We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Madison Gillespie. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Madison below.
Madison, thank you so much for joining us. You are such a positive person and it’s something we really admire and so we wanted to start by asking you where you think your optimism comes from?
For a long time, I’ve been an optimistic person that likes to see life in a positive lens.
Energy is a real thing. When you’ve experienced hardships and wallow in negative energy, you become heavy and unable to move. As a result, you don’t look forward for the things in life and you aren’t hopeful for the future. You become this weighted energy that you were taught to stay away from. If you view your life in a negative way, you welcome that negative energy to continue to stay in your life. For change to happen for the better, it starts with your mind. Only the individual themselves can change their mindset, if they let it.
Whenever I’ve gone through tough times, I always make sure that I am grateful for the things I do have in my life. Going over those little or big things, brings a sense of happiness. Because when you list those things that you are grateful for, you realize life isn’t so bad and you are living an abundant life. That’s what it is. Being thankful and optimistic for the little things in life, adds on to the pile of blessings you have and will get in the future. That’s why stay I optimistic as much as I can because that’s what keeps me going every day and look forward to the future. Having positive energy welcomes positive results.
Plus, life can be very fun, especially if you live fully for yourself!
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
My current occupation is that I am a data analyst as my 9-5. But my passion is being in the creative and entertainment field with a focus on cartoons and animation. As long as I can remember, I’ve been in love with the performing arts. Throughout my scholastic years I was acting, stage managing, directing, hosting, assisting, building sets, staging lights, etc. Essentially, I was the theater kid. When I was in college, I was on the speech team which honed my presentation and performance skills very well. Fast forward to now, I am on an Improv team that I’ve been with about 3 years now.
On the side, I do voice over work and I make crochet YouTube videos! At first, when I started my fiber arts journey, my anxiety was at its highest when I was going through a tough time after graduating college and knitting became a nice and therapeutic hobby for me. Then I branched out further into the fiber arts community, and I got into crochet and Tunisian crochet. As a result, I fell in love creating things from my hands and I couldn’t get enough of it.
One Christmas I handmade presents for my family and friends. They responded with joy and awe and said that I should make a business selling some of the items I made.
In January 2021, I started my business, created an Etsy page, and did a pop-up shop that year. But I didn’t know how to manage it and be consistent with producing products. Being overwhelmed with huge responsibility, learning the business, and marketing was a major part of my own discouragement and downfall. Plus, I would experience fatigue in my hands, and I knew I had to take it easy. As a result, I neglected my work and stopped crocheting all together.
Around 2023, I went back into it and this time I started posting things I made with no motive. Just to show off my work. I wanted to start over and make it easy and not put a lot of pressure on myself and it worked! I was happy to post again and to do it just for me. One day, I recorded myself crocheting a rasta beanie. As a result, it kind of went viral on TikTok with 24k views and lots of comments. I was shocked at how many people wanted to know how to make this rasta beanie I made. I created my first YouTube video on how to make the beanie and I fell in love with teaching people how to crochet things. Then I thought I had a great response on creating videos to teach people to crochet things I liked than when I tried to sell something online. This was the turning point for me. Major light bulb moment. Honestly, I still love crocheting things for people because I genuinely love to see their reaction when they get it. I also love how I am teaching people how to make things for themselves or others. It’s a nice feeling.
Now, I create crochet content for the masses. We’ll see what the future holds!
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Three things that were most impactful in my journey would be motivation, consistency, and research.
The advice I would give for people who are in the early stages of their creative or business endeavors are to make things easy for yourself at first. Don’t focus on long term goals so you won’t be overwhelmed and pressured to get a million things done at once. Focus on the short goals because you can attain them easily and it motivates you to complete more goals. Just keep going.
Be well versed in the community you are involved in and do a lot of research.
Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?
Main advice is to take breaks when you can. Simple. Take a break.
I like to listen to music, watch anime or shows, stretch, play video games, meditate, read, take a walk, get some fresh air, do other crafts, or give myself a spa day. Honestly, anything that makes you relaxed and clears your mind, do it.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/madimanepage/?hl=en
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@madimanepage?si=OFPJ6Qk0Zzms842E
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