to live where we do. Now We've got three acres in beautiful Pika Pika and it's how our journey to get this started, but I would say within two months, it really quickly turned into a very, very, very flourishing friendship.

Speaker 1: 4:19

Yeah, and I think this is something I really enjoy about my business is that I get to meet this incredible people, that clients turn into friends, friends turn into clients, and often we joke about it with my friends if they need to see me, you know when is your next threeixes coming up or insurance review, so we can actually sit down because we all lead such busy lives but when we do catch up it's always very special. So, yeah, I actually remember now I think we met when I just had my daughter. So, yeah, it would have been because I think she came with me to the meeting, didn't?

Speaker 2: 4:48

she. She came to the first interview and I was like, wow, check this lady out coming to interview, just hustling but it wasn't a hustle at all, it was so natural. And Zara was I just remember the fuzzy sticky up hair and yeah, she was really little, yeah, she was in a capsule, I think I brought her.

Speaker 1: 5:04

Yeah, I often brought my babies to the meetings. Normally they behaved when they were little Just sleep, but. But yeah, it was really interesting because, um, as you, as you said, you took the sabbatical, you worked really hard, you, um, you traveled hard. One thing you recently mentioned and I said to you oh my god, chelsea, you've got to share this on the podcast, how you saved money for the deposit. So let's go back even a step further backwards. You shared the story of how you managed to save money within that 12-month period or six-month period. Can you please tell my listeners what you did?

Speaker 2: 5:41

Yeah, definitely so. You know there's this big thing around people working in 9 to 5 and it's this big dogma. But if you're in a job that you love and it's your dharma and you're meant to be in that space can actually be really fun. So I was doing events. I was an event coordinator for a government organization in the health sector and my partner and I, arthur, decided we would like to have a year off work. He also worked for the ministry of education and we decided right, how do we make that happen? We were paying I can't remember $650 a week for rent, so it wasn't too high. But we thought how can we do this?

Speaker 2: 6:16

So we sold up our house, we sold the big.

Speaker 2: 6:20

We had a big, beautiful white Hilux, and this was where that sort of holistic journey started, where we realized that the bigger and better things didn't bring us happiness, and getting rid of everything it just started to feel so freeing.

Speaker 2: 6:35

So we sold our hat, we sold everything we owned, we got rid of this beautiful white Hilux that we had and bought a Nissan. I think it was a Nissan Corolla and honestly it was $1,700. It looked like it could have been picked up from a junkyard but it drove and it had a registration and warrant and we went house sitting so we looked after houses and animals all around Wellington and it was really hard. We were living in a suitcase and we were living out of a car, not knowing where we were going to live, week to week sometimes. And then we landed a longer house sit for two and a half months and every single penny that we earn we actually got to put in the bank. So people talk about emotional, sorry being, you know, free, freedom of bills and really wanting to follow that life, but you have to be prepared to strip it right back.

Speaker 2: 7:36

So we basically had two full-time salaries and no bills no electricity, our petrol was hardly anything Half the time the people left food and we got to just hang out with dogs. It was amazing. So in that first year we only had to pay for an Airbnb for I think about four weeks and honestly I can't say figures but that I can't remember exactly what it was. But we were in the six figures when we saved by the end of this, because if you imagine two full-time salaries, yeah, no bills, it added up really quickly. Um, we didn't have any debt and then we took some money of that aside. We went into day yoga teacher training, we went and travelled to.

Speaker 2: 8:16

Arthur's mother lives in the Martinique in the Caribbean and his father lives in France. So we spent a year off with that money. It was absolutely magical, but a lot of growth happened within that time and then that also gave us a really nice part of our money for our deposit for our house, which you helped us with. So we took our KiwiSafers out which was your advice and then we put that money in. But, yeah, it was a journey, but it was magical.

Speaker 2: 8:52

But there was lots of really hard times too, thinking back on it now, and I wanted to bring my diary with you, but I forgot. I wrote this vision when I was at Krishna Village, which is where I did my yoga teacher training, and it has a wellness center with a little house at the front. I really truly believe in manifesting the life that you want to live and I had a little house at the front with my mother living on the land. I had a little girl, the wellness center, and I pulled this diary out the other day and I hadn't looked at it for a four or five years or whatever it was, and it's literally I'm looking at what I'm living now like my yeah, it's really cool, I just got goosebumps.

Speaker 1: 9:34

Honestly, charles, like this is probably the second or third time I hear this story, but every single time you say that, I get absolute goosebumps from how real it is and how special it is. And I think a lot of people don't realize the power of visualization and manifestation of you create the product. You are the master of your own destiny. That's what I truly believe in and that's when I sit down with people and I go okay, what do you want? What's your vision? And I mean I remember our journey was you looked at so many houses right before you've come across the one you actually bought we put in.

Speaker 2: 10:10

I I think about over 20 full applications for houses just to be declined, to be declined, to be declined because it was just the market that we were. Yeah, it was a really hot market.

Speaker 1: 10:20

You know and um, and what impressed me in you is that you were not giving up. You were like I've got this vision, I know what I want and I'm gonna go for it. And and that's what I admire in you and that's what's coming through your stories as well, with house sitting and making that sacrifice. And I think a lot of people don't, you know, they see that picture now that, okay, you've got this beautiful pecker pecker retreat center and stuff like that, but they don't probably really know how much you had to sacrifice during those house sitting days.

Speaker 1: 10:48

I mean, yeah, it could be fun it sounds like fun going to people's homes, but sometimes it's not fun because you just don't know where you will arrive or what sort of you know environment it is or dogs that you need to look after. But also, I guess the other side of the coin is you get attached to the dogs and the cats and then you have to leave them and wave goodbye. So you know all this different emotions that you go through. But then you've got that goal, you've got that vision, you know where you're going and that's what really inspired me about you Take me to the house that you finally ended up buying, because I know what you did was that garage. Can you tell our listeners the vision you had, how it looked like and what did you do with that space, please?

Speaker 2: 11:28

It was actually from. I always saw it and I just had to make it sort of come to life. It was always in my mind and I just had to get it on paper. I'm really I'm sad I didn't bring the diary to show you. However, when we looked at the place, it just had a double car garage and a little bathroom to the side and it was a real workingman's garage. There was just concrete floor which was a bit broken. There was no jib in the walls. There was no insulation.

Speaker 2: 11:55

It was, but it was a beautiful little weatherboard garage and I thought, oh, this will be, this will be nice. So we gutted it. Poor Arthur doesn't have a garage, so I feel a bit bad about that. But my uncle came and helped. He basically did all the work. We gutted this place out, we ripped the walls out, we all worked on it, we painted it and now it is my yoga studio and I've got a beautiful wellness room to the side with a gorgeous little bathroom. It looks out at gorgeous trees everywhere and it's yeah, sometimes I have to look back to think, wow, we have actually come really far, Because when you're in it you go, wow, I have it now. But yeah, I'm really, really proud of it Again. We had that old car because we came back to it after our trip and we were driving up around Palmerston North with these old big windows to put in and it was all a really like wild journey.

Speaker 1: 12:46

So to see it come together has been quite lovely journey, so to see it come together has been quite lovely. Yeah, so the vision that you had of creating that space, from seeing that garage right and I think that's where a lot of people sometimes that's when it doesn't align in their head like they've got this vision but they don't see how they can get from a to b. What sort of advice can you give to those people that are looking at it?

Speaker 2: 13:11

Start small. Yeah, start small. Look at the end result and for me, I just believe that if you close your eyes, believe that you're there and believe that you're standing in it and move earth to make it happen, use your own hands. That was where we saved a lot of money. Again, that was really quite a tough time. I was actually eight months pregnant when we were still doing lots of the stuff, um, and it was, yeah, it was a, it was a wild, wild ride. Usually we had lots of friends helping. You know, don't be afraid to ask for help. Um, just put on some food and quite often you'll find that, you know, the help is there. Yeah, uh, and I was really lucky, like I say, my, my uncle was one of those jack-of-all-trades, so I kind of had a bit of a sparky and a builder and and everything there.

Speaker 2: 14:06

My father really helped um back us financially with that to get it done and we've just sort of paid that back as a loan. So just making sure that you're always kind of working within your means and a lot of it. It's still a stepping process you know, I've only just finished my full yoga stock of props, you know, because everything is, I feel like $1,000 is the new $100 these days yes, it is so every single time you want to do something.

Speaker 2: 14:37

It costs a lot, but just starting and remembering that what you see isn't what other people see, like when you come to my house and if clients come down the drive, a friend of mine said to me recently you know this is really beautiful, whereas what I see is rural, like weeds everywhere and and all that you know. So you have to always step back and, yeah, listen to others advice, because when people come from Wellington and come up, apparently they just feel like they've dropped into just peace and relaxation.

Speaker 1: 15:08

And oasis, oasis.

Speaker 2: 15:10

Oasis, yes, whereas I see, oh no, there's a weed out of place. Or you know, because I live rural, the farmer's next door doing chainsawing down trees, and I kind of cringe when I'm on a client, but then when I'm working on a client, but they used to traffic and buses, and beeping so yeah, I mean being your client.

Speaker 1: 15:36

Let's swap heads here for a second. I mean I enjoyed being your client. You know, I went to your massage therapy sessions etc. And when I was lying down on on the floor on the table and I can hear the birds singing, it was beautiful. I remember one time I was lying down and there was a duck or a goose or something and you were like, oh my god, I'm so sorry. And I'm like, oh my god, this is beautiful. Like the nature is right there and you don't hear that often, but it was really funny sound, keep going. And you were like, oh, and I remember you were a bit uncomfortable with that, but it was absolutely fine for me and I think, yeah, you need to remember that that you know how you see things, how you perceive things is not how other people see things, and I think you've created this magnificent place in there. So if, looking back at that journey, would you do that again, like would you buy that house or would you buy something else?

Speaker 2: 16:31

Yeah, Well, there's certain things that of course you would change, you know. But it's at the back of the property so everyone always has to come past the house and now that I have a young one, you know, it would be amazing if it was at the front of the property, but there's always room for movement and things like that. But, yeah, there'd certainly be things I would change like that. But yeah, there'd certainly be things I would change. If anything, I would actually like a really small house. That journey really really taught me that we wanted land and we wanted to do little, just little cute cabanas where people could stay, and I wanted to live in a tiny home. But unfortunately there was just no land no bare land.

Speaker 2: 17:14

When I was looking, I had every real estate agent in company coast hustling trying to find, trying to find some in yourself, um. So it's been an amazing stepping stone. We are still looking, you know, we are still looking because a lot of the land isn't usable, but, um, yeah. So if anything was to change, it would be just to have a smaller, a smaller home. It's a big old, beautiful house, but they also come with quite a lot of work which most people know, you know.

Speaker 1: 17:43

Can I do like a shout out now to all the agents listening to this? If you've got any land available in Kapiti Coast, reach out to Chelsea. We'll leave your details and your business details, you know in the air so people can get in touch with you. Actually, now that we're on this topic, do you want to give yourself a shout out quickly? How do people find you?

Speaker 2: 18:02

Oh, I have a website, remindritualsnz. We are on Instagram, remindritualsnz, and also on Facebook.

Speaker 1: 18:11

Do you run retreats?

Speaker 2: 18:13

Yes, I run retreats in New Zealand and also in Australia. I've got Martinborough has seemed to have just landed in my heart at the moment, so I've run a couple over there and have some coming up. We've used the Ministry of Yoga, which has been an absolutely beautiful venue. So, major, shout out to them. If you want to go somewhere just with your friends, you can hire it. So, major, shout out to them. If you want to go somewhere just with your friends, you can hire it.

Speaker 2: 18:38

Waihaonga, out in Otaki Gorge, you know that's a local place that just absolutely stole our heart. I run retreats with another friend, kimi, and that's called Te Awa Journey, and we do retreats on our beautiful Kapiti Island. So we have our fourth retreat coming up in February, 14th to 16th February, on Valentine's Day. So, out of everything that we do, my heart is in that space.

Speaker 2: 19:06

It's just magical when you're pairing the Māori wisdom with the ancient Eastern wisdom, the whenua over there with the ancient eastern wisdom, the, the whenua over there. It's just just magic. You're looking at kiwi at night. So, um, yeah, lots of day retreats, lots of personal like corporate ones at the moment, and, yeah, lots, lots of things. Anything can be created and that's what I love um doing for one-on-one sessions or with I have a lot of private groups come and I just say, what would you like for the day, and I will make these sort of dreams come true, whether it's yoga or breath work or walking in the garden or massage, and you just sort of pair it all together as a little package for them and I know you're incredible at cooking as well.

Speaker 1: 19:51

Can you just tell the listeners a little bit about the food you prepare?

Speaker 2: 19:55

I love cooking. I think if I was to have another hat I would love, love, love. My mum and I have always talked about having a little vegan cafe. She does the catering for my retreats and I wanted to call it the two cheeky chickpeas. So in another it's that whole thing of when you do something for 50, 60 hours. It can take away that love.

Speaker 1: 20:20

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:21

So that's why I sort of marry doing a few hours of each thing each week, and it means that you stay abundant, you stay full and you stay so aligned. Yeah, so everything that we do is predominantly vegan, gluten-free and organic. We pretty much follow a lot of Ayurvedic principles with the way we eat. I've been vegetarian since I was 11, been vegan for over 10 years, but you know, that's just a thing. Anything can be created, right, but I just love looking at the colors and creating these things where people don't feel like they miss out on food because a lot of the time when you get something vegan, people go oh it's missing, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 2: 21:07

Whereas back when I was a vegetarian, all you used to be able to get in Australia was eggplant, eggplant and mushroom risotto, and there's nothing wrong with those things, but when that's all that's available, yeah, so yeah, that's when that kind of love came out. So, yeah, I love baking.

Speaker 1: 21:25

Baking vegan treats is my favorite thing. Oh, you make some amazing food, honestly, like. If you ever have any leftovers, just you know, feel free, chuck them over the fence my way, chuck them your way. Chuck them over the fence my way, yeah, my way. I absolutely love your food. Um, what also inspired me about your journey is how you actually were thrown into this industry and how you had to pivot. Can we talk a little bit about, um, what happened to you and how you ended up being in back in the beauty industry from the high executive roles that you were leading, the life that you had?

Speaker 2: 21:59

Yeah, well, it was after the trip. It was after the. Actually, that's how that house-sitting story started. A dear friend of mine, Marie she was a project manager at the place I worked she said I need someone to look after my fish for six weeks. So that's how the journey started. So we started there and, honestly, it was marrying everything together. So we went away, we started that kind of pathway of yoga teacher training and then when I came back I couldn't really visualize myself being in a nine-to-five. I was just, I was a event coordinator. But what I did realize is that I could put the event coordination and marry it together with all of the beauty and holistic wellness spaces and create retreats. That was kind of where that came together, which was it's. It's just a beautiful synergy of of the different things.

Speaker 1: 23:00

Cause. What I want to show to the listeners is that you know, as you said in the beginning, you don't have to be trapped in that nine to five. You can actually create the life you want and the life you love by being creative, by finding new passions.

Speaker 2: 23:15

Yeah, yeah, and believing I it was it and believing it was really scary. And we were lucky, my partner, he got a sabbatical so he, after one year, got to go back to his role. But it's really, really scary. But one of my favorite gurus saying is go to the darkest, scariest place and jump, jump in, just jump in, don't dip your toe. Jump in and go there, because that's where the growth will come, that's where the dreams will expand. Yeah, and it sounds all cushy going house, sitting and leaving your job. It is really really scary. But I think, if anything, what we know at the moment is it is so turbulent out there, life is so short. So if you have the means to do it and don't get me wrong, if you have a child, a family, it you can't just pack up your life and leave a lot of the time, but you know you might be able to.

Speaker 2: 24:09

I don't know get a, get a crappier car, or if you have, uh, something that you're paying off, maybe like, yeah, I've never, ever had after pay. I have never, ever laid by, I only lay, I only used to lay by back in the day, um. So, yeah, you know, making sure that you live within your means to make it come true, but just jump, jump in and try it and if it doesn't work, then you can go back to, like you say that nine to five, which can be beautiful for people that love it. I loved it when I was in it, um, but it was just stepping away, stepping away.

Speaker 1: 24:42

If you step away to look, look back, then that's where you'll know exactly what you want yeah, yeah, and because your partner is also in a similar field as you do, you want to tell us a little bit about what Arthur does yeah, so Arthur still works um in in the city and he does.

Speaker 2: 25:03

We did our training together and it was more just to expand our own practice. It was never going to be this big journey of what it's become. Yeah, so that's that pivoting. Like you said, zeb and Niso, it's pivoting and changing. So while we were there it was like everybody needs to feel this, like everybody needs to get a touch of this magic, you know, and so, yeah, he trained in that and we are still trying to do the jump, you know, trying to do the leap. So he does men's retreats and takes classes and things, but does still have the full-time job. So we are hustling at the moment like outside, looking in, it looks like it's all together, but trying to be a stay-at-home mama and trying to run events and do retreats and have your partner doing nine to five. We have no evenings together like it does at the moment. It's hard.

Speaker 2: 25:54

We don't have that typical after work family time because, he's running out to another job or to teach a class or I'm doing the same. But I have it like I feel, I have a vision that in a couple of years, hopefully, the plan is that he will start to cut down the days and still be in both. You know, a foot in each side but it's really, really tiring. But you've got to do it.

Speaker 1: 26:18

I'm glad that you are real and you are saying that it is hard, you know, because, as you say, people looking from the outside in often only see the bigger picture of, oh, happy family.

Speaker 1: 26:31

You know, they've got this retreat running, they've got a beautiful girl, everything seems fantastic, but actually what's behind the scenes is, yeah, you're hustling, you're running from place to place, Like even now, I mean, I think you just had to put your baby down and come over here.

Speaker 1: 26:47

So you know, even things like this, like people listening to us going, oh, that's a cool podcast, but they have no idea that right before the podcast, you had to work hard and then get your baby to sleep and then rush over here and jump on camera for the first time ever. You know, I think us as humans anything we see online these days or anything we see that's going on in our friends' lives we really need to take a step back and go okay, that may not be the true, Not that it's not the true picture, but give that support and give aroha to each other a little bit more. I don't think we do that enough. I don't think we pat each other on the shoulder enough and say Chelsea, you're amazing, Well done. You're beautiful. I don't think we do that enough.

Speaker 2: 27:36

Yeah, do do it. I think my friends get sick of me telling them how amazing they are and how much I love them because you just might not have the chance to one day um it's like that whole thing about jumping in and trying just tell someone or forgive someone. It's um, it just sounds cheesy, but it just always comes back.

Speaker 1: 27:55

It makes you feel good, so I completely agree, yeah, so what's next for you in store? What's your next step?

Speaker 2: 28:01

Well, like I say, we are thinking of where we are looking. I would like to get a little bit closer to Wellington. So at the moment, that's what I'm trying to kind of manifest I want to stay in the Kapiti Coast but move a little bit closer to where Lily will go to school, which is Steiner in Romati South. So I'd like to not have that commute. So I'm looking.

Speaker 2: 28:25

If anything was to come up, there's a retreat centre on the market at the moment, out at Otaki Gorge, and if I could just pick it up and put it in a different destination, it would be perfect. So, yeah, I have people looking, it would be perfect. So, yeah, I have people looking. And, yeah, for me it would be being able to go to the next step, because at the moment I'm just me, I'm only a one person and I'm getting really tired. So, having a space where people can come and stay, so where we can do the cooking and the glamping and have other facilitators hire the space you know, um, because at the moment I'm traveling other places um, and have it to be able to have people stay, that would probably be the next um, the next plan yeah, on the thing is, but it has to be the right place, because it's pretty special where we are.

Speaker 1: 29:18

we have amazing neighbors, so that's a big thing when you're running a business, you know oh, totally, especially when you leave rural as well, I think neighbors are important, um, because they would be your first point of call, really, if something you need or something's going on. Um. To wrap it up, chel, thank you so much for you know all this insight. To wrap it up, everything I've been asking of people of lately, today, today, of of the um, the people that come to visit, is what gives you joy, what fills your cup what fills my cup?

Speaker 2: 29:57

um, I guess I mean there's so many things friends, family, obviously, my baby girl but being able to be real and jump in and try and stay, yeah, stay within. So the joy is that I have taken that leap and I am doing what I love. So I guess my work gives me joy, my family give me joy, my friends give me joy. That doesn't come with, you know, sadness at times too, for sure, but I just think and just being so grateful for everything that's going on. So it's just so wild out there and so sad the way other people are living. So just staying so so grateful for everything that you have, even just your breath. You know it sounds so cheesy, but some people even struggle to do that.

Speaker 2: 30:48

So, you know, it's just a really powerful thing to just come back, be so grateful that you have a body that works or a voice that speaks or, yeah, like the ability to take a deep breath and be here and live. Wow.

Speaker 1: 31:07

That was deep, a bit deep, that was a little bit deep. No, thank you, charles. Thank you so much. As we wrap it up, any final words that you would like to say to anyone that's listening out there?

Speaker 2: 31:21

Talking is quite hard, Showing up not just in a photo and for social media. So this is the first time I've tried, so we'll see how that goes. So that's all Zevena, so thank you so much. Thank you for coming, Namaste.

Speaker 1: 31:36

Namaste.