Today we’d like to introduce you to Marina Qutab.
Marina, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
It was one night when I finally decided to make a Facebook page for my blog. My Instagram had grown up to 10,000 followers, and my friends repeatedly asked me why I didn’t have a page on Facebook. So I logged onto Facebook and began the process for making a business page. I realized I couldn’t have the username “@marinaqutab” because I already used this for my personal profile. I sat for a few seconds thinking, well what am I? What do I do? Hell, I am an Eco Goddess! An earth guardian! I checked to see if “@ecogoddess” was taken, and it wasn’t.
My mouth dropped.
Then came a gust of inspiration. Like anything was possible. You see, this name Eco Goddess empowered me to believe in myself. As an activist. As a woman. As a person of color. As divine feminine energy. Suddenly, all of the insecurities I had didn’t matter. I felt connected to my higher self. There was a voice within me saying go on Marina, lead a movement for peace and earth justice. Empower others to make healthier, more compassionate lifestyle choices that are in alignment with Mother Earth. I then did the only logical thing I could think of: I looked to see if the domain www.ecogoddess.com was taken.
Damn. It was.
I got ahold of the owner and expressed my vision and hopes for the name. This is where it gets weird… Do you believe in magic? He (Aaron) told me he had been waiting for a young woman to come to him with an idea like mine. He turned away countless offers from wealthy entrepreneurs, business owners, you name it, for years. Something told him to wait. As he expressed all of this over the phone, I became speechless.
“I finally found her,” he told me.
Eco Goddess is the creation of Marina Qutab, a Zero Waste Vegan Influencer in the eco-conscious lifestyle industry. The co-founder of the first zero-waste shop in Southern California, she has been advocating for a more just and thriving planet for over 8 years. An exemplification of all that she wishes to create, she is a leading visionary in the eco-friendly lifestyle movement, especially in San Diego, CA. Marina’s inspiration for being a zero waste vegan lifestylist arose after her life-changing experience at the young age of ten visiting her father’s home country Pakistan. Here she was exposed to environmental degradation at an alarming rate and extreme poverty.
Upon becoming ill and blowing her nose into a tissue one night where she witnessed black mucus from the air pollution, she knew it was her calling to work towards building a more conscious, just and sustainable world. A recent graduate from UMASS Amherst, Marina double majored in Communications: Media & Popular Culture Studies and the Arabic Language, and minored in Film Studies. She has been a leading voice on sustainability and social impact since her early years in high school, where she ran a successful campaign to ban styrofoam from her dining hall.
Her passion for environmental action, public health, and equal justice led to her enrollment in the month-long Project Green Challenge, where she competed with over 4,000 students from around the globe and later qualified as a finalist. She was then flown to San Francisco to attend PGC Finals, where she delivered a speech TedX style in front of a panel of esteemed judges and placed 2nd. She motivates thousands of conscious lifestyle seekers from around the world to make healthier, more compassionate lifestyle choices that are in alignment with Mother Earth. She is the author of Zero Waste Vegan Travel released in November of 2017. In the first month on Amazon, her book made it on Amazon’s Best Sellers Top 10 List: #3 in the category EcoTourism Travel and #4 in Waste Management.
Her book teaches readers how to navigate the world with more fulfilling, health-focused & mindful lifestyle choices that are in alignment with Mother Earth. She reminds readers that A better world begins with YOU. Whether it’s choosing what you eat, how you take care of our delicate planet Earth, who you spend time with, how you practice self-love, Eco Goddess is here to show you there’s a way to CHOOSE a path that allows you to follow your smile (be happy + fulfilled), build a more mindful, sustainable and thriving planet (be compassionate), and grow into the individual you always wanted to be (evolve).
Has it been a smooth road?
The road to becoming self-employed was anything but smooth…
-Creating an effective marketing strategy.
-Building a killer brand from scratch.
-Accumulating capital.
-Choosing what to sell.
-Leveraging my work experience.
These tasks were all foreign to me. I will share with you two of my biggest challenges when I was first starting out.
Number 1: Cash flow management
Cash flow management was my biggest challenge as a newly self-employed blogger and social media influencer. Cash flow is essential to survival, yet when I first became self-employed I had no idea how to make money doing what I loved because I was so accustomed to making content for free. I did what I imagine a lot of bloggers do: I googled how to make money as a blogger. I read countless articles. I followed their advice, put in the work, and slowly but surely I began to monetize my blog and social media content through products, partnerships, collaborations and consulting.
Key takeaway: proper budgeting and planning are critical to maintaining cash flow. When I planned out the different streams of income I could incorporate into my business model PLUS properly budgeted my savings towards new projects, I began to feel more comfortable taking on the world as an entrepreneur. I always had the desire in me to be my own boss. When I began fearlessly pursuing that dream, I inched closer and closer. That’s the beautiful thing about facing your fears: the hardest part is over. Without fear, there are no blocks that are keeping you from accomplishing your goals. In other words, the only thing getting in the way is you. The “I’m not good enough” mindset will never serve you if you have big dreams of being a successful and thriving entrepreneur.
Number two: Asking for money
Another big challenge I faced was collecting payments (self-doubt). Money for most of us brings up thousands of insecurities and doubts. I felt scared to look money in the face, command it, control it and put myself out there.
Asking for fair compensation meant putting a formal stake in the ground about where I stood in a value equation. Put simply, I was unclear about my own worthiness to do that. I took it upon myself to join a coaching program called Wild Awakening: Female Leaders Mastermind. The combination of group and individual coaching calls, vision boarding, journaling and learning a new organization system helped me gain clarity for my business in a number of areas- including asking for money with confidence.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Eco Goddess story. Tell us more about the business.
Eco Goddess is a lifestyle brand that seeks to empower you to make healthier, more compassionate lifestyle choices that are in alignment with Mother Earth. Through a fusion of informative and motivational content, Eco Goddess makes eco-living fun and rewarding for all. Eco Goddess encourages everyone to reach for progress, not perfection. She believes positive little actions can lead to big change, and big change can serve as the catalyst for a continuous thread of positive ripple effects across the globe.
Eco Goddess’s channels of influence include workshops, speaking, coaching, social media, videos, and products including ebooks and her up and coming zero waste kit.
Eco Goddess champions the green girl lifestyle, and openly advocates for a vegan lifestyle with minimal waste. She can fit her past year’s trash in a single mason jar (https://youtu.be/vZ_yQSkKsiU). The thing I am most proud about with the creation of Eco Goddess is the global community I have built and continue to build every day. What started from zero less than 2 years ago has now become over 17,000 followers from around the world. I believe my compassion, enthusiasm and authenticity in the delivery of my message attracts a wide variety of people (even people who aren’t living super “green”).
Whenever I get an email or a message on social media from a follower who expresses their excitement in wanting to make a difference (whether it be shopping waste-free, eating healthier or giving up straws) my heart leaps with joy. At the end of the day, this truly is my goal: to connect with others and make a positive impact on their lives so that they too can do the same for themselves, their community and the world at large.
What sets me apart: my perspective, my drive and passion, my music skills (voice, violin & guitar), being trilingual (English, Arabic, Spanish), my living arrangement (living ultra-green & minimalist in a tiny home on an organic farm), my upbringing (multi-cultural home of Pakistani, European and Spanish decent), my approach to spreading the ‘save the earth’ message and teaching it forward (I call it edutainment… check out my YouTube.com/ecogoddess), and my emphasis on not only ecoliving but ecofeminism and female empowerment.
Where do you see your industry going over the next 5-10 years? Any big shifts, changes, trends, etc?
I imagine the eco-lifestyle (including but not limited to: veganism, zero waste & minimalism) industry continues to expand significantly in the next 5 – 10 years. I say this for a few reasons.
One, consumers are getting more conscious. They’re mindful of the products they put in and on their bodies, and of the environmental impact they have. This makes sense, as new ecofriendly products come out on the market every day. You can even find biodegradable toothbrushes nowadays, where as 5 years ago there was no such option. Of course, the greener alternatives must work, be affordable and do the job well,
Which leads me to my next point: as consciousness increases, manufacturers are taking note. Over the past couple of years, the number of products that include ‘plant-based’ in the item name has increased online. Consumers have bought 2.7x more plant-based products online than they did in January 2016. It appears that growth really escalated in March 2017, which is when a popular documentary, What the Health, was released. This does not surprise me one bit, as my inspiration for going vegan was born after watching a documentary: Cowspiracy.
Which leads me to my third point: media is picking up and reporting on trends in the ecolifestyle industry, including feating stories about tiny homes, zero waste living, and intentional communities/ecovillages. As the media provides a narrative for this movement, more people will become aware and want to get involved.
Lastly, some cities are responding by banning styrofoam completely, while others are mandating curbside recycling and composting. This is a true illustration of the power of the movement. Action taken in public policy is not only powerful but it is a huge win for entire areas of the world. We are stronger together.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ecogoddess.com
- Email: marina@ecogoddess.com
- Instagram: @marinaqutab
- Facebook: facebook.com/ecogoddess
- Twitter: twitter.com/ecogoddess
- Other: instagram.com/marinaqutab
Getting in touch: SDVoyager is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
