161: Marianna Lopez (Wander Not Lost)

Marianna Lopez on Innovation City

“We all have the ability to transform our lives. We all have the ability to do and be and have the things that we want.” – Marianna Lopez

Welcome to Season 3 of Innovation City, a podcast featuring innovators, creators, and disruptors to discover how business is changing in the modern world.

Created and produced by SLAM! Agency in cooperation with Venture Cafe St. Louis and Venture Cafe Miami, Innovation City gives you an inside look at how rapidly business and culture are changing thanks to increasing diversity and inclusion, heightened creativity, and a stronger and better-connected business community. Venture Cafe is the largest combined gathering of entrepreneurs and innovators anywhere in the world. Events are held every Thursday in St. Louis, Miami, and other leading innovation cities around the globe.

Today’s guest is Marianna Lopez, Founder of Wander Not Lost. Marianna is a Catalyst, Healer and Life Coach, and she brings heart and soul to everything she creates. Her services offer a space for others to discover their light, embrace their shadow and find a balanced, joyful life. In this episode, Marianna sits down with the team to discuss being a Catalyst, connecting with your emotions on the deepest level, her advice to others wanting to become a healer, and much more!

They discuss:

• Defining happiness
  • It’s whatever you want it to be, in so many ways.
  • What brings me happiness might not be the same for you.
• Experience with creating content and experience design
  • She has worked with Francis Ford Coppola, Malcolm Gladwell, James Cameron, Bill Clinton, Seth Godin
  • Creating executive education conferences across the world
• The losses that made her begin making a transition
  • Connecting with the emotions arising from losing her father
  • Committed to bring heart and soul to creations
  • Sharing her experience of loss, passion, and happiness
• Once you’re vulnerable, what’s the next step?
  • Being open minded and open hearted
  • Being open to trying things on differently
  • Challenge yourself
  • Sit with your uncomfortable feelings and acknowledge and identify them
• The stigma of emotions like anger, shame
  • It’s okay to feel this way!
• Encouraging audience engagement
  • Provocative speakers
• Being a Catalyst
  • It takes courage and you have to hold yourself accountable
  • Pushing and empowering others
  • Go beyond fear
  • Experience life as an active participant
  • It’s possible to make your own dreams come true
• Journey of seeking, and the transition to teaching
  • She will never stop seeking and learning
  • There is always something new to learn
  • The way she learns is by teaching
  • Preach what you practice
• Advice for those beginning the journey
  • One step at a time
  • Be comfortable with where you are
  • Make sure you’re passionate about it
  • Plant the seed, give it time to grow
• Integrity in her own life and in coaching
• Her vision for expanding her impact
  • She wants to create retreat experiences
  • Ultimately, she wants to build an integrated therapeutics center for healing
• Contact Marianna on Facebook @Marianna Lopez, on Instagram @shewandersnotlost, and her website at wandernotlost.co

Lightning Round:

1. What is one of the kindest things someone has ever done for you?
   • My mother has allowed me to move into her apartment. And a stranger let me borrow their flip flops to walk home when I lost my shoe paddle boarding.
2. What can you do that you could not do a year ago?
   • I can teach Meridian Yoga. And I can work completely remote.
3. What makes you lose track of time?
   • Dancing. A good conversation with someone. Creating something.
4. What was your childhood dream?
   • I wanted to be a mermaid. Then I wanted to be an actress.
5. What is a defining moment in your life and how did it impact you?
   • My father’s death. Apart from the obvious, I realized I had lost my road map.
6. What would you do if you were not afraid?
   • Probably be on a plane trying to find this property for the sanctuary.