86: How Kelly DiNardo Uses Writing & Yoga to Help Others Live With More Purpose & Joy

This episode’s show notes are brought to you by Vurbl 🎧 Vurbl is launching new technology for audio creators like me 🙋‍♀️, so our message is broadcast loud and clear. Join the beta at Vurbl.com

Kelly is the author of several books, including Gilded Lili: Lili St. Cyr and the Striptease Mystique, and the owner of Past Tense yoga studio in Washington, D.C. her latest book, Living the Sutras, gives readers a modern, accessible and personal look at ancient yogic philosophy and the wisdom found within.

As a freelance journalist, Kelly specializes in exploration – whether it’s internally through yoga and meditation, physically through health and fitness, culturally and socially through profiles, or the myriad ways travel brings all of that together. She has written for O: The Oprah Magazine, Martha Stewart Living, Health, The New York Times, National Geographic Traveler, Glamour, Redbook, Shape, The Washington Post and others.

Katie (00:00):

Hi everyone. Welcome to the hustle and omics podcast. I’m your host Katie. And today I am so excited to be talking with Kelly DiNardo. She is a writer, the author of Gilded Lili: Lili St. Cyr and the Striptease Mystique, as well as Living the Sutras. She’s the host of Living It podcast and a yoga teacher for more than 15 years and the owner of Past Tense Yoga studio in Washington DC. So Kelly, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Kelly (00:25):

Thank you so much for having me.

Katie (00:27):

Yes, absolutely. So as my listeners can hear and your intro, you’ve got a lot, a lot going on, but I would love to go back and just hear more about your background, who you are and how you kind of got to where you are today.

Kelly (00:39):

Absolutely. So when I graduated college, I worked at USA today and USA weekend magazine for several years. And there was a lot that I loved about my job, but I was ready for a change and there, there wasn’t, I wanted to stay in Washington DC at the time and there wasn’t a lot of other writing jobs that were available at the time. And so after a little while I decided to quit and try freelancing, which felt just kind of crazy at the time. How long ago that was. And I remember my dad, you know, being very concerned about how I was going to have health insurance and pay my rent and things like that. So I started freelancing and it was, that first year was so challenging and it was just a lot of hustle to, you know, get, get work and find jobs.

Kelly (01:35):

And before I had left my job, one of the editors I worked with a lot, she was so great and she said, she gave me this great piece of advice and said, just find something that gets you out of the house every day. And so I got a side gig teaching step and sculpting classes. This is totally aging myself. How long ago this was. And so he was doing that and I had a personal yoga practice and was kind of studio hopping all over DC at the time. And my boss at the gym knew that and invited me to do a teacher training that they were doing. And so I was teaching on the side and I was, you know, hustling up writing gigs as best I could. And things started to get a lot easier after that first year. You know, you find your rhythm after a little bit and I had some regular clients, which was great and it kind of feels like almost right as I got comfortable in the freelancing and felt like it was, it was smooth and going well that, you know, of course the universe likes to throw a challenge at you.

Kelly (02:47):

And so journalism was kind of in a rough spot. This was probably like 2008 ish and [inaudible] a lot of magazines were laying people off and they were cutting columns and they were closing all together. And I lost a couple of my regular consistent gigs and I panicked a bit and I was panicking to my then boyfriend, now husband and he said, well, what would you do if you weren’t a journalist? And I, I honestly do not know where this answer came from, but I said that I would open a yoga studio and I it the idea of stock and within probably three to six months of same that I had sound a space and gotten a business loan and I had opened past tense yoga studio in Washington DC. And thankfully journalism did not die. I am still very much a writer and I also still own past tense. I, I tend to joke, I have two mediocre paying jobs to, to make up one, one real one. So I balance and juggle my time between, between those two things.

Katie (04:02):

That is awesome. So a lot of my listeners might be kind of in the process of starting a business or building up their side hustle, maybe working another job. When you hear all these terms like being a business owner or a freelancer or a contractor and it’s kind of like what is the difference between all of those? So you did freelancing for a long time. Can you kind of explain what the differences between freelancing and maybe owning a business or just kind of what those terms mean in general?

Kelly (04:28):

Yeah, absolutely. So freelancing is working for yourself. At its very simplest, right. So I am free to work for any magazine or newspaper or website that wants to hire me for my, for my job. I am not beholden to any one company. You can be freelance designer or editor. I tend to know all the, the media versions of what that looks like. Even my other job, like a yoga instructor is essentially, a lot of them are essentially freelance. They work for different studios. So that would be how I would define a freelancer. And then a business owner can be a freelancer. I mean, I certainly treat my freelance writing as a business, but for me, what I mean by that is that I actually now have a a brick and mortar business and it doesn’t have to be a brick and mortar business, but I have a business with, with staff and a team of people. And for me it’s a little bit more outward facing in terms of working with customers and, and students. I think freelancers can be business owners. They kind of go together.

Katie (05:40):

Yeah, absolutely. They definitely overlap. That’s kinda, I wanted to get into that cause I talked to a lot of people who are like very confused by the differences and the similarities and that you could be both or one or the other. So I just wanted to kind of get that definition out there. But it’s so fascinating that you kind of went from journalism and they got passionate about yoga. I actually started in journalism and then kind of felt like I wasn’t going to be, I have the mobility that I wanted. But what kind of drew you to yoga in the first place after being in a such a different field?

Kelly (06:08):

Yeah, I mean I had a private practice. I actually started, I had a very inconsistent on again off again practice for a long time and USA today had a really wonderful gym and they brought in a yoga instructor a couple of times a week for classes there. And I started going to the Thursday night class cause I was training for a long distance run. And you know I say often that I came to the mat for looser hamstrings to kind of counterbalance what I was doing with my runs and I stayed for all the reasons people stay on the mat. And my time on the mat was really instrumental in me making the decision to quit my job and try freelancing. And yoga for me has been just this for a long time. It was just a personal, a personal practice that supported everything I wanted to do. And now it’s something that is part of my job too. And I feel really lucky that I get to spend my days working on things that I personally care about and that I’m really passionate about. So I mean, yes there is nonsense and bullshit in every job, but I feel like mine is pretty minimal because I really do love what I do.

Katie (07:16):

Yeah. That’s amazing. Yeah. I’ve kinda gone through this experience myself of taking something that you’re super passionate about and making it into a business, which is amazing. But sometimes there can be these feelings of like, well, maybe I need something outside of business to be super passionate about. Have you felt that or have you found that there’s been a good balance between something that you really love to do and it’s also your business?

Kelly (07:37):

Yeah, I mean I definitely have other things that I’m passionate about. I still run and I do not write about that and I have no ability to make that or interest in making that a business. I love to travel. Sometimes that happens to end up with business cause I write about travel a lot. I love to cook, there’s no way I’m ever making that a business. So I absolutely have personal interests and passions and things that aye not going to monetize in any way. With both my writing and the yoga studio, they seem very disparate jobs, but there’s a lot of similarities. And for me the ultimate thing is that I’m helping people learn and explore. And both of those jobs and how that actually manifest is very different. You know, with writing, I might be telling someone a story or writing a service piece about how to do some new health or fitness trend or how to meditate or where to go and travel and when you’re there, what to see.

Kelly (08:38):

So I’m teaching them in that way. And then with the yoga studio, yeah, we’re teaching people and letting people learn how to explore how they feel in their body and then more importantly, what’s going on in their mind. And when people can figure that out, when they can come the kind of crazy in their mind, I think it opens up this huge door for them to figure out a lot more of what’s going on in their lives, right. When they can be silent enough to hear it. So the jobs I know like externally [inaudible] very different, but I don’t think they are. Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. And I’m a huge proponent of taking everything in your life, whether it’s past experiences, past jobs, whatever, and finding new ways where you can use those skills and talents, you know, in other parts of your life and finding ways to intertwine them.

Kelly (09:25):

I really believe in that and I think that’s fantastic. And speaking of your writing, you know, just going through your articles tab, when your website is so impressive, you’ve written for places like New York times, Martha Stewart, living wall street journal, Oprah’s magazine. It’s pretty incredible. So how do you go from starting out to writing for these big, big, big magazines? What was that journey like? Yeah, and it was a lot of hustle. Honestly. That did not happen overnight at all. I was very lucky to have worked for USA today and that name carried a lot of weight when I was freelancing. Right. When I could say that people knew I had national experience, they knew that I knew how to work on a deadline, you know, and I had clips to show people. So that definitely helped. And I bounced around with a lot of different magazines.

Kelly (10:12):

One of my first jobs was with glamour magazine and at the time they used to hire writers to go to medical conferences and basically like write reports for the editors so editors could stay on top of what was happening in the health world. And so I did a lot of things like that on the backside of things before people really entrusted me to do public facing things. I wrote for smaller publications, more regional, local places to build up my clips even more. And once I had a good enough clip base, you know, I would focus on certain publications and I would be dogging. I mean it took, I, I should actually look at some point how many times I pitched the New York times before they took one of my stories, but it took years. I mean, it really did take years and my first story for, Oh, it was a story I had been pitching as a feature.

Kelly (11:09):

So like I was thinking couple thousand words and I had been pitching it for a year and they took it as a, I want to say like 500 word, short little story. But that was it. I was, you know, I had my foot in the door and, and I felt like once I did, I really worked hard to kind of maintain those relationships and prove myself that I was going to be low maintenance and do the job, do it right and be willing to work on edits and not be difficult. Right. And I’m so glad you mentioned that this kind of success or any kind of success it does take on these quote unquote overnight success stories are a total fallacy. Some people get lucky, but I’d say that’s like 1%. When I first started out, I wanted everything now, now and I know as an

Katie (11:54):

Entrepreneur who has a lot of hustle and a lot of heart that is very hard to get out of that mindset. So I’m really glad you mentioned that. But the whole process of crafting a piece, choosing a topic, pitching it to different publications, I’d love to talk about that because I feel like it’s a very unique process that has to be honed over years. So kind of what’s your writing process when you choose a topic and decide to pitch it to different publications? Yeah,

Kelly (12:19):

There are a couple of different ways. I mean I tend to read, if it’s a health and fitness story, I tend to read a lot of medical journals and science, like science based research. And when I do that I’m looking for, I’m tend to look for trends or kind of big stories. So that’s one way that I might come up with a story I’m always looking for interesting people to write about and I get a ton of PR pitches. So that’s another. And then sometimes it just being out in the world. I was doing a story on Houston for ARP magazine and I did a great behind the scenes hardhat tour of the new Holocaust museum there. It’s actually not new. It was just being redesigned and offhandedly in conversation. The woman who was taking me through this tour mentioned something that I found really interesting about how many States have mandated Holocaust education and that triggered a story that I’ve been, that I then flushed out.

Kelly (13:20):

I did a ton of research into it, found some really interesting statistics, found some interesting people to humanize the story and that’s a story that I’ve been pitching for about six months now. And again, this comes back to the previous thing. Even though I’ve written for all those publications, sometimes selling a story, it can be really challenging, can be really time consuming. So that’s another way. It’s like just being on the ground and talking to people, getting out of the house in my office sometimes is the best way to find a story. And so once I, once I find the nugget of an idea, there’s a lot of research that goes into kind of fleshing it out and supporting it. And then I tend to, unless it’s for a big feature, I try to keep my pitches to under two paragraphs. They’re, they’re short. They’re, it’s just the idea.

Kelly (14:11):

If an editor’s interested, they’ll ask for more details and and then I send it out and I have, you know, some regular places that I write for and some regular editors that I, you know, really enjoy working with. So it, it tends to go there first, but if that’s not, if they’re not interested, I have no problem blind pitching. And it’s a great way to make new contacts. So one of the women’s magazines turned down my story on the Holocaust education that I was just talking about, but I made a new contact and she was great and responsive and so I just need to pitch her again, which is so it’s, it’s a lot of, it’s a lot of research. It’s a lot of networking. I mean, I’m selling, I’m selling something. It’s like any sales job. I just happened to be selling myself and my idea and the ability to do it.

Kelly (15:06):

Right. Right. And you mentioned you like to keep your pitches under two paragraphs. Do you have a strategy for that or any tips and tricks to kind of crafting that perfect pitch and then kind of on top of that two part question here? Yeah. Start to find who to send that pitch to. Yeah, great question. So, so I, I really study the publications before I pitch them. I read multiple issues before I pitch. I spend a lot of time and an absurd amount of money at Barnes and Nobles magazine rack and at the library and looking at back issues of things I’m looking at their websites makes a little bit easier, but sometimes the print publications really different than the website. So I do a lot of research on that. I am one of probably the few people who read mass TEDS very carefully. So I, you know, it’ll tell you, it tells you a lot.

Kelly (16:00):

They’re like, who’s the features editor? Who the health person is. There are online, some great how to pitch guides. There’s a website called media B stro that does them and they interview different editors about specifically what they’re looking for. There are other places besides media bistro that do this as well and those are really helpful. And then once I know what you know, what I’m going to pitch and who I want to pitch it to, then I send out the email and it can be really overwhelming. And so there’s two ways I do it. I sometimes am looking to break into a new magazine and I will pick two or three to focus on and come up with ideas specifically for them. Other times like I have a story idea that I want to sell and I don’t really have a strong preference like where we’ll go.

Kelly (16:51):

And then in that case I’m researching several different magazines and newspapers to see. I also talked to other writer friends a lot like a actually ran into a writer friend yesterday and we were brains. I was telling her about this story and we were brainstorming different places to send it. So having a good writers community can be really helpful too. Yeah, absolutely. How do you start finding those communities? You go on Facebook, do you just make friends at networking events? I’ve done both and I’m really picky about the writers’ groups that I joined and I would really suggest other people be as well. You want to be, you don’t want to be the person who’s so experienced that you’re pulling everyone up and like mentoring people. There is nothing wrong with mentoring people, but that’s not what a writer’s group should be. Right? You want people who are at your same level so that they can, you can help each other.

Kelly (17:45):

Right? It’s, it’s more of a co mentorship kind of experience then, you know, one person teaching everyone else. So, yeah. And at this point, you know, in the beginning I had some really great online groups that I was part of. Freelance success is a good one and now it’s a little bit more personal and that people that I’ve met and become friends with in the industry. And that’s been really nice too. Yeah, that’s awesome. And since we’re on the topic of your writing, you have, it looks like three incredible books. I’d love to chat about those. Which one was the first one that you wrote? So the first one I wrote was gilded Lily, Lily Saint seer and the strip tease mystique. And that was one of those kind of funny things that came about. I was doing research for an author based in Ireland. I was his American researcher, which was a great side job and a nice way to learn about the book process.

Kelly (18:41):

And he called me one day and asked me what Lily st Sears relationship was with Frank Sinatra. Cause that was who he was writing about. And spoiler alert, they did not have one. But in the process of researching that, I just became completely fascinated by her. She inspired Marilyn Monroe and Bette Midler and Madonna and of aunties. And she was this huge celebrity in the forties and 50s and headlined over people that we know, you know, like Abbott and Costello or Dean Martin. She was the headliner and they were the opening act and the fact that this woman has become so forgotten and that people don’t know who she was, even though she was so influential, really like broke my feminist heart honestly. And so that ended up being a, just a total passion project in some respects. And I was dog-eared in getting that sold and done and it took a lot cause I think it was kind of a niche topic, so I didn’t, not sure.

Kelly (19:48):

I don’t just don’t really know what to do with me. So yeah. And then I’ve ghost written a couple of books and I’ve contributed to a several travel guides. I’ve worked for Fodor’s guide to Switzerland for the last three additions, writing different chapters for them. And then most recently I wrote a book called living the Sutra sutras, a guide to yoga wisdom beyond the mat with one of my yoga teachers, Amy Pierce, Hayden. And that was actually the first time really that my two worlds collided in that way. And and that was really fun. And what we were trying to do there was make kind of the foundational yoga philosophy more modern and accessible because it can be really dense and esoteric to understand. That makes sense. With these books, did you go through the traditional publishing route? Did you self publish? I went through the traditional publishing routes. I have a great agent and yeah, and I’ve just gone through the traditional publishing route. Yeah, very

Katie (20:48):

Cool. I always ask that because it’s changing so much these days. You know my dad has written a couple books and he went through the traditional publishing route. I self published a couple. So I always find it interesting with the changing publishing market, what people choose to do. So yes. And before we kind of hopped on the call, you mentioned you have a online course coming out so I’d love to hear about that.

Kelly (21:08):

Yes. So it’s actually kind of grew out of the yoga book. It’s based on the sutras and it is a six week course where we’ll go through the yoga philosophy together every day or like Sunday through Thursday I will email you a, you know, like a thought and a writing prompt for the day and then we’ll hop on a live call to kind of go through things and answer questions. I think on Fridays is how it’s going to be. I’m still sorting out the exact specifics of it, but the book is really very hands on. There’s a lot of journaling and reflection and for some people that can be a little overwhelming so there’ll be additional prompts and things, but I wanted to go through it and kind of help people through the material, make it really personal for them. Yeah, absolutely. So who would this course before?

Kelly (21:58):

Anyone? Honestly, yoga teachers who take it are totally eligible for continuing ed credits, but it’s not just for, for yoga teachers. So it’s really anybody who wants to understand yoga philosophy and understand the entirety of a yoga practice, not just downdog and pigeon pose. And it’s for anyone who has no interest really in, in the physical practice, maybe is more interested in the mindfulness practice meditation and understanding the history and philosophy and in a broader way. And the idea is that through these more holistic practices, people can start to understand their true nature and through understanding that they can understand their purpose in life, which is a huge thing to tackle and ultimately live with a lot more ease and joy. So, I mean, do you know anyone who doesn’t want to live with purpose and joy? I don’t. So it’s really, really brand new one.

Katie (23:00):

Yeah, that sounds pretty good to me. And since you kind of mentioned the mindfulness part of yoga and you’re a business owner as well, do you have any tips or tricks to give out to other female business owners that might kind of help them with their mindfulness as they’re working through growing their own business?

Kelly (23:15):

Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that I, this is so simple and it’s so easy in it, it’s amazing how well it works, but pranayama or breathwork is, is a huge part of yoga. And mindfulness and the most, you know, most of us don’t really think about our breath until it’s not working right for us. And we’re anxious. And one of the simplest things you can do to calm your whole body down and kind of tuned back in is to just make your exhale longer than your inhale. So it can be as simple as inhaling for four and exhaling for six or inhaling for three and exhaling for five. And what that does is it triggers the parasympathetic response and it literally comes, I mean science is back this up. It calms your whole body down. So that’s something when you know, I like to do, when I’m starting to feel like I’m spinning or if I’m getting frustrated about something or I have to give a presentation, is to just do that for 10 breaths, which is about a minute.

Kelly (24:22):

And it’s really amazing how much that will calm you down. I think it’s really important to have a meditation or mindfulness practice and it doesn’t have to involve sitting on a mat. I mean it absolutely can, but I think it’s just really important for business owners, for women in the world, for everyone really to just take 10 minutes of the day to, you know, take a break, clear head, be quiet with yourself. Whether that’s going for a walk without headphones or if it’s sitting on a meditation cushion or gardening, whatever it is that works for you to kind of find some quiet. I, I think it’s really an invaluable tool.

Katie (25:10):

I agree. Yeah, that’s fantastic advice. And I loved the breathing exercise cause it’s something that you can do anywhere, anytime, no matter what other people. I think that’s really valuable. And you’ve mentioned so many awesome resources including your own, but do you have anything out there that you would recommend, whether it’s a book or another podcast or a course or whatever that you found helpful that you think the listeners might too?

Kelly (25:33):

Yeah, it kind of depends on what people are interested in. There are a ton of great meditation resources out there. We had Sharon Salzberg on the first season of our podcast and I convinced her very brazenly that she should do a five minute guided loving kindness meditation for us. And so that’s free and available. And so people are interested in that style of meditation. That’s great. My yoga studio, past tense is launching a video membership and so that’ll be both Asana and meditation classes. And so we actually just did a whole bout of filming and there’s guided meditations are really different. So if you want to explore different styles, that’s a great way to do it. And of course there’s tons of guided meditations on YouTube and different apps. I really like sanctuary, which is rod Stryker’s meditation app. His voice is just lovely and really wonderful.

Kelly (26:32):

And then I struggle with meditation if I’m super honest. And one of the ways that I’ve really found works for me is through sound bath meditation. And if that’s a people are interested in, I would just Google where you know the nearest one is. But most cities and towns have some place that is doing that style of meditation too. So that’s really good. And then in terms of writing resources, I think media bistro, freelance success are really good, are really good places to start. Awesome. And I’ll link to all of that in the show notes so everybody can check those out. And of course I know everyone’s going to want to find out everything you’re doing in the future and check out your books and your writing. So can you tell people where to find you online? Absolutely. So my website is Kelly denardo.com and you can see my writing and talks there and I think there’s a link to the website or to the website for the yoga studio, but that’s past tense studio.com and there’s definitely a link to the podcast website there so people can find me there. And I’m on Instagram at Kelly Ginardo and I always respond when people message me, so don’t hesitate to. Awesome. And any listeners in Washington D C definitely go check out past tense cause they’ll be local and they can come see you there, right? Absolutely, yes. Perfect. Great. Well Kelly, thank you so much for coming on the show. It’s been really a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you so much for having me. It’s been wonderful to be on.