Follow What Fulfills You: A Story Of Reinvention With Annavy Phelan

Some of us grow up with the pressures of following a path that we don’t love. A few years down the road, we start to question whether it is too late to turn back and pick up our passions. Annavy Phelan is all too familiar with this story, but where she is now definitely can inspire you to follow what fulfills you. She is currently the Co-Founder and Co-Owner of Loveland Yoga, the yoga studio in Houston with the most heart. Among others, she is a yoga teacher, a muralist, a mom, and a wife. In this episode, she joins Yanet Borrego to share how she reinvented herself, discovered her purpose, and aligned her career to what truly fires her up. Annavy then tells us her mindset around failure, how she balances being a mother, wife, and business owner, and what it is like working with her husband.

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Follow What Fulfills You: A Story Of Reinvention With Annavy Phelan

I am beyond excited because I have a special guest. As you can experience already, she is fire. I love this entrance. She is Annavy Phelan. She is a Cofounder and Co-owner of Loveland Yoga. She is a yoga teacher and the best Houston muralist. She is so special in many ways. She is someone I have wanted to interview for a while now. I did a couple of workshops in Loveland Yoga and I'm like, “Let me build more trust and rapport until I'm ready to interview her.” You are that special to me. It was important to interview you. I wanted to be it at the right moment and place. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for having me. You are equally as awesome and special. Your light shines bright. It is an inspiration to follow you on Instagram.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I also reached out to you because you have an inspiring story when it comes to your career/business. A lot of the people that I bring into the show are people that have reinvented what career means to them in unconventional ways as I did and you have done. It wasn't until I read the bio on your website in Loveland Yoga. I was like, “Annavy was this and that. This is her background.” It was inspiring. Even the way that you were communicating everything was vulnerable, genuine, and inspiring. It is so you. It is natural and genuine.

It is hard to put a mask on every day. We were like, “Let's be honest and open. Let's write what happens.” It is a fun story because we retell it often. The story gets diluted. There is a little change here and there like, “Did that happen?” “I don't know.”

I feel the same when I tell my story. I tell it like it was me yesterday drinking coffee because I have said it many times.

I haven't said it that many times.

This is your chance. Now is the time.

I am from Houston, Texas. I am from immigrant parents, much like you. Both of my parents are Vietnamese. They came over here after the Vietnam War. I was born in Houston. I have an older brother. He was born in California. They moved to Houston for better opportunities. It is an interesting story because when you grow up a little differently than everybody else but you speak English, people still treat you a little differently.

It's like you don't belong anywhere in a way.

Houston is great for its diversity. When you get off the airplane at the airport, you see every different race. If you travel anywhere outside of Houston, it doesn't look that way.

Other restaurants have food for Korean. Here you have everything.

It is beautiful and a little mixed because there are some areas where it is not as diverse. We first grew up in the hood. We had a humble beginning. We grew up poor. My dad owned, at that time, some chain of convenience stores when we first moved here to Houston. My mom opened one nail salon and things progressed. The convenience store was out in Galveston. My parents would drive from Houston all the way out to Galveston to take care of the store. There was an incident that happened at the store. Somebody had burned it down. They were like, “I'm done with this convenience store.”

Ever since as a child, seeing my parents as entrepreneurs, like starting their own businesses, was inspiring. My mom would go to her nail salon and do her work. My dad would work at the convenience store. It was called ABC. It is still there if you want to check it out. It is still a convenience store. The building still exists. He sold the convenience store as is. My dad started to move into more of a corporate job. He worked for Schlumberger. He applied as an engineer. He didn't have a USA degree but they let him work at that time.

You don't see that often. That is awesome because if he had the skills, that is what we care about.

You, a former engineer, is almost the same thing. You couldn't even get in without having a degree. You have to have the degree now. There is no way you could have worked yourself up.

Not at least in the companies that I worked for, but thankfully, I had my degree in the US. I love the part that you mentioned about belonging and speaking English. I can identify with that because I grew up speaking Spanish. In Puerto Rico, where I have lived for several years, that is Spanglish. It is a combination. You don't know how to speak Spanish or English well. You are at a disadvantage in both ways.

My Vietnamese sucks. My English isn't that great either. They both suffer, but at least I can speak both-ish.

It is interesting because even on my Instagram, I speak mostly in English, but I speak Spanish to my friends and mom. I do get this feeling of like, “Where do I belong? Do I belong with English-speaking people? Do I belong with the Latins?” It is this identity of, “Am I everywhere? Maybe I'm meant to be everywhere and be part of everything.”

Do I value my Latin culture? Do I eat Latin food? Do I share my Latin background with my husband, who is of a different race? I want to eat Asian food all the time. Bobby may not want that. It is weird like, “Do I celebrate Christmas?”

It is an identity shift of like, “What identity do I embrace at what times?”

It caters to who I'm with. If I'm with my parents, I'm like, “We are eating Vietnamese food now.” If I'm with my in-laws, who are Caucasian, I will be like, “We are going to eat Caucasian food.” Sometimes I feel like I lose a sense of who I am because I'm morphed into catering or people pleasing a little bit to whoever I'm hanging out with.

You are like a chameleon. That is what I call it. You adapt wherever you are, but who are you at the end of the day? You are a compilation of all the adaptations to everyone else. It is a lifelong journey. At some point, every single person struggles with that.

They are figuring out who they are and who you are.

I'm done with a book called The Way of Integrity. It is a powerful book. You would identify with it. It is by Martha Beck. It is all about figuring out yourself and going in line with what feels right for you. She was saying how in a 5 to 10 minutes conversation, people lie several times, like, “How are you?” They were like, “I'm doing great. I love your shoes.” It is funny, but every time I tell them that, they laugh because we all know, at some point, we have lied to please others in some way. It is about finding the courage to go back in integrity with yourself.

Are you telling me you lied about how cute I look now? I see what you mean. It’s these small white lies to make people please.

That becomes a habit but it is lying still. It takes you away from who you are and from your integrity.

How are you supposed to answer that?

Being polite like, “How are you?” I'm still integrating, but we will pass on that. What does that mean? Rarely do people ask deeper questions or understand what you say because people are like, “How are you?” Let's move to what we need to do.

I'm like, “What breakthroughs? Did you have it in you? What did you cry about? Was it hard? What are your mental thoughts? I want to know everything that happened.”

You were raised by your parents here in Houston, Texas. What happened career-wise?

My parents helped me go through school. I first went to UT. I have a Marketing degree from UT. I don't utilize it much anymore.

Are you serious? I'm like, “All Loveland Yoga marketing is good.”

I don't remember anything from college except having a party.

Do you party a lot now?

I don't even drink. Social skill is what I learned in college. I was lost in college. You were directed at one point at such a young age and you were like, “Figure your life out for the rest of your life. Pick one major, stick with it, and good luck.”

Follow the recipe, but then when you get there, you never realize that you never learned about yourself, what you like, and what brings you joy.

It was unfulfilling, but it was a journey I had to take. I came back home and was still not very sure of what path to take. My parents and family were like, “You should move into something more secure.” I have always wanted to be an artist.

Do you know that since you were a child?

As a kid, I would be like, “I want to be an artist. I want to do art. I want to make beauty and add color to people's lives.” I want to be intentionally different, but that doesn't pay the bills. Your Asian parents, who immigrated here after post-war didn't move for your ass to be a starving artist, which is a term I hate because you can make money doing art.

You have to find a sincere way that you can still create in any way, maybe podcasting or public speaking. It is a form of creation. You are making art to pay the bills. My parents were encouraging me. They were like, “You need to take a safety net job. You need a job in the medical field. You like dentistry and art. Why don't you go to the pre-dent route?” I took all the Science classes.

I cannot imagine. From marketing, which is more on the creative side, to Chemistry and Biology.

I like science, but I don't love it. You take your Orgo 1 and 2 but I didn't do three, your Genetics and Biochem. I was like, “This is terrible.” I then started working in the dental field. I started as a dental assistant and then I slowly did managerial stuff and billing. I was the jack of all trades towards the end of my career because I was able to do everything except for the actual dentistry. I was approached while I was working at another place for a freestanding surgery center where we do surgeries for dentistry under general anesthesia. I became part owner but it wasn't the right fit for me. It didn't feel right from the beginning. I should have listened to my gut.

That's the biggest lesson that every person I interviewed, and even myself, is to listen to your gut. I love that you started as a child because I believe you discovered that purpose and what fires you up. You need to look at your childhood because you already know.

Look at yourself as a kid. What did you like as a kid? I liked riding my bike and doing physical exercise. Whenever we hung out with my dad, we would always do physical activities. We played kickball, rode our bikes, and played tennis. We played tennis a lot as a kid. I liked doing physical activity. It wasn't acknowledged by my parents that was something also because I own a yoga studio. That was something that was valued. Physical athleticism wasn't cared about. It was the maintenance of keeping your body healthy enough to live.

Maybe you could explore more of that, see what you can do, and bring money that way.

I’m not balling out of control, rolling around in yachts, but I'm a lot happier than I was making good money. It is inspiring because I feel like we have similar paths. We picked a safe, secure, and high paying. We got swayed.

My mom left everything she had in Cuba to bring me to a country where I could have freedom. I want to be able to give back. I want to support my same family. Even as a child, we prioritize ourselves to be able to provide that for our parents. We never got to spend time getting to know ourselves, which is what happened after we went through all of that experiment, and we realized we made a bunch of money. We said, “The checklist wasn't mine. The success checklist was someone else's.” We were programmed to believe this way. We deprogram ourselves and we all learn everything because it is a learning process. We tap into that inner.

I'm still deprogramming.

We are on the same platform.

Do I buy a new car? No, I don't need a new car. Those successful monetary values that our family has already placed upon us, the type of car we drive, the house we live in, and how many kids we have. All of those affect every decision. I'm a teeter-totter on every big life decision I make because I always subconsciously think about, “How will my parents judge me for what next decision I make?”

It is a habit of going back to the same place. It’s like, “I am breaking the pattern and building a new habit.”

I'm trying to deregulate that and be like, “It is my life. I don't want them to value me because of how many kids I can pump out of me, how big my house is, how fancy my car is, or what purse I carry on my arm.” That is sometimes a symbol of, like, “I made it. Look at me. I'm comfortable enough so my family can feed themselves.”

We respect everyone's model.

You buy that Mercedes-Benz and you have your eye on it. You reward yourself. That is you. I'm always such an advocate of if that is what is fulfilling for you, you do it. I'm like, “I'm still trying to figure that out. What is going to fulfill my own cup?”

What is fulfilling for you, you do it.

You are in the process because you have it polished. You have it in your bio. It says that you tried applying for a dental school exam and you failed several times. It is important to highlight that. Even Sara Blakely took the LSAT several times to go into law. She failed three times and she ended up working for Disney and selling fax machines. She invented Spanx. Now she is a billionaire. I love bringing up that aspect because everyone is afraid of failing, making that mistakes, and trying something new. In the process of reinventing yourself, what was your mindset around failure? When you failed that, what was the thought process? How did you come out of that?

That was a hard one to swallow because it was a milestone our parents set for us. I was thinking back to it. There is a lot of crying and realization that this isn't for me. What life am I leading if I'm forcing myself? It was about the intuition thing. It was like, “I'm going against my intuition. I don't want to do this. I'm only doing this for someone else.” It was the feeling of security financially. You need time to work through it and admit that you failed. It sucks, but how do you get over it? I think a hard slap on the face. I’m like, “I failed at it. I failed hard. I didn't get in and accept the fact that it was okay.”

You don't like that field anyways to be your whole career. I love Jamie Kern Lima. She is an author. She says, “Rejection is God's protection.” It was like, “That is not what you like. If you like it, try it twenty times.” That is how Starbucks got invented. It wasn't until the 65th loan that he was able to open a Starbucks. It is like Disney got. Failure is part of the process. Sometimes you are trying to fit in somewhere you don't want to fit in anyways, but you were. You are like, “Course-correct. This is not it.”

I was teeter-tottering in between the two. I’m like, “Do I keep trying and say maybe the puzzle piece fits, and this is the right way?” It was like, “This isn't it. This isn't the way I was supposed to go.” I finally listened to my gut, and I was like, “This is it. I'm closing the door on this chapter. I'm moving on.” I left everything.

I took a break for a year. I was an intern at a micro-blading eyebrow tattoo place. She is amazing because I have to do art. I aspire to be a tattoo artist. I'm insecure about putting something permanent onto people's bodies. That’s why I took that internship because I wanted to be in it to see if I liked it. I do like the art of tattooing and art on our skin.

You have a big tattoo.

It matched a little bit of the medical stuff because you have to keep everything sterile. I enjoyed it, and it was far enough away from what I was doing but still close to where I enjoyed it. I spent a year and saved some money. I was like, “Let's take a break and figure out what I want to do with my own life and where I want to go.” I had taken my yoga teacher training before the break at the end of me quitting everything.

What led you to yoga?

I have always done yoga since the end of college. It is a little blurry somewhere around the college. I was always into some physical activity. Playing basketball, yoga, or weight lifting, whatever it was, I was always into physical activity. I liked all those things. I’m finding my way there too. What physical activity caters to me? Yoga is always stuck in the background. It wasn't always the majority thing that I would always do, but once in a while, I would be like, “I need to take a yoga class. I need to decompress. I need to de-stress.” You stretch it out, breathe and get back into my own body.

We spend a lot of time here in our heads. Whenever I practice yoga, I turn off my mind. I let the teacher guide me, so I don't have to think about the next pose or what I'm doing. I can attune to, “All my shoulders are hurt. It has been a while since I have looked at my hips. My hips feel tight from standing all day.” Yoga has always been there. I took my yoga teacher training in March 2017. The end of that was the confidence built to quit because it is hard to quit a high-paying job.

It requires a lot of courage. I love that you experimented in order to know that yoga was a thing. You always ended up going back to yoga. You tried every activity and physical stuff. Clarity is a product of experimentation, taking action, experimenting with what feels right, and knowing that way. It is a lifelong journey.

It is forever changing. I quit, took my yoga teacher training, and met Bobby, my husband.

They are the cutest couple ever.

We were very platonic at first. We were friends and talking casually. It wasn't until the fall or summer of 2017, we started talking. We were hanging out. He has been a yoga teacher since he was 23.

I had been following Bobby for a long time. I had him on Instagram. There was a time that I was doing more yoga. The people I was following were sharing things from his Instagram. I started following him a long time ago. Cody started going to Loveland Yoga. I didn't know Bobby and you. That is how everything is interconnected.

I didn't know you joined because of Cody.

He was the one who started first.

I met Bobby. We hung out as friends first. I quit my job, and that is where the yoga studio he was working with was. He used to work at YogaOne for those who followed the YogaOne path. They had sold to YogaWorks and changed hands of ownership. It wasn't the same anymore. It felt different. He quit that job and we decided to open Loveland.

That was in 2019.

We started planning. We drove around Houston. First, it was a dream. We would drive around aimlessly like, “This would be a good spot to open a yoga studio. This corner needs a yoga studio. There are no yoga studios around here.” We started talking about it more. We are manifesting it to our family and friends. I was like, “I think this is what we want to do. I'm not sure.” Bobby was like, “Yes, we should do it. We should put our foot down.”

I was a little hesitant because of the business I had started before. I wasn't happy with the path and the way it was going. That business is closed. That was another failure I had to swallow hard because I was like, “This is my pride and joy. I wanted to see it grow,” and then it went into a dark place fast. I’m swallowing my pride, saying, “This is a failure. It is a failure for me and everyone who is working at the company.” That was a door that I had to close and accept failure to. That was a lot harder to accept versus not getting into dental school because I had started that from the ground up.

It was my baby. I don't know how to run a yoga business at that time. I was like, “I know how to run a business but I don't know how to run a yoga business. When do you do sales?” Bobby was like, “I got us. Let's take this journey and take a leap.” We got a real estate agent. We were looking sincerely around. We had the money for the down payment. We had a concept slowly in place. Bobby wrote this in-depth business plan. I had some business experience, but I didn't have a business plan ever written. We had nothing to show. You can't show people who were giving you a chance nothing.

This was to a real estate agent.

No. This is for the landlord. For you to rent space, you need business experience.

That part I don't know because I don't have a rental place.

If you ever see a strip center like SheSpace, you have to show you have business experience. You have to show your trail of business. How do you show that when you have no business experience? Bobby had this experience so he wrote this amazing in-depth business plan to the tee. I was like, “I haven't worked this hard since college.”

I was looking at the business plan and the financials. My mind was blown by how in-depth, well-thought-out, and well-written the business plan was. I was like, “I can't believe he wrote this. This is amazing.” My eyes lit up. I was like, “I'm marrying this guy. This is the one.” We submitted our business plan. It gets approved by the skin of our teeth because nobody was giving us a chance. We are climbing up before the pandemic hit. Everything was climbing up to expensiveness.

How many noes did you get before the yes?

We had four legitimate noes. I'm not sure, to be honest. Sometimes we would reach out and the no immediately would be the silence or the price.

If you think you are high risk, I imagine they are going to ramp up the price.

I was like, “Who can afford that?”

I love that because, in entrepreneurship, there are many noes you receive. That is important to highlight.

Sometimes we said no, too, because it would be like, “His vibe feels weird. It felt like the landlord was a little leechy.” They were like, “You have to pay rent. You pay this on top of that. You pay the property, and you play this.” Maybe it is not the right fit and is a little sharky. It was hard. We got a lot of noes from them first. The few people who were like, “This is rent, but we have to charge a little bit more on this.” Those were the few noes that where my gut was like, “I don't know if that relationship will be good towards the end.” We finally settled on a place in the skin of our teeth.

It is this place that you have right now, which is the best location ever. You need to visit Loveland Yoga. It is a nice place. It is central to everything.

It was the right place and the right time. We submitted everything. We started building. We opened our doors on October 2019. It was relatively around our birthdays. I was born on October 18th. Bobby is born on October 19th. We got married in September 2019 before Loveland opened. We had our grand opening in December, January, and February, and in March 2020, we closed our doors. We turned the key and taught online classes. Next to opening the business, it was one of the hardest three months we have ever endured, mentally and physically, because you can't exercise. We lived in an apartment complex. We are doing yoga on our balcony and teaching yoga classes in our living room.

You don't know how long it is going to last. Were you still paying rent in that place, or they waived them?

They didn't waive it. They deferred it. You will pay for it next year, which sucks because now I'm paying double the rent. You don't bounce back from COVID fast. We were still feeling it in 2020. We closed for COVID for a few months. Nobody remembers what happened during COVID. Do you remember the few months that happened during COVID?

I was in Hawaii when COVID hit and I was still at my corporate job. I had met Cody and we were dating.

Did you bring him to Hawaii?

Yes.

Those are the memories.

I was taking one of my training in Hawaii. This was ten hours in a training room learning about spirituality, and he came. That is when I knew he was the right person. We were learning the hula.

If you ever need lessons on how to find the one, that is Yanet right here.

I have a track record. I had many partners. That is how we figured out that Cody was the right one. You got to experiment in that area too.

You kiss a lot of frogs. Is that what you are telling me?

You got to experiment in every area of life to know what is right.

What happened in Hawaii?

We were freaking out because COVID hit.

I thought you were going to say something else because you guys were freaking out.

It was a tough time. No one knew what was going on. We thought it was for a few months, and it was nonstop.

We thought we were going to be closed for two weeks. We closed for several months. All I remember is that when our doors opened, five people showed up because it was still wearing a mask. Everyone was disinfecting everything. It is a big deal, and I understand that. We didn't want to push people out of their comfort zone. We try to cater as much as possible to disinfect the blocks. We bought a medical-grade cleaning machine. We still use it. It is called Clarke.

We Clarke and disinfect the floor and the blocks. We bought an ozonator that converts H2OO into H2O. It changes the molecules of the air so it is a little bit safer to breathe in the air. We were trying to take every precaution to make people feel safe, but we also had to keep the doors open. There was no way that we could continue to teach online classes and make it.

You were pregnant. I feel that was a big milestone.

Yes. I was running a business, being married, and having a baby. Robbie was born in December 2020.

This is one of the big questions I have for you. I was integrating motherhood, being a wife and a business owner. As I think of having kids, I'm always like, “I'm building this business.” How do you do it? Give me some tips. You cannot drink too much coffee if you are breastfeeding. I got a miscarriage. The thing I remember is that I couldn't drink the amount of coffee. That is the most painful thing for me. My mom says, “In Cuba, no one said we couldn't drink coffee. I drank a lot of coffee when I was pregnant.”

Your mom was right. She drinks coffee. I'm kidding. Don't take any medical advice from me. I have no idea. I personally drink coffee.

Bobby helps you a lot with the baby.

We alternate.

He cooks and bakes bread.

He is an entrepreneur in everything. I want him to open a bakery.

I looked at the Instagram stories. It looks amazing.

I want him to open an artisan baking thing. To go back to your original question of how do you balance motherhood, entrepreneurship, running a business, and being a wife, it is hard because when you focus on one thing, the other things suffer. When I'm stressed out about work or something happens at the business, I'm not the best wife.

It can be hard to balance different parts of your life. When you focus on one thing, the other things suffer.

I can relate to that. I'm sure Cody will attest to that.

I'm a crappy wife sometimes not all the time. I need to let go of the attitude because I don't have anyone to let it out.

You can call me anything.

I can't be mean to you. Sometimes I'm mean, and it is hard.

Awareness is the first step.

The balance is sometimes a teeter-totter. Maybe I'm a great wife for the month or week and then I lose attention to the business. Thank God, everyone who is part of the Loveland team is amazing.

You are an amazing leader because you attracted that.

Everyone is unique in their own beautiful puzzle piece that makes Loveland such a fun, vibrant, wonderful, welcoming place to be.

It is a studio with the most heart.

Everyone has something unique and beautiful. Everyone is so much smarter than me. I'm like, “Yes, you do that.” They always have wonderful suggestions, where I'm like, “Yes, do it.” I was raised to be the cheerleader for the underdogs. Even if you are not an underdog, I will be your biggest cheerleader. If a teacher comes up or something like, “I want to do this,” or if Vienna comes up to me like, “Let's do goal setting workshop.”

I did two workshops and she was amazing. You are open and flexible. You are focused on serving the community. With that in mind, it comes flexibility and openness to whatever is best for the community of Loveland Yoga. When I focus on one area, the other suffers because sometimes we have such big expectations and pressure to deliver perfectly in each area. The reality is that we are human beings. We are also learning. It is impossible to be perfect and show up empowered and perfect every time. You work towards it. We are still going to mess up. We are human beings. I love that reminder.

One thing on my show is there is no editing. We will put everything there. I'm sure people are entertained by our conversation. It is my last question because I'm sure we are close to the hour or have past the hour already. I told you I have a good intuitive drug. I'm good at timing. I have always been intrigued by business partnerships.

You and Bobby are operating this studio. Every time you guys do something, which I think you are thoughtful about everything, my first question is, was that Annavy or Bobby’s idea? I want to get inside their brain or life and understand how you two balance or integrate each other. On the business side, what are your strengths versus Bobby's strengths? Maybe you both are good at everything. How does the marketing versus the copyright works?

When we first started the business, it was all over the place. We would all do this, switch this and do marketing there. We would both do this. As the years progressed, we started to groove a path of I take care of all the marketing. I will do the Instagram ads and build the website.

The billboard in the street like what you guys had and there are sometimes letters there is genius.

He does all the analytical things. We have help with finances but before, Bobby is doing all the paperwork and finances. We are both there for the interviews. That one is a little iffy because I feel like we have similar tactics for hiring. We go with our gut. It is not the best business advice.

Sara Blakely, all of her colleagues were like, “What is your business plan?’” She was like, “I talked to the universe and I showed up.” She didn't even have a visa. I'm not saying do not have one but many things evolve as you show up. There have been many uncertainties in the past. I have done a business plan on my computer somewhere for my coaching business. It was part of one of the coaching certifications I got. I haven't looked at that in a long time. It is nothing that I live by.

Now we know who does what. It is a little bit more defined by who is taking care of the business. We communicate with each other like, “Have you seen this email? Are you going to take care of this? Who is taking care of that?” We delegate for that. I'm sure you and Cody do the same thing with your coaching business. I was trying to pick his brain the other day, and I was like, “Do you talk to Yanet about her business?” He was like, “Yes.”

Every time I have a vision, I'm like, “I'm thinking this. What do you think? Can you review this email?” He is always my sounding board in that sense. He has never been interested in being an entrepreneur. He is more comfortable on the security side of corporate but he writes well. I love going to him for advice. He helps me a lot in making sound decisions. Sometimes you are in it that you need someone to provide you with a different perspective than the one you are experiencing at the moment.

It is beautiful that we can rely on our significant others too.

It is beautiful that we can rely on our significant others too.

We are married and live in the same house.

Bobby is the person that anytime I have any insecurities about a decision, he’s like, “Who should we hire? Should we add more classes to the schedule? What is the next big business thing that we are going to do?” I always look to him. It is unfortunate that I can't rely on myself, but he has always been like, “We got this. We are going to make this. It is a solid foundation. You can relax. Trust that whatever we are working towards is going to happen. Trust your decision. You know that you are a smart woman.” I never thought I was a smart woman until I met Bobby. He was like, “You are smart. You got to believe it yourself.”

It is important because we need a village. Even though we can do things ourselves, we have blind spots. We have things that we need help with. I believe that we are meant to do it all together in a way. Find the right people, not anyone or everyone. You connect with the right people in the journey like you and I connected.

It was fate. It was the universe shoving us together.

It is fate when the universe shoves you to the right people.

I'm thankful and grateful. Do you have fun? It was normal. I get nervous when I'm being interviewed. When you are in it, it feels great. Your story needed to be shared more.

If this idiot girl can do it, you can do it too.

If that smart woman can do it, you can do it.

It is something I'm working on too. These little jokes I pick at myself. Thank you for sharing your inspiring story about leaving a comfortable job.

It is a comfortable job that I was doing great at, and still pursuing a bigger aspiration and letting go of that security blanket. I'm happy we got to connect to share your story with our readers. Many people will be inspired in many ways because we touched on many points, and it was such a fun interview. I love this energy of playfulness and childlike fun.

I love your energy, light, and awesomeness.

Thank you, everyone, for reading. Follow Annavy on Instagram. Share all your info on Instagram.

Let’s shout out to Loveland Yoga first. @LovelandYoga and LovelandYoga.com. My personal IG is @Annavy.Phelan. I have all my personal life things where I usually shoot things off my son.

She has a YouTube video. She has many things. You need to follow her.

We are starting a YouTube. I got that from you. I was like, “We need to hit that YouTube.”

We inspire each other here.

Important Links

• Loveland Yoga
• The Way of Integrity
• @LovelandYoga - Instagram
• @Annavy.Phelan - Instagram
• YouTube – Annavy Phelan

About Annavy Phelan

Annavy Phelan is the co-founder and co-owner of LoveLand Yoga, the yoga studio in Houston with the most heart. She is a yoga teacher, a muralist, a mom, a wife, and so much more! She has a fascinating story of how she discovered her purpose and aligned her career to what truly fires her up.