Episode 111: The Power of Enough: From Scarcity to Abundance with Dara Erck of Sam + Leo

Podcast

Episode 111: The Power of Enough: From Scarcity to Abundance with Dara Erck of Sam + Leo

“I'm so grateful for the abundance that is happening despite the challenges in my life, which are plenty.” — Dara Erck

This episode is your invitation to reframe your relationship with scarcity, in your creative process, work, and how you see yourself. I’m joined by Dara Erck, founder of Sam + Leo, the first all-natural wellness vitamin brand devoted to kid and teen mental health.

Dara shares the BTS of building a brand while navigating real life challenges like: Career pivot, divorce, solo parenting, moving, rebranding, and rebuilding after her thriving Amazon channel was unexpectedly deactivated.

She also discusses her relationship with manifestation and intuition, and how she used aligned strategy and being open to the possibilities to grow her brand, including being named a finalist in Whole Foods’ program for emerging brands.

Dara reminds you that even when things feel hard or unclear that you have the power to keep going and to take note of the abundance around you (big or small) to create your own solutions and pave your own unique path forward.

Questions to Reflect On:

Sit with these questions: Journal, them on a walk, create a voice note, chat with a friend, or sit with a cup of tea and think about them.

Leave a comment on Substack or connect with us on Instagram @chefcarlacontreras & @shopsamandleo to share your takeaway from the episode.

1. Where in your life are you being invited to think creatively and strategically right now?

2. Is there something that you want to create or manifest?

xo Carla

PS: Substack curious? Listen to the podcast episode about building your new digital home on Substack. Join the Build Your Rising Substack Accelerator to share your creative projects and work in the world. Create, Launch, & Grow Your Substack our next live Q&A + Community Chat is Monday October 20th.

Disclaimer: Always seek the counsel of a qualified medical practitioner or other healthcare provider for an individual consultation before making any significant changes to your health, lifestyle, or to answer questions about specific medical conditions. This podcast is for entertainment and information purposes only.

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About Dara Erck

Dara Erck is a seasoned global health strategist and the founder of SAM+LEO, a brand dedicated to improving teen mental health through innovative gummy vitamins. As the mother of two teen boys navigating their own mental health and learning needs, Dara brings a personal touch to her professional expertise.

With a robust background in vaccine advocacy and resource mobilization, particularly through her work with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Dara empowers listeners by sharing actionable insights on public health initiatives and mental wellness. Join her as she explores how small changes can lead to significant health benefits worldwide.

FIND DARA and SAM+LEO :

Website: https://shopsamandleo.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shopsamandleo

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@shopsamandleo

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shopsamandleo

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daraerck/

Full Transcript:

Carla (00:01):
Welcome to Nourishing Creativity. The cycle of the last few years has left you and me feeling mentally, physically, emotionally, and creatively drained, nourish your very full life through interviews with creatives and entrepreneurs about how they create and move through their creative blocks. If you don't know me, I'm Chef Carla Contreras, a food stylist and content strategist. You can find me, chef Carla Contreras, across all social media platforms and more information in today's show notes. Dara, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. This conversation has been a while in the making, and as we're going to talk about in this episode, it couldn't have happened at a more aligned and divine time. Can you share with us who you are and how you serve the world?

Dara (01:01):
Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I am Derek rk. I am the founder of Sam and Leo, a teen mental health brand with a line of gummy vitamins in the functional space for our teens and kids. I also have a background in global health and I'm just happy to be here to share my journey.

Carla (01:18):
Let's get into food first because I am a trained chef. What was your last meal or drink?

Dara (01:24):

My last meal was my breakfast this morning. I made a quiche a couple of days ago with sweet potatoes and charred and all this amazing stuff in it because I realized I just wasn't nourishing myself well or having things to eat, so I wanted to make something that I could grab and go, and it's been so great to have that and reminds me that I need good nourishment in my body, and so having that this morning was just the perfect way to set up. Otherwise it could be a piece of toast or some coffee. So

Carla (01:52):
That sounds delicious. It's an accessible thing for you to move through your very full days.

Dara (01:58):
Exactly,

Carla (01:59):
Yeah. Let's get into creativity. How do you define creativity and with context, you have moved through a lot of manifestation and we talked about this before we hopped on the podcast, so I'm curious if this relationship is linked to you.

Dara (02:21):
Yes, so I would say not. So in the far past, I would freak out with the world creativity because I never define myself as a creative person. I was a very quantitative, business focused, operations focused person and would say I wasn't a creative person. And more recently in that manifestation process and my journey as a founder, I've embraced the creativity and realized that it shows up in different ways for me that I previously didn't think of. So whether that is thinking strategically in a creative way or a mindful way, I have developed a product, a packaged good by myself. I have some teams supporting me, but it's very creative in the terms of formulations and taste and flavor and the package design, all of that. If listeners go to see the product, you'll see that's very different than what's on the market. But then also just thinking about when I hit roadblocks and things have been hard and challenging as we all have, you can easily give up or you can turn to lots of different addictive things or other things that aren't so healthy for us, and making a conscious decision to think creatively about what could serve me better.

(03:30)
And so that word has really changed for me in creative space, and I think that might be helpful for other people in that similar position to think that it's how we define creativity for ourselves. I'm in that shift right now that it doesn't come up in the way that it might be as building something or designing something, but it's more of a life creativity.

Carla (03:49):

And this, I want to underline and highlight, you've shifted your career. Can you talk about that and how creativity has lent itself to that transition?

Dara (04:01):
Yes. I think it wasn't necessarily an intentional shift in the journey. I think part of it was the pandemic. I had been working for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation my entire career, global health, doing amazing things, loving the job, not leaving it because I didn't love it, but wasn't traveling, had this idea about what was missing in the teen market, especially for my own kids and a lot of challenges in my own kids' journey, and really stumbled into it and then realized that it was a viable product, something that I wanted to pursue, and kind of went down that path. But so many challenges and hurdles, and there was many places that I could have stopped and said, this is too much. I'm doing it on my own. No team. It's really hard and it's really lonely. I also went through divorce in the process.

(04:48)
I pivoted the whole product offerings and I think in that process, realizing that their skills that I had from previously in my world and my history that were very applicable to what I'm doing now, but also a mindful shift of my new era of my life. So newly divorced, new single parenting, living in a new place, I'm living in Colorado now, and embracing it from a perspective of not new, not different, not better, not judging it and just being with it and flowing through it and that energy flows with it. And I don't think I would've been able to say that a year ago, not even six months ago. I think it's a newer realization and still figuring some of that out.

Carla (05:28):
Can we talk about your current relationship with creativity? Because we've known each other for a while and just even hopping on this podcast today, I was like, wow, you've had tremendous shifts. So what does that look like now today?

Dara (05:45):

Today? I think it involves actually more pause than push forward in the sense that things don't always appear. What they seem right in the moment or a challenge is not necessarily this huge endeavor to overcome, but it is an opportunity and looking at things more as an opportunity than a challenge, which is not my background or strength. I definitely have the moments of freak out and there are definitely challenges in my life still, but coming to them with this new energy and openness allows that creativity to flow. So whether we've talked about, I was selling really well in a channel on Amazon, it got deactivated to a halt right before I was about to raise funding. It seemed like my world was ending. I was like, what else can I do in this space? I started to focus more into the mental health component of it and networking and just being open to what else was out there in the space because I had a sense that I was resonating with my audience, with other parents, with other parents of kids and teens, and so that wasn't going away.

(06:43)
And to say, okay, so you have this idea, it may look different. And that's a total creative process. And then I think one foot in front of the other and not looking too far ahead, not looking too far behind, but kind of being more in the present is really helpful because it can be really scary. And then I think the last part of this is incorporating the manifestation, but also the abundance and scarcity mindset thought process because probably like you and many other listeners, it's really easy to go to scarcity and it's really easy to be scared and fear can drive a lot and fear does not help creativity. That's the killer of creativity for me anyway. And it takes a lot of work. But I realized that when I was less fearful, embracing abundance, that creativity was more available.

Carla (07:33):
Can we talk about scarcity mindset for somebody that's new to that term? What does that mean to you?

Dara (07:39):
Scarcity is deeply rooted in me from my background. Growing up, self-funded school, college worked since I was 12 years old. Failure wasn't an option for me, right? My own safety net was me. And then going through a divorce as well, realizing I am on my own again, easily can slip into this mind of there's not enough. I have to work harder. The paycheck's more important than the process. There's so many attributes, whether how you're looking at your food systems and what you're putting in your body, how you're taking care of yourself. Should I go to the yoga class? Should I not go to the yoga class? It shows up in so many ways for me. And then if you take a step back and realizing especially in the present that there is enough. There is enough for what you need to do. There is enough of you, you are loved, you are safe.

(08:26)
Also, scarcity doesn't help your kids or the people around you. It doesn't help your energy. And so I don't think it's necessarily healthy to just push it away and not recognize it, but it's more helpful for me to see, oh, that's scarcity showing up. What can I do and how can I work around it? Versus abundance, meaning there is enough. This is my decision today, this is how it's going to help me today. This is what I need today. And then transitioning that to my kids and also to my business. And so I know with founders, we make thousands of decisions about paying for something and costing on so many things about money and things in our businesses, but it's also about how we want the present to show up in the future for our businesses. And so what does that abundance look like? And I also am very practical and I say, I don't want to be Pennywise pound foolish. I don't want to be so cheap that it's not making the right decision, but also to know there are finite resources. And so it's a constant balance, but it's more the mindset and it's more about how to embrace those decisions and not allow them to be roadblocks.

Carla (09:29):

Can we talk about nourishing creativity and what is your creative process? Because there are ways and spaces that you've moved through. You just mentioned the abundance flow. What does that look like?

Dara (09:43):

Yeah, it can show up in lots of different ways. For me, I'm sure there's a freak out moment. I'm sure I'm freaking out. Either it doesn't look like it, but inside I am or I am seeing a challenge. And that's then my operations mindset saying, how can I be resourceful? How can I solve this problem? And what are those steps to the solution? So it almost doesn't seem creative because it's so operational, but I think it is my brain thinking about other ways to tackle a problem. And I think I just naturally go to that state of like, this is a problem. How do I solve it? And then I've more recently leaned into a network or other startups and founders who I can ask those questions of, but ultimately I'm alone. And I think that's where it comes to some of that gut intuition and trusting our intuition because someone could very easily say, I don't like your package colors, or I don't like that decision, or You should have your own podcast.

(10:35)
You should be on this podcast. So many decisions. And at the end of the day, some of that creativity is sitting down and thinking what is best for me? And trusting, listening, truly listening to my own gut decision. And we talked a little bit about this also, that there's just so much happening in my life besides the business. There's not time in the day for all of it. And so that creativity shows up of how to accomplish what I need to accomplish in a day. And some of it's prioritization. Sometimes it is taking a break and saying, I can't do it. All my body needs to slow down. Unfortunately, sometimes my body will make that decision for me in almost too much. I think it happens to all of us, whether it's a migraine or you get a cold or whatever, you're like, whoa, I've pushed that a little too far. And that's when you have to listen to yourself. But that's how it shows up for me right now is there's just so much amazingness in my life that I don't also want to allow the negativity in or that I can easily, I think I mentioned this too, I can easily complain about I'm tired or I can't. There's just too much. I don't want to embrace that space because I'm so grateful for the abundance that is happening despite the challenges in my life, which are plenty. And so allowing for that grace.

Carla (11:44):
Can we talk about creative blocks? Because you mentioned Amazon, you were in the thick of that, and then we moved through a space where you were applying to be in Whole Foods, and you recently shared just before we hopped on, you're in, they literally blocked your account. And what was that like to move through?

Dara (12:07):

Fortunately, I believe I started this manifestation journey, however people want to think about that before the deactivation in Amazon. So I started this place of what do I want? Writing it down, thinking about it, visualizing things in my business in my life. So that was early. I felt like I was a newbie in that space and my products were only being sold on my website, which wasn't really converting. And then I resisted Amazon, put myself onto Amazon, and the sales were there, people were finding me, it was going great. And then to know fault of my own, Amazon deactivated me overnight as I was growing so well, and I was like, whoa, what do I do now? And took a pause to say, what are my options? And I didn't know how long I'd be down for. It could have been a week, it could have been six months.

(12:52)
It ended up being over three months. And so I started to think about what I could do in that. So in that space, I started to lean into the mental health aspects of what I was building and what I was passionate about and really leaning into the passion of the why of what I was building, not knowing where it was going to go, thinking about building more community and networking. So podcasting, and that's how we met at the same time was diligently trying to get Amazon back up and working. So that was a process. It also at that time gave me time to think about the product because I needed to change the formulation and the packaging. So in some ways it was a good timing to have that, but I had to put that into motion quickly by myself. That challenge in that doorway was either closed like you're done, or let's open that door and see where that goes.

(13:38)
It was many, I guess, parallel tracks, looking at building community, looking into the mission and the why, working on the business. And then Whole Foods. I was notified a few months after the Amazon deactivation that I was a semifinalist, and they just started manifesting the Whole Foods connection, which the program is for local and emerging brands. They chose 10 brands out of 1600 applications, which is the most amazing dream come true and opportunity, and really leaned into kind of brought together the why of everything I was building, the mission, the packaging, the innovation of the product that I wasn't taken away from anything else on the shelf. It was a new and innovative product, but I had worked to do, they chose me. I actually had other things I needed to work on. I wasn't just a given and so that they could actually support me in that.

(14:27)
And then once I saw that shift happening, I saw it, but I also was working towards it obviously that all that manifestation was leading up to it. Things just kept opening and just being willing to do it. And that as I'm talking and thinking about it, I wasn't even told that I had gotten it in that timeframe. I just knew that I was a finalist and being a finalist alone helped with that shift. I think just getting to that level validated, I was on a path that someone was paying attention to and that was meaningful. So even if I hadn't gotten it, even though I was manifesting it, it was putting me towards that energy of working towards it. And then the other roadblocks are, I mean, life kids and moving kids needing different schools, transitioning housing situations. There's stuff going on. It's challenging and just knowing that it's going to be okay and that I'm okay is the only way I can get through it right now, but any one of those things could easily be a roadblock that would stop people in their tracks

Carla (15:28):
And you move forward. And even with Whole Foods, they asked you to shift some things in your packaging. They asked you to do things.

Dara (15:37):
So they had mentioned to me even before they told me I was a finalist, that I had won, that there's some things to be changed in my packaging. And I was like, great. And I reached out to think, this is where I also feel like there was a little divine intervention or me and taking control over it. But I reached out to, they gave me a list of resources to contact. I contacted 'em, got the ball rolling, but then I went back and let them know that I was doing that, even if I didn't get it, even if I wasn't going to be selected, I wanted them to know, thank you for this resources. I've taken action. And now I know that that really helped seal the deal for them, that they knew I was willing to do that work and I was open to it.

(16:16)
That's kind of a message to everyone listening, is listening to what's happening around you and taking action and being available for that, because that totally changed the trajectory, I believe. And then other things just started opening up, like my conversations with government officials, the attorney general of Colorado and senators, and just talking about teen mental health and what I'm passionate about is now flowing out. So it's not just the product and the business I'm building. So it's throughout my whole network and what I want to do. And people are seeing it in different ways, and someone might see the product and they want it on the shelf, and some people want to be talking about teen mental health, but I'm open for all of it, and that's where I'm seeing that energy flow.

Carla (16:53):

It's incredible to witness you as you unfold this journey of, I want to say the practical 3D and the manifestation and the embodiment of being open to the possibilities. It's incredible.

Dara (17:08):

The more that I see the opportunities come, the more I want to be more open. And there is that moment of what's the advice? You have to be able to say no to things because you can't do everything. And I'm conscious of that. There's only so much of me to go around. I can't be everywhere, but the things that are coming my way are things that I can't say no to or don't want to say no to right now. And so I am mindful of the things I have to say no to, obviously. But the more that you're open, the more that those good things come

Carla (17:34):

There. Thank you so much for sharing with us and sharing your journey of manifestation and also moving through challenging situations in your life. Can you share with us how we can work with you, how we can find you, how we can support you?

Dara (17:52):

Yes. And if you've heard, I love connection and people reaching out, so feel free, you can find the business is Shop Sam and Leo all spelled out.com. Also on Amazon. You can reach me at dara@shopsamleo.com, and then all of the socials, shop, Sam and Leo and LinkedIn as well. So happy to connect wherever people want to and love collaboration. I think that's the other key here is building that community and network collaboration's key.

Carla (18:19):

Thanks so much for tuning in to Nourishing Creativity. You can find me Chef Carla Contreras across all social media platforms and more information in today's show notes. While you have your phone out, please leave a review on iTunes or Spotify. This is how others find this show. I really appreciate your support sending you and yours so much love.