We had the good fortune of connecting with Mackenzie Martin and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Mackenzie, how do you think about risk?
Risk is such a crucial element of success and a critical cornerstone of building beautiful things. I have often found when I’m approached with questions seeking answers in how I’ve built three businesses, a lot of it correlates with risk taking. Considered risk is advantageous because it unlocks doors and opportunities you might have left shut and opens your mind to possibilities you’ve not yet dreamed. I find people’s fear towards assumption of risk is a deterrent because of it’s possible proximity to an outcome of failure. To utilize risk in business and in life, we have to be okay to fail. This is not to say risk blindly without well researched and robustly informed information. But it is to say that most great success stories lie dormant on the steps of life’s front porch because we are too crippled with fear of potential failure to open the door. There are significant moments in each of my businesses as well as my personal life where I had to get honest with the internal fear of failure that is entangled with taking risk and could keep me still. Of what I’d be robbing from myself if I allowed that fear to guide me. I decided early in my twenties that I would not rule my life from a throne of fear but instead seated in my internal knowing and empowered towards a life of wild, creative, joyous unknown. . . “into the wilderness I wander”. I have watched this simple mantra, which I have tattooed on my wrist, build a bridge into the mysterious places of my heart and cultivated wild gardens of beautiful things I didn’t know existed, or know I’d want, 15 years ago. Enlightened risk offers us the gift of expansion. Risk allows us to stretch past our comfortability and find the edge (and then once we’ve found it, we have to redefine it as it’s now further in front of us. That’s the thing about the edge). Risk in an invitation into the portal of possibilities in contrast to the safety of clinging to our known limits. We may never find our purpose if we don’t invite some risk in and that is why it’s essential.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Largely who I am as an artist, and what I do as a business is fundamentally the same. I approach all work considering how much intention can be placed within an idea, choreography, or business principle. I try to not touch anything with just half my heart. That intentionality rings so deeply within me. Alongside intention and infusion. . .comes my love for designing a sense of space; holistically, spatially, and visually. My newest endeavor is a monthly 31 day movement based pilgrimage called CREATION OVER CHAOS which I launched during (and because of) COVID. It focuses around a central mantra and emphasizes daily improv tasks to help build the tools a dancer needs to guide themselves towards a place of exploration and to set up a safe space to research movement on their own. This material is steeped in intention, infused with the deepest passion. It was designed as a gift to offer dancers a way through this challenging moment where learning and space has been grossly interrupted. Perhaps what sets me apart is how I see and hold space for people, attention to detail and design, innovation, and honest, intentional storytelling. I hope when others encounter my work they experience those qualities and touched by their own humanity because of it.

Any great local spots you’d like to shoutout?
When people visit me in Los Angeles we eat out, a LOT. To me, a fun way to experience culture in a city (especially when I travel internationally) is to go to restaurants, with attention to casual inclusive atmosphere and location. A go to restaurant for me is Blue Plate Taco in Santa Monica – YES to the views and Sangria (but order it without soda water). Eating gluten free and vegan isn’t hard in Los Angeles, and fun to treat out of town visitors to exceptional gfree/vegan food they’d not have at home. Hugo’s in West Hollywood, Cafe Gratitude in Venice, Bricks & Scones in Larchmont and Zinc in DTLA.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My mom encouraged the magic of creation and play my entire life. Our home was filled with music, life, books, movies, instruments, a craft room (filled with everything you could ever want) and the permission to play as messy, as loudly, and as freely as my spirit led me. She (and my dad) taught me that my opinion mattered, and that what I built with my hands, designed and fashioned with fabrics, painted and glued with my fingers, and played on the piano. . .was a beautiful use of time and energy. I watched her teach music lessons, to pay for dance costumes and other extracurricular arts based activities because she believed in it’s importance. I watched her too, find joy in making. This is important, her demonstration. This celebration of creation largely affected my relationship with how I view art as an adult, and the permission I gave myself to find a career as an artist and instilled in me a deep intrinsic value of all art and the practice of untamed creation.

Website: mackenziemartininc.com
Instagram: @_mackenzie_martin_
Twitter: @MackenzieM_Inc
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mackenziemartininc
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_GA5PkIwE1F5P1rH1Ox8Pw?view_as=subscriber

Image Credits
@focuslexi

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