Evolution or Revolution

Mary-Lynne Williams: Leaving tech at 48 for peace & purpose.

• Season 2 • Episode 5

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 55:51

Mary-Lynne Williams is the CEO & Founder of Buffalo Firefly in NYC and Richmond VA. Buffalo Firefly is an Energy Wellness Company whose core mission is to bring the power of sound & energy medicine to the masses, allowing us to recalibrate and elevate from surviving to thriving. Energy medicine and sound healing allow us to regulate our nervous systems as a regular practice, encourage mindful presence, & invite people to achieve more abundance in all aspects of life — resulting in a deeper connection with their soul, the universe & their infinite potential.


Before stepping into this work, she spent over two decades in the tech industry as a product design leader, including roles at Microsoft, Meta, and Zillow, where she shaped complex digital products, led teams, and worked at the intersection of systems thinking, user experience, and human behavior. She left her career in 2019 at the age of 48 to pursue peace & purpose. She evolved her leadership & coaching skills, reiki master training & general ability to do whatever the f*ck she wants to build a strong, successful brand.


Her career in tech was successful by every external measure. Yet over time, Mary-Lynne began to recognize a growing disconnect between the work she was doing and the way she wanted to live in her purpose. She increasingly found herself in a chronic physical & mental health crisis and bravely chose to pivot. 
Her story is not about leaving ambition behind, but about redefining success—trusting discernment, and choosing work that feels sustainable not just intellectually, but physically, emotionally, and spiritually as well.

Instagram: @buffalofirefly or @buffalofirefly.nyc

Shop & book appointments: www.buffalofirefly.com 

Send us Fan Mail

EVOLUTION OR REVOLUTION is produced by Courtney Kaplan.

Website: Iconic Leadership Coaching.

Follow me on IG @iconic_owl

Connect on Linked in @courtney-kaplan 

Music by Midwest Got It (IG: midwestgotit)

SPEAKER_04

Welcome to Evolution or Revolution. Evolution or Revolution is a podcast about making big changes in your professional life. Our guests give us the inside scoop about how they did it. We hear the origin stories, the wins, the challenges, and we get generous advice that can help you in your outlife. I'm so glad you're here. I'm Courtney Kaplan. I'm a coach and I'm a founder of Iconic Leadership Coaching. And I've always been fascinated by these kinds of transformations. Let the stories in evolution or revolution inspire you. Open your mind and build confidence that you can make the changes that you need to make as well. Welcome. Today I'm so excited to have as my guest Mary Lynn Williams. Mary Lynn is the CEO and founder of Buffalo Firefly in New York and Richmond, Virginia. Buffalo Firefly is an energy wellness company with the core mission of bringing the power of sound and energy medicine to the masses. And we are going to be talking more about that in a bit. But before stepping into this work, Mary Lynn spent over two decades in the tech industry as a product design leader at Microsoft, Meta, Zillow, where she shaped complex digital products. She led teams, she worked at that intersection of systems thinking and user experience and human behavior. I know a lot of my listeners that are working in tech understand exactly what that space is like. Her career in tech was really successful by every external measure. She was doing well, but over time she began to recognize a growing disconnect between the work she was doing and the way she wanted to live. And increasingly she found herself in some chronic physical and mental health crises and bravely decided, you know, it might be time to pivot. So in 2019, at 48 years old, she left her career. But this story is not just about leaving ambition behind. It's about redefining success, trusting discernment, choosing the work that feels sustainable, not only intellectually, but physically, emotionally, and spiritually. So I'm so excited to have you here with me today, Mary Lynn, and dig into this beautiful process of corporate life in the tech world to where you are now. So welcome. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. It's nice to see you again. It's so good to see you. Yeah. In fact, um, Mary Lynn and I both worked at Meta, although we didn't know each other at the time. I don't knew of each other maybe, but didn't work together directly. And then we both kind of made a transition into coaching about the same time. So we were we were connected in the early days of this. And I guess, you know, one of my first questions for you, Mary Lynn, if you would help us take us back to like 2015 or 2013, something, you know, a ways back. And I'm curious to know what was a typical day in your life like? And how are you feeling when you are working in tech kind of in the peak of that chapter of your life?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Um, I think I would probably even take us back a little bit further because things were probably starting to shift for me more. Well, slowly shifting in 2015. But let's say maybe um the there was a period where I had transitioned from working in agencies in New York and I had taken a job working on the design team at Microsoft on the Windows design team. So switching from agency world to switching to software was a transition for me and a lot to learn because the process of creating software was remarkably different than consulting with clients who were building things kind of on their own for the most part. And I was working directly in a development process for a huge software product. So there was a lot to learn there. So a lot of the days at Microsoft in particular were, you know, get up in the morning, go there, and there are lots of meetings and lots of information to learn and retain. And I'm a like high-functioning individual, so I took in the information pretty well. I learned a lot. I was able to quickly apply what I learned, but I definitely noticed big, you know, disconnects between people had who had worked at Microsoft for years and years and trying to understand their process and improve processes along the way. And so there were interpersonal things that you would come up against. And I'm sure a lot of our listeners have those moments where maybe it's not even about a person's experience, but just that we're all humans that act and talk differently, and communication can become a thing. And then there's just a constant stress of uh what I remember needing to get work done and needing to be thoughtful and creative, but being in meetings all the time. So a lot of the time to create and to be really effective was not really there. And so it felt like you were sort of carrying all of that weight home, feeling like you needed to check your email a lot and things like that. There were all kinds of other observations that I would have as a woman in the tech industry. So I was certainly uh unique in this, in the sense of most of the teams that I was on. I was the only woman in the room in these leadership positions because I was a design director or a design, a principal design manager, whatever the titles are at the different companies. And there were sometimes other women in the room, but not all, not often. And it started to feel like I was masking because if I didn't mask and act like I thought people wanted me to act, then I would potentially be steamrolled. Or um if I, you know, and so I would notice things like I would try to behave the way that the men in the room did in order to get things done, which tends to align with the words assertive, um, direct. And I'm actually a person like that in general. So it didn't feel so unnatural to me, which is why I was in the room. But when people look at me and they see feminine features, they don't expect me to be pushing them. And so there's always this feedback of being abrasive and kind of like constantly being told you're not quite right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

And there's a cost. I think there's an invisible cost. We can talk more about this in a bit, but there's an invisible cost as soon as you're masking in any way, right? Or trying to be a little different than you actually are. And I can imagine that that extra effort and extra energy is depleting over time and that it wasn't working. You were still getting feedback that was negative.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. Yes. It got to the point probably around 2015 actually, where I was it also happened in 2011. There were a series of times where I became I had chronic illness that showed up for me, and there were challenges with Western medicine, finding out what to do. I would get so tired in the afternoon, and so um, I was my body was in physical pain. So I would be working just like normal, but I was in pain and needing a nap. And this would be by one in the afternoon. And, you know, sometimes I would actually go home, but most of the time I powered through it.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I was explaining to one of my coworkers one time at Microsoft as we were walking from one building on campus to another to go to a meeting, and he knew that I was struggling with my health. And he was asking me some inquisitive questions about it. And I was like, you're just walking, right? Like you're just you are actually a runner and you are walking, and everything just feels normal to you. My legs hurt. My legs hurt when I'm walking. And it's not because I'm not fit, it's because of joint pain and all of this other stuff. And so the physical uh toll on me, for whatever reason, my body had um issues to that it had to handle from autoimmune perspective. And so I faced a lot of struggles that came from my nervous system being stressed.

SPEAKER_02

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I hear that. And um, I think these days every place is a high stress situation, right? It's not just tech, it's every if you have a job, you're under a lot of stress, and that that also takes a toll after time. So you were at Microsoft, but then did you you continue to stay in tech after that with this with these chronic illness moments? Is that right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Well, what happened was I did finally get a diagnosis of Lyme disease. And once I got the Lyme disease diagnosis, Western medicine still didn't really help because they loaded me up with antibiotics, which didn't make me better. And I ended up going to kind of an out there um method of healing, and it got better. And so I started to feel better and I started to function better. But in general, what had happened during that period of time, and this was around 2014, 2015, when I got the diagnosis and got a little bit of help and started to feel more uh light, keeping in mind that I was also racing bicycles during all of this time, like because I was overachieving. Everything had to be at the top level. Like I had to be at the highest level at my work. I had to be living in the, you know, the best city, I had to work at the best company, I had to do all the athletic things. And, you know, so all of that starts to weigh down the body. But what ultimately happened during this period is I explored ways to feel better. I was learning new skills, meditation, mindfulness. I was going to um acupuncture or naturopaths or going to Reiki sessions. And so I was seeing what worked, filling up my cup with all of these tools and got to the point where I was still functional. I moved on to work at Facebook because I had been at Microsoft for eight years. I had been in several different organizations through the process. And I went and I worked on the newsfeed team building up the Seattle design and research and content team in the Seattle office for Facebook. And I worked there for about a year and a half and then took a few months off, which was kind of a little hint of what was to come. And then I went and worked at Zillow as design director there.

SPEAKER_04

Uh, yeah. A lot of times when we face health challenges that can't be addressed by a prescription, or maybe they try a prescription and it still isn't working, or you try Western medicine, it's such an opportunity to start to look at other things to see if how can you calm your nervous system, calm your body, help truly take care of yourself. And it's so interesting, Marilyn, when you describe yourself as wanting to be, you know, the best at work, the best in bicycle racing, living in the best city. That is very, in my experience, that's really addictive, right? Like there's like a bar that you've established, but then you can never lower that bar because you it would be a disappointment, I don't know to who, but that we we set these bars or these expectations of ourselves that are kind of our own, and then kind of beat ourselves up to get there or stay there or maintain that level of output. And so I'm wondering if you think what you think now of that that bar or that expectation of yourself back then.

SPEAKER_01

Well, it's a funny thing to ask who you're disappointing, and it's probably the system. And a lot of us at the time didn't hear about the system. The system wasn't a thing that people talked about probably until the last five or six years, in that same way that we understand that the system is that there's not any individual person that is malicious tech necessarily. And the there are some malicious people, but in general, it's all something that has occurred over many, many, many years. And um we just think that that's what we're supposed to do is climb ladders, achieve more, make more money, be proud of what you've accomplished so that people who you know will think you're cool. Uh, I think maybe I was worried what my ancestors will think. Uh my soul was probably trying to achieve goals if you want to get into the more spiritual side of it. So maybe I needed to push myself to super deep limits in order to find a resilience that I haven't found before as a soul, you know. So there could be all kinds of answers that I could have for that. If I look back at those times, I don't tend to be a person that regrets much. So I don't look back and say I shouldn't have done that because I'm so proud of everything that I accomplished. And I still do it to it, I just do it in my current industry. And I think what I'm learning is that when I feel deeply connected to the work that I'm doing in a way that feels more about me and my inner self and my soul and helping other people has been what's been really important to me. And that's not really what I was doing in my previous roles. I was enjoying doing design. I was leading some people, I was working with them and helping them. But I started to notice that I wanted to do that all the time. I wanted to always be helping other people. Helping other people feel well to feel good in their nervous system. And so I don't look back on it and say, I shouldn't have done that. Uh, but I do look back on it and I I can learn from it and I can see where I'm doing the same thing now.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. And I think that um having ambition isn't a bad thing. It's just knowing how to channel that ambition and respect any boundaries or capacity that you have. Um I definitely am one who loves to start a lot of projects and have a lot of things going on and then realize, like, oh, I just physically don't have the time or the energy to do all these things. Although I'd love to. Um, so you're now at Zillow. And when do you start to get this thought that maybe it's time to leave or make a bigger change beyond a different company or a different role? Like something that's not just apples to apples, but really a step change in how you're spending your time and um professional path, what your professional path looks like.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I think that if I pinpoint when I started to think that I should be changing, I don't know that I was conscious entirely of it, but when I became undiagnosably sick and people know whether it was Lyme disease or whatever, they didn't know what it was. People were saying, it's very stressful what you do. And I was like, Well, what do you mean? Like, who cares? And I'm like, I'm not stressed. And I I just started to get those little hints from like people saying things over the over to period of time. Yeah. But when I by the time I was at Zillow, I had had those moments where I it occurred to me that there could be another life because I see other people doing things. Yeah. But I still didn't understand. I thought life was start here, go to grade school, go to middle school, go to high school, go to college, study the thing at college, and do the thing that you studied at college, and then go to a job and then climb that ladder and then retire. That's something that people that they tell you is the arc. Well, I went to college for architecture. I did not end up doing architecture. So I'd already gone off the path and seen what can happen when you become a graphic designer instead, and then a web designer, and you follow the flow of what's happening in the world. But I overall still thought that all of that was the same path to that same career. Sure. And that I would just go until you don't go anymore and retire like other people. But I couldn't imagine retiring. I was so depressed that I couldn't even imagine my life that far in advance. Yeah. It was, it was for me, the mental health was the challenge, like the the anxiety and the and the depression and the overwhelm that would come with all the pressure that's on you in these companies, because a lot of times there's a sudden deadline that seems really important to the company, but it's not that important. None of it is um, it's just that whole a saying of you can't take it with you. And what, you know, you can't take it with you when you die. Like whatever it is, whether it's Facebook, newsfeed, those things, like none of that comes with you when you go. And so none of that stuff really matters. It's really your present moment experiences in life and how you're growing as a soul, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_04

But I want to pause because I do think you brought up a really good point there that when we're depressed, burnt out, sick, you know, all of the things, it's not a very imaginative or generative place, which I think is really hard because you know you're burned out or you're feeling different or you're not feeling as inspired, and you can't quite put your finger on it. And then someone says, Well, what would you rather do instead? And you don't have any ready answers, nor can you even imagine what a future might look like. And so it's like this weird, you know, cycle that you can kind of spin in for a bit. And I bring that up because I do hear that with my clients sometimes. Like, I'm burnt out, I don't want to do this, I've done it for 15 years. Is this what I'm gonna do with the next 15 years? And there's almost a look of despair of like, because I don't know what else could be. So, you know, I think that that's something that can happen in those moments of transition. We kind of get too depleted to really have a springboard to imagine what's next.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, absolutely. And if I were to actually circle back to answering the sort of the final straw question about when I was at Zillow, I went to a retreat for women in design leadership that was run by Mia of Design Department. And we all descended upon Palm Springs, the I think the Ace Hotel, and I was meeting all these women, and I or you rewind to earlier in our conversation where I said that I was often the only woman in the room or one of two in leadership positions that were anywhere near my organization. I was at a retreat with, I don't know, 30, 40, 50 women uh from all of these other companies. And I was at Zillow at the time. There were people from Facebook, which was my previous company, Meta. Uh, there were people from Snapchat and Airbnb and Google. There were people from everywhere, and they were all women in these design leadership roles. And in our conversations, we realized that we were all the only woman in the room, all in different little pins on the map. And that made me feel connected in a way that I hadn't felt. But also, the other important part about this retreat was I it was a real stepping away in a in a sense where I was stepping away, not to some silent meditation retreat where I could ponder the meaning of life. I was I was stepping away with people who were doing what I was doing. And I saw the patterns in a clearer way than I could have seen. And I didn't know that I was seeing them yet. There was a Reiki practitioner there who was doing group Reiki as part of one of the events. I was fascinated. She happened to be from Seattle. I came back and I learned Reiki. But one of the most pivotal moments for me, I'll never forget this. I walked back into Zillow. The building is downtown Seattle. It's you know, by the Modern Art Museum. I walked in and I got in the elevator and up to the 38th or 40th floor or whatever it was. And I walked in and it all seemed absurd. What is this? Was all I could think. Like, what am I doing? Where why are we doing this? Why are all of us doing this? Yeah. And I just couldn't, I could never get myself back into the idea that this was going to be the rest of my life or the rest of my working life. And then I left.

SPEAKER_04

And then you can't, you can't.

SPEAKER_01

I got the ick. And I broke up with it. And I and I was even honestly, if there's women out there listening to this, or even um, you know, men who are seeing this, I think a lot of the the women in these roles are told not to talk uh as much. And I started to get mad and my and my mad was coming out of my mouth a lot more often than it did earlier in my career. So I was seeing uh the issues that I thought were problematic, and I was saying it in ways that I had never done before. And it just became mutually beneficial for all of us to part. I'm not saying and I'm not saying I was making a scene. The truth, everyone.

SPEAKER_04

Oh, you don't want to hear the truth. Maybe I should go. Yeah, you should go.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And I'm not saying it was like a whole scene for sure, but I definitely I felt like I was actually opening up doors for all the other women behind me. And that was important. I was a sacrificial lamb, so to speak. I created a bunch of organizations for women where I was. At Microsoft, I had a group for women where I supported women and our team, especially women who are struggling to get promoted and trying to work them through it and help to guide them. And then I did the same thing at Meta. I created a group of women from the team and we all met and everybody was supported. Same thing happened as Zillow. And my words were that I was sharing when I thought things were a problem. I think they opened doors that are probably more open now than they used to be. Although I do expect things ha are a little status quo.

SPEAKER_04

Right.

SPEAKER_01

And changed back.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

The pendulum swings. And I think more I think right now what I look at in the tech industry is all these layoffs and the you know, the the worry about your job with AI and all of that, which is a real concern, obviously. But I think that fear that you might be in the next round is more than what I dealt with when I was in the business because we were all just blowing it was all blowing up through those, through that one, that decade, 2010 to 2020. We were all just going, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, that's right. A lot of people have a lot of concerns about AI or a conversion to being big fans of AI, but for certain certainly the future is changing and to not think about how that is going to impact you or what you want is it's probably time to start to think about those things. You you parting is um such sweet sorrow. You you're leaving and what happens next? Do you know you're gonna open Buffalo Firefly? Did you take some time off? What happens when you leave? Did you did you know where you were going or was it an open, was it just the future wide open?

SPEAKER_01

I didn't know exactly. I think obviously something soul level, invisible, subconscious, unconscious, something new. But when I told my team at Zillow that I was leaving, they were sad and bummed out, and they asked me what I was gonna do. And I said I was gonna open up a like a food truck, but it was a tarot truck, and I was just gonna go around all the tech campuses and read. Amazing and just read tarot for people. I sort of laughed, but I was also sort of serious. Yeah. And then I left and I thought, well, what are you doing, Marilyn? What are you gonna do? I I had this skill of doing energy healing, which I was blown away by. Reiki is magical. It is, I don't I don't know how to explain it other than it's just sort of magical. And um, it's a miracle to have access to this skill or this ability. It's not an ability, anybody can do it, but that and just the idea of something new existed for me. And you were going into coaching and some other people were, and I was still working with uh design department to be, I was a local coach in Seattle for the design department subsections. We had different cities that had a period of time that they were gonna have groups. So I was still doing coaching type stuff, which was part of my previous job. So there was a little bit of an evolution, and then I said, okay, I'm gonna do tarot at the beginning of my coaching sessions and I'm gonna see a little bit of Reiki clients and see how that feels. And it felt weird, felt super weird, did not think it was right. I also applied for jobs and I thought maybe the difference is I've never had a woman manager. Maybe I need to find a job with a woman manager. And then I found a bunch of jobs that there was no woman manager, and I applied for them anyway. My heart felt sick when I went into the interviews. Like I felt nauseous and my heart would like close up in my throat. I actually got laryngitis in the middle of one of the interviews as soon as it began, could not speak anymore.

SPEAKER_04

Wow.

SPEAKER_01

And so I paused, took a break, and then kind of and then I started Buffalo Firefly and I just went for it.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And then COVID hit, and I was like, well, I have to go for it.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. So kind of starting, starting Buffalo Firefly was like closing the doors of I'm not gonna, I'm gonna stop interviewing and I'm gonna start something. Did you where did you start with Buffalo Fly Firefly? Did you know what that was? I remember some of the things you were doing over COVID, and I thought it was super inventive and really creative and and cool. And but did you I think a lot of folks wait until their whole vision is set and they know exactly where they're going next. Right. Was that the case?

SPEAKER_01

Or were you just- definitely didn't wait. Yeah. And it was definitely a learning process and a building process and a try this, try that. Uh so after I did this Reiki training, and it it'll sound mysterious and confusing to anyone who has no idea what I'm talking about, but you get access when you do this Reiki work to your spiritual being in ways that you've never even known yourself or your spiritual being. And I had new gifts and abilities to like that amplified my intuition. And I started working with crystals, which are really interesting. Um, you know, our computers are made with quartz, there's there's electricity in them. And I started working with them as energy as well. And once I realized that I wasn't bringing in my salary anymore, I needed to weigh one, you know, one of the things that I picked up during COVID was I started selling crystals. So it's since I couldn't buy retail price crystals the way I wanted to, I started selling them as a way to get crystals, which was also but also a way to diversify the business. And but I like right before COVID, I had I had experienced some sound baths with a Reiki practitioner moving around the room and doing energy while the sound bath was happening, the sound healing experience. And I fell in love with it and I just wanted to host these. And I was like, well, I found the sound healer who could play the bowls, and I did the group Reiki. I did it in my home. And I had three or four of these events where we just ha hosted 10 people in my house, and I loved doing that, and that was just a premonition to the future. And then right after COVID, I started teaching meditation. And at the time I didn't have um, I didn't have specific like certification in as a meditation teacher. I had a lot of training in meditation and a lot of skill. So I started teaching that and that went really well. And then I signed up for an official meditation teacher training program, which yeah, theoretically I could go off and just be a meditation teacher. But what I was what I do with that information is I use it in my current, you know, role. So I just basically diversified and just kept picking off things that I was interested in and figuring out ways to make money with them.

SPEAKER_04

But the thing I love about your story, Marilyn, is that you diversify and then you offer and like actually do it in the world for people, right? There's there are some folks, I tend to lean in this category a bit, which is like certification collector, right? Where we're like taking the classes, getting certified, taking the classes, getting certified. But to say, like, great, now I'm having people over to my house and we're gonna do this thing. Great, now I'm gonna open up a crystal store, come buy some from me. I think that that is a there's a, there's a, there's an ambitiousness and a resilience there that I think is an important thing for people to consider if they're gonna go off on their own, or even if you go off into a new industry or a new job, there's like some putting yourself out there in a way that's gonna be new and uncertain and different, but you've gotta like do it and not kind of continue to write the strategy plan or write in your journal or think about it. There's there's the doing half, which is probably 90% of the learning when you're making it.

SPEAKER_01

If you think about, I'm sorry, if you think about the jobs that we did in the tech industry, what we were doing really towards the end more than maybe earlier days was we were creating MVPs. So a workable product. You remember when you know Meta released threads? That's one of the more recent where I was like, whoa, this is really not complete. And when they first released it, well, that's what I was doing. I was releasing functional, very not complete products, but I was doing it also based on observing what was working in the world. And when I bought crystals and it was COVID and we couldn't be near each other, and I wasn't opening up a retail shop, I started doing live streams on Instagram, and I just started with my friends. Some of my friends came and bought some crystals, and then some other people found out about my page for whatever reason or another. I was even doing like live tarot readings, or um, there was a period of time where live streaming wasn't really happening on Instagram, and I was doing recorded, like recorded videos and posting them or putting it in stories.

SPEAKER_04

Yes, I remember. I was so I was a fan and a and a customer. I thought it was really, really inventive the way you did that.

SPEAKER_01

Also, I'm not gonna lie, I I also applied for a job at Google in the middle of all that. And the universe spit me back out. Every time I tried to do that, I even did it a couple years ago. When I'm already fully running a business that we have good revenue, where it's just really hard to build a business like this to profit in the way that a salary was profiting, a big salary, and you're always reinvesting in your business. And so I got nervous and I applied for a job at Capital One because my first location was in Richmond, Virginia. And I was like, okay, I'll have my employees do all the work here. I'll go and get more seed money. And I noticed that the industry is different. They didn't want to have anything to do with me. I didn't even get a real recruiter to respond to my message, which I took as just source, stopping it for the shortcut.

SPEAKER_04

I don't have to review my portfolio and prepare for an interview. I can just Exactly.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, also I was like, my resume, you don't want to talk to me? Come on. And I was like, then I knew. Then I knew that I was on the right path and I needed to keep going. But sometimes you have doubts. And so prepare yourself for that if you think you want to branch out. Open a flower shop.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, just because you're thinking about getting another job or maybe looking on LinkedIn, it doesn't mean you're doing the wrong thing. It's, you know, it it we all have those moments where like, wait, what am I doing? Should I just try and scramble back to that old way? And um that doesn't mean it's it doesn't mean you're doing the on the wrong path. It's you know Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so today uh with Buffalo Firefly, I know you've got two locations. You just opened a new location in Brooklyn, I believe. Tell us about where you are, like where are you today? What's I see these beautiful crystal bowls behind you. Tell me a little bit about what what is your life like today and what what is Buffalo Firefly today?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I will say that one of the things that I think is important if we're thinking, you know, evolution or revolution, if we're thinking how this actually goes, is it's more like an evolution. It feels like the outcome is later a revolution. But I realized after leaving my career and starting this business, that I needed to leave Seattle. It was too expensive at the time for the level of business that I was at in my development of this new business. So I moved back to Richmond, Virginia, where it was a lower cost of living. And I got a gift of an open of a space being handed off from a previous yoga studio came into my lap. And so I found this huge space with already cut up into treatment rooms and little retail area as well as two classrooms. And I turned that into Buffalo Fireflies brick and mortar location, and that was early 2022s. So four years ago, I opened that location. And then last summer, for some reason, I was being called back to New York and I had an opportunity to check it out and imagine it. And I was imagining it through the lens of potentially sharing space with a company that makes meditation cushions who we work with. That felt wrong when we investigated it. And then I found this space in Brooklyn. So this is all in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. And I, you know, I tell that whole story because if you want to change and you're in one of the major metro areas where a lot of the tech companies are, and you can't imagine how to afford life, you can change your location. You can change what you thought your life was going to be. You can shift at any time to another plan. It is all in your control. And everybody that I've seen that uh has been on a few of these other podcasts similar to this, talking about how it is to leave. A lot of them have left a major metro area, gone to a smaller, less expensive area to live, and have built their dreams from that. So I think I just want to place that out into the world. It's huge. Yeah. Um, I feel like there was some little point in there that I wanted to emphasize, which is that you I you can always be dreaming and you you're just you have to also trust that the the things that come to you that show up at your door are probably for you. And if it shows up and you're curious about it, it's I mentioned flowershop, it's an option. So one of the things I find in the tech world is a lot of us got a little bit burnt out on doing digital stuff.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And sometimes you just want to be in the world doing hands-on stuff as a human, because we're living in this 3D world and we're working in this digital world, and it starts to feel disconnected as it from your human experience. And if you went to a flower uh arranging workshop to learn or a class or a cooking class, and you really want to do more of that, oh, find a little retail spot with your corporate salary, open up a little flower shop, start exploring it, learn it, do your thing. Uh, I I'm just all for taking little steps towards the hustle, the side hustle, or making it your full-time hustle if you have the finances to get it started and just trying it because you can always go back. Yeah. I love that. I love that. And these days there's so many.

unknown

What's that?

SPEAKER_04

Quit your job. Yeah, quit. Quit. You can. It's possible. And these days there's so many options to that side hustle situation, right? There's pop-ups, collaborations, community moments, you know, all the all kinds of ways that people can get out there and um give it a whirl. And to your point, it's not forever, and it doesn't mean you're locked in, but it's an experiment. You're giving you giving it a try. And it could be something that's really fun and something that you learn from. So I love that. And thank you for making the point about moving geographically, you know. The the truth is if it's like, well, I can't do that because I need a lot of money. And it's like, is there some place where you don't need a lot of money or need less money? We all need money, but is there are there places that are less expensive or something that um would allow you more flexibility with your life choices?

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And I imagine whoever's listening, you know this. You are already successful at what you're doing, even if you have dips and peaks. You are successful and you are skilled and talented, and you can make your own company from nothing. I just did it. Yeah. So, you know, we're almost at a million dollars revenue a year. I did that from zero in six years. And it is possible.

SPEAKER_00

Amazing.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And obviously it's like not all profit, right? But we're it we're selling products, and a lot of that goes to cost of goods and team and all of that. But we are getting better and better at this over time. And I'm also a big fan of AI right now to help me do stuff that I don't need to be doing so that I can focus on creativity. But the crystal bowls became our biggest retail item. I mean, I was working with selling crystals before, and we do services where we we certainly still do Reiki. And I have students who do Reiki from my locations, and I have facilitators who come here and do group sound bath events. Most of what we're doing is selling sound healing instruments, which would be towards people who are doing sound facilitation, but also to people who just want to use them at home for their own well-being. And I'm just in love with these bowls because it's a mix of crystals um gemstones, which I became passionate and interested in, uh passionate about and interested in. And they're, you know, it's a unique, high-quality bowl that we're working with. And I'm just, I love them so much. And so I don't remember ever saying that about anything I was making in the tech industry. And I love doing a sound bath and having somebody feel better than they did when they walked in. I love making people feel better, not worse. Yeah. And yeah.

SPEAKER_04

I guess I want to throw out there too, if you're hearing Mary Lynn talk about sound baths and Reiki and you're like, I don't really know what she's talking about. I invite you to find one. There's tons of sound baths out there these days. In fact, I just went to one with my 13-year-old kid last Sunday. And I've been going to this one monthly or whatever, and it's just such a beautiful experience. And I thought, well, I'll take the biggest critic, my 13-year-old, to um one of these experiences. He loved it. It's like such um, I can't describe it, Mary Lynn, but that vibrational sound really has an impact beyond hearing something with your ears.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. And it there are sound baths that are more challenging for people to experience. It can have to do with the instruments used or the experience of the practitioner. So if you try a sound bath and you're not into it, I guarantee that if you keep trying a few different ones, you're gonna find one where you're like, whoa, that is good. There's never, I think overall there's there is goodness in this. And the reason that I love it so much, sound in particular, Reiki kind of comes in the same package in this way, but sound in particular makes it easier to get into a meditative state. And so that's all we're doing is facilitating your access to your subconscious mind, the theta waves of your brain, which allows you to rest. It allows your nervous system to go into the parasympathetic mode, which is not the fight or flight mode called the sympathetic mode. And a lot of people will say they struggle to meditate, but they know it's good for their health because there's all these studies and they they can't meditate. And I always say, why? What happens when you try to meditate? And they say, Well, I can't stop thinking. I said, Well, you're doing it right if you're noticing that, because you're supposed to be noticing the thinking and practicing bringing yourself back to an anchor of some sort, your breath or the present moment in some way through sound or whatever. And what happens with sound, sound healing is the the bowls actually kind of push you past oh like noticing your thoughts as much and right into a little bit of more blissful state. With practice, you still have to come back over, you know, periodically and do it again. The you can still go into your thinking mind, but I think what's so important about meditation and your thoughts is that when you're trying to meditate and you can't stop thinking or you're ruminating, it's actually telling you something. And it's a moment where you're actually aware of your thoughts when most of the time you're just on automatic and you're not actually aware that you're thinking and you're thinking something and acting on it without actually making a judgment about whether it's a true thought, a fact, something that you should believe. Because our brains do a lot of stuff that we shouldn't believe.

SPEAKER_04

That's right. And uh do a lot of stuff that we shouldn't believe and are now getting so much input from so many different information sources constantly, that that's a real over-stimulating, over informed um way that our nervous system really gets kind of shaken by. And so to have some kind of strategy to say, like, hey, I have a stress strategy, I have a way that I help keep myself more regulated is a fantastic practice to have. And so today, um, how are you feeling most days today? What is your life like on a typical day these days? I know it must still be very busy, but um what's it like?

SPEAKER_00

I would say a day in the life now is I wake up when I want.

SPEAKER_01

I'm not at the mercy of someone else most of the time. I think the only thing that I would Say is real, is I am financially responsible for myself in a way that I'm so I'm not married, I don't have a shared income. And everything I do is to keep me supported as well. And so there's a little bit of this underlying safety stress where the nervous system is like, oh my gosh, we have to keep this going. And so there is a, there's a lot of working and thinking about work. But I also really enjoy everything I do. I'm excited right now because I'm, because some technology came out, which I don't think the average spiritual business, spiritual wellness business is activating on, because I came from a technical job where I understand all of this. But Claude Cowork and Claude Code are making it extremely easy to build agents that will do stuff that you don't want to do. I have employees, but not that many. And I do most of the things myself. And when everybody else is doing the things, I need to check them and I don't want to do that anymore. And so I'm I've been excited this week building tools to do a bunch of stuff that I don't want to do so that I can do more of what I want to do. And I I spend I you know I spend a lot of it in spreadsheets and I don't want to do that. So I'm so I'm doing this, and it's building a future where we can be more efficient and authentic and vulnerable and personable.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. I mean, the secret about running a business is that you do have to run the business, right? And so that what's today is April 15th, it's tax day. So anyone who has their own business knows that there's taxes to pay, there's inventory to stock, there's spreadsheets to fill, etc. Um, but um, it seems like there are a lot of new tools that make that could be making that easier, and you're still doing it for yourself in the end. It's still to your own benefit. And it sounds like it's still to your own benefit for the sake of helping people, helping people heal, helping people reset their nervous system, helping people have these healing tools in their homes, which that in itself is incredibly satisfying.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And I one of the other things I do today is I ship a bowl that some one of my regular clients has bought and shipping it to upstate New York. And there's just a lot of joy in seeing them get to go home. I feel like I'm fostering the bowls behind me here for if you're looking at this in the video format, not the audio. And if you're not looking at it in the video format, you can check out our website and see the bowls and you can always reach out to me and ask questions as well.

SPEAKER_04

I'll have your website and ways to contact you in the show notes. But um, and you have two physical locations, one still in Richmond and one up in Brooklyn, is that right? Yeah, that's right. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So you can also go visit live and in person. So in our closing uh thoughts here, if there's somebody out there who's at that tech job, uh going from meeting to meeting, wondering how they're gonna make something else happen, what any advice or they've given so much generous insight and transparency about your own journey and what you might recommend. But if there's somebody out there that's like, there's gotta be something more than this for me, this is not a match.

SPEAKER_01

One of the things that I noticed as a theme in the conversation as I was thinking about how I got here is I and it's a thing I tell people when I coach them and they don't know what to do. They're trying to decide. For instance, one client was trying to decide whether to move to New York or or LA, and I said, go experience the thing as if you're going to do it. As an example, if you're thinking about creating a jewelry business because you're passionate about that, make your jewelry, go to a market, sell the jewelry, be there interacting with customers, but don't quit your job yet. You know, make some progress and see how it feels and how it feels to test. Imagining that being your world instead of your job. So I would say that try out little tidbits of testing the energy. And for him, I told him to go get an Airbnb in LA for a week near where he would want to live or near where he would work. Uh, same thing for New York, and he did it. He did it and he realized New York was the place. So he moved to New York based on that decision. And so I just kept trying. I tried the first thing I did was I tried a coaching client and I did the tarot coaching and I enjoyed it for a little while. And then I tried Reiki clients, and I actually still see Reiki clients periodically. I right now I'm just in a process of expanding the business, so I don't see one-on-one clients anymore, but I loved doing it. So I kept doing it until I knew what else I loved. And so it's experiment. You never really got to where you are today without trying something saying, I'd like to read another book like that, I'd like to watch another movie like that. Everything is about experiencing and seeing how it feels in your body. And so know that. But also practically, if you are at a job where you think you might be in a pass of layoffs, wait for that and keep keep that money. And but if you think your health is in danger because you're staying somewhere and the stress is making you unwell, either leave and relieve yourself of that stress or reach out to places near you that do sound healing or meditation or Reiki and try something that you maybe haven't tried before, or if you have tried it before, make it more regular for a little while.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Because you need to have a calm nervous system multiple times a day.

SPEAKER_01

And a lot of people are not that way. If you think about the way the people used to live, the the danger was at night when the predators were out and you were, you know, but you would build out your like safe space that felt safe and someone's watching, so you feel safe because someone's watching. And um you're you're basically there are many times during the day where you're not being chased by a bear.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_01

And the the reality is all that matters to your brain is if you're being chased by a bear. Right. Just to oversimplify it, what is a bear? And a bear can be, you know, major financial distress, you know, or what the brain seems to do is treat emails like bears or meetings like bears.

SPEAKER_03

Email, Mary Lynn. Yeah. So what a email. Yeah. Some sort of you don't like.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, exactly. And those are not bears. Those are the brain. It optimizes for things that are not about our enjoyment. It's only trying to protect you and be efficient at everything else so that it can protect you from a bear.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Because if it's not efficient at everything else, it's going to miss the bears coming. And so it's going to always say, You did this before, I'm going to do it again. And if your thoughts are critical of yourself or stressful, or you're constantly in a stressful situation at your work, your brain's going to be like, well, this is how we operate. And so I'm going to figure out ways around this and we're going to do it over and over again because it's faster, not better, faster.

SPEAKER_04

That's right. And it and you're alive. So it's good enough. It's keeping you alive. So let's just keep with this program.

SPEAKER_01

And that's why meditation is good because you can watch what your brain is doing. You start to observe your life from a like a bird's eye perspective. And then you see how silly your brain is, and then you learn you can retrain it. But if you're in automatic, you don't see it. So you can't shift it in the moment. You really have to shift it while it's happening.

SPEAKER_04

Marilyn, it's been such a pleasure to reconnect and have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for all your transparency and generosity and sharing about your journey and where you are today. And I've just been so uh so appreciative that we could spend some time together today.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you so much for having me. And yeah, it's been so fun to see that you are running your business as well after all these years. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_04

Hey, it's Courtney, and I'm back for Coach's Corner. I just finished my conversation with Marilyn, and I loved our conversation because it combined so many truths about what happens when we decide to go through an evolution or revolution. First of all, so many of my guests who look like it was a big revolution, a huge change, they insist it was an evolution that step by step things changed over time, which I think is so important to remember. And for Mary Lynn to have started out and actually tried many different things. I remember her sales on Instagram live. I remember um watching from a distance as her business changed and grew, and she allowed herself to explore those things and then move on. Um I think that that might be part of the journey to figure out where you're going. It is a journey, not a destination. And so I really appreciated that she pointed that out. And the other thing that I appreciate about Mary Lynn's story is a reconnection to spirit, a reconnection to some of the information and understanding that all of us have access to, but that we may be disconnected from. So you may not consider yourself a spiritual person, that's fine, but there's still a side of consciousness or awareness that you have access to that can help you make better decisions, take better care, get more information. And we tend to block a lot of that in order to be able to go to a job that's not satisfying, stay in a relationship that's not exactly working, um, whatever those things are, continue to do things to impress our parents or friends or other people. We tend to block a lot of our inner knowing. And so that's one of my favorite parts of coaching is helping people reconnect to some of that information and inner knowing about themselves because it's powerful, it's true, and it can help our whole body, mind, and spirit relax and reset because we're not kind of propping ourselves up with um masking, faking, suppressing the truth. All of those things take away our personal energy and our power and um choice making. So, gosh, huge thanks for to Mary Lynn and Buffalo Firefly. Um, I hope you can check out her store or her online store and see a little bit more about what she's about. So glad to have you as a listener. Until next time, stay true to yourself. Thanks for listening to Evolution or Revolution. If you're interested in learning more about my coaching work, please go to my website at iconicleadershipcoaching.com to read more about how I work partnering with people like you to become more grounded and reconnected to their peace and power. Check out the show notes for more resources and more information.