Body Positivity and Style with Maddy Gutierrez
Body Positivity and Style with Maddy Gutierrez
As many of you long-time listeners know, I’m a big fan of manifesting your dreams and realizing how important it is to put goals out there, even if they are scary or may take time to accomplish, because you never know where that journey is going to take you.
Today I’m talking to Maddy Gutierrez founder of the life and style blog of her own name maddygutierrez.com about the blogging goal she set for herself and the unexpected journey it sent her on. And now here’s Maddy.
What Are We Drinking?
Maddy — Vodka Soda
Shannon — Tito’s Vodka & Black Cherry Schweppes
Podcast Notes
Maddy is a full-time blogger, and she started a blog when she moved to London a few years back. She stopped, because she didn’t think anyone would want to read it.
When she moved back to New York City, her son was about two years old and it was at the point where she missed earning an income, but she wanted to be a stay at home mom.
She started a blog knowing the income potential and knowing you can build a legitimate high-earning business and a social media presence.
If she was going to put the time into it, she wanted to get something back from it.
When Maddy first started, she wanted to make sure she got started on the right foot, so she did a lot of research. While researching, she learned that she should have a self-hosted Wordpress blog. It is the only way you can truly own your content.
Hosts can take your site down at any moment. She bought a domain and spent a lot of time learning on YouTube. She started with “how to start a blog”, and then moved onto how to format your blog.
Maddy wanted to make sure that she was all set from a legal standpoint. In the beginning, she researched a lot about privacy policies and disclosure statements, so she would be set up long term.
A lot of bloggers probably come to those things later, but she knew those would be building blocks and set them up properly.
She originally thought she was going to be a mom blogger and write about parenting, but she found it to be very dull and old and it wasn’t exciting to her.
Being a plus-sized woman, anytime she posted a photo of herself or shared something about her jeans or her coat, she had a lot of people ask her where she bought them.
There are not a lot of places that sell current and modern plus-sized clothing. She isn’t about sexy positivity, but she doesn’t want to look like a grandma. She wants to be a stylish woman living in NYC in a plus size body. Usually it is either one extreme or the other.
Shannon has always struggled with body positivity. She was always a size six or eight, but she gained weight every time she found out she wasn’t pregnant. After she had her son she was at her highest weight and she thought she would lose all of it breastfeeding. After she finished breastfeeding, only 20 pounds came off.
She felt scared to gain more weight, because 10 years ago after size 14, you needed to shop at a different type of store, like Lane Bryant.
A plus-sized woman deserves to wear cute clothes and be respected when she goes to a store, restaurant, or doctor’s office. It’s not as easy to lose weight as people make it out to be. Getting physically fit or financially fit is not something you can achieve overnight.
January is Maddy’s two-year blogging anniversary. When she first started her blog, she was on a diet and she didn’t feel worthy of love and respect. She was on a journey herself, trying to find her own style and find what worked for her own shape, and she let people in on her thought process.
Maddy thinks the honesty of her blog is why it has kept people around for so long. Regardless of size, we all feel like we need to be better. Maddy thinks of herself as a plus-sized blogger and she is always surprised when someone responds to her who buys the straight size.
She doesn’t always feel like she needs to choose an outfit that flatters her body or makes her look like she is taking up less space. Sometimes it’s okay to choose an outfit that is functional and still be cute. The same outfit on her plus-sized body would be passed off as cute on a straight-sized body.
Growing her following has been 100 percent organic. She started doing style sessions where she would take one skirt and style it several different ways. Some of the bigger bloggers shared her account and did some sessions with her.
Maddy almost never gets any negativity online. It’s not necessarily the size of your audience, it is the quality and engagement, especially for making money on your blog. Brands are looking at how many of your followers will take action based on what you are saying.
You can have one million followers and have nobody care, or you can have 10,000 followers and have 8,000 care. It is all about the content and community you are creating.
A lot of brands want to work with you on a one-off basis. Talking about something multiple times over a timespan will start building that brand knowledge and trust.
Maddy doesn’t want her feed to be one giant advertisement. There are too many things that she genuinely loves and she doesn’t have room for random things. Maddy will never apologize for doing an ad, because she will always do partnerships with products she genuinely stands behind. She would have talked about them regardless of getting paid.
In the beginning, Maddy did a lot of pitching to brands. There are a lot of platforms that connect influencers to brands. Now most of the things she partners with are those she has thought of on her own time that she knows she has either purchased before, it will be a good product for her brand, or a brand reaches out to her and asks her to try something.
Maddy always writes in a clause that allows her to pull out of a contract. This summer, she signed with a skincare product and she requested a four-week lead time so she could try it first and make sure it was something she wanted to put on her blog.
Most brands have a budget to put behind influencers and bloggers. Nobody watches a commercial anymore. Influencer marketing is the current pathway to brand awareness and future sales.
Her job is not sales, her job is to make you aware of a great product so when you are ready, you’ll think back to the time she shared that product. It might not be the same time as when she suggested it. Her job is content creation that puts a brand’s face in front of an audience.
Her income is split 60 percent from sponsored content and 40 percent from affiliate marketing. She chooses to keep her ads below 25 percent of the content she puts out. If she posts 20 Instagram photos a month, no more than five can be ads. She could probably bring in more income, but she doesn’t want to flood her feed with ads or put all of her eggs in one basket.
January is notoriously slow for partnerships, because November and December are so brand heavy with the holidays. If she didn’t have affiliate marketing to fall back on, she could be without an income.
Maddy chooses not to use pop up ads, because she doesn’t want to take away from the user experience and because the revenue from them is not that great.
Maddy is making more than she did at her full-time job, pre-children. She set very lofty goals for her five-year plan with the blog.
Her five year goal is a multiple six-figure salary. Next year will be her third year and her goal is a six-figure salary. If she had made what she made the last few months of 2019, she would have surpassed her three-year goal.
It becomes very attainable when you break it down based on the type of revenue and set goals. If you don’t aim big, what’s the point. You need to make a plan and put a dollar amount on it.
Maddy comes from a family that struggled. Her family worked really hard but there were still times where their power was shut off. When she and her husband moved back to NYC, they were a single-income family.
When you come from a place of not enough, to dream of more than enough can sometimes come off as greedy. People don’t want to hear about how you want more than what you had, but it is okay to want financial security and big things in your life.
You can have a million dollars and still know the value of a dollar, and teach it to your children.
The blog takes all of Maddy’s time. You may spend 60 seconds reading a sponsored post, but she spent eight hours creating that post and four hours answering DMs about it. She also spent eight hours creating non-sponsored content.
Maddy is currently in the business of building a business and the hours are never ending. Some day she will be able to take a weekend off, but that time is not now. She spends all day working and all evening on her computer.
A year and a half ago, Maddy could barely look at herself in the mirror. Now, she may be at her heaviest weight, but she is the happiest she has ever been. Her life, value, and happiness are not dependent on the shape of her body.
She lived a life of punishment for 30 years. She is now 5’10”, and in first grade, she was a head taller than the other students and she knew her body was different. At age six it was the first moment she felt ashamed of her body. Now, she works out to feel good.
He husband didn’t realize quite how much pressure she felt on a daily basis to punish herself for just living. Like she needed to apologize for being who she is and for her body.
Their relationship has shifted, because she no longer needs the reassurance she used to need. She can put on an outfit and feel great without her husband telling her she looks great.
In the plus-sized world, there is a fat tax. The difference between manufacturing a size 00 and a size 40 is pennies on the dollar. Switching out the pattern template costs more money than making a larger size.
Clothing costs more and insurance costs more for those who are overweight. However, they are more at risk for health complications, because they are more likely to not go to the doctor for fear of being shamed.
Clothing is about 20 percent more expensive for plus sizes and it is lower quality.
The most positive clothing brands for plus sizes include Universal Standard, Anthropologie, and Girlfriend Collective.
TAKEAWAY: My biggest takeaway is the importance of the first step. Maddy’s website now helps thousands of women express themselves in a positive way and this never would have happened if she didn’t take the first step toward starting the blog. The hardest part is starting. I hope you get started on one of your goals today
Random Three Questions
What is your favorite outfit to wear, when you want to feel like your best self?
If you weren’t blogging about what you are blogging about, what would you blog about?
This is your last night on earth. What is your final meal?
Connect with Maddy
Blog: Maddy Gutierrez
Social Media: @maddygutierrez
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