Welcome. This is A Glimpse Inside. I’m Wendy Perrotti. And today, we’re talking about The Messy Middle Road Trip. If you’re 40-plus and you’re someplace in that messy middle, this show is for you. I have two incredible guests with me today you’re going to absolutely love.

Nicole Markel is an entrepreneur in the wellness field on a mission to share her personal journey while battling an auto-immune condition and empowering others to live a healthier lifestyle. She’s found her purpose by educating people on how to reduce their exposure to toxins in everyday personal care and cleaning products and provides them with a solution as an independent consultant with Pure Haven.

Sandra Costello is an entrepreneur, photographer, and coach who believes in brave moments and helping her clients find new ways to appreciate who they are exactly as they are. And if you’re a listener to A Glimpse Inside, you’re already in that tribe. She helps people transform the way they see themselves and really dive into their sweet spot. She is a self-professed extrovert. Sandra is curious to get to know her clients and their stories that make them uniquely beautiful.

Sandra and Nicole have a podcast as well, and it’s called The Messy Middle Road Trip. In fact, The Messy Middle Road Trip is the very first podcast that I ever guested on and it was the thing that really made me think, holy cow, this is a lot of fun. I want to do this all the time, and it really was the inspiration for A Glimpse Inside. I’m so excited to have them here.

And what’s really cool is that back in the day, when I was a guest on The Messy Middle Road Trip, Sandra was not there. I’m meeting Sandra for the first time today. She’s an absolute rock star from everything that I’ve seen so far. I’m so excited for us all to get to know her and for you all to get to know Nicole. I’m going to hand it over to them to say, “Tell us, you guys, tell us about The Messy Middle Road Trip. What do we need to know about you?”

Well, thank you so much, Wendy, for having us on the show. And we created this podcast actually with my original co-host. We created it about two years ago because we were having conversations about mid-life with our girlfriends. And we looked at each other and said, “These are the conversations that we need to have with a bigger community.” So many of us are going through menopause, perimenopause, talking about symptoms and where we were at. And we really wanted to create that community of women over 40, who embrace the past, appreciate where we are now, and take action to live our best life because really it’s all about the journey. And that sort of set us on the path with the whole road trip concept of capping in that convertible with your girlfriends and being able to share those intimate stories, because we all have them and really embrace the squishy middle because it’s not always pretty.

And we love being able to have those raw, real conversations and get to know people. And I’m going to toss it over to Sandra because Janine, with COVID and everything that happened, she’s in the travel industry, she decided to pivot and really focus on shifting gears with her career and the podcast became too much. I had to look at, do I do this alone? Do I walk away from it? Or do I find a really cool co-host that can step into Janine’s shoes? And lucky for me, Sandra was willing and ready to jump in the convertible with me. And like you, Wendy, she had been a previous guest, so I knew it would be a great conversation and a great fit. So Sandra, can you share a little bit about that fated phone call that you got from me.

Well hello, Wendy. This is so exciting. I’m really happy to be here this morning. Yeah, I can remember the call very well. Nicole had sent me a message the night before and said, “I have an idea. I have a proposition for you. Can we talk?” And I thought, “Wow, what’s this?” I almost called her right away. Anyway, she called me the following day. It was summer. I was sitting outside because COVID, that’s where my office landed. She started talking about the podcast, which I was aware of and mentioned that things were shifting and she was sort of heading in this direction. I thought, “Oh my God, she is calling me to be on the show.” And I didn’t let her finish the sentence that I said, “Yes, I would love to do it.” Photographing and getting to know women is really my jam. Being able to be on a podcast where we get to have conversations about mid-life sounded terrific. Yeah.