Cat Meyer

Building your life around the person you are, instead of building life to find yourself.

Cat Meyer is the definition of multi-hyphenate. The founder and CEO of sexual wellness brand Head South, restorative yoga teacher, hairdresser, and hypnotherapist in training shares how being driven by curiosity, listening, and learning has shaped her growth and money story. Cat’s success is a testament to the practice of building your life around the person you are, instead of building life to find yourself.

How would you like to introduce yourself? Personally, professionally, motivationally? 

Who am I? I'm someone who's always been very curious. Professionally, I am the founder and CEO of a brand called Head South, and we started as a podcast called Head South Radio. Previously, I spent ten years in the hair care world. I was a hairdresser and a content leader for a brand called Hair Story. I love hearing people's stories, I think I'm a very good listener. So taking in people's stories and then knowing how to package that is what I do for the world.

I'm also a restorative yoga teacher. That started for me when I was in New York working and grinding away, having a zillion jobs and hustling so hard, and then finding the reprieve in restorative yoga, a practice that is predominantly stillness. I've relocated to LA and I'm enjoying teaching restorative out here. I also just recently started on a journey of being a narrative guide. So, speaking to storytelling, I am training in becoming a conversational hypnotherapist. 

Wow. How do you nurture this sense of curiosity? It’s so brave. 

I have always been fully supported by my parents—not financially—but psychologically. When I was five or six, I was taking piano lessons and my dad was like, “your piano teacher's on the phone. She wants to know if you want to start up lessons again.” It was towards the end of summer and I was like, “nah, I'm going to play tag” and I just ran off and played. 

My parents were never forceful. They supported me in making my own decisions and supported me through allowing me the understanding and giving me all the options. That’s been the case my entire life. It’s so cool. I think that's where the fueling my curiosity comes from.

It’s so telling what psychological safety can do for you when you can be certain someone won’t love you less. How did this translate to money?

I am number five of seven children. My parents are both one of eight.  I grew up in a household that is half Filipino, half Irish, German, French, but, culturally irish. I come from a system of working and contributing. 

When I was four or five, my chore was vacuuming the stairs. Someone would plug it in for me, but I did the cleaning. No matter the task, we were involved—holding the flashlight for my dad while he's fixing the toilet, handing him tools, cooking with my mom.  I think this instilled a sense of working as a team early on. How to communicate, support one another, get these things done because we want allowance and that had to be earned.

So I was raised in a household where I was working, earning, and all things were taught to me. I left knowing how to cook, what taxes were, I got the full spectrum of how to function in the world through my parents. 

When did they start talking to you about money?

We opened a bank account for me when I was 12. It was at a credit union through the post office because my dad was a mailman. Actually, my mom was just talking about the teller, Alice, who I’ve known pretty much since we moved to America, she would come to our family reunions. So I had a good relationship and understanding with our bank and our credit union and finances.

I got my first official paycheck at 15. As soon as I was old enough, my parents took me to the school board for permission to get a job—that’s how it worked then. We didn't have a lot of money and we had a lot of people, so working was very much like, the thing you did in addition to school and sports. 

I remember being 15 and getting a job as a swim coach and at the local hospital. Doing both, and sports, while being on honor roll. As you can tell, it's still continuing where I'm like, I do this. This, this, and this. And I have a business. I’m a manifesting generator.

So you’ve got energy to spare! Wait, so what did you spend that paycheck on? 

I would go to the mall every Friday. My girlfriends would come over, we do each other's hair, all of it. I would buy bath and body sprays because my mom was not somebody who was into those kinds of things. She doesn't spend a lot of money, and not for any other reason, that she just doesn't care for it. But I would spend money on beauty products and hair products.  

And was that the gateway drug to you getting into hair?

I definitely had a passion for hair and products and making looks at that age. I was very much into painting and illustration as well, so this creativity fueled hairdressing as well. 

You were a hairdresser in NYC for 10 years and then pivoted. Was there always an ambition to run a business? 

I was consulting under an LLC called Meyer Media and was also developing a hair care line with a business partner. My business partner at the time got locked into a non-compete and it put everything we had been working on for about four years on the shelf. We were at a standstill. 

One morning, I woke up having had a dream about lubes. I’m going to jump in timeline here, but at that point, I had been consulting an astrologer. I am about to turn 40, but I was 37 or 38 at the time, and she and told me to look into midlife crisis’. She recommended I read a jungian psychology book and told me to think back to 20 years ago what I was interested in. 

Around 17 and 18, I was very passionate about sex education. I had a great relationship with my mom, who, when I told her I wanted to have sex, took me to the gynecologist and we had the conversation. I was given all the information I needed around birth control and then I was able to make the decision of when I was ready to have sex.

So I was like, “Oh! Maybe I’m supposed to be a sex therapist.” I started looking to it and I was like, wait, “why would I pivot so far away from what I've learned over the past decade around building brands, creating community, and creating content?”  So I woke up with a dream about lubes, and I was like, that's what it is.

It's the combination of this passion that I had 20 years ago, and everything I’ve experienced on my career journey so far. It’s come naturally to me. 

Always back to storytelling. So I have to ask, how did you fund it?

I made money from the transaction that happened with my former business partner. I was able to put some of that towards my brand, and I also did a friends and family round. It was a very small collective of people who believed in me and believed in my mission to put money towards inventory, production, and getting product to market. 

You’ve combined the two ultimate taboos. How did the conversations go? What’s in your toolkit to make the conversations flow? 

You're absolutely right. I find that sex, money, and creativity are the three biggest blocks that we experience, especially in mid-adulthood. They all, I think, stem from communication. So there is this whole layer of psychology around our belief systems and what we've been programmed to do, both to our benefit and what holds us back. 

A big thing for me was learning about my limiting beliefs. I have recognized that I will start to create excuses for other people before asking for help or asking for clarity, thinking “they wouldn’t want to spend that.” So I took a big leap in doing the friends and family round. I sent the email and immediately shut my laptop. I was feeling anxious and went to take a bath. Once I got out, I had emails saying people wanted to invest.

Something that I'm hearing from you is you're so available to new information and change. Redirection. Within that openness, are there any super precise goals you have? Financially or otherwise? 

A vision that I have is to have a home that has property. My partner is in farming, I want a space where he can farm. A homestead would be great. 

How are you saving for that?

Right now I have an IRA account set up and contribute annually after tax season. I also set aside funds into an acorn investment account. The next few years I’ll be more interested in saving for the future but at the moment my focus in regards to finances is predominantly on funding my brand. Follow Cat on Astor to see her portfolio.

What is the best investment of your life? 

I am so proud of investing in Head South. It was the biggest check I’ve ever written—by a vast margin. 

Seeing it in stores, on shelves,  I am so proud of it. I have grown so much as a human since starting Head South. It just made me a better human, partner, daughter, friend in all the different ways. I feel fully fulfilled, or I'm in the process of fulfilling who I'm supposed to be. 

And it’s really allowing me to do other things. Like, those were limiting beliefs too, of “oh, I can't pursue that or there's not enough time.” I don't know if you guys share content like this, but one of the biggest breakthroughs I've had was reading the book The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks.

Oh definitely this is going in the final edit. 

It’s about working and changing the limiting beliefs you have. Breaking through your own glass ceiling.  

We’ve learned that there’s actually a lower correlation between high savings, low debt, and investing less. My hunch is that once you have money, it’s scary to not see it. But realistically, have you ever spent, I don’t know, $75,000 in a day? I wonder if the limiting belief is scarcity, but also, can I create this again? 

Wow, that is so eye opening. 

Finance, right? And it's the same thing with sex. It’s all about communication.