“For just $500, you can shadow my life of freedom, bliss, and play in Hawaii!”

That was a real pitch I sent my friends, and I believed every word of it, Reader.

I went to Hawaii to live out a dream, but instead, I became an internet scammer.

Yes, once upon a time, I actually scammed my friends (and I wish that was an April Fool's joke).

How did I get there?

Back in 2014, I was studying “mindset work,” reading a book called Busting Loose from the Money Game, and following a woman named Chandra Nicole (a real world Girl Boss) online.

I name her not to shame her (maybe she's changed!) but to be transparent about when, where and who this story is about, and to be honest about my part in this, especially because I know a lot of people were harmed.

That spring, I was working as a gardener on an island off the coast of Maine for a woman I deeply respected. She was the first woman I met who ran a landscaping company and spent days alone in the wilderness.

That job planted the seeds of what would eventually become LadyBug EarthCare.

Around the same time, Chandra and I were co-hosting virtual sessions on breaking free from limiting beliefs (guru lingo alert). I was writing articles on what I called “spiritual permaculture” (before I heard anyone say that phrase haha), teaching how to cultivate “joy-fruit” and “peace-fruit” and other magical-thinkings you may recall, if you’ve been around my voice on the interwebs for that long, haha.

Chandra really took me under her wing, seeing the potential in me (yellow flag sometimes), and told me if I put my intentions into the universe, an opportunity would bring me to Hawaii, where I could live with her and help build her business, Rebel Academy, as her first Freedom Guide. Wowee!

One fine day, as I was planting pansies along a garden edge, I got a call from a friend I hadn’t heard from in years. He offered me extra airline miles to join him on a surf trip… in Hawaii.

It was too magical not to follow through. So I flew to Oahu the next week.

After my surf buddy went home, Chandra returned from Colorado (unbeknownst to me, she was scamming another woman who would later become a dear friend and my first death educator), and we started working on Rebel Academy.

It wasn’t working out (hmm haha), so we pivoted to a new idea: Lifestyle Shadowing - The Honolulu Venture.

Because of the miraculous ways I had landed on this beautiful island, and how "well provided for" I felt in Chandra's hands (yellow flag sometimes), I believed in the idea whole-heartedly.

I taught myself website design, built a beautiful page highlighting lazy days on the beach and waterfall hikes, and convinced my friends to invest. Soon we had thousands of dollars and a plan to welcome people into this wild world of wonder we were creating together.

As quickly as it came together, it all fell apart (as fast-growing things often do).

Chandra started changing dates and details. We got evicted from her Airbnb (which she was never authorized to rent) and moved in with her boyfriend. She also had a big drinking problem, which I couldn’t see online.

One morning I woke up from sleeping on a couch, surrounded by beer cans and bachelor vibes and thought to myself, “Is this the lifestyle are we actually selling??”

Sooner than I could answer that, I was stuck fielding questions from friends wondering where their money went. Within days, after some explosive realizations, I was living with another stranger, borrowing even more money to get home, and it felt like an epic “walk of shame” thousands of miles long.

It took me years to pay all my friends back.

And longer to get my confidence back around selling anything.

But the experience was priceless.

*deep breaths*

Dear Reader, the reason I'm telling you this, on April Fool's Day of all days, is that anyone can be easily tricked, especially the good-hearted. Anyone can build a fake business based on big promises, or a real one that rakes in loads of cash, with clever marketing schemes.

But building something with integrity and impact (and meaningful ethics) is longer and harder. It takes real work, and most of that is internal. We have to become discerning, intuitive, honest and insanely willing to look at our shadows. All our faults show up glaring at us in the mirror of our business, much like children.

LadyBug EarthCare (my 6-figure ecological landscaping company) didn’t become successful just because it’s a great service that people want and value. Although that is an essential part of it.

It nearly crashed a dozen times based on bad advice I accepted, and good advice I ignored.

After many years (and many dollars) of painful lessons, I finally found the right mentors (and gained a deep embodied discernment) to guide me and learned that there are people trying to do business right.

The tide is truly turning. Leaders are starting to really care WHY they are doing business, and how their business affects the world, both people and planet. And we really need businesses like this, to change the systems that are polluting the world. This is a big part of EarthCare.

My friend Tarzan Kay is one who really cares and does things differently now.

After a multi-million dollar online business as a grifter (as she self-describes) she saw the light, changed her ways and began the long process of unpacking and restructuring everything.

Tarzan is now a consent-based marketing educator, facilitator of the best business mastermind I've ever attended (called Wisdom Circle), and so much more. She’s an incredible human - a national canoe medalist (in Canada) who has done 21 portages on a solo wilderness quest (!!), a community song leader (my heart's calling too) AND writer of my favorite weekly newsletter. That's some serious street-cred in my world.

If you've ever noticed a little checkbox asking if you consent to receive my newsletter after downloading something, that is a small part of Tarzan;s influence on how I run my business.

Curious about the changing landscape of business and marketing? Building your own? Or just interested in knowing who informs my work? Join me at the virtual summit: Girl Boss Apology Tour – all genders welcome! Tarzan has put together a free 5-day event to have honest conversations about what it means to run a business with integrity. While it's designed for business owners, I think anyone would benefit. Consent-based practices, self-forgiveness, belonging, and inner work are all on the agenda, along with open and closing circles, where I suspect songs could be present. These are the kind of people I learn from now: Ron Reich - a "recovering bro marketer" with genuinely sharp ideas (and a business mastermind retreat in Colombia I'm eyeing up with a song-sister) Liz Wilcox - endlessly generous and fun, a Survivor contestant who started with an RV blog and whose email philosophy shaped the EarthCare Library​ John Berghoff - creator of the xChange Approach, who inspired me to design live online experiences with real belonging built in - like the upcoming workshop "Plan Your EarthCare Journey," and all the live RoundTables for members of the EarthCare Professionals Collective. This is truly different from anything you’ve ever seen online before. ​→ Get Your FREE Ticket here (affiliate link) and share this email with friends! (I also grabbed the $25 all-access pass, which is a donation to teach kids about consent at school. But the event is totally free, no catch. No bro marketing. No scams. Pinky swear. And I do not stand to profit - I just make it clear when there's an affiliate link - another thing Tarzan taught me)

Even though I’ve been seriously burned… multiple times… by trusting people on the internet, I still believe it can be a powerful tool for us to share our collective ecological impact work, whether you tend to your own land or run an ecological business.

I get replies to this newsletter from the US to the UK, every week, telling me how vital and valuable it is to hear from me about these things.

While I still believe the most important thing we can do is keep our hands in the ground and our roots in our local community, I think we also need to learn how to show up in the wider world without losing ourselves in the muddy muck that can sometimes be pervasive.

That means learning from people who are actually doing it right.

​Join me for a few sessions of the Girl Boss Apology Tour to hear more amazing stories of transformation, to see Tarzan in her glorious element, and to be encouraged about the changes rippling around the world.

Even if you don’t have a business, you might learn some really valuable things about how to avoid being scammed, or how to spot the businesses/brands doing it better. This is BEHIND-THE-CURTAIN STUFF!

Maybe you'll carry a seed of wisdom from these sessions into the world and influence other business owners to do better for people and the planet we love too.

Stay wild and weary of charlatans,

​
Kendra

P.S. Have you ever been scammed? Or done the scamming?! Hit reply! I'd genuinely love to hear your story.

Written by a human - Kendra Marie Hoffman

"The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful." - e.e. cummings