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Marta Hobbs, A Woman Empowering with Self-love & Luxury Retreats
The power of another person’s story can be oh-so-powerful! At LH, we love sharing the stories of women behind brands they have dreamt of, founded, and built. These are the women who bring companies to life—women who are living, working, creating, inspiring, raising families, and more. In The Women of … series, we delve into the minds and worlds of these women to share their empowering and uplifting thoughts and stories. Up now, Marta Hobbs.
Self-love, manifestation, and abundance mentality are the cornerstone of Marta Hobbs’s outlook on life and business success.
Born in Szczecin, Poland, Marta and her family emigrated to the United States as political refugees when she was just thirteen years old. Her relentless pursuit of “the American Dream” guided her journey in building her business, healing her trauma, and now empowering other women through her luxury soul-guided retreats. (If you want in, the next one is May 5, 2024!)
Read on for our exclusive interview with Marta Hobbs and learn more about her inspiring story, commitment to helping others, and how she brings radical self-love and spirituality to the business world.
Meet Marta Hobbs—The Inspiring Author, Mentor, Entrepreneur, & Host of Luxury Soul-led Retreats
When did your love affair with self-love begin? And how did it make you feel?
My love affair with self-love began when I understood that this is the key to abundance and manifestation.
Love was always important to me and at the center of who I was and what I stood for. For so long,
however, I was focused on loving others well and doing loving things for my family, friends, employees, business partners, and colleagues—generating love outside of myself and “DOING” love. The one person I wasn’t looking after while caring for others was me. And so, I often felt not loved enough, not quite loved right, or the way I wanted it to look and feel like.
It took a long time to understand that the most important place to start, is loving myself; that filling my own love tank was MY job. Cultivating love within and “BEING” love allowed me to simply pour out from an overflow and share love with others without expectations, needs or pressure. I was already full—my cup overflowed actually—now I just wanted to share it. Through self-love, I became love itself.
This becomes the sacred gateway to full abundance and a life of true luxury because it simply becomes your identity. Love is who you are—it is your essence, your core. Once we remember this truth, we become a magnet for anything and everything we desire. Becoming the abundance you seek in your external world on the inside first allows you to tap into the limitless, boundless, and endless love of God, the Universe, Source, Mother Nature, and Spirit—Divine Love itself. And once you embody that connection and live out of that identity, there is nothing that you can’t have, be, or do. The external world begins to reflect your internal state—like a mirror. Abundance within (which is love) manifests in the physical world. It’s pretty incredible.
Tell us a bit about your path and what led to your decision to start Marta Hobbs, the brand.
My path to starting Marta Hobbs, the brand, began with a crisis. A crisis which came at a very unlikely time in my life—just when I achieved everything I ever wanted. At 38, I retired a multi-millionaire, having sold a business I built and ran with my husband for 14 years. We had just moved to Paris, a place I always dreamed of living, happily married with two beautiful kids. From the outside, it was the perfect life.
The moment the company sold and made me financially secure for the rest of my life—rather than
celebration and “happily ever after,” I found burnout, a health crisis, and paralyzing anxiety. While I had
achieved everything I had been dreaming of and pursuing, a sense of disappointment, confusion, and emptiness came over me, and I started wondering if there was more to life. “Who am I?” I began asking, “If I am not the company owner, COO, and the trailblazing entrepreneur?”
It was when I finally stopped racing, chasing, hurrying, being busy, and embraced stillness, silence, and solitude that I started to connect to the inner world—my soul—my authentic self.
While my health issues and exhaustion forced me to spend a lot of time in bed and cancel most of my social life in the City of Light, I wondered, “Who am I when I’m not able to be the perfect mother, wife, friend I have always strived for being?” It was when I finally stopped racing, chasing, hurrying, being busy, and embraced stillness, silence, and solitude that I started to connect to the inner world—my soul—my authentic self. I had lost her along the way—in the pursuit of my goals. She was the price I paid for my success.
This journey, which turned into a decade of healing, self-discovery, inner work, learning, mastery, and a
deeply spiritual path transformed into what I now share with others (leaders and entrepreneurs)—identity work. Who are you when you’re not DOING but simply BEING? When you sell your business, quit your job, find yourself an empty nester, no longer married, or suffer the loss of a loved one—when the role(s) you have been using to identify yourself suddenly get taken away—who are you then? We often get lost in the work that we do, completely becoming our brand, and once it turns into a large, successful company—this causes problems. There is no room to breathe. There are no boundaries—you are the business. There is pressure, financial strains, and expectations—a lot more is at stake.
Just like a co-dependent marriage, a company completely dependent on you will crush you because it is simply not sustainable—the way you started vs the way you continue at the next level. It takes a pivot, a transformation, that most people can’t make because it asks of them to let go of everything that’s gotten them to this point—individuation and a complete identity shift. So the solution usually becomes to do more of the old, and do it harder, and that ends in burnout or health issues (or both!). That certainly was the case for me and the “side hustle” we started, which turned into a business generating $2.5 billion.
Today, I reconnect successful women and busy entrepreneurs with their hearts. I teach balance between the doing and the being, the masculine and the feminine energetics, and I come along their side as a mentor, confidante, and companion. Providing powerful leaders with a safe space to release the everyday stresses and complexities of leadership at a high level (rather than repressing parts of themselves) allows them to expand their capacity to lead more effectively, hold more, and show up fully in their power, accessing new ways of being and leading.
I teach from my life experience—what to do but also what NOT to do—and because of the size of business I built I also have the opportunity to stretch those who work with me in terms of what’s possible. My mentorship is a guaranteed experience of expansion—just by being in my energy and having access to the wisdom I have to share.
We love the sound of your Luxury Retreats; why did you decide to offer these? Who are they
designed for? What makes them unique?
The “Meet Me in Paris” luxury retreats are the offering from my heart—I adore this work! They are designed for women in leadership or busy female entrepreneurs—much like I was a decade ago when everything crashed. These retreats are a way to disconnect from the everyday, often chaotic lives and all the doing, pursuing, and succeeding and spend three days with me in Paris.
Our time together is about luxury, elegance, wealth, pleasure, and beauty, but all rooted in SoulCare, self-care, and self-love. I invite the women who join me to slow down, relax, and savor the extraordinary events I have personally curated, thanks to my VIP relationships in Paris—to fully experience them while being truly present in every detail.
I want the women who attend to really notice what happens when they allow themselves the time to soften, to open, and to receive—surrounded by all this beauty, very often, we start to notice that it is simply a mirror to the beauty within.
We stay at the five-star Four Seasons George V and spend a full day at Dior—exploring the beauty of the
flagship store, its museum and restaurant as well as some surprises only available through my retreat. We take a private cruise on the Seine River, have a glamorous make-up session and an unforgettable photo shoot by the Eiffel Tower, and end the day with High Tea at the Ritz Paris. We visit my favorite spa for massages and wellness treatments and take a special tour of the City of Light. Of course, we eat some delicious, gorgeous meals together and enjoy a toast of champagne or two!
I want the women who attend to really notice what happens when they allow themselves the time to soften, to open, and to receive—surrounded by all this beauty, very often, we start to notice that it is simply a mirror to the beauty within. It is hard for my clients to take the time way, for themselves, and each time they are so grateful as they reconnect to the passion that fuels what they do in the every-day life. They leave completely new women re-entering their lives with a newfound love and energy—for what they do, but most importantly, for who they are.
What do you consider your greatest achievement to date?
The family I have created together with my husband—our two (now adult) children—and the love that
flows, grows, and deepens amongst us. Of course, it all stems from the family I came from—a kid who grew up in communist Poland, lived surrounded by fear, and fled her homeland with her parents and sister for safety and political asylum in the United States. It was a rough start to life. It got even rougher in those early years in the USA as a refugee teenager, not speaking any English, being beaten and bullied after school while my parents worked double jobs.
But somehow love got us through it—holding the four immigrants looking for freedom, and later holding the four of my family now through all of what we faced together. Love also held me while I did the deep work of trauma healing from my childhood wounds, CPTSD, and all the pain I carried in my body. It really is amazing how powerful love can be—when I didn’t think I could face another day because the hurt I was facing, holding, processing, and releasing was so intense, it was the love for my kids that got me through. I truly believe it is the force behind everything we do in life—so I’m most proud of how that is something I will one day leave behind through my family—the legacy of love.
If you could have done something different, what would it be?
Absolutely nothing. Everything I have done, everything I have gone through, everything beautiful and everything painful that I have experienced is what got me here. It all needed to happen exactly how it happened in order for me to become the woman I am today and for my life to be what it is today—a masterpiece. I am thankful for every incredible and heartbreaking moment. And I am proud of the younger versions of myself for showing up for it all—to get me to this point in my journey. I embrace it all, and I embrace all parts of who I was, who I am, and who I am becoming.
Who is Marta Hobbs, the Woman?
She is a fierce, powerful, fearless trailblazer who is also soft, gentle, and tender. She is a wise, warm, and grounding presence. She is love embodied. She is quick, bright, intelligent—an entrepreneur and a
pioneer. She is inspiring, charismatic, and magnetic. She is no-nonsense and speaks her truth. She’s a deep thinker and has a strong spiritual connection.
She craves silence, stillness, and solitude. She contemplates. She writes. She craves intimate connections with others and being around people she loves. She is a safe woman for other women. She is home for those who love fully. She is a soul-embodied woman.
She is beauty, feminine energy, and an incredible business-woman, a confident leader.
She is elegant, luxurious, and graceful. She is sensitive, sensual, and a helpless romantic
She is a mother, a daughter, a wife, a sister, a friend.
She loves Paris but needs time in nature, at the beach. She lives life by her own rhythm, honoring her own seasons, here to experience all of what life has to offer—the immense pleasure and the horrible pain.
She is anything she chooses to become—and right now, that is an author, an entrepreneur, a mentor and confidante, a public speaker and host of retreats, and the founder and teacher of SoulCare. She’s not afraid to shed old skins, embrace the unknown, and rebirth herself when the soul calls her to a new adventure. She loves to travel, wear beautiful clothes, fill her home with fresh flowers, and her journals with good stories and powerful reflections. She loves to love.
That is Marta Hobbs.
What empowers you?
I empower myself—but not from an ego place of thinking I am better than others. I empower myself by knowing who I am—the soul having a human experience. If I am an extension of the abundant and limitless God/Universe—then I am powerful by nature; it is my essence, my core. The trick is just remembering this truth. Most of the time, love is the vehicle that helps me remember. So, I guess it is LOVE that empowers me in the end. The answer is always love, it seems…
When women invest in other women, we all rise together. Do you have any specific thoughts about women working together?
I am so proud of us doing the work. I really am in awe of how many women I see and meet every day who are committed to growth, evolution, change, and creating the reality they know they deserve—bettering their own lives and the lives of others from the inside out. I love how many women are healing generational trauma and offering brighter futures to their kids. I love how we are healing at the root, remembering our own divinity, committing to doing meaningful work, living soul-led, and holding both wealth and power. It’s such an incredible time to be alive to witness women doing all of this!
The feminine heals in community. So what I would say to all the women doing the work—join forces. Stop the competing, comparing, and out-doing each other.
The feminine heals in community. So what I would say to all the women doing the work—join forces. Stop the competing, comparing, and out-doing each other. The next thing we have to tackle is the sisterhood wound—individual and collective. Because standing together shoulder-to-shoulder, cheering each other on, pulling one another up, supporting every woman we encounter along the path—if we do that—we would truly be unstoppable.
The goal now is to remember not just our own divinity but each other’s as well. To see one another fully in our power and not need to be the one who shines the brightest, to not need others to dim their light so that we feel powerful. I want to see a new kind of sisterhood emerge—where we are a safe space for each other—with open hearts, gentleness, and compassion—where we always see the best in each other, where we forgive, have difficult conversations, where we love fully and remind one another of how sacred, powerful and beautiful we each are. And how our authenticity is what is needed—not carbon copies of others around us.
What’s next for Marta Hobbs?
If abundance is my essence, then anything is possible! How do I decide?
These days, I let life lead me, accepting and welcoming what comes rather than forcing my own agenda. Having said that, I do have a vision, but I am open to how I get there. I trust life. I trust that I am held, supported, and guided. I’d like to help more women and impact many. I hope my best-selling book “Unraveling” sells a million copies. I hope to talk about my journey on Oprah. I hope my story becomes a film. While I am manifesting that, I’ll continue running my retreats in Paris and add new ones in Saint Barths.
South of France retreat is coming in October 2024, and I plan on doing more in-person events—like dinners in small groups in Paris, Miami, and New York—the places I live or visit often. I also plan on continuing offering my SoulCare Meditations in luxury spas worldwide—my partnership with Four Seasons hotels expanding. I will offer more in Paris besides retreats—VIP Days and special Christian Dior themed tours. Lastly, I hope to do more public speaking so that my message can reach a broader audience.
Explore more Marta Hobbs!
Curation by Anna Beck, Copyediting by Bridget Kitson
All Photos Courtesy of Marta Hobbs
