It’s said it takes about 3-5 years to fully recover from burnout.
Shocking, right? Imagine battling multiple rounds of burnout through your decades-long career. This is Tai Beauchamp’s story. Before becoming the wellness mogul she is today, she earned respect in the publishing world as the youngest and first Black beauty and fitness director at Seventeen Magazine when she was 25. This came after she’d already sharpened her chops at Oprah Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar magazines among many other notable publications.
While at the top of her game, the publishing world in the 2000s was rife with glitz and glam and admittedly Beauchamp said she was regularly exposed to a world of excess. Although alluring, she felt like the environment didn’t speak to who she really is.
“I think first and foremost, my connection to who I call God or spirit is who I really am,” she said. “Sometimes the beauty and publishing industries can turn into breeding grounds for superficiality— sometimes I think that because we get caught up in the perceptions of what something is supposed to look like, we miss the truth of who we are in those moments, no matter what it looks like. And I think for me, quite frankly, and I don’t talk about this a lot, I always felt like a person on the inside who felt like an outsider.”
Despite feeling that way, she continued to earn leadership positions at top publications and made her mark as one of the foremost authorities on style and beauty. But soon, Beauchamp said she noticed her soul was unaligned with the work, and it started to take its toll.
“Starting my career at Oprah Magazine really cemented a groundwork that a lot of people didn’t have because it was always about a sense of empowered beauty, empowered lifestyle, empowered philosophy, an empowered mindset foundationally from even a professional standpoint,” she shared with Essence. “But imagine then going to work at Harper’s Bazaar and Good Housekeeping speaking with incredible people, but being exposed to extreme luxury all at the same time. And this is in the heyday of publishing. I mean, people don’t understand in the late 90s and early 2000s, when publishing was extremely luxe and extra.”
She said she had to remind herself of some of the principals she learned while working with Oprah Magazine’s team about self-love.
“Back then, I didn’t realize I was indoctrinated around this philosophy of allowing myself to choose myself, even though I didn’t necessarily absorb it the way that I do now, but it was still a part of my consciousness.”
After pivoting away from publishing fulltime, she realized entrepreneurship was the right path for her and launched BluePrint Group, LLC (Tai Life Media, LLC), a branding and marketing firm. Additionally, she started spreading the word about wellness to women around the world while offering the tools to help them along the way.
In 2020, she launched wellness beauty brand Brown Girl Jane alongside co-founders Malaika Jones and Nia Jones. The brand was founded on the mission to connect women of color who are aiming to feel good while taking care of themselves from the inside out. One of the biggest tools in her arsenal for accomplishing that, she says, has been LinkedIn. Tapped as a partner in their Beauty Creator community, Beauchamp shared that the social platform has been like a secret weapon.
“I think it’s really important for creatives to recognize the power of understanding that creativity is essential for this world to go around,” she shared. “It’s also important to prioritize enterprising as well—-I believe that creators should also earn what they’re worth and I think LinkedIn offers creators the opportunity to leverage enterprising opportunities while telling stories in their own way.”
She says she regularly uses LinkedIn as an outlet to spread her message of wellness all while connecting with others that aim to do the same.”
“LinkedIn allows people to see where you are, but also helps you to get to where you want to go.”