Meet Marta Hobbs. The successful entrepreneur, author, and founder is talking to HOLR about her latest memoir, Unraveling.

Marta Hobbs can do it all! The successful entrepreneur, author, and founder of SoulCare is sitting down to chat with HOLR about her latest memoir, Unraveling. In fact, Marta’s latest accomplishment finds her as the current top-selling author on Amazon for Women’s writers, which is huge!

As a successful entrepreneur, author, and founder of SoulCare, tell us about how you got your start in the field.

I would say my entrepreneurship had been with me since I was young. My first business venture was at 15, when I started a fan club for a boy band and typed up newsletters, copied them at the local drug store, and mailed them out all over the world buying stamps at the post office and addressing them by hand. I’ve streamlined operations since then and have dabbled in several fields including television production, hospitality/travel, and wellness.

About 20 years ago, I started an internet travel company called CheapCaribbean.com with my husband Jim. We fell into the project by falling in love with the island of St Martin and decided we wanted to live like we were in the Caribbean all the time. Then we wanted to share what that felt like with others and offer affordable getaways. It worked so well that we were employing over 500 people and running out of 5 offices all over the USA a decade later. The company still exists today even though we are no longer involved. 

My start in writing and wellness, as well as the development of SoulCare, was a result of that journey and the crisis I found myself in after. Everything I had learned in my 15 years as Founder and COO, as well as the decade that followed, led me to want to work with successful leaders in order to support and accompany them. Leadership can be lonely, isolating, extremely stressful, and completely exhausting. I wanted to create not just a space for leaders to come to with all the complexities of life, but also to develop a practice that would allow for these busy and driven individuals to reconnect to their hearts. So often we perform, execute, produce, and achieve – but rarely do we ask ourselves how all of that is feeling on the inside. This way of leading – focusing only on the externals – is unsustainable and, in my opinion, the reason why we have so much burnout and anxiety. I want to change that. I want to bring leadership to a place where the health and wellness of the individual matter. We need to be nourishing our mind, body, and spirit in order to achieve the kind of success that doesn’t come at the high price of losing ourselves in the process. We need balance and wholeness. This is the work that I now do.

Talk to us about your healing journey into holistic wellness.

My healing journey began with hitting bottom – a total crash! It came at the most unlikely time – I had just retired, sold my successful business, and moved to Paris – where I had always dreamed of living. I had “made it,” all before turning 40. I was happily married to the love of my life, we had two children together and life was about to get more amazing, or so I thought. But instead, with life slowing down and my entrepreneurial career-ending, my identity was completely shaken. My sense of self was so enmeshed with what I did for a living and all the jobs I performed, roles I played, and masks I wore … that I needed to experience complete UNWELLNESS to understand that something needed changing. I started suffering from paralyzing anxiety, and panic attacks and was diagnosed with a serious heart condition. I didn’t understand at the time what was happening so all of this made me really afraid – and this was new because I had been a warrior and a fighter, not someone who was scared. And that perhaps was the biggest part of the problem. I had built a solid exterior façade to protect myself, to stay safe within it, and to race, compete, push, and achieve on the outside – but it disconnected me from my heart. I started to wonder who I was deep down inside – my spirit, my essence, my soul. The journey into holistic healing started with therapy to understand my source of anxiety and panic – which was childhood trauma. I got into yoga, breathwork, and meditation, and read everything I could get my hands on about awakening, psychology, child development, neuroscience, trauma, attachment, and relationships. I wanted to understand how I was wired and why. I started getting certified in everything I studied – trauma-sensitive yoga, yoga therapy, energy work, integrative and holistic coaching, and even nutrition. I really started looking at myself and my life with a much wider lens and began to live a completely different way – with intention, empowered by choice, and a mind/body/soul approach. Everything became about being in alignment with the type of person I wanted to be and the kind of life I wanted to lead. Everything slowed down drastically. It became a beautiful journey of self-discovery and self-awareness, even though at times it was very painful and very difficult. In the end, I found myself.

Your new memoir, Unraveling, just came out. What can readers expect from your latest launch?

The story of a successful, strong, professional woman who falls apart. And then the healing journey, which took me back to looking at my roots and where I came from. It is the tale of my childhood living in Poland under communist oppression, fleeing my homeland for safety with my family, and arriving in America with no knowledge of the language or culture as a political refugee. It’s the heart-breaking details of what that’s like for a thirteen-year-old girl, who simply wants acceptance and belonging. How that wound drove me for much of my life to achieve, to succeed, to prove to everyone (and most of all to myself) that I too could do great things, that I too was enough, that I too mattered – even as an immigrant. The book describes my own path to success, the pursuit of the American Dream, and the burnout and breakdown, which brought my old way of functioning in life to an end. Although it felt like a death at the time, it became a sacred doorway to a deeper and more meaningful way of living. I write about my spiritual journey and how living soul-led and with an open heart is what allowed me to finally find the freedom and belonging I had been seeking. I was within me all along.

You are also launching your new Soul Leadership initiative SoulCare in addition to Unraveling, in which you guide others toward healing, self-discovery, and living a heart-centered and soul-led life. Tell us more about these accomplishments and what you hope to achieve with these upcoming launches.

My mission is to reconnect as many people as I can with their hearts so they can live soul-led, which is leading a life with a deep sense of purpose, inner peace, and an overflow of love. I have created a spiritual practice that teaches my clients, after just one session, how to safely slow down their bodies, regulate their nervous systems, quiet their minds, and enter the sanctuary of their souls. This is SoulCare – an hour-long personalized and customized one-to-one session that I consider spiritual self-care. My book “Unraveling” serves my vision by telling my story of how I ended up in desperate need of this practice, and how I developed it, and it also gives a good taste of what the practice is like – describing it but also offering a free download of it in the last chapter. “Soul Leadership” is my exclusive and intimate mentorship program, which I offer to a handful of individuals a year who are interested in taking the work deeper.

All of these initiatives support my vision to create a new definition of leadership, success, and power in business, which focuses on the wholeness, wellness, and authenticity of the individual. It is my hope that this work can facilitate a transformation of businesses into heart-centered, purpose-driven organizations. This is my contribution to making the world a better place – starting with one person at a time and of course, beginning with myself first.  

What does it mean to pursue “the American Dream”?

In order to pursue the American dream, one must first realize what a massive gift and incredible opportunity it is. One must see how this isn’t given to everyone everywhere.  How fortunate to find ourselves in a place that offers this – the chance to dream big and make it happen. A space where anything is possible…

Only by seeing this, can you begin to pursue it.

If you do not see it, you will not pursue it. 

It is almost like a secret door that most do not enter. But it is always there.

Hard work and dedication are required. A willingness to fail, learn from mistakes, and get back up to start again. It takes tough skin, determination, and the ability to hear your heart’s desires louder than the noise of the naysayers and doubters. It asks for self-trust and a belief that it is possible – and the certainty that you are the one to do it.

Pursuing the American Dream is knowing that no dream is too big, no desire is too outlandish, and no idea is too crazy. It is knowing in your heart that what you want to do is yours to make happen. 

There are no limits – only the ones you place on your own imagination and creativity. 

But you gotta work your ass off and trust your gut. It is a wild ride – and so worth it (with proper SoulCare practice along the way, of course!)

What’s next for you?

Next up is a partnership with Four Seasons hotels. I am super excited to be joining Four Seasons New York Downtown and to offer SoulCare to my fellow New Yorkers in the hotel’s beautiful spa. After that – the sky is the limit! I will see where SoulCare and Unraveling take me. I’m looking forward to expanding my offering into other luxury hotels worldwide. I am dreaming about adapting my book into a film or a Netflix series. And then just staying open to what comes my way. Life is such an amazing adventure, and I can’t wait to see what comes my way next.

Follow along at www.martahobbs.com

Click here to purchase Marta’s book Unraveling.

Published by HOLR Magazine.