With two successful businesses under her belt and numerous prestigious awards, she’s proving to be a force to recon with. Gone are the days of not loving herself and wishing she looked like everybody else. Now, she stands tall with unwavering confidence as she takes on the world using the very thing she struggled to accept for years.
The Morgan A. Owens brand fosters entrepreneurial and corporate success for women by giving them the tools they need to excel in their careers or establish their own businesses while being authentic to their true selves.
Owens has applied these tools, built several brands, and mastered the ability to replicate this successful strategy in all her business ventures.
Last year alone, Owens received the 2017 YMCA Adult and Latino Adult Career Achiever, the 2017 Black Career Women’s Network Millennial Entrepreneur of the Year, and the 2017 YWCA Rising Star awards.
Her first business, a fitness class called Curvy Cardio, has been featured on WLWT, Issues with Jan Michelle-Kearney, Cincy Chic, WCPO Insider, The Cincinnati Herald, Fitness Blogs such as Black Women Do Workout, 1230AM.
Owens’ accomplishments are undeniable, but even more remarkable is the fact that a key component to the success she enjoys today was simply learning to love herself.
Owens was raised in a loving home in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her parents, who both came from humble beginnings, were fortunate enough to have the ability to send Owens and her two brothers to a private school. But at a young age, Owens became conscious of her brown skin.
“My dad always tells this story: I was in kindergarten and I came home upset after playing on the playground. I told my dad that a girl didn’t want to play with me because she said I was brown,” Owens told The Weight She Carries. “He told me that when God created me, He picked a special color in the rainbow and my color was brown. So, I was aware about race very early on.”
As she got a little older, Owens also became aware that she was curvier than the other girls at her school. She was one of four black girls in a class of 80, but the other black girls weren’t shaped like she was. They were slimmer.
In 6th grade, Owens had a crush a boy and asked her friend to call him to find out how he felt about her.
Owens listened quietly on the other end of the 3-way call, hoping to hear her crush say he liked her back.
Instead, Owens heard the boy say, “She’s cute, but she’s fat.”
Owen’s self-esteem diminished further because the black boys bullied her, but didn’t make fun of the other black girls.
“I started to think that maybe my family was just telling me what I wanted to hear. That’s when it began to really affect me. I became a mean girl because hurt people, hurt people. I began to make fun of people who looked like me.” – Morgan A. Owens
During those years, Owens became a cheerleader and felt even more pressure to lose weight when her coach told her that she needed to lose weight.
“I wasn’t severely overweight, I was just shapely like many of us minority girls are,” Owens said. “So, I began working out every day. I filled out more in my sophomore year of high school and the boys began to pay me attention, but I didn’t love myself.”
In 10th grade, Owens sunk to an incredibly dark place and battled suicidal thoughts.
“I was trying to be somebody that other people wanted me to be,” she said.
On the surface, Owens appeared happy. But buried beneath her bubbly personality and great sense of humor were tears only her pillow knew about.
Someone at Owen’s school alerted her high school guidance teacher, who then told her parents. Owens’ mother advised her to pray about it and to find a way to help others, which would, in turn, make her feel better about herself.
When Owens began college at Miami University, she was glad to find more people who looked like her, and noticed she was getting more attention from guys.
“I channeled that attention into doing things that weren’t a part of me,” Owens said. “Whether it was partying too hard or wearing clothes that were too revealing. Looking back at some of my choices, I’m so glad social media wasn’t what it is today.”
After earning a Bachelor’s degree in English/Creative Writing with a Minor in Criminology, Owens took up four jobs, working from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. each day. She was so busy that she didn’t have any time to resolve the internal conflict that had been brewing within her for years.
“It wasn’t until about age 26 or 27 when I just grew tired of not loving myself. I was in relationships on and off with different guys and I was tired of them treating me a certain way. if I didn’t want to do what they wanted to do, they would just stop talking to me; Or I would date someone and he would just disappear. So, I began to wonder, ‘What’s wrong with me? What am I doing wrong? What is the common denominator?’ I came to the conclusion that I needed to love myself.” – Morgan A. Owens
Owens set out on a quest to love herself unconditionally. She was determined to embrace every aspect of Morgan Owens and love herself from the inside out.
She became a Zumba instructor and liked how it made her and the other women in her class feel.
“I was interested in ways that I could help inspire women who look like me to get in shape,” Owens said. “I wanted a fitness class that embraced women of all shapes and sizes, but I didn’t want the focus to be losing weight – that’s an added benefit – the purpose was really to feel good about yourself.”
In 2014, Owens branched off and started her own fitness class, Curvy Cardio. To encourage people to join her class, she began posting before and after pictures of herself on social media. The more she posted, the more she realized that pictures of her old self were still beautiful.
People began to respond to her pictures and appreciated her transparency. Soon, her class started to pick up.
“I got a logo, created a website and a retail line with empowerment phrases like ‘Confident in my curves’. The retail line did great, but the class participation fluctuated,” Owens said. “Some days, I would have one or two people come to class, other days there would be 10-15 people. At one point, I thought maybe I should quit and just focus on the retail line.”
“The Glow Up is real. Whatever moment you’re in is not going to last forever. As long as you put God first and love yourself, anything is possible. As soon I started to love myself, my businesses took off and my corporate career took off, too. And now every situation that I’m up against, even when I hear a no, or a door closes on me, it doesn’t phase me because I know something greater is around the corner.” – Morgan A. Owens
Owens started off with three classes a week and then progressed to four. Now she has started training instructors and only teaches one day a week in a session called “Mondays with Morgan”.
Curvy Cardio is also an afterschool program for K- 5th grade girls, teaching them about healthy body image.
“I’ve travelled with the class nationwide. I also have a signature online program called 30 Days of Werk,” Owens said. “The popularity of it garnered a local health care system, UC Health, to be a corporate sponsor. That partnership has allowed me to reach other women nationwide. So, you don’t have to be in Cincinnati to participate.”
In addition, Owens is a branding and marketing expert. She holds workshops and events specifically for minority women to give them the tools they need to successfully navigate the corporate world or their entrepreneurial ventures.
To anyone out there starting a business, Owens has sound advice on some key things to remember along the journey:
- Be patient – “I got impatient sometimes because results didn’t come as quickly as I wanted them to. Now, I would tell myself back then to just be consistent. Be patient and trust the process,” Owens said.
- Invest in your branding – “When I was in the hustle stage, I didn’t really invest time to do my branding well. I didn’t take is as seriously as I should have,” Owens said. “But now, with me being in the marketing field, I know the benefits and how far branding can take a business. If you are just starting out, do everything right the first time.”
- Be discerning – “You can’t work with everybody. I found out the hard way that you can’t be so trusting with your business with everyone because not everyone is routing for you,” she said.
- Trademark your business – “I’ve had an experience where someone matched their brand colors to mine and used some of my catch phrases. A good friend of mine had to remind me that what God has for me will be for me. So, I just stayed in my lane and focused on what I was doing. And you can tell the difference between the two. So, I don’t even worry about them anymore,” Owens said.
- A bad day is just that – a bad day – “As an entrepreneur you have up and down days. On some days, I tell myself to quit and focus more on my corporate job. In those moments I remind myself how far I’ve come. You just have to dust yourself off and keep pushing,” Owens said.
To find out more about Curvy Cardio, the Morgan A. Owens branding and marketing workshops and events, or to book her for a speaking engagement, connect with Morgan Owens on the following platforms:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/miss.m.owens
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/miss_morgan86/
Website: https://www.morganaowens.com/
Vimbai E. is a content marketer, ghostwriter, and the founder of The Weight She Carries. With hundreds of articles and stories publishing online, in print and for broadcast, her love of language and storytelling shines through every piece of writing that bears her name.