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If you were in a room with <a href="https://www.deangraziosi.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dean Graziosi</a>, you’d probably have an invisible souvenir from your experience: a little voice inside your head that interrupted your thoughts every time they told you that you weren’t worthy/smart/talented/brave enough to go after what you wanted in life. 



The voice might even sound like Dean, as his confidence is catchy. That’s because he battled—and defeated—his inner critics, working tirelessly to get to a place of self-awareness and service, impacting millions of people with his hard-earned lessons. When you understand how he became one of the top educators in the world without money or guidance, you gain hope that you can do the same.



And if you met his wife, Lisa, on your way out the door, you’d probably turn around and grab a table so you could chat longer. That’s because her rise to acclaim in the beauty industry involves <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-build-resilience/">resilience</a>, tenacity and living as though she was already at the top of her game, even though when she started, she was far from it. Her warm energy and faith in herself rub off on you, so you can’t help but believe in yourself, too.



It’s easy to imagine, then, when Dean and Lisa found themselves in the same room for the first time—at a dinner party hosted by friends—the connection was as instant as the alignment. Two strangers who watched their families struggle with a lack of financial resources committed their lives to figuring out how to change that reality. Two strangers who learned to manifest what they wanted without anyone teaching them how. Two strangers who were tireless entrepreneurs and knew what it meant to put it all on the line for their dreams.



Two strangers who also made lists of what they wanted in a partner and, when they shared them, discovered they had described each other with shocking accuracy.



Lisa envisioned an Italian man with New York energy, a passion for personal growth and the ability to build a home. Dean hoped for someone who loved his two children from a prior marriage as her own, was committed to growth and could thrive alongside a driven and passionate entrepreneur.



Remarkably, Lisa was as committed to family as she was <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/personal-development-plan/">personal development</a>, was an established entrepreneur who had designed hair for New York Fashion Week, was voted the top hair stylist in Arizona and was one of the top hair extension experts in the country.



Dean, who fixed cars and built houses in New York during the early days of his career, was as well-versed in personal development as he was in being a New York Times bestselling author, as his book, <a href="https://amzn.to/47JpxFs" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Be a Real Estate Millionaire</a>, sold a million copies.



Long before their paths crossed, they architected successful careers rooted in purpose and grit. Today, eight years in, raising their blended family of four, they help others see that the life they want is within their reach by sharing the personal tools for success that shaped their journey.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-manifesting-success">Manifesting Success</h2>



One of those tools often gets mixed reactions from a crowd. Manifestation is a word that, if you know, you know. And if you’re skeptical, you might wait for the other shoe to drop.



Until you hear Dean’s story.



“I dreamt big as a little kid,” he says. “I remember feeling, at 10 years old, ‘I’m gonna get rich.’ But it wasn’t for the reasons other people wanted to get rich.”



He just wanted his mom to stop working three jobs.



His parents’ split when he was 3 left his mom struggling to make ends meet—cleaning houses, cutting hair at a salon and painting houses.



“She’d work all three of those jobs and come home at 9 o’clock at night, tired, and my sister and I would make her dinner, and we’d try to help,” he remembers. “And watching her do that, I think... at 5, 7, 10 years old, I just wanted to retire my mom.”



The desire to see his mom happy and free from stress was the spark that drove him to take the path he did with such ferocity. When he was 15, he started cutting firewood. That led to fixing up and selling cars, which led to co-owning a collision center, which led to buying a rundown apartment building for no money down when he was 19. 



He’d work on cars during the day, go home to shower and eat, then would go fix up his property, learning how to do plumbing, electrical work and cabinetry. After he owned 30 apartment buildings, he took to building houses—a skill desired by the wife he had no idea he would one day have.



“That all started with this drive to kind of run away from something that was painful—watching my mom not have financial choices, not being able to be there for us,” he says. “At 26, I retired my mom, and I’ve given her a paycheck every week. She’s 80.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-infomercial-that-started-it-all">The Infomercial That Started It All</h2>



At 56, Dean has seen a lot since retiring his mom three decades ago. He admits that throughout his entrepreneurial journey, his inner critic would often chime in with <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/what-is-imposter-syndrome/">self-doubt</a>, telling him he wasn’t educated enough, but he never stopped thinking big, no matter how unattainable his vision seemed to others.



Most people can’t say they built a real estate empire in their 20s, but Dean can not only say it, he can say he taught others to do it themselves.



And as an author and entrepreneur, he can also say he set the wheels in motion for a friendship that would change his life.



“At 27 years old, I watched Tony Robbins on an infomercial,” he says, “and I bought everything that he had…. I felt like he was speaking to me…. I wrote down, ‘Someday, I want to thank him.’ Now he’s my dearest friend in the world.”



That introduction to the self-education industry inspired him to create his first infomercial and set of products, which led to other infomercials, several NYT bestselling books—such as <a href="https://amzn.to/4oU2yhZ" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Millionaire Success Habits</a>—and the honor of being one of the top success educators in the world.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-mastering-friendship-and-business-with-mastermind">Mastering Friendship and Business With Mastermind</h2>



A year after Robbins’ program lit a fire inside him—which was more than two decades ago—Dean wrote him a letter that said, “You shifted my life. Someday, we’re going to do business together, and I can’t wait to meet you.”



Fast forward to 2018 and the two are on a golf course—a twice yearly tradition since their friendship began 13 years ago—talking about what they’d do if they went into business together.



“[We thought], Why don’t we just teach people what we’ve been doing for more than seven decades combined?” Dean recalls. “And that’s where Mastermind was born.”



As co-founders of <a href="http://mastermind.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">mastermind.com</a>, he and Robbins teach people to turn their life experience, skills and passion into a product, business or personal brand by providing them with the guidance and tools needed to enter into the self-education industry. Since launching in 2018, they’ve touched the lives of more than 7 million people in over 100 countries, sharing their wisdom alongside inspiring voices like Jay Shetty, Trent Shelton, Marie Forleo and Matthew McConaughey. Through video courses and live events with guests—and some of the highest registration numbers in internet history—the two are living examples of manifestation in real time.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-family-business-is-the-best-business">Family Business Is the Best Business</h2>



Even with millions of eyes on his work and more than a dozen profitable businesses under his belt, nothing compares to the success Dean has found with his wife, Lisa.



“Lisa taught me a whole new level of what’s possible,” he says, adding that after he met her, his business went to a whole other level and his life grew exponentially.



“She understood my drive so much, and instead of resisting, she leaned forward, and... it made me want to find the time to not put business first,” he says, adding that Lisa has made him want to “go out and solve more, do more, impact more, donate more.... I feel invincible.”



Supporting Dean was easy for Lisa because she shared his drive—as well as the confidence that whatever she wanted was possible.



“I’ve always been really good about manifesting,” she says, adding that, in her business, “the type of client I want in my chair, the connections, the events I go to—I’ve manifested all of that.”



It was the desire to support her parents that drove her to build a successful career as a hair stylist and business owner. Just like Dean, she asked herself, What’s the fast track of me making more to help my family?



“My mom and dad are both entrepreneurs, and... we lived a very [lower] middle class life our entire life,” she says. “My parents are immigrants, and they’re just really hard working.... We had very little, but we had a house.... We had clothes; we had food.”



The work ethic they modeled served as the tool she used to rise through the ranks of her career, eventually becoming Arizona’s top hair stylist.



Although she dreamed of going to college, she knew her parents couldn’t afford it, so during high school, she attended cosmetology school and worked at a salon after graduation.



The salon owner only hired stylists with a big client list. And even though Lisa had no clients—and no money to rent her chair—she assured her new boss she had everything that was needed. She pretended she was older, dressed the part and made a glowing impression—all while working three jobs and calling potential clients, pretending to be her own assistant.



“I had different names,” she admits. “I had two cell phones. [One was my salon phone and one was my ‘assistant’]…. I knew that I was good, but I had to prove myself because I didn’t have clientele.... So, once they came in my chair, they… knew that I was good.”



Her strategy worked. Soon, she was styling music videos, doing hair at New York Fashion Week and building a client list across the country—all before she was 21.



“I just was driven,” she says.



Her drive came at a price, however.



“I started getting alopecia areata when I was about 19 or 20 years old,” she shares, adding that she likely developed the condition because of stress and anxiety from her workload. “You lose hair in chunks in your head. And I had it so bad.... I was out of my mind going to every doctor.”



She searched for a salon with the cheapest hair extensions she could find and was dismayed by the selection.



“They were these big, gum-type things,” she says. “It was the worst thing ever.... It was so bad, I wore my hair up for a good year because I had so many bald patches and little clips everywhere to hide it. And I said, ‘That’s it. I need to learn.’... And I was one of the first people in my town doing extensions.”



She practiced on friends and tried as many brands as she could before launching her own hair extension brand online.



When she and Dean met, she shared her vision of owning a salon where people could get affordable, high-quality extensions. That vision became a reality in 2019, when she opened <a href="https://www.extensionbar.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Extension Bar</a> in Scottsdale, Arizona.



“Extension Bar was this dream of hers,” Dean says, adding that they built the first one in a building he owns, where his offices and production studio are located. “We have a door that connects us.... And this crazy entrepreneurial woman here launched that. It’s doing great.”



Though she had plans to grow Extension Bar, a desire to be a full-time mom and wife took precedence.



“What’s really cool about <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/are-entrepreneurs-born-or-made/">entrepreneurship</a> is that your passions could change,” Lisa shares. “I love being a hairstylist.... I love that.... I know how to immediately change someone’s look and make them feel so good about themselves. And the connections with my clients, I love that. But I also love being a mom and a wife.... Right now, I am so good where I’m at.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-finding-the-blueprint-in-your-life">Finding the Blueprint in Your Life</h2>



Most people would love to feel good with where they’re at in life, but they often get stuck during the construction phase. If you look at success as a house, the most important element besides the building materials would be the design. You need a blueprint before you can begin.



“If you asked a million people if they were meant for more,” Dean says, “I think all 1 million would say, ‘Yes, I’m meant to do more, to be more, to maybe just love more or achieve more.’ But how many of them actually live into that more?”



His mother often comes to mind when he asks that question. Her drive, compassion and strong work ethic were all pivotal components to his own success story. He calls her a “badass without a blueprint” who has always given so selflessly to others.



“She was a hard worker,” he says, “but hard work alone is not enough.”



Realizing you don’t have to figure it all out on your own is key, he says, and it’s something he wishes his mom understood. If he could have all those years ago, he would have shared some of the principles guiding the success he and Lisa have experienced: modeling what works, pushing past fear and taking action no matter the discomfort.



“She was led by fear and imposter syndrome and let the fact that she didn’t have a lot of money or resources hold her back when it could have been her fuel,” Dean shares, adding that if she found someone who already achieved what she wanted and modeled them, “and found a purpose bigger than her fear, she could have taken the uncomfortable action needed to slay the dragons holding her back.”



Lisa and Dean didn’t have the blueprint when they started their entrepreneurial journeys, so they created one from scratch, changing their lives because of it. Today, they have dedicated themselves to helping others construct their own beautiful designs.



They believe that, with small mindset shifts, people will realize they are enough, know enough and can achieve fulfillment. They offer the plan and the path to get there.



“These are lessons I wish my mom had,” Dean says, “but they’re lessons I want everyone to have.”&nbsp;



Photo by Nick Onken. To read the print issue in its entirety, buy it <a href="https://mysuccessplus.com/product/success-magazine-january-february-2026-dean-and-lisa-graziosi">right here</a>.

Dean and Lisa Graziosi share how mindset, manifestation and grit shaped their blueprint for success—and how you can design your own path.

Dean and Lisa Graziosi share how mindset, manifestation and grit shaped their blueprint for success—and how you can design your own path. | SUCCESS

A Blueprint for Success: Dean and Lisa Graziosi's Winning Formula

A Blueprint for Success: Dean and Lisa Graziosi&#8217;s Winning Formula

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Blueprint for Success: Dean and Lisa Graziosi’s Formula | SUCCESS

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Stefanie Ellis is a food and travel writer, as well as PR strategist and content creator for her own company. She has bylines in The Washington Post, BBC Travel, Eating Well, Saveur and more, and her clients are thought leaders in finance, branding, healthcare and the food and beverage space, with a former NBA player and duct work company thrown in for good measure. You can get in touch at stefanieellis.com or on Instagram @40somethingunicorn.

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Stefanie Ellis

The Pastry Project co-founders Emily Kim and Heather Hodge

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Imagine a world where there were Willy Wonka pop-ups on every corner. Big windows decorated in bright pink, pastel purple and gold that looked like someone was having a birthday party, but was really just a place to watch pastry fairies making sweet treats inside their workshop. Treats Mr. Wonka would approve of, like cakes in every color of the rainbow, made by local baker, Lady Grey. Homemade birthday cakes, chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches, ice cream cake drizzled in chocolate or Oompa Loompa-hued purple vanilla soft serve with toppings like coconut cake crumbs, rainbow peanut crunch and strawberry passion fruit dip that makes every sundae look like it has a colorful top hat.&nbsp;



<a href="https://thepastryproject.co/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Pastry Project</a> in downtown Seattle could be the model from which all other Wonka windows are built. To get the desserts of your dreams, all you have to do is stand in line on a magical street full of old brick buildings—many of which are part of the city’s famous underground tour because, yes, there is an actual <a href="https://www.historyhit.com/locations/seattle-underground-streets/#:~:text=The%20original%20Bill%20Speidel%20tour,Historic%20Town" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">abandoned city beneath the ground</a>—with a <a href="https://pioneersquare.org/businesses/waterfall-garden-park/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tiny park</a> and 22-foot waterfall directly across the street.



Serving you would be co-founders, Emily Kim and Heather Hodge, who launched The Pastry Project in 2020 as a social enterprise dedicated to breaking barriers to employment and making pastry education more accessible.&nbsp;



Their free, 20-week baking and pastry training program offers students baking and pastry <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/what-is-professional-development/">job skills</a> training, <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/soft-skills-examples/">soft skills practice</a> and job placement assistance to more than 30 Seattle bakery, dessert shop and grocery store partners.



Hodge and Kim are able to fund their free training, pay for their space and purchase equipment and ingredients through many different avenues, including:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>In-person pastry classes and corporate workshops</li>



<li>Monthly <a href="https://thepastryproject.co/products/pastry-kit-subscription" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">curated pastry kits</a> shipped nationally that include pre-measured, non-perishable ingredients and a recipe card</li>



<li>Local pastry goody box pick-ups made by pastry students</li>



<li>A soft serve window July through September (the rainbow peanut crunch is also sold separately at the window!)</li>
</ul>



So, how exactly does such a generous enterprise get built? Where do the people who build it come from before fusing food and social enterprise into something as meaningful as it is delicious?







Kim, who used to work on city policy focusing on gender and racial equity at Seattle City Council, found herself at the uber-popular local ice cream empire, <a href="https://www.mollymoon.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Molly Moon’s</a>. For six years, she helped start and run the <a href="https://www.mollymoon.com/milkfund" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Anna Banana Milk Fund</a> nonprofit, which provides fresh milk to families in need, while also leading the company’s community relations, which grew to include social impact work.



Hodge, who attended the <a href="https://www.ciachef.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Culinary Institute of America’s</a> Baking and Pastry Arts Program right out of college, says that when she entered the workforce, she discovered just how difficult it was to be in the pastry industry and make enough money to pay the bills.



“When I moved to Seattle, I wanted to re-immerse myself into pastry,” she says. “I worked at a small bakery here and moved on to Molly Moon’s. I was intrigued by the good pay and benefits, and became the head chef and manager of culinary operations, leading our many kitchens as well as the whole culinary team [for seven years].”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-offer-free-pastry-training">Why offer free pastry training?</h2>



Because Kim and Hodge worked together during hiring season at Molly Moon’s, they learned just how difficult it was to place someone in a kitchen who didn’t have experience particular to a specific culinary niche—in their case at the time it was ice cream.



“[In] busy working kitchens, you can’t just teach someone in a couple of days,” Hodge adds. “It takes time and practice [to hone] those skills. We discovered there was an opportunity to support individuals who had barriers to employment in the industry. We [wanted] education [to be] accessible and free… [so] we decided to create The Pastry Project.”



Kim adds that the pastry industry is competitive, which means there are often fewer positions for those interested.



“[It’s different than a cook in the kitchen, and] you generally need a lot more experience,” she says.



“We really focus on individuals who are passionate about pastry… who we believe will be successful and will graduate from the program… ” she adds. “We want to support people through mentorship and learning so they can start a career in the industry.”



The pair run one cohort a year, with eight students per cohort for five-and-a-half months, who get placed in jobs following their training. Typically, the duo receives close to 50 applicants for just eight positions.



Not only do they place students in jobs, they also let small baking and pastry startups with cost barriers use their space through their residency program, which is typically six months long. So far, they’ve housed some of Seattle’s most notable baking businesses, like Lady Grey (cakes), The Creamy Crow (Portuguese egg tarts), Tiny Bakes (a graduate of the program) and more. 



And the community loves them. So much so that others want to join them. Thanks to their innovative approach to pastry education, they have also found ways to creatively align with area pastry businesses in ways that make it profitable for both parties.



“We do a lot of partnerships and collaborations with places we think are mission aligned,” Kim says, mentioning a partnership with King Arthur Flour where their students produced buns for Northwest Harvest, which supports local food banks.



Other collaborations included Dairy Farmers of Washington, With Warm Welcome—which focuses on Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI bakers)—and GroundUp, a Portland-based nut butter company focused on job training for women with barriers to employment.&nbsp;



Some of their soft serve collaborations bring in the desserts of local businesses and turn them into toppings and super-creative sundae designs, such as one with local <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DL5rWWYTOAm/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">macaron-focused patisserie, Lady Yum</a>. This pop of color had purple vanilla soft serve, strawberry passion fruit dip, macaron crumbles and homemade passion fruit curd. Did people stand in line? Yes. They always do. It’s just one small part of the magic Kim and Hodge have created, and it’s the kind of magic that infiltrates the community in the best way—reminding people how delicious helping each other can really be.&nbsp;



“The goal of The Pastry Project is to reduce barriers to education and employment and we want those jobs to be amazing for people once they enter the workforce,” Hodge says. “Everything we do—baked products, classes and future things we sell, will be for that. Everything else is what feeds it. We’re here for the baking and pastry community. We want to be a neighbor, not competition.”



Photo courtesy of The Pastry Project

Learn how The Pastry Project is creating easier pathways to employment and education in the pastry industry.

Learn how the pastry company is creating new work and school opportunities.

The Pastry Project Expands Opportunities for Success | SUCCESS

The Pastry Project Co-Founders Create Sweet Opportunities for Their Community

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As the <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/media-literacy-for-entrepreneurs/">media</a> landscape continues to evolve, an innovative crop of entertainment industry professionals are using their platforms to change our relationship to how we consume <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/5-tips-for-connecting-with-your-audience-from-the-woman-whos-worked-with-the-biggest-names-in-entertainment/">entertainment</a>.



Stephen Shaw and Jonathan Linden, co-CEOs of <a href="https://roundroomlive.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Round Room Live</a> (RRL), and Isha Sesay, CEO of <a href="https://www.areyapartnerships.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Areya Media</a>, are leading the way, connecting audiences to experiences that entertain, illuminate and educate in new ways without sacrificing impactful storytelling.







<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-taking-tv-and-culture-where-it-s-never-been-nbsp">Taking TV and culture where it’s never been&nbsp;</h2>



What do a former lawyer, a Rolling Stones roadie and “Baby Shark” have in common? A lot, which you’ll know if you’ve ever attended an arena show or exhibition put on by Stephen Shaw and Jonathan Linden, co-CEOs of Round Room Live.&nbsp;



After working together at live entertainment producer S2BN Entertainment, the two combined their years of expertise to create a world all their own. The tour and exhibition experience for brands like the Rolling Stones, Oprah Winfrey and Marvel and Linden’s global licensing experience and producer credentials for two of Barbra Streisand’s tours and Rock of Ages on Broadway would be the perfect recipe for success.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Thanks to their big-picture thinking, they’ve transformed the shows and songs kiddos see and hear on TVs and tablets into engaging live spectacles. As surprising as it may seem, they turned the 18-word viral sensational song “Baby Shark” into a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/14/business/baby-shark-live-concert-tour.html#:~:text=By%20the%20time%20the%20confetti,enduringly%20profitable%20real%2Dworld%20franchise">75-minute show</a> seen by more than 300,000 families. Then, they proved that an on-stage reimagining of a TV show can rival the normal way we consume entertainment by taking everyone's bespectacled friend in orange suspenders, Blippi, from behind a screen to a full-on musical. 



The duo’s events aren’t just for kids, however. Family-friendly offerings like The Formula 1 Exhibition appeal to all ages, while those in search of powerful social justice and global advocacy installations can find it in Mandela: The Official Exhibition, created in partnership with The Royal House of Mandela. The exhibition, which tours internationally, examines the legacy of the human rights icon with personal effects and objects not previously seen outside of South Africa. A past exhibit, Tupac Shakur: Wake Me When I’m Free, used technology and artifacts from Shakur’s personal archives as a way to dive deeper into the activism, music and art he created.



Shaw says RRL’s approach to live events is rooted in storytelling, cultural expression and emotional connection. He points to the Mandela and Shakur exhibitions as powerful examples of how live experiences can engage audiences in critical social issues.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“These exhibitions are designed not only to celebrate cultural icons but also to illuminate the struggles, triumphs and legacies that shaped them,” he shares. “By bringing these stories to life through immersive environments, archival content and emotionally resonant narratives, we aim to foster reflection, dialogue and understanding…. It’s about creating spaces where people of all ages and backgrounds can come together to learn, feel and connect with something larger than themselves.”&nbsp;



Given the sheer volume of families who attend their events and exhibitions across the world, one might wonder if the duo foresees a shift from screens as a main source of entertainment to watching living, breathing actors, singers, and dancers recreating something that is one-dimensional. 



“Absolutely,” Shaw says, noting that they have seen a clear cultural shift.  



“In an increasingly digital world, there’s something uniquely powerful about being in a physical space, surrounded by other people, watching stories unfold in real time,” he says, adding that “people want to feel something. They want to connect—not just with content, but with each other, with history, with emotion and with the world around them. That’s what we strive to deliver.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-bringing-the-african-diaspora-into-the-light-nbsp">Bringing the African diaspora into the light&nbsp;</h2>



Connecting people with content, each other and the world is something RRL has mastered with their live events and exhibitions, but Isha Sesay is equally committed to doing similar work through a different medium.&nbsp;



In 2021, the former CNN international news anchor became CEO of OkayMedia, now Areya Media (AM), a multimedia company that amplifies voices across the global Black and African community and is the parent company of Okayplayer and OkayAfrica, platforms known for their culturally driven narratives. &nbsp;



Sesay’s passion for creating impactful storytelling that advances underrepresented voices is a skill that earned the UK-born, Sierra Leone-raised journalist a prestigious Peabody Award a decade ago for groundbreaking work—including breaking the story of the 2014 Boko Haram kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls from Chibok, Nigeria.



Since becoming CEO, Sesay has stewarded the evolution of Okayplayer with the Webby Award-winning podcast, The Almanac of Rap. Hosted by rapper and hip-hop expert Donwill, episodes are part conversation, part history lesson and part entertainment—featuring influential artists, producers and those steeped in the rich history of hip-hop. Sesay considers it a sister offering to Okayplayer’s Afrobeats Intelligence podcast with Joey Akan, an award-winning journalist Sesay says has deep relationships in the music industry and with the biggest stars in Afrobeats.



Sesay says AM’s mission is to “make sure that every corner of the world sees African talent, sees our efforts, appreciates our voices and our stories.”



Though Sesay was born in the UK and now lives in the U.S., she lived in Sierra Leone between the ages of 7 to 16 before moving back to London. It’s an experience she says had a profound effect on her view of the world.



“For a large part of my youth, teenage years and maybe even up until my early 30s, I don't think I fully appreciated… the blessing of having moved around and existed in such different cultures and what those experiences have meant for me and the person that I am today,” she says.&nbsp;



“I'm so grateful that all three of those cultures are part of my background, but especially so that I spent my formative years in Sierra Leone in West Africa, which, for my entire life… has been sort of in the bottom tenth of the world's poorest countries.”&nbsp;



She points out that Sierra Leone is “still battling forces of misogyny and great gender inequities,” noting how this has shaped her view on gender dynamics and how she moves through the world. “I refuse to be held back by those same forces,” she says.



When Sesay joined OkayMedia, she deliberately changed the name to Areya, which means “sunshine” in Yoruba, one of the largest single languages in sub-Saharan Africa.



She says the company experienced some turmoil before she joined, shrouding it in a bit of darkness. To her, it was just begging for a fresh start, and a name change was a powerful way of doing that.  



“When I came to find out that [Areya] meant ‘sunshine,’ it felt so right, given where the company had been and where I was trying to take it,” she says. “Beyond that… I felt it spoke to a bigger point of what we're trying to do around Black culture and Black stories and voices and move us from the margins, from the shadows and the corners, to center stage and to the light.”



For Sesay, sunshine is synonymous with joy, something she feels is desperately needed right now. “We need so much more Black joy right now because things are tough, things are frightening, things feel dark. And so to have that as your mission, to combat that and to bring light, that's the work I want to be doing.”



Photo courtesy of Isha Sesay

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As the media landscape continues to evolve, an innovative crop of entertainment industry professionals are using their platforms to change our | SUCCESS

Taking Center Stage: Meet the CEOs Shaping Media

Meet the CEOs Shaping Media | SUCCESS

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A group of people sit around a conference table.

Sibling rivalry. Lying. Greed. Betrayal. A controlling, narcissistic father and a crumbling family empire with no one to hold it up.



Though we could be looking at any number of Shakespearean tragedies, the above is a loose plotline for the HBO show Succession. While the show is fictionalized, there are dysfunctional families and dysfunctional companies everywhere. Often, the two coalesce in a dystopian reality that makes for great entertainment but terrible business. It also gives the false impression that families that go into business together will only ever implode their relationships with their clients, their shareholders and each other.







In truth, well-educated <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/10-ways-to-be-a-leader-even-when-you-arent-in-charge/">leaders</a> understand that the unpredictable and shocking final episode of Succession is what it looks like when you don’t have a <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/future-ready-leadership-succession-planning/">succession plan</a>—something that should be in place long before the head of the company passes away or Dr. Phil is called in for an intervention.



In real life, effective succession planning can save companies, not destroy them.



No one knows this better than Ivan Lansberg and Devin DeCiantis, who co-wrote <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Enduring-Enterprise-Businesses-Turbulent-Conditions/dp/1541703650/ref=sr_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.fpv6dcUg_QN8dVoYkvTboVAdBqrxjIiwiL7Q2WScb-VbvsDAu-U5qJGQzAMeJA3RW4gHfFvh2PrCSHSbJEeHHcmmJGsk5Pge3VFaVxzQBO1w4See22zMgqsct9ZICtCvU-RVHIoMlEyhyCySDTuZBEB2E0D9e3JKOH3ow9IIuEzkC_EvmgTQrzl0mPycOxiPNM0f2E09tWmtqdbDNtbKxQ.Z2z2zoqrrx9bycb-9WiU7WEZAC6f_RDAtxhD72ENq24&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;hvadid=725841075975&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvexpln=67&amp;hvlocphy=9028243&amp;hvnetw=g&amp;hvocijid=1168960262714863730--&amp;hvqmt=e&amp;hvrand=1168960262714863730&amp;hvtargid=kwd-2383915904861&amp;hydadcr=22563_13730660&amp;keywords=the+enduring+enterprise&amp;mcid=8e105c7e1cf8321ba918ef597281656d&amp;qid=1743683362&amp;sr=8-1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Enduring Enterprise</a> as a tribute to the work they do together at Lansberg Gersick Advisors, an advisory company dedicated to serving the world’s leading family enterprises.



“One of the things that’s so unique about succession is just how predictable and inevitable it is,” DeCiantis says. “Not all risks are going to present themselves in such an obvious way to every single organization.”



“This is one of the reasons why we’re out there talking about this,” he adds. “We want more people to attend to this proactively rather than reactively.”



Yet reactively is how many companies—including family-run ones—respond.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-do-so-few-companies-think-about-succession-planning">Why do so few companies think about succession planning?</h2>



“Despite the fact that we’ve been at this now for 30 years, warning [people] that this is an important thing to do,” Lansberg says, “lots of very sophisticated companies globally don’t have good succession plans.”



Domestically, data from <a href="https://www.pwc.com/us/en/services/audit-assurance/private-company-services/library/family-business-survey.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">PWC’s 2023 US Family Business Survey</a> reveals that in 2021, only 34% of family-run businesses had a robust, documented succession plan in place. So what’s preventing so many businesses from proactively creating succession plans if they’re so important?



The answer, Lansberg says, is layered—particularly when it comes to family businesses.



“Many entrepreneurs launch into building companies, and at some point in their development… limitations of their own biology come in and hits them in the face, and they start wondering, ‘How are we going to continue this enterprise? And how do I pass it on to my kids or not?’” he says. “Wrestling with that question becomes a very important feature, not just for the family’s continuity as an enterprising family but for all of the families that live off the enterprises that… [these] founders create.”



Still, broaching topics of death and hierarchy aren’t things that most families are naturally hard-wired to discuss.



“If you do the mental experiment of sitting with your parents to talk about what’s going to happen with the family when they’re no longer with you, it’s a scary proposition,” Lansberg continues. “It raises the question of how we’re going to deal with life without them, but it also erases all of the uncertainties of… my kids being greedy. Are they pursuing other objectives and not caring about us, and so forth and so on.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-succession-planning-takes-time">Succession planning takes time</h2>



Another issue is one of obsolescence. According to Lansberg, reinvention is often necessary for a company to survive in the current marketplace. This can include bypassing blood lineage by bringing in non-family executives who may be able to offer fresh perspectives that can move the business forward. But most families may avoid these discussions out of fear.



“The sum total of all of these factors leads many companies to get caught flat-footed at the very moment when these issues need to be clarified and thought through,” Lansberg says. “And unfortunately, because of that, many end up failing.”



Scrambling can easily be avoided, DeCiantis adds, but disaster prevention takes concerted effort. “It behooves any organization that desires long term success to… be more proactive and not just wait for the heart attack or the final episode of an HBO series to inspire them to attend to something that actually does take a considerable amount of time,” he says. “Succession planning isn’t something that you sit down to at 3 [p.m.] on a Friday afternoon and finish at 4 [p.m.] and call it a day, and you say, ‘Okay, I've got the plan, [so] let’s go and execute this now,’ and by Monday morning, there’s a new regime in charge.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-which-companies-are-doing-it-right">Which companies are doing it right?</h2>



In their book, DeCiantis and Lansberg show family business leaders across the world who they say have gotten succession planning right. In addition to highlighting notable family-run companies like Kikkoman, Samsung and the New York Times, the duo have profiled global companies that are still standing strong after surviving military coups, war, economic challenges, terrorist conflicts, technological shifts and political instability.



Here are just a few notable examples:



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-toraya">Toraya</h3>



One marker of success that DeCientis and Lansberg have seen replicated around the world in many cultures and industries—as well as in this company in particular—is submitting to the patronage of a powerful political entity. For instance, Toraya’s founding family has been making Japanese sweets (wagashi) for the Imperial House for over four centuries.



“Toraya was the preferred sweet maker to the Imperial House,” DeCiantis says. Because the family’s wagashi became desirable to the crown early in the first generation, he adds, they were given an imperial crest, which cemented their lifelong relationship to the now constitutional monarchy.



“[Toraya’s] success was so tied to the Imperial House that when [the capital] moved from Kyoto to Tokyo in the 1800s… Toraya [moved] with them,” he adds. “Their success is vested in the integrity that comes with the blessing of the Imperial House.”



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-cemex">CEMEX</h3>



Another enduring enterprise in the book is CEMEX, a pioneering Mexican family business founded by the Zambrano family in 1906. DeCiantis and Lansberg say that the family navigated economic upheavals and global market expansions to transform the company from a regional cement firm into a global leader in building materials.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-ikea">IKEA</h3>



Founded by Ingvar Kamprad in 1943, the Swedish startup leveraged its early mail-order business to become a global leader in home furnishings. It also deployed modular strategies in business and ownership to overcome significant economic challenges and shifting market dynamics and maintain its commitment to affordable, high-quality, resilient designs.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-looking-to-the-future">Looking to the future</h2>



For companies that are hoping to weather the storms of unpredictability—whether they’re economic, political or familial—Lansberg and DeCiantis say that while being rooted in tradition has its merit, growing with the times is a more direct route to success.



“You have to think about the company… you want to build, not the one that exists today,” Lansberg says, “and then break down the skill sets you need to be able to succeed at that company.”



DeCiantis adds that success in succession is possible—“You just need to be intentional and patient and invest the time [and resources] necessary to get it right.”



This article originally appeared in the July 2025 issue of <a href="https://offer.success.com/success-plus/">SUCCESS+ digital magazine</a>. 



Photo by dotshock/Shutterstock.com

Discover how global brands have managed succession planning for uncertain times and how you can secure your business’s future too.

Discover how global brands have managed succession planning for uncertain times and how you can secure your business’s future too. | SUCCESS

Succession Planning Isn’t Like the TV Show

Succession Planning: A Necessity for Future-Minded Leaders | SUCCESS

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What does the resume of a successful restaurateur, real estate investor and <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-give-back-purposefully/">philanthropist</a> look like? For Atlanta’s Ebony Austin, it looks like working her way up the ladder at Godiva for 12 years, moving from manager to corporate specialist to overseeing store operations. She later became a business development manager for 1-800-Flowers, overseeing all the Fannie May chocolate shops in the Chicago area.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;







After attending the Your House Academy, she says she bought her first property for $30,000, then flipped it for $300,000. Her real estate investments allowed her to open her first restaurant in 2019, and now she owns five: Georgia-based Cliché Restaurant and Wine Bar in College Park, Stir House in Atlanta, Nouveau Bar and Grill with locations in both College Park and Jonesboro, and Nouveau Noir in Dallas, Texas.



She was a millionaire by the time she was 35 and has given away more than $1 million in scholarships to students at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).



Every year, she creates a Christmas experience for thousands of families in need and says she has never spent less than $250,000. Her biggest event was at the Gateway Center Arena in College Park in 2024.



Most people would collapse under the weight of responsibility Austin carries, but for this committed <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/navigating-the-entrepreneur-roller-coaster/">entrepreneur</a>, discipline allows her to stay focused on her goals.



“I come from a place of understanding that if you really want something, to dream it is fine, but discipline will always be that bridge between hard work and your dreams and where you are now…. I’ve always had grit and grind about myself, and I’ve always liked nice things, and I understood that in order to keep them, I needed to put in the work,” she says. “And most importantly, I always knew that at some point, I wanted to be in a place where I could actually help people. That was more of my motivation than anything: How do I get in a place where I’m effective in communities that were like mine?”



Having grown up in a tight-knit neighborhood in Chicago, Austin says that she felt rich because of the love that surrounded her.



“You can go to your neighbor’s house and have dinner and have a good time, and they would make sure you got back home safe,” she says. “So it all felt like family. So I understood that it was bigger than a dollar amount. It was really more of how do you be of service to people and how do you help and what does impact look like in your community?… That’s what keeps me going, to say, ‘Ebony, you still haven’t done enough. Ebony, you got to keep going. Ebony, you gotta see what’s next. How do you get there? How do you help? We help 50 people this year. How do we help 300 people next year?’”



This mindset drove her to devote a significant part of her mission to uplifting and financially supporting Black scholars at HBCUs. As a student at Langston University, Austin struggled financially and knew she wanted to help other students avoid the challenges she faced.



According to the<a href="https://www.tmcf.org/about-us/member-schools/about-hbcus/#:~:text=and%20Pell%20Grants-,More%20than%2075%25%20of%20students%20at%20HBCUs%20rely%20on%20Pell,%2Dtime%20Degree%20Seeking%20Undergraduate)" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> Thurgood Marshall College Fund</a>, 94% of all HBCU students are awarded some type of financial assistance, yet HBCUs have one-eighth the average endowments of predominantly white institutions. 



This reality is what led to Nouveau Creations, a line of stone-ground grits Austin launched in 2023, on March 12, her grandmother’s birthday.



“That’s who actually raised me as a little girl,” Austin shares. “She died when I was nine, and I lived with her. So that was our thing was grits. And so that’s why that’s the only signature item that we have on our menu [at Nouveau Bar and Grill].”



She knew that a product focused on things that really mattered—family and education—would give her the winning formula for success.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-importance-of-giving-back">The importance of giving back</h2>



“I went to an HBCU,” she says. “I understood the struggle. I understood the lack of financial aid. And, so, I just kind of combined the two things. It was the start of the person that raised me. And then it was also the best years of my life… if I could help students get to where they’re trying to go through education, for me, that was huge. And so that’s why 100% of those [grits] proceeds [go] to HBCU students. And then I match whatever that looks like on the end. So if we raise $150,000, then personally, I’ll match the $150,000. And, because of that, we haven’t been able to tell a student no.”



Since she started selling the grits in 2021—available online and in 180 Publix and 45 Food Lion locations across Georgia—Austin has given more than $1 million in scholarships to HBCU students. She also conducts an HBCU tour every year and has been known to show up on campuses with a DJ and 18-wheeler stocked with groceries so students can fill their pantries.



With so much money already given away, you’d think there would be a stopping point, but Austin has no off switch for her generosity.



In her latest philanthropic endeavor, the real estate investments that allowed her to buy her first restaurant are going to allow others to buy their first home. And the full circle cherry on top? Her restaurant team gets first dibs.



“It’s a beautiful thing when people can pour into their team,” Austin says, sharing, “we’ve helped a lot of them build their credit. We’ve helped them be able to go and buy cars. We’ve helped some of them now have their own house… so now we’re getting ready to go into a phase where we’re getting ready to actually build homes. And I’m excited about that.”



She says she aims to create affordable housing for her team as well as police officers, educators and other vital members of the community.



The goal, she says, is to set the people she cares about up for success.



Austin learned long ago that being a part of your community is more than just lip service. It’s more than just a restaurant in a neighborhood. It’s showing up. It’s doing the work. It’s making profound connections that impact things in powerful ways. It’s believing in the people around you and inviting them to join you at your table.



“I enjoy making people happy,” she says, always staying true to that voice inside that told her, “Ebony, you still haven’t done enough. Ebony, you got to keep going.”



Photo by Mel B. Photography

Discover why restaurant and property mogul Ebony Austin prioritizes philanthropy above all else. Learn the value of giving back.

What does the resume of a successful restaurateur, real estate investor and philanthropist look like? For Atlanta’s Ebony Austin, it looks like working | SUCCESS

Grits and Grind: How Restaurant and Property Mogul Ebony Austin Prioritizes Philanthropy

How to Give Back with Ebony Austin | SUCCESS

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Woman listening to Myndstream on headphones in a hot tub in the woods

Woman listening to music on wireless headphones in hot tub

Longevity &amp; Performance

Longevity &amp; Performance Archives

Longevity &amp; Performance | SUCCESS | What Achievers Read

When we think about whole-body care in the health realm, we think of functional medicine, which rests on the belief that there is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to healing. To treat the full person, many different medicines or treatment modalities may be necessary.



But when we think about something as intangible as <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/workplace-music/">music</a>, we often fail to take a whole-person approach. Googling “relaxing music” does nothing to describe what’s leading us to try to relax. Is it anxiety? Stress? Do we need help regulating our nervous system or alleviating insomnia? Just as there is no one pill to cure someone’s pain, there is no one approach to using music to feel better.







Music, like medicine, has many different functions—which is why <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/freddiemoross/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Freddie Moross</a> thinks the term “functional music” is a more holistic way of navigating a rather nuanced discussion.



As the founder of <a href="https://myndstream.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Myndstream</a>, a company that creates and designs music for health and well-being for a variety of spaces, Moross says the term makes a clearer line in the sand regarding the ways we use music to feel things.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-myndstream">Why Myndstream?</h2>



He says when he started Myndstream in 2020, people were talking about music therapy—which involves using music in clinical settings alongside doctors—when they really meant mindful, wellness-focused music. “Others would say ‘sound therapy,’” he says, “which has a very kind of ancient, often experiential aspect to it [such as singing bowls]… and then there’ll be therapeutic music and other things which could be digital. It could be recorded music; it could be experiential to some degree. But for me, it was all quite messy in terms of definitions.”



Having grown up with a father who built a company focused on using music for entertainment—Philip Moross’ <a href="http://www.cuttingedgegroup.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cutting Edge Group</a> has produced music for Stranger Things, Whiplash, Bridgerton and more—Moross was exposed to what most would call “mainstream music.” But now that he lives in the realm of music used for health and wellness, he isn’t so sure semantics help define purpose.



“An artist like Timbaland producing a rap record would be ‘mainstream music,’” he shares, “but I didn’t like the definition because Liquid Mind [a wellness-focused artist] has had several billion streams. He is mainstream. He’s popular… the intention behind the creation, that’s what separates [things]. Timbaland can come in and write a rap record, or he could come in and write a wellness music record. And the reason why he’s writing one versus the other is what he’s trying to achieve for the listener. It’s about the intention—the function of that concept.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-is-functional-music">What is functional music?</h2>



Functional music, he says, asks at both the creation and the listening phases what function a piece of music is trying to achieve. “In the DNA of who we are, we come from this idea [that] you can create something quite magical with the right programming of music on screen and you can evoke certain emotions artistically,” Moross says. Which is why, when Cutting Edge acquired Real Music, a catalog of ambient and new age music with more than 70 artists and 3,000 tracks, the timing was perfect for him to bring functional music to the forefront.



“This type of music, it’s not there to entertain,” he says. It’s there “to elicit particular physiological, psychological reactions, to elicit particular outcomes that people are trying to achieve.”



When someone is looking for <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/11-strategies-for-managing-stress/">help with stress</a>, anxiety or insomnia, for example, they can find Myndstream in the same places they would find entertainment: Amazon, Spotify, Apple, Pandora and YouTube. The brand’s entire music catalog lives in these places, only consumers have no idea when they select certain songs that Myndstream owns them. Most people may not even know the artists they choose. They simply know whether the feeling they’re trying to achieve is successful. In this way, Myndstream is offering an invisible hand, guiding consumers down the path where their music lives.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-many-uses-of-myndstream">The many uses of Myndstream</h2>



In the other part of their business, however—the B2B side—Myndstream is in the unique position of being the first music streaming service for spas, with over 100 playlists categorized by mood and duration, allowing therapists to personalize music to the needs of their customers and treatment outcomes.



Many people don’t know that, as a spa or hotel owner, you can’t just hook up your phone to a streaming service and play music. The music on those platforms is not commercially licensed, which means those using it in a professional capacity can face big fines. Moross says the careful curation of music and the licensing peace of mind Myndstream offers is not only convenient for business owners, but it also has the potential to enhance the experience people are having in those spaces.



“Spa music for a long time has just been background,” he says, adding that “it doesn’t just have to be a whale in the background that people kind of try and tune out…. You can be creative with it. You can have fun with it; you can do things that people might not expect and maybe make some mistakes and take some risks, but also do things which can be really exciting that people will fall in love with your brand for.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-collaborating-toward-the-future-nbsp">Collaborating toward the future&nbsp;</h2>



<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/what-ive-learned-from-living-boldly-and-taking-risks/">Taking risks</a> is something Moross loves doing. As he continues to sign new talent, he’s proud of collaborations with established talent not known for their work in this niche industry.



Artists like Grammy-winning producer Timbaland—who is behind some of the biggest names in entertainment, such as Ludacris, Missy Elliott and Justin Timberlake—put out his first-ever wellness-focused album, Yellow, under the Myndstream label in December 2024.



Working with handpan artist Malte Marten, Timbaland has taken a serene departure from his musical roots. It’s a departure that matches the personal pivots in his own life, focusing on <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-practice-mindfulness/">mindfulness</a> after battling addiction.



“He was ready for a musical challenge, and here was a genre of music that was ready to be challenged,” Moross says.



Recognizing his company has a lot of room to grow, Moross believes Myndstream can do things no one else is doing, while using music to help people.



“The whole reason you get into business is to try and help grow things, right?” he asks. “You want to build value for everyone around you.”&nbsp;



This article originally appeared in the May/June 2025 issue of <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/magazine/">SUCCESS® magazine</a>. Photo by Oleh_Slobodeniuk/iStock.com

Learn how Freddie Moross, founder of Myndstream, creates holistic “functional music” to help improve people’s health and well-being.

Learn how Freddie Moross, founder of Myndstream, creates holistic “functional music” to help improve people’s health and well-being. | SUCCESS

Myndstream Brings Functional Music to a Speaker Near You

Myndstream Brings Functional Music to a Speaker Near You | SUCCESS

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Before a garden can grow, it starts with a single seed. That seed can transform acres of dirt into a blanket of colors so vibrant, the sun wants to look at it all day.



Ideas grow exactly the same way. They can become so big and, often, so transformative that people can’t help but gravitate toward the individuals to whom they belong. That’s how <a href="https://www.deangraziosi.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dean Graziosi</a> and <a href="https://www.tonyrobbins.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Tony Robbins</a> went from a single conversation on a golf course in 2018 to a business partnership that led to some of the biggest live launches in internet history. The two friends were already quite successful in their own careers but couldn't deny the value of sharing their combined 76 years of knowledge and success in the self-education space. Because the industry changed both their lives, they knew the tools they’ve been using could help others change their lives, too.



That golf course conversation turned into a business plan for <a href="http://mastermind.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mastermind.com</a>, a platform that teaches people to turn their life experiences, skills, hobbies and passions into something actionable. Today, says Graziosi, their company is one of the biggest self-education portals for those who want to turn their life experience into a product.







<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-thrive-in-2025-with-graziosi-and-robbins-nbsp">Thrive in 2025 with Graziosi and Robbins&nbsp;</h2>



Graziosi, a testament to the <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/what-is-my-purpose-in-life/">power of life experience</a> as fuel for business success, knows in his core that his personal journey gave him exactly what he needed for the platform he has today. His entrepreneurial path started with chopping firewood, then to fixing up and selling cars, buying his first tow truck and owning a collision shop. Next, he bought an apartment building—then 30 buildings, built houses and filmed his first infomercial, creating a course, Think A Little Different. He wrote a NYT-bestselling book, <a href="https://amzn.to/4lunFGX" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Be A Real Estate Millionaire</a>, which led to a coaching program that steered Graziosi toward becoming the number one real estate educator in the world for those looking to get into their first house.



When he and Robbins launched their first live event in 2018, they had 280,000 attendees from across the world. In 2023, their event with Matthew McConaughey, The Art of Livin’, drew 2 million viewers globally, and their Time to Rise Summit in 2025 had 1.2 million participants. Attendance for <a href="https://thrive2025event.com/rsvp" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Thrive in 2025</a>, a free, three-day virtual live event on May 15–May 17, 2025, from 10 a.m.–1 p.m. PT., is expected to draw an equally high number of participants, so be prepared to feel the energy of strangers from all corners of the world, all ready to turn their life experience into a business they love. 



We sat down with Graziosi to ask for a sneak preview of the event, and these were his responses.&nbsp;&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-success-what-can-people-expect-to-learn-about-at-the-event-nbsp-nbsp">SUCCESS: What can people expect to learn about at the event?&nbsp;&nbsp;</h3>



Dean Graziosi: Attendees will be guided through the exact road map to transform their expertise, passions and life experiences into a thriving business and lifestyle that aligns with their goals. They’ll gain clarity and direction to confidently navigate 2025’s rapidly evolving world and recognize the best opportunities to create impact and income.&nbsp;



They’ll learn the strategies, tools and mindset needed to package their expertise, attract the right audience and create sustainable success.&nbsp;



They’ll recognize their true worth and will learn how to turn their knowledge and life experiences into a thriving, purpose-driven business that serves others while creating financial freedom.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-s-who-do-you-and-tony-want-to-join-you-for-thrive-in-2025-nbsp">S: Who do you and Tony want to join you for Thrive in 2025?&nbsp;</h3>



DG: I want somebody who's unfulfilled in their career. I want the badass without a blueprint…. I want the PTA mom everybody comes to for advice…. I think so many amazing women and men know they're meant for more, but they're not sure how to get there. They're unfulfilled in what they're currently doing, but they want someone to hold their hand and take them on a journey. And I think that's what we do. So if somebody's not in love with what they do, their business isn't doing what they thought [it would do], they know they're a badass, but they just hadn't had anybody show them the path to get there, then they should show up and spend a couple days with us.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-s-what-s-one-thing-you-re-excited-to-unveil-at-this-event-that-no-one-has-seen-yet-nbsp">S: What’s one thing you’re excited to unveil at this event that no one has seen yet?&nbsp;</h3>



DG: The last year, things have truly changed... Tony and I have worked on an AI that thinks like him and I…. Go have a conversation with our AI… it also downloaded and learned how I market, how I strategize, how I implement, how I fulfill on customers, how Tony gets in your head and makes sure you don't stop. So people have the opportunity now to not be alone.



A lot of people fail in business and entrepreneurship because they might have the blueprint, but they don't have <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/personal-accountability/">accountability</a>. They don't have a partner, they don't have a guide. And we're going to show people now that the world has changed, that they don't have to be alone anymore. They don't have to guess on things. They don't have to be stuck on the blank page. They don't have to lose momentum because they don't know what to do next. We're going to show people <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/ai-and-leadership/">how to integrate AI</a> into what they do so they can start off on third base.



The game has definitely changed. It's a new world, and people who might have been hesitating in the past to do their own thing, I think they're going to see that now is the perfect time.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-s-any-special-guests-joining-you">S: Any special guests joining you?</h3>



DG: <a href="https://speakers.success.com/speaker/jay-shetty/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jay Shetty</a> and <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/matthew-mcconaughey-and-the-art-of-reinventing-yourself/">Matthew McConaughey</a> are going to be there, as well as Jillian Turecki, Radhi Devlukia-Shetty, Lisa Nichols, Gary Brecka and Tony Robbins, of course! We’ve got some great people coming for the event!&nbsp;



Photo courtesy of Dean Graziosi

Join Dean Graziosi, Tony Robbins, Jay Shetty, and Matthew McConaughey for 3 days of life-changing advice on transforming your passion into a business.

Join Dean Graziosi, Tony Robbins, Jay Shetty, and Matthew McConaughey for 3 days of life-changing advice on transforming your passion into a business. | SUCCESS

Do You Want To Thrive in 2025? Join Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi and Special Guests at This Free 3-Day Virtual Event

Thrive In 2025 with Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi | SUCCESS

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Close up of black female hands molding raw dough on wooden table powdered with flour

When Jatee Kearsley spent four months eating her way through Paris in 2021, she had no idea just how far her life adventures would take her.



Though she and a friend visited the city with the express purpose of understanding the history of French pastries and the processes by which they’re crafted, she couldn’t have known that, two years later, she’d have her own patisserie. And she couldn’t have imagined that, nine months after she opened, she’d go <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/the-secret-to-going-viral-with-brendan-kane/">viral</a>, and people would be calling from across the country—and the world—trying to get their hands on some of her baked goods.



<a href="https://www.jetaimebk.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Je T’aime Pâtisserie</a>, in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood, opened in the summer of 2023 with little fanfare. In the early days, business was slow, and Kearsley remembers selling around 12 croissants a day, six chocolate and six plain.



“No one knew about us,” she says. But then the popular social media channel, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/righteouseats/?hl=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Righteous Eats</a>, got wind of what Kearsley was doing and, in April 2024, featured her in a video that went viral. The next day, “those six chocolate croissants were gone in like five minutes.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-perils-of-popularity">The perils of popularity</h2>



After that, croissants and everything else were flying off the shelves, and the self-taught baker could barely keep up with the demand.



“I did already have a staff, but my friends and family rushed in to help me,” she recalls. “I was also sleeping at the bakery … I slept there for two weeks straight just to try to keep up with all the things that we needed … I don't think people understand what a small business goes through when they go viral.”







She points out that many <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/tips-and-resources-to-scale-your-small-business/">small business owners</a> buckle under the strain instant recognition can bring. It’s especially difficult when you’re crafting things from scratch, such as croissants, which take Kearsley three days to make from start to finish.



”I think, at the time, I was probably making in total… like, 100 croissants for the week,” she says. “And now I'm making like 500 [to] 600…. If you're not prepared to go viral, it could literally make your business fail. And I was not prepared. I just had a lot of friends who came and helped me out in my time of need.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-pastry-with-a-purpose">Pastry with a purpose</h2>



While Kearsley loves that her business is getting noticed, what makes her the happiest is the reason customers want to support her. She creates pastry with a <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/finding-your-purpose/">purpose</a>. Her mission is to fight systemic food discrimination in communities without access to good quality food, often known as food deserts.



One of the ways she does this is by accepting EBT (the government's electronic benefit transfer or food assistance card), though many people told her it wouldn’t be a good idea. But as someone who believes the saying “If you don't help at least one person in your life, you're wasting your life,” she wouldn’t run her business any other way.



“Even before I was going viral, people were like, ‘Why are you in this neighborhood? Like, this food is too fancy for this neighborhood.’ And I'm just like, ‘But it's not, though. It's really, really not. Like, these are the foods that you normally eat. They just look fancy. Because I want you, the people of this <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/jairek-robbins-on-the-importance-of-building-a-community/">community</a>, to be able to experience food at a different level.’”



As a result of her choices, she has welcomed people into her shop who never tasted a croissant before. She remembers a group of teenage boys who had never seen quiche before, but she reminded them they’ve had versions of a quiche their whole lives.



“Quiche is just eggs and vegetables,” she told them. “You ate an omelet 30,000 times. You ate scrambled egg. Like, you know, it's just the way that you plate it and the way that you present it to people that makes it [seem] ‘weird,’ or too fancy, but it's not. So when you… add food education to the ethos of my business, that's super important too, to educate my people.



“I think people get that misconstrued a lot when I say my people, because they just think I'm speaking of Black people,” she continues. “But I'm speaking of all, you know, marginalized communities and [people in] food desert areas.”



That includes those boys, who walked away with some free quiche samples and are now regulars.



“I actually hired one of them during the summertime,” she says. “I think that with me having this relationship with the community on a personal level… it gets them coming back because they know someone actually cares…. I actually care about seeing my community of people grow and learn more about food and the things that they need to… sustain their everyday being.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-it-takes-a-village">It takes a village</h2>



She’s quick to point out, however, that she can’t do this important work alone.



“It has to be a whole community who wants to see a change, who wants to see more … food options, more healthy options, more cafes, more salad bars, more small businesses that offer fresher products like smoothies or salads, or fresh [baked goods] like mine” she says. “These croissants are not sitting in a factory. They're not sitting on a truck. They're not sitting on the shelves for many, many days … I'm there at 4:00 a.m. so I'm there witnessing the beauty of baking these things fresh every day.”



Her mission isn’t going unnoticed. Kearsley says once she went viral, people were asking if they could donate money to pay for someone else’s pastries. So, she set up a GoFundMe, which raised $7,500. She partnered with Righteous Eats to create a community day. All the donated money went to other food businesses in her community, and they gave away ice cream, burgers, juice and pastries for free.



“I'm just someone that God is using to propel the mission that he has me on,” she says. “Of course I have to make money because I'm a business, but my passion is to really, really uplift and educate and help my communities of all ages [and] all races.”



Photo by Hryshchyshen Harbucks/Shutterstock

Jatee Kearsley’s Je T’aime Pâtisserie went viral, but her mission is bigger—making quality food accessible in Brooklyn.

Jatee Kearsley’s Je T’aime Pâtisserie went viral, but her mission is bigger—making quality food accessible in Brooklyn. | SUCCESS

Sweets With Substance: Jatee Kearsley Runs a Brooklyn Bakery With a Bigger Purpose

Je T’aime Pâtisserie: The Brooklyn Bakery with a Purpose | SUCCESS

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Dreams are a bit like pearls.



Something has to get inside your brain to inspire you to do what you never thought possible.



For pearls to be made, an irritant must find its way inside the shell of its host.



For humans, that “irritant” might be passion or purpose. For mollusks (e.g., oysters and mussels), parasites, crabs or worms can get into the lining of the shell and cause irritation. A liquid substance coats the irritant, which hardens to become a pearl over time.



The beauty that results from a mollusk’s internal struggle can take years. For <a href="https://mattharrisdesigns.com/pages/about-us" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Matt Harris</a>, it took half a lifetime.



As one of the world’s most sought-after pearl experts, his ascent didn’t happen overnight. And it didn’t happen without many “irritants” entering his brain before he found the career he was destined for.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-discovering-a-new-passion">Discovering a new passion</h2>



When he turned 50, Harris had a job he liked “just fine” and was making good money, but he wasn’t fulfilled. <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/3-ways-to-get-better-at-dealing-with-change/">Change can be hard</a>, but it’s even harder, he admits, “the older you get, when you have mortgages and bills.”



Thankfully, he knows hard can be easy when it’s the right thing for you.



Having done everything from conducting at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and selling fine art to managing all of Warner Brothers’ West Coast retail stores and running his own software company, Harris’ niche-fluid career helped him become a lifelong learner.







So, it was no surprise that, in preparing for his wedding, he volunteered to research a topic that fascinated him.



“My wife and I decided to get pearls for the bridesmaids, but neither of us knew how to buy them,” he recalls. Because he’d accompanied his mom to her jewelry making classes when he was a child, he was comfortable walking into a shop at the California Jewelry Mart in Los Angeles and asking the women working there if they’d teach him Chinese pearl stringing, which uses silk and closely knit knots. “They thought it was the cutest thing in the world,” he says, “so I learned how to string this traditional silk method.”



When his software company reached its 20-year mark, he moved to Napa Valley with the intention of building a winery but says he felt stagnant.



“At a certain point later, I’m like, ‘Where did the fire go?’” he says. “It wasn’t that I was in bad shape. It’s just that I got comfortable, and I realized I didn’t want to be mediocre anymore, so I had to reignite that.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-reigniting-the-fire">Reigniting the fire</h2>



The fire returned when Harris moved to Austin, Texas, and started selling his pearl creations at a local jewelry store. He convinced the owner to let him manage the store and earn 50% of the profits if he doubled their revenue.



After quadrupling their revenue—and having reached a milestone birthday—he says he asked himself, “Do I want to die being known as a really great jewelry store manager, or do I want to leave a mark? Something people can remember me by—something that my daughter can remember me by and say, ‘My dad did that.’”



Turns out, the mark he wanted to leave was sitting in his drawers. With thousands of collected pearls, Harris realized pearls had a story to be told, yet no one was telling it in a way that did them justice.



“There was no one person that was the person,” he says. “It seemed like there’s this spot open, and it seemed like it was waiting for me.”



A few years and many celebrity and travel experiences later, Harris has <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-discover-your-life-purpose-8-steps/">found his purpose</a>. He has some advice for living the life you were meant to live.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-find-your-2-0">Find your 2.0</h2>



Harris attributes his shifts to The Super Connector Mastermind run by Jen Gottlieb and Chris Winfield. In the 2.0 exercise, where attendees were asked to imagine themselves a year into the future, he remembers questions like: “How do you feel?” and “What does it look like?”



“I saw myself speaking about pearls in exotic locations like Tahiti, where a lot of pearls come from,” he says. “And I saw myself being known in the industry… as the guy that’s teaching people about pearls.”



Harris 2.0 was born.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-take-a-leap-of-faith-in-yourself">Take a leap of faith in yourself</h2>



When Harris learned of a conference in Tahiti for jewelers touring pearl farms, he asked to speak about the history of pearls. He got the gig.



He didn’t have a speech written or experience but still pitched himself as the right person for the job.



“There’s a saying that I love: ‘Argue for <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/the-pursuit-tony-robbins-5-steps-to-break-through-your-limits/">your limitations</a>, and sure enough, they’re yours,’” Harris says. “If I would have had the slightest thought that I couldn’t have landed that, then I wouldn’t have asked. So, I did. And before you know it, somebody says, ‘Oh, Matt, you’re speaking [in] Tahiti?… Why don’t you speak over here?’”



A year later, he’s in a video about the history of pearls shown on all Air Tahiti Nui flights—all because “I got into 2.0, and I believed that I could do it. And that’s kind of like that leap of faith in yourself.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-don-t-be-afraid-to-ask">Don’t be afraid to ask</h2>



When Harris started designing jewelry as a hobby—long before he launched into it full-time—he emailed everyone he knew, asking if anyone knew actress Debra Messing, who he thought would look perfect in one of his necklaces.



A friend who Harris shares wine tastings with responded. “He says, ‘I don’t know if you know this, because we don’t talk business over wine, but I’m a photographer for NBC, and I work on the Will &amp; Grace show.’”



Harris gave that friend a necklace for Messing, and her wardrobe person called, asking to meet. After designing for Messing for two seasons of the show, he asked her to connect him with Britney Spears, who was going to be a guest on an upcoming episode.



“Britney then asked if I could make a necklace and earring set for her,” Harris says. “If you don’t ask, you’re never going to get it.... In order to have the courage to ask, you have to believe that you’re the person that can do it…. You are your 2.0.”&nbsp;



This article originally appeared in the March/April 2025 issue of SUCCESS magazine. Photo courtesy of Matt Harris Designs.

Find out how at the age of 54, Matt Harris left a lucrative career to pursue pearl jewelry, creating a dream life that inspires others.

Find out how at the age of 54, Matt Harris left a lucrative career to pursue pearl jewelry, creating a dream life that inspires others. | SUCCESS

Pearls With a Purpose: Why Matt Harris Left a Lucrative Career to Pursue Pearl Jewelry

Pearls With a Purpose: Why Matt Harris Left a Lucrative Career to Pursue Pearl Jewelry | SUCCESS

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packaged margherita pizza in the foreground

business

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katie lee pizza

katie lee pizza Archives

katie lee pizza Archives | SUCCESS

small business

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small business Archives | SUCCESS

Every pizza has a story.&nbsp;



Most people think it’s all about the ingredients, but the success of a restaurant relies on so much more than sauce and crust.&nbsp;



Those making the pizza have stories, too. Some, like Katie Lee, have a novel unlike any you’ve ever read before.



If you visited any of her three Katie’s Pizza and Pasta Osteria locations in St. Louis or read any of the media coverage about her, you’d get a story about a young woman who lived in Italy with her mother. You’d see someone who opened up a shop, named after her, with her dad. You’d see Instagram-worthy pizza, salads and cocktails. You’d see all the hallmarks of the American dream.



Until Lee lost it all: her reputation, her business, her relationship with her father and her sobriety.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-lee-s-real-story">Lee’s real story</h2>



The real story isn’t on Lee’s website, as it’s one she was never ready to tell—until now: 17 years after she first opened Katie’s with her dad. This time, she has 100% ownership of her namesake restaurant.&nbsp;



Lee dropped out of high school at 15 – a result of never feeling like she fit in, coupled with a struggle with alcohol and drugs. After working in nearly two dozen restaurants until she was 20, she went to live with her mother, who had gotten a job in Florence, Italy. That’s where her love of Italian food took hold.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image alignright size-medium is-resized"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/5-240815_KATIES_0032_retouched-300x214.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-83254" style="width:400px"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Katie Lee. (Photo by Greg Goldmann)</figcaption></figure>



“That kind of lit the fire with me,” she says. “And obviously, I had a ton of experience in restaurants, and now I had this passion around food. So I came back to St. Louis, struggled more with my alcoholism, but was able to put together a business plan, write a menu and then open the first Katie's Pizzeria in 2008. I was 26, and I opened it with my father.”



She was using ingredients that are now very common in today’s food scene but she felt weren't as well-known at the time: think prosciutto, fresh mozzarella, figs and squash blossoms. People went crazy for it.



Lee agreed to 0% equity in the business with her dad retaining ownership because he put up $50,000 to open the restaurant.&nbsp;



When her concept started to see success and she didn't have any equity, she says it caused tension.



&nbsp;“My alcoholism kind of spiraled, and I was kicked out of the restaurant and then spiraled further, lost everything,” she says. “Everything I had: family, friends and ended up, after trying to get sober for six years, going to treatment centers and hospitals and everything else, [I] ended up in a halfway house in not the best part of St. Louis, and it was kind of the last place I could go because I had nothing left. And I lived there for six months and have been sober ever since … I got my job back at the restaurant that I created, only this time as a waitress, which is a very humbling experience. And then … kind of got back on my feet and then decided that my only path forward was to figure out a way to do it on my own.”



Despite not having a bank account, a car or anything necessary to get a loan, Lee was able to raise $40,000 through a Kickstarter campaign, which allowed her to sign a lease and begin to raise money through IOUs from friends.&nbsp;



“I raised about $300,000,” she says, “Opened the restaurant, elevated the concept, added handmade pastas, a bigger space … paid everyone back within two years and began building what everyone sees today.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-her-father-s-impact">Her father’s impact</h2>



While Lee was rebuilding her entire life, behind the scenes her father, who had epilepsy, was getting worse. Because of his brain trauma, he had to have his hippocampus removed, which created memory issues.&nbsp;



“I had this very sad and uncomfortable situation where, in order to save him, I was going to have to leave him….” she says. “He was destroying the business with his brain damage and dementia … so I go and build my business and he shutters his. But the good news is that the brand survives, the restaurant survives. I begin to build an empire, I begin to build a life … we had about a six [to 12 month period] where it was just traumatic… and then we reconnect and then spend every day together. And over the next five years, he kind of slowly has this terminal illness where his brain [was] shutting his body down. But I'm taking care of him and we reconcile and spend the next five years together. I have a daughter. He spends every day with her. And then he passed away in 2021.”



Despite their ups and downs, Lee’s memories of her father remain an important ingredient to her success. “The benefit to having someone that saw the world a little bit differently or had these outlandish ideas about what he could do that gave [us] the opportunity, my brothers and I, to kind of see the world that way,” she says. “And so I never thought there was any issue with me not having all of the things that you would need to <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/5-tips-for-running-a-successful-business/">build a business</a> and <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/everything-you-need-to-know-to-become-a-great-leader/">be a leader</a>.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-first-in-frozen">First in frozen</h2>



In spring of 2020, when the government announced restaurant shutdowns because of COVID, things for Lee looked as though they might implode. Her father was terminally ill, she had a newborn baby and now she had to close her two restaurants.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“I kind of go into like, okay, I've got to save this whole thing,” she says. “So within a matter of 24 hours, I got my team and my family together and we prototyped a frozen pizza.”



She took photos on her phone, wrote web copy and had her web developer help her build a fully functioning e-commerce site in 72 hours.



She sold 50,000 pizzas in the first six weeks.&nbsp;



Lee turned her restaurants’ dining rooms into assembly lines and her cooks hand-stretched the dough and wood fired each pizza, then sealed them with a cryovac machine and froze them on-site. She bought used standup freezers for the assembly, then at night her team would load up their cars and take them to an old meal kit facility and store them in a collection of walk-in freezers.



Soon, Lee got a call from the CEO of a local grocery chain, Dierbergs, who helped her put a team together to scale production.&nbsp;



“We get under…inspection, we get into all of the Dierbergs and the rest was kind of history….” Lee says. “We slowly, over the next four years, start growing and then in the last two years, [have been] growing 100% every year. We're now in 800 doors across the country. We're expanding our line of foods to shelf-stable sauces and pastas…[as well as] olive oil and balsamic that we're importing from Italy.”&nbsp;



Lee is building her fourth restaurant and talking to partners about expanding to other cities. She also has her own frozen pizza production plant.&nbsp;“Normally, a <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-run-a-successful-startup-business/">startup</a> doesn't have the infrastructure and the experience that we do, and we've kind of got it all” she says.



Photo by Tré Parmalee

Get an inside look at the story of Katie Lee, founder of Katie’s Pizza in St. Louis, Missouri, and her journey to success.

Every pizza has a story.&nbsp; Most people think it’s all about the ingredients, but the success of a restaurant relies on so much more than sauce and | SUCCESS

The Person Behind the Pizza: How Katie Lee Built–And Rebuilt–Her Restaurant Empire

Katie Lee’s Pizza Restaurant Empire | SUCCESS

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Personal Development

Personal Development Archives

Personal Development | SUCCESS | What Achievers Read

Before I officially met Miranda Rae Mayo, I watched her on a variety of screens. On my phone, she sings Alicia Keys’ “Fallin’” on TikTok. On my TV, she’s with her Chicago P.D. and Chicago Med colleagues on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, talking about how she’s been a cast member on Chicago Fire since 2016. On my computer, she’s on a YouTube interview from 2016, standing under a tree and answering questions about her life as naturally as if she were speaking to a dear friend.



I like her instantly. There’s something kind about the way she speaks, and the confidence with which she carries herself makes me want to be the beneficiary of that energy.



When she pops onto my computer screen for our interview, the vibe is so comfortable that it feels like we’ve known each other for years. Within five minutes, we’re laughing, opening the rigors of adulting and comparing Mary J. Blige lyrics.



Mayo is an incredibly likable person, and it’s not just because she knows how to act the part. Before our call, I was told by someone who knows her well that “she’s just such a magical human.”



Even while she’s sitting on the floor of a dimly lit closet, wearing yellow sunglasses that take up half of her face, she radiates so much light that we may as well have been standing under a tree in the bright summer sun. I appreciate that, even with an exhaustive shooting schedule for Chicago Fire, she’s spending a treasured day off with me—the rest of it spent, she says, cleaning out her closet.



“I’m in my closet right now so that I don’t forget about it and abandon it, because that’s how my mind is,” she laughs. “I’m all over the place. But I’m going to turn on [my music], and I’m going to jam.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-musical-influences">Musical influences</h2>



Despite spending her days as a full-time actor, Mayo has been singing since she was a child—likely taking cues from her dad, who is a jazz singer.



“Growing up, he would always sing to us,” she shares. “If there was ever a live band anywhere, my dad would probably figure out a way how to sing.” She remembers trying out her own voice at family reunions and her aunt’s spiritual center in Fresno, California. “I would always sing there,” she says. “So singing was the first dream. You know, to be some unique version of Britney Spears and Brandy.”



Despite those original influences, Mayo had a strong preference for the soulful stylings of Blige and remembers singing her hit song, “Not Gon’ Cry,” at age 7.



“That was the one that I imagined someday I’d be in a stadium singing,” she says. “It’s funny. I was driving home literally two days ago from the set, and I turned my car on, and [that song] was on the radio. I never listen to the radio. And that was the song that was on. I was so happy. I know all the words.”



I know all the words too, and I sheepishly ask if she’d consider singing it to me at the end of our call. But before I even finish my sentence, my speakers fill with a richness that reminds me of chocolate sauce being poured on top of a sundae. It has all of Blige’s characteristic depth and range, with Mayo’s etherealness acting as soft clouds of whipped cream atop the musical dessert being served.



The closet becomes a stage, with Mayo’s eyes closed and me swaying back and forth in my chair.



“Eleven years of sacrifice / And you can leave me at the drop of a dime… / Well, I’m not gon’ cry. I’m not gon’ cry. / I’m not gon’ shed no tears.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-her-early-career">Her early career</h2>



Mayo has clearly found her calling, and I ask if she always knew she’d be in show business.



“I hoped,” she said, remarking on the fact that she was always a dramatic kid. “And then, in high school,” she adds, “it was like, ‘Oh, that’s what you do with that?’”



Once she knew where to channel her talents, the roles started coming. In addition to TV appearances on Law &amp; Order: Los Angeles and Pretty Little Liars, she was also in movies like The Girl in the Photographs and Going Places before landing on Chicago Fire as Stella Kidd. Mayo knows that the luxury of a longtime gig in Hollywood is rare, and it’s an opportunity she doesn’t take lightly, particularly when it comes to the show itself.



“I think it’s one of those shows that, once you watch one, it’s like Pringles,” she laughs. “Once you pop, the fun doesn’t stop. I do feel that way. Watching one episode is kind of enough to keep you locked in and curious. And everybody on our show is so just compelling and full of love.… I think people can feel it, and that’s part of what pulls you in and gets you invested.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-facing-rejection">Facing rejection</h2>



I ask her what a career like acting, with its rampant criticism and unsolicited commentary, has taught her about rejection.



“I think all the way from the beginning of my career until when I was fortunate enough to land on Chicago Fire, [being <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-overcome-your-fear-of-rejection/">accustomed to rejection</a>] was something that was necessary,” she says. “And now, I think I definitely have not experienced the same kind of exposure to that kind of rejection on such a regular basis, so I’m a little out of practice.”



What Mayo does have practice with, however, is her mindset. She works a lot on attachment in her own spiritual practice—which she has cultivated with famed leaders like Michael Beckwith—and believes that not getting too attached is connected to our ability to evolve. This way of thinking has allowed her to look at any challenge as an opportunity for redirection.



“I heard someone say on Instagram that rejection really just is a redirection,” she says. “And so the more comfortable that I can get with inevitable or uncontrollable redirection, the more joy-filled my life can be.”



Redirection is a part of transformation, which is a concept that Mayo fully embraces, knowing that she has come far from where she first began. As a self-proclaimed dramatic kid looking to unleash the different parts of herself into the world, it seems like a fitting evolution that, as an adult, she is helping kids unleash different parts of themselves into a world that they don’t always feel safe navigating.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-spreading-warmth-through-hlf">Spreading warmth through HLF</h2>



Since 2017, Mayo has been involved with the <a href="https://holisticlifefoundation.org/abouthlf">Holistic Life Foundation</a> (HLF), “a BIPOC-led nonprofit based in Baltimore, Maryland,” that has helped youth and adults in underserved communities improve their “social, educational, emotional and environmental well-being“ through yoga and mindfulness since 2001, according to the foundation’s website. Its <a href="https://holisticlifefoundation.org/mindfulmoment">Mindful Moment program</a> integrates mindfulness and yoga into the school day for children, which has led to “a 72% reduction in classroom suspensions.“ Students get to take part in daily 15-minute breath work and guided reflection sessions, and those who need extra support can visit the Mindful Moment Room, which contains meditation cushions, yoga mats, artwork, waterfalls and plants.



“Individuals transform into more compassionate, loving individuals who learn to live in the moment and to self-regulate so that they are not reacting to life but are able to respond to their internal and external stimuli,” says cofounder Andrés González. “They become more aware, focused, centered and empathetic. This then trickles out into their surrounding communities.”



Mayo, who has been a board member since 2020, says that working with HLF has matched the work that she wants to do in the world. One of the biggest things she has learned from working with HLF is how her own personal practice directly correlates with the kind of impact she can have.



“You have to know how to emotionally regulate,” she says. “You have to know how to be still and be patient and be loving, if that’s what you want [for] the children and the community. That’s how the world changes.”



Cofounder Ali Smith loves that Mayo truly practices what she preaches.



“When Miranda first appeared in Baltimore back in 2017, we were trying to figure out how a famous actress even knew about us and why she was so passionate about wanting to help,” he says. “Once we got to know her, her caring spirit and her desire to make the world a better place, it became evidently clear.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-making-an-impact">Making an impact</h2>



Changemaker seems like a role that suits Mayo well. She understands that to have an impact on others, you must first know yourself. Transformation is an inside job.



“[Transformation] isn’t… reaching out and turning into something else,” she says. “It’s peeling back [the layers] and revealing who you are.”



Photo by: Alexus McLane

Learn more about Miranda Rae Mayo’s life as both an on-screen star and a board member for the Holistic Life Foundation.

Learn more about Miranda Rae Mayo’s life as both an on-screen star and a board member for the Holistic Life Foundation. | SUCCESS

Miranda Rae Mayo: From On-Screen Star to Board Member

Miranda Rae Mayo: Making a Difference Through Mindfulness | SUCCESS

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Trends &amp; Insights

Trends &amp; Insights Archives

Trends &amp; Insights | SUCCESS | What Achievers Read

Last week, I did yoga with my landscaper.



Before he cut the grass, Joseph mentioned he was struggling to teach himself <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/6-ways-yoga-today-will-make-you-better-tomorrow/">yoga</a> through YouTube videos. I was meandering barefoot through the flower beds, so I invited him to remove his shoes and join me for an impromptu class. It was so much fun that we discussed doing weekly garden yoga once spring returns.



I’ll have to work the classes around the neighborhood walks I’ll be having with Kim, a friend I met a few streets over. She was looking for a walking buddy, and after a long phone chat, we discovered so many commonalities, it was almost eerie. I experienced the same thing with Marissa, who cleaned my dad’s house. We talked for hours after she was finished, and now we text every day, go to farmers markets and share our life stories. I’m also an auntie to her son, who comes to my house for waffles and dance parties.



These are just a few of the people I met through the <a href="https://nextdoor.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Nextdoor app</a>.



When I moved to a new city, I used the app to get help with my house, but I’ll admit I was lonely after leaving behind a large network in a city I lived in for 13 years. Starting over was hard, but the last place I expected to <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/finding-your-community-and-chosen-family/">find a community</a> was on an app built around hired services like lawn care and home repairs and reuniting lost pets with their owners.







Did the founders of Nextdoor ever predict lawn yoga or carb-loaded dance parties would come from something they created?



I wouldn’t expect Sarah Leary, cofounder, chief marketing officer and chief global business operations officer at Nextdoor, to confirm or deny whether these things were included in her vision, but I wasn’t surprised to learn that her vision did include the belief that “when neighbors connect, communities thrive.”



She says she noticed that “While social platforms connected friends and colleagues, no one was connecting neighbors—until Nextdoor. We built a platform where neighbors help neighbors.”



Help comes in many forms, and for me—and the folks you'll read about below—it came in the way of unexpected friendships.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-forming-an-accidental-community-on-nextdoor">Forming an accidental community on Nextdoor</h2>



Tami from Indianapolis met Rose through Nextdoor when Rose’s grandson was looking for someone to take her to the local food bank. “Before you know it, we were going every week,” she shares. “Six to seven months later… Rose, along with her husband, have become very close friends. They help me with my car, and I take them grocery shopping or wherever they need. Rose listens to me gripe, and I’m there for her on her bad days… We now consider each other family.”



When Sarah realized she was living next to people she had never met in her Dallas suburb, she put out a dinner invitation, asking, “If you’ve never stepped outside of your house to meet your neighbors, would you consider coming this night? I would love to meet you.” She never expected to see 91 neighbors in her backyard. The power of that experience triggered a new tradition that has seen her welcome more than 3,500 neighbors to her backyard table. “There’s nothing new, but something is extraordinary when we reach out to each other as neighbors,” she shares.



We need people at our table. We need <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/why-friends-are-important/">friends</a> who feel like family. We need to feel less alone in this journey, and we’ve got proof that it’s more vital now than ever.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-social-connection-can-impact-mental-health">Social connection can impact mental health</h2>



We’ve got an epidemic of loneliness.



The U.S. Surgeon General published a report in 2023 titled “<a href="https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation</a>” that discusses that a lack of social connection increases the risk of death by more than 60%. That’s as much as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day!&nbsp;



Since we spend so much of our lives on our phones, we may falsely believe we’re experiencing social connection, but social media is its own petri dish of isolation, which is why it’s vital that we use it as a stepping stone to get out the door and into each other’s lives.



<a href="https://bumble.com/bff" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bumble BFF</a>—a separate app from Bumble’s dating app that's designed specifically for friendships—has been a lifesaver for people like me searching for real-life connections.



I matched separately with Jenna and Rachel, not realizing they were partners. And they had no idea they were both talking to me! I love how kindhearted they are and how natural our connection is. While chatting with them, I was also chatting with Janis, whose depth was endearing. Little did I know Janis was friends with Jenna and Rachel! While we all hang out separately, we also have a beautiful group of like-minded rock star women who support, encourage and complement each other in meaningful ways.



Emily from Kansas still remembers Nicole, the first friend she made in Seattle when she moved there several years ago. “I was still transient at the time, living between my car and the houses I was dog-sitting at,” she recalls. “I didn’t have a traditional job that was introducing me to people, nor any known community spots to start making friends. It gave me someone to talk to, to relate to, to share soup with, to sit on a couch [with] and watch a TV show and laugh together.” Nicole’s suggestion to get involved in local nannying also “ended up launching a whole new career… that not only sustained me but got me out of poverty.”



Anna and Elmira, both from Seattle, walked around the lake with Elmira’s dog, Chelsea, on their first meeting. “We've been walking together since,” Anna shares. “We are very different from one another in many ways, but still were able to build a friendship.” Elmira shares, “This year, after Chelsea passed away, Anna became my greatest source of emotional support, and our friendship deepened through shared experiences with her family, road trips and her brother's wedding.”



Sara from St. Louis met three people in person with whom she’s excited to keep hanging out, and Peggy, her first BFF friend, introduced her to two other people, further expanding her circle. “I went from not really having much fun to do on the weekends… to having to keep my Outlook calendar updated so that I can keep up with what I’m doing [on] which days,” she says.



Lucille McCart, corporate communications director at Bumble, shares that “Building a strong community is key to a happy, healthy life. The people who surround you are the ones who support you through life’s ups and downs.” However, she adds, “Starting fresh with new friendships, especially as an adult, can feel overwhelming.”



It can, and it is, but with these apps in my corner, starting fresh feels hopeful, too. I look at Joseph in my backyard, arms stretched to the sky and feet anchored to the ground, and he looks as rooted as the flowers around him. And I think that’s the whole point. <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/why-friends-are-important/">Friendship</a> roots us to each other, growing into an expansive garden where everything flourishes.



Photo courtesy of sdx15/Shutterstock

Discover how the Nextdoor app has served as a bridge between building community during an epidemic of loneliness.

Discover how the Nextdoor app helps to build community connections.

The Nextdoor App and Community | SUCCESS

Can the Nextdoor App Revolutionize the Way We Think About Community?

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A row of binders full of sticky note and a used coffee cup.

If you were on a beach vacation in Hawaii, where the only sound you heard was the waves gently lapping on the shoreline, what would you be thinking?



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li>I can’t wait to get in the water!</li>



<li>I wonder if I’ll see a dolphin today?</li>



<li>Why am I lying on this beach instead of doing something productive?</li>
</ol>



Most of us would like to believe the first two things would hold our focus while lounging on the sand. But, in truth, the third is probably what goes through a good majority of people’s minds, even when paradise is right in front of their faces.



Number three is what Israa Nasir, a New York–based psychotherapist and the founder of <a href="https://www.instagram.com/well.guide/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WellGuide</a>, focused on as she was vacationing in Kauai with her partner. Instead of enjoying the gift of a well-deserved holiday, she found herself wracked with guilt for luxuriating when she could be “doing something.” What that “something” was, of course, was simply a construct she had created in her mind, but it was one that stemmed from her family and the messages she received in a culture steeped in the mindset that doing more means you are successful, powerful, a great leader or something else.



It took an epiphany on that beach (and some serious sandcastle building) for her to shift her toxic mindset and realize the things she was helping her clients with were things she herself needed to change. Her own inner work led her to write <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Toxic-Productivity-Reclaim-Emotional-Demands/dp/196230535X" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Toxic Productivity: Reclaim Your Time and Emotional Energy in a World That Always Demands More</a>, which focuses on the challenges many of us encounter when it comes to finding balance between our personal and professional lives.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-do-we-glamorize-hustle-culture">Why do we glamorize hustle culture?</h2>



Though there’s no definitive moment in U.S. history that got us here, Nasir sees the ’80s as a decade when the perception toward regular work changed. “If you look back to [the movie] Working Girl, and you look at the movies and the shows [of the time], it's very glamorized,” she says. “And I can understand why. From a woman's perspective, at that time, being somebody who was out and about working and very busy, that felt very glamorous because you're pushing against what was happening in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. But, over time, I think it just became super infused in our culture.”



She points to her own upbringing as a millennial who grew up in the “girl boss” era, where people admired women who worked all the time and had phones and laptops, signifying the allure of <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-find-freedom-from-toxic-hustle-culture/">hustle culture</a>. This type of depiction, she says, is detrimental for a multitude of reasons and, if not addressed by workplace culture, will lead to a host of long-term issues.



“If we internalize thinking, ‘I have to be on all the time—I need to have my BlackBerry,’ and that becomes a social symbol, your workplace is going to obviously lean into it,” she cautions. “If you want to work more, they'll say, ‘Sure, work more.’ If you want to work on your holiday, they'll say, ‘Yeah, absolutely, respond to emails.’ They're never going to say no.”



But Nasir says working all the time without breaks actually makes us less productive—not to mention the burnout and sense of disillusionment and disconnection that follows.



“If you haven't identified your emotional foundations or your habits, lifting yourself out of that state of burnout or disillusionment also becomes emotionally challenging because you start shaming yourself, you start feeling guilty, you don't feel good enough. So, you start fighting yourself,” she says. “I think one of the biggest markers for me is when people are constantly at war with themselves. It’s because we're not listening to something we need.”



But what do we need, exactly? Even if mental health is becoming more of a priority, some might say the damage is already done. And with the addictive power of social media, how can we empower ourselves to detach from this toxic mentality that is now part of our programming?



To start, Nasir says, we can reject hustle culture and turn toward self-care and compassion. If enough people start changing their habits, there’s hope the change will move upward.



“It'll be like a bottom-up change,” she says, “because, as more people adopt this mindset—that we don't have to hustle and grind 24 hours, that we are worthy of rest… [and] even if we make mistakes, things don't have to be perfect to get done. If we all start adopting this, slowly, you'll start seeing people in leadership making these changes.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-did-we-get-here">How did we get here?</h2>



Another way to work on making shifts is to recognize where the messages first began.



Nasir says experiences in our childhood create the frame through which we see the world. For example, when parents offer a reward for doing well in school or a punishment for doing poorly, a child then connects achieving objectives to belonging and love and then not meeting other people’s standards to rejection.



“That foundation sets in so early that, as adults, we often don't realize how that's actually showing up in our behavior,” she says. “This fear that if I'm not good enough, my boss will not like me [or] my husband or my wife is not going to like me—that just sets so deep inside of us.”



Non-verbal messaging is also deeply embedded in our core memories. For Nasir, it involved watching her parents’ active lifestyles, where self-care and rest were not prioritized. She says she can’t remember a single day when her mom was just relaxing on the couch. This made her internalize the message that if she had free time, she needed to fill it with something. When she was on that beach in Kauai decades later, she was able to better understand that she was operating under a harmful set of beliefs.



There are many harmful behaviors most of us have unwittingly normalized. So, Nasir offers advice for how to address our patterns of toxic productivity in a healthy way:



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-1-detox-from-social-media">1. Detox from social media</h3>



When it comes to aggravating toxic productivity, Nasir says social media amplifies social comparison.



This can have both physiological and neurological implications, as we never feel good enough because we think everyone else is more successful, is working harder or is being seen and valued. The negative feedback loop is endless.



“Take some time off social media and intentionally spend your time analog,” Nasir advises. “Take up needlepoint, make a puzzle, go running. And if you're running, try to run without music so you don't have to pull out your phone to get your music and then get sucked into the hole.”



If you find you’re comparing yourself to others or end up buying things you don’t need, she suggests unfollowing these accounts. You can also go to the “For You” page and click “not interested” on things that don’t make you feel good, and you can limit the ads you receive—particularly ones that are triggering, such as diet ads or things targeting your self-esteem. 



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-2-start-slowly-when-building-a-habit-or-making-a-change">2. Start slowly when building a habit or making a change</h3>



“What I would say to anybody who is struggling with starting a habit is we never build a habit at 100% right off the bat,” Nasir says. “If you are able to build it, it's very likely that it will be unsustainable in the long run… but if you build slowly, you start teaching yourself that, ‘Hey, I'm actually capable. So, if I do a 20-minute workout because that's all I can do, I notice that I am getting stronger. Maybe I can prioritize a 30-minute workout in three months.’”



It’s important to understand how impactful incremental exposure can be. Doing something without completing it—like exercising or organizing only part of your closet—can help you cope with the discomfort and might eventually give you mental flexibility that you didn’t have before.&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-3-practice-saying-no">3. Practice saying “no”</h3>



Because a big trait of toxic productivity is not being able to say no or overcommitting to things, Nasir breaks down some practices that can help flex these muscles.



“A lot of times, people who struggle with toxic productivity are not looking at their whole calendar fully,” she says. “They're just saying ‘yes’ to things as they’re coming.” She suggests looking at your calendar on Sunday night or Monday morning for the week ahead and knowing exactly when you’re available so that when someone asks, you can build your “no” muscles and offer them another time instead. Awareness is the first step.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-4-reimagine-productivity">4. Reimagine productivity</h3>



Most importantly, Nasir says the antidote to toxic productivity is not the absence of productivity—it’s the radical reimagining of what productivity truly means.



Productivity is not about overworking yourself, burning yourself out or comparing yourself to others. It’s about making sure that what you’re doing is value-aligned. It’s about slowing down to care for yourself and putting your energy toward things that matter to you, not the things you hope will earn approval.



Nasir also suggests paying attention to your emotions, as they’re important messengers. “I wrote this book because we are all very unhappy as a society,” she says. “We can see it in all of the numbers. Autoimmune conditions, loneliness, relationships falling apart—we see it everywhere. And it's because we all are striving for some made up ‘Narnia’ land... What we're all looking for is not at the end point of doing more. We're not going to get there. What I want people to do is to take a breather, look inward, find out what's important to them and only do those things.”



After all, Nasir says, awareness is the first step. “How can you change something you don’t know?”



Photo from Thomas Bethge/Shutterstock.com

Do you feel like you’re never doing enough? Psychotherapist Israa Nasir shares four lessons you need to learn to handle toxic productivity.

If you were on a beach vacation in Hawaii, where the only sound you heard was the waves gently lapping on the shoreline, what would you be thinking? I | SUCCESS

Reimagining Productivity in a World That Got It Wrong

4 Ways to Manage Toxic Productivity | SUCCESS

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professional women looking up at skyscrapers

Future of Work

Future of Work Archives

Future of Work | SUCCESS | What Achievers Read

When Jonathan Fields was working as a lawyer in one of the biggest law firms in the country, enduring long hours and massive amounts of stress, he became an unexpected witness in one of the most important trials of his life. After being hospitalized when his immune system shut down due to a massive infection, he traded law for his health. As a result, he embarked on a wellness journey that led him to owning a fitness studio, a yoga studio and two movements that disrupt our concept of a "good life."



On his top-ranked <a href="https://www.goodlifeproject.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Good Life Project</a> podcast, which launched in 2012, Fields has had deeply personal conversations with some of the most well-regarded thought leaders of our time. But he says that it’s not the renown of those he interviews that moves the needle. It's the fact that they’ve figured out something important—and are willing to share it.



Fields himself has always had something to share. Self-described as a person “almost pathologically steeped in possibility,” he’s “had a deep fascination with the way that we work… and the way that it makes us feel.”



Two years after his third book, <a href="https://amzn.to/3TNkPAr" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">How to Live a Good Life</a>, came out, he found the spark of an idea that would change the trajectory of both his career and hundreds of thousands of others'. He was creating a new way to look at work.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-careers-that-make-us-come-alive">Careers that make us come alive</h2>



Fields wanted to better understand the impulses that drive us to work and how we could more effectively align with those impulses in a way that made us feel good. He started looking for things that existed in every person, regardless of job titles, industries or companies—intangible things that people took with them wherever they went because they were inherent and personal, not learned or cultivated. He looked for people’s alignment with the work they were doing and what made them feel energized and excited.



“I literally started deconstructing massive lists of industries and jobs and roles and titles to see if we could identify them,” Fields recalls. “And it distilled down to these 10 core impulses really quickly. They just kept showing up over and over and over in different patterns.”







He the nrealized that he could form archetypes from these impulses. “So we started calling them ‘Sparketypes’ for fun—shorthand for the archetype for work that sparks you…. We spent all of 2018 building the <a href="http://sparketype.com/Sparketest" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Sparketype assessment</a>—building it up, breaking it down, rebuilding it, running beta testers through it—until we found that it was pretty robust and pretty stable, and people were reporting solid results that felt really on point. Then we released it out of beta at the end of that year and were kind of not ready for what happened after that.”



To date, more than a million people have taken the Sparketype assessment, offering up over 50 million data points. In 2021, Fields wrote a book about it, <a href="https://amzn.to/4evfshu" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Sparked</a>, and he started the <a href="https://podcast.sparketype.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Sparked podcast</a> in 2022.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-sparketype-differs-from-other-career-assessments">How Sparketype differs from other career assessments</h2>



While there are several great assessments on the market, Fields notes that his is focused in a specific way. “We’re looking at the question, ‘What is the underlying impulse for effort or work that makes a person come alive?’ Because if we can identify that and then help somebody align the work they’re doing with that, everything changes—both for them and for the organizations that they might work for and for the people they’re in service of.”



Knowing your Sparketype, he says, gives people a chance to <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-discover-yourself-with-24-true-self-quotes/">figure out who they really are</a>. They can then make the necessary shifts to get to where they’d like to be. He recognizes, though, that not everyone has the luxury of making grand career moves just because their work doesn't make them feel alive. Often, circumstances simply don’t allow for it.



“Maybe I’m working three jobs; I’m supporting extended family,” he says. “I’m not going to blow anything up to try and figure out how to make this a center and start over and rebuild around it.… But at the same time, that doesn’t mean that you have to walk away from this impulse. 



“That means that maybe [you take] 15 minutes a day or an hour on a Saturday and a Sunday morning on the weekends [to] find a way to make art or to volunteer to be of service.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-can-sparketype-change-your-life-for-the-better">How can Sparketype change your life for the better?</h2>



If the work you’re doing doesn't align with who you are, it’s going to affect your relationship with yourself. It may impact your physical and <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/mental-health-first-aid/">mental health</a>, as well as your relationships with others.



Fields looked for correlations between doing the work indicated by your Sparketype and feelings of:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Meaningfulness</li>



<li>Energy and excitement</li>



<li>Flow</li>



<li>Expressed potential or performance</li>



<li>Purpose in life</li>
</ul>



“And the data actually proved that out in a really strong way," he says. "We know the more that you say you’re doing the work of your Sparketype, the more likely you are to actually experience all five of those states.



“The opposite is also true. The less that you say you’re doing the work of your Sparketype, the less likely you are to say that you experience all or any of those five states," he adds. "And those five states are really important to individuals—but also as an entrepreneur and to leaders and to founders and organizations—because on a human level, they’re critical to flourishing. We need a sense of meaning and purpose.”



He’s proud that the tool he created helps productivity and efficiency. But at its core, it “creates a more human environment where people can feel like they’re seen and appreciated and more empowered to actually do the things that make them feel the way that they want to feel.”



Photo by Kiefer Photography/Shutterstock.com

Discover how Sparketype from Jonathan Fields, cofounder of the Good Life Project, can help you find work that makes you come alive.

Discover how Sparketype from Jonathan Fields, cofounder of the Good Life Project, can help you find work that makes you come alive. | SUCCESS

Get Sparked With Jonathan Fields' Sparketype Assessment

Get Sparked With Jonathan Fields&#8217; Sparketype Assessment

Introducing the Sparketype Assessment From Jonathan Fields | SUCCESS

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a smiling woman applying a skin care product on her face

Your skin is the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK470464/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">largest organ in your body</a>. It also happens to be quite a shape-shifter. <a href="https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/21901-epidermis" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">New skin cells are formed in the epidermis</a> and work their way up to the surface every 30 days. The old skin flakes off, and the cycle repeats.



Unfortunately, that doesn’t always mean that the skin is a clean slate when a new month rolls around. Depending upon our age, hormones and stress levels, dead cells can have a little party on our face that gets out of hand, causing wrinkles and sagging under our eyes.



For others, the breakout police get called after a rowdy group of bacteria gets trapped on the skin’s surface, <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/acne/symptoms-causes/syc-20368047" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">which is one cause of acne</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-arleen-lamba-m-d-s-skin-care-exploration">Arleen Lamba, M.D.’s skin care exploration</h2>



Sometimes skin issues can sneak up on you, and Arleen Lamba, M.D. knows the feeling all too well. When she began suffering through a litany of breakouts at the end of college and throughout medical school, Lamba says she found herself on a wild goose chase, trying everything she could to track down answers.



“This was the era where skin care was second and makeup was first,” she recalls, adding that she “went and did the Nordstrom and Macy’s [route], and then the estheticians and dermatologists. I did the whole thing because I was lost, and I wasn’t finding a solution.”



She refused to be a physician who couldn’t figure out what was happening to her own skin, so she became committed to finding a solution herself.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-finding-a-solution">Finding a solution</h2>



“That’s when I really understood the skin cycle every 30 days, what certain ingredients can do to your skin, what types of treatments you need [and] how you need to treat your skin every 30 days,” she says. “And slowly and surely, I started seeing an improvement because I started picking up solutions through my studying and research and me being… the guinea pig. My skin got tremendously better. And then I realized that there was this hole in the market.”



The gap, she discovered, was a layered one. First, there’s biology: Some people’s skin may be flawless but prone to monthly breakouts. Other people’s skin may be impacted by the environment, stress, their diet, a lack of sleep or allergens.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-creating-simple-and-accessible-skin-care">Creating simple and accessible skin care</h2>



Then there’s accessibility. Lamba remembers that, with her busy schedule as a physician, she could only do treatments on weekends or after work, but many offices weren’t open during those times. Plus, she wasn’t able to make appointments online or via text. Finally, there was the cost. As a resident, she didn’t have the budget for expensive treatments or overpriced products she didn’t need.



“I wanted to create a really simple program where we could do skin care every 30 days and come in and commit to our skin and commit to ourselves,” she says. “And that’s where <a href="https://glo30.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">GLO30</a> really came out of.”







<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-her-first-skin-care-studio">Her first skin care studio</h2>



When she opened her first studio in 2012, Lamba was pregnant with her first child and working full time as an anesthesiologist. She would take an early morning anesthesiology shift, then go straight to her skin care studio for evening appointments.



When her son was 2, a friend prompted her to rethink what she most wanted to devote her time and energy to. “[They said,] ‘You’re going to have to jump off that cliff without a parachute,’” she recalls.



For her, the parachute was her job in anesthesia, which gave her the funds to open her skin care studio. But she knew that no matter how scary it might be to give that up in favor of the unknown, she wanted to see where she landed when she invested her whole self into the process.



Fast forward to 2024 and you have a surprise entrepreneurial success story that came from solving a personal challenge. Lamba currently has <a href="https://glo30.com/locations/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">five GLO30 stores throughout D.C., Maryland and Virginia</a>; dozens more in-development franchise-owned stores in markets including Dallas, Orlando, Austin and St. Louis; and a goal to <a href="https://www.ifpg.org/top-franchises/glo30" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">open 1,000 GLO30 locations in the next decade</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-facing-the-future-of-skin-care-by-utilizing-ai">Facing the future of skin care by utilizing AI</h2>



Because of her research and dedication to healing the skin, Lamba has developed a variety of tools that have created true results for her customers. One of the most unexpected ones comes from a talking box on the wall: GLO30’s <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/from-the-editor-ai-innovation/">AI</a> skin tool assistant, <a href="https://glo30.com/skin-analyzer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">GLOria</a>.



Before their appointment, a client walks up to GLOria and scans a QR code or inputs their email address, and a polite voice greets them while noting the current temperature and pollution level. After scanning their face, GLOria offers advice for treatment options that are based on real-time assessments of the state of their skin—including everything from the amount of pigments to hydration levels, line formation and pore size.



The person performing the facial gets the information, which informs the treatment for that month, and customers can access their information any time to track changes and progress. Lamba says it’s crucial for GLO30 to be technology-forward because “if you can’t measure it, you can’t change it.”



This belief stems from the fact that one of the biggest issues she saw during her own skin treatment journey was that recommendations were most often based on who was providing the assessment.



“There’s a lot of, unfortunately, <a href="https://www.dermatologytimes.com/view/identifying-diagnostic-bias-in-skin-of-color" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">biases</a> to that,” she says. “We are a multicultural nation with so many undertones in our skin, so if they didn’t understand your undertones, they couldn’t really give you the advice you needed... Some would say I have oily skin; [others] would say I have dry skin… Everybody’s opinion was so drastically different, and so it made me really doubt the process.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-health-is-wealth">Health is wealth</h2>



Lamba feels strongly that we don’t have to become doctors to understand that health is wealth. Her customers understand that concept well. Developing a commitment to offering “skin care for the rest of us” has served Lamba well as an unexpected entrepreneur, but she credits much of her business acumen to her medical training.



Given the ethos that guides her business, her clients are in a strong position to get what they need as well.



“The beauty industry, for a long time, has said, ‘Something is wrong with you, but our product will fix it,’” she says. “And that is something that I am completely against. Everything is right with you. We’ll help you see it.”



This article appears in the <a href="https://store.success.com/by-media/success-magazine-september-october-2024-daymond-john.html">September/October 2024 issue</a> of SUCCESS magazine. Photo courtesy of Yaroslav Astakhov/Shutterstock.

Discover how Arleen Lamba, M.D. is transforming skin care with GLOria, her skin tool assistant that treats skin with the power of AI.

Discover how Dr. Arleen Lamba, M.D. is transforming skin care with the power of AI.

Dr. Arleen Lamba, M.D. Transforms Skin Care with AI | SUCCESS

Arleen Lamba, M.D. Turned Her Skin Care Struggles Into a Solution for a Market Gap

Arleen Lamba, M.D. Transforms Skin Care with AI | SUCCESS

https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/dr-arleen-lamba-skincare-yaroslav-astakhov-shutterstock.jpg

Discover how Dr. Arleen Lamba, M.D. is transforming skin care with GLOria, her skin tool assistant that treats skin with the power of AI.

When I ended my call with <a href="https://www.stephanielharrison.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Stephanie Harrison</a>, author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/New-Happy-Getting-Happiness-Right/dp/0593541383" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">New Happy</a>—a book that illustrates how, through generations of beliefs handed down to us, we’ve internalized false ideologies about happiness— she asked me a question no one I’ve interviewed has ever asked: “How can I support you in your life?”



While it felt so good to be asked that, it also felt surprisingly shocking. As I chewed on the bigness of those simple words, my brain was scanning the room, as if to say, “what’s the catch?” while my heart was doing cartwheels at feeling seen. I knew something good just happened, but I didn’t believe I could really have it.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-false-meaning-of-happiness">The false meaning of happiness</h2>



Happiness is, arguably, <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/anxiety-zen/201511/why-is-happiness-so-hard-10-reasons-10-solutions" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the one thing everyone in the world wants</a> the most, yet <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/anxiety-zen/201511/why-is-happiness-so-hard-10-reasons-10-solutions" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">it often feels impossibly difficult to access</a>. So, it makes sense that when we are offered moments of happiness, we may not always receive them because we buy into the myth that it’s some elusive, impossible achievement.



That’s because, says Harrison, we believe in what she refers to as Old Happy, which is rooted in the idea that <a href="https://zenhabits.net/external-happiness/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">happiness is external</a>, and things like working harder will lead us to fame and popularity, which brings lots of money and, thus, more possessions, which will mean we’re perfect and people will like us and we will have won in the competition of life.



Spoiler alert: That’s the wrong way!



Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/30-spring-quotes/">28 Spring Quotes About Change, Resilience, Hope and Happiness</a>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-to-discover-ultimate-happiness">How to discover ultimate happiness</h2>



<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/15-lifestyle-hacks-for-finding-happiness/">To truly be happy</a>, we’ve got to kick Old Happy to the curb, and rediscover the true source of our happiness: each other.



In New Happy, Harrison emphasizes that “the self needs other selves,” and when we discuss this, she tells me that the greatest fiction in the world is this collective delusion we have that it’s not true. American culture has taught us that to be <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-be-a-successful-solopreneur/">successful</a>, we’ve got to go it alone, pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and proving our strength and resilience to the world. But the true arc of life, says Harrison, shows different data.



“A woman carried you and birthed you, and then from that moment, for you to be where you are, there had to be people who loved and cared for you and supported you,” she says. “Even if they did it inadequately, even if they didn't show up in a way, they still brought you to this moment. And the millions or hundreds or thousands of people who touched you in different ways that shaped you into the person that you are, every single one of them has their fingerprints on you. That shift of recognizing that we are all connected, the more we can <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/beyond-first-impressions-6-ways-to-deepen-your-connections/">contribute to those connections</a> because we can see all that they’ve contributed to us.”







<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-human-connection-and-the-collective-brain">Human connection and the collective brain</h2>



In her book, Harrison describes the <a href="https://henrich.fas.harvard.edu/files/henrich/files/muthukrishna_henrich_2016.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">collective brain</a>. Most of us, she shares, have this idea that humans are smart because of geniuses like <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Albert-Einstein" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Albert Einstein</a>, but, in fact, “human intelligence comes from all of us contributing all of our great ideas and unique perspectives. And over time, that builds into something that could never be replicated and could certainly never be touched by one person.”



Harrison has had the blueprints for her message for a long time, and New Happy was the building she constructed after more than 10 years of research. In 2018, three years after finishing her master’s thesis, “The Importance of Acting Upon What’s Within: A New Definition of Happiness,” at the University of Pennsylvania, she realized she had a message people needed to hear.



She started a <a href="https://www.thenewhappy.com/podcast" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">newsletter</a> with just 17 subscribers, where she used her own art as a complement to the messages. Slowly, her subscribers grew, as did her <a href="https://www.instagram.com/newhappyco/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">social media following</a>, where she posts videos that offer up deep insight and actionable ideas backed by science. With a <a href="https://www.thenewhappy.com/podcast" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">podcast</a> and a book added to her offerings, her community can find a route to happiness that suits their needs.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-3-lies-we-tell-ourselves-about-happiness">3 lies we tell ourselves about happiness</h2>



Some of the guidance Harrison offers centers around changing our attachment to the three lies she says we tell ourselves about how happiness is achieved. The three lies are:



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-lie-no-1-you-re-not-enough">Lie No.1: You’re not enough.</h3>



“Because we live in a society and a culture that makes money based on telling us that we’re not enough, we have created a relational system that <a href="https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-is-the-achievement-ideology.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">values people based upon their achievements</a>, their appearance, their success, their power and then we deem them as worthier or less worthy than others,” she says.



“And this leads us to view ourselves always through a lens of <a href="https://openup.com/self-guided-care/blog/comparing-ourselves-to-others/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">comparison</a> to another person. We have systemic factors that contribute to certain groups of people feeling unvalued by society or marginalized and oppressed. We have systems in place in schools and universities and governments and workplaces that rank people by their productivity and their output. So, all of that together, plus many more factors, ends up coming together to create a world of people who do not believe that they are enough.”



She says when she started <a href="https://www.thenewhappy.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The New Happy</a> movement, she thought she was the only one out there who didn’t think she was good enough. But it was her community that validated what she didn’t yet know: Everyone else felt the same.



“I was truly kind of shocked because I thought, ‘oh, this is my secret shame. This is a ‘me’ problem. How is it that these strangers also have this problem?’ And…it’s the No. 1 thing I hear from people, and we all think we’re alone in it. We all think that we’re the only one who’s broken. And it’s terribly tragic. And it’s also an opportunity for us to notice and to try and make change happen.”



Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/gratitude-journals/">Use a Gratitude Journal to Boost Your Happiness</a>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-lie-no-2-you-ll-be-happy-when">Lie No.2: You’ll be happy when…</h3>



Harrison says we’re fed ideas that to be happy, we need to achieve more, do more and push more, and our <a href="https://durmonski.com/well-being/materialism-in-society/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">cultural obsession with materialistic values</a> and the pursuit of extrinsic goals is making us the opposite of happy.



She believes once people realize they’re enough just as they are, they won’t have to turn themselves into anything else to feel worthy. It’s the pursuit of becoming yourself, she says, “that ultimately ends up being what can make you happy and not having to tie your well-being to something at the end.”



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-lie-no-3-you-re-on-your-own">Lie No.3: You’re on your own.</h3>



Harrison is fascinated by just how pervasive the idea is that happiness is something you get for yourself by yourself in our culture, and she says she dreams of a kind of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Wonderful-Wizard-Oz-Frank-Baum/dp/1495421864" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Wizard of Oz</a> moment where we all see behind the curtain and realize nothing was as we truly thought. “Once you see [the truth], you kind of can’t unsee it,” she adds.



She believes that if we want to prevent suffering and create more joy, we must <a href="https://www.bustle.com/wellness/how-to-support-friend-going-through-difficult-time" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">show up for those going through difficulties</a> who may not have the resources or support systems they need.



“At the heart of all of our problems, there is one solution, and it’s to help each other,” she says. “It’s the only solution. And we can fight it, or we can embrace it. And how incredibly amazing that it turns out that helping people makes you feel good, too.”



Case in point: That question Harrison asked me at the end of our call.



Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/work-happiness-method-stella-grizont/">Stella Grizont’s Work Happiness Method: 8 Skills for Career Fulfillment</a>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-connection-between-kindness-and-happiness">The connection between kindness and happiness</h2>



Kindness can often feel like an urban legend in our <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/slow-productivity/">hustle culture</a> where we’re too busy to lift our heads from our phones long enough to exchange a smile, or remove our hands from our keyboards to gently touch someone’s shoulder as we ask, “what good can I do for you today with no expectation of a return?”



When the authenticity of her question offered me a very real moment of happiness I could not seem to access, I know it’s because I’ve been operating at an Old Happy mindset that told me true strength lies in helping yourself, not asking others for support. I want to live in a New Happy world, so I do two things: I ask Harrison if we could meet again to connect on a deeper level if for no other reason than because we can, and then I take a cue from her playbook and text five people I love: “Is there anything I can do to support you?”



I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t happy after those simple acts. Could it really be that easy?



“After all this research, I just have such absolute certainty that helping is the only path forward,” Harrison says. “And it just happens to be the greatest blessing in the world that it also ends up being what serves us at the same time.”



Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/6-easy-activities-to-increase-happiness-every-day/">6 Easy Activities to Increase Happiness Every Day</a>



Photo courtesy of Xavier Lorenzo/Shutterstock

Uncover author Stephanie Harrison's practical mindset shifts that lead to happiness and can ultimately change your life for the better.

Author Stephanie Harrison shares practical mindset shifts that lead to happiness.

Finding Happiness: Mindset Shifts to Change Your Life | SUCCESS

Author of New Happy Shares The Key to True Happiness

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Finding Happiness: Mindset Shifts to Change Your Life

Carlos soto and Michael Arbanas in a mezcal field

Nosotros Tequila, started with two friends selling tequila out of their backpacks and became the largest self-distributing tequila and mezcal company in California at one point.&nbsp;



It was a Friday night in September 2015. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlosmsoto/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Carlos Soto</a> was sitting in a bar conducting a social experiment by watching what drinks people were ordering. His findings revealed two things: There were massive amounts of tequila-based drinks being consumed, and when patrons were asked which brand they wanted, the options were surprisingly limited.



But why was he at a bar conducting a secret survey?



Flashback to a few hours before, when Soto was in his class “Managing New Ventures,” at Los Angeles’ Loyola Marymount University. The professor had just given a specific assignment: Pitch a business idea unrelated to technology. Tequila was the first thing that came to mind.



“I saw so many millennials and young people coming in and ordering tequila, but there was a complete disconnect with the brands,” Soto recalls. “The brands were Patrón and Don Julio, and that was kind of the extent of it. There wasn’t really much else there.”



His experiment prompted him to look deeper into the industry, and he discovered tequila was experiencing quite a bit of growth. Today, nearly a decade later, it’s hard to imagine the tequila landscape as barren, but Soto says this was “before every celebrity and their mother had a tequila brand.”



“Casamigos wasn’t even a thing,” Soto adds, referencing the George Clooney-led tequila brand.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-origins-of-nosostros-tequila">Origins of Nosostros Tequila</h2>



Soto, who was born and raised in Costa Rica, says he didn’t know much about the culture when he came to the U.S. on a college scholarship. “I’ve never been much of a beer person, and one thing that I really learned being here in California was tequila as a whole,” he says, adding that the large Mexican influence he was exposed to was most felt in the food and drinks.



“I fell in love with it,” he says, “and, really quickly, it kind of became my drink of choice.”



In December 2015, not long after that fateful class, Soto found himself in Mexico, visiting tequila farms and distilleries to better understand its production.



He found a small family-run tequila distillery in Jalisco willing to take a chance on a college kid with no resume in the spirits industry, and after using $2,500 of his savings, Soto returned home with seven different samples of a tequila blanco. He enlisted 13 of his family, friends and teachers to critique and rank them all. When the one Soto secretly favored was deemed a clear winner, the idea was cemented: He would create a tequila company.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-finding-the-right-business-partner">Finding the right business partner</h2>



Soto knew if he was going to be successful, he had to have the <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-pick-a-business-partner/">right business partner</a>.



Enter his college friend <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-arbanas-79021196/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Michael Arbanas</a>, who was a year behind him in school but was his equal in terms of vision, drive and talent.



Arbanas was interning as an analyst at a bank while earning a bachelor’s in finance, but he wasn’t happy.



“The reason why [<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/this-is-my-key-to-a-successful-partnership/">partnering</a>] was so attractive to me is we got to build the business from zero to one,” Arbanas says. He also knew that everything he was learning in his internship and finance classes could be applied to building a new business.



“The real kicker,” he says, “is we have very complementing personalities and skill sets,” adding that he and Soto “also spoke the same language in terms of business.”



Though Arbanas says he and Soto had no idea they would become so successful, he knew they had a big opportunity in front of them.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-nosotros-tequila-enters-the-industry">Nosotros Tequila enters the industry</h2>



“We saw the market shift,” he says. “We obviously didn’t have the funds that a lot of these big companies had to kind of do it quickly, but it was an industry that we loved, and it was very appealing.”



After Soto graduated in 2016 with a bachelor of business administration degree and a major in entrepreneurial studies, he went to Bank of America in Westchester and took out a personal loan for $18,000. It was just enough, he says, to make their first official batch of tequila.



Unfortunately, that was the easy part.



“We had tons of issues bringing back the bottles,” Soto says, pointing to incorrectly sized and placed labels. As a result, they didn’t sell their first bottle until January 2017.



That wasn’t even taking into account the regulations and hurdles to overcome in the alcohol industry both domestically and internationally since their product came from Mexico. They didn’t yet have name recognition and reputation in their favor, and perhaps the biggest detriment at the time was their age.



Soto says, because he and Arbanas were just 21 and 22 at the time, it was difficult to convince bar owners that they had a high-quality product. Their biggest challenge was convincing them to try it.



Arbanas remembers the <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/7-challenges-successful-people-overcome/">challenge</a> being made bigger by the fact that they were “selling out of our backpacks and not having enough product to leave behind at bars. So, if someone did give us the opportunity, we had to take it there and then.”



Despite a clear passion for their product and a genuine desire to build relationships and create community—the name Nosotros means “us/we” in Spanish—they didn’t have enough accounts. Soto’s visa was about to expire, and morale was running low.



Then, they heard about the San Francisco World Spirits Competition.



“We had $2,000 left in the bank,” Soto says. “It cost $500 to compete in that competition, so [it was] a little bit of a Hail Mary.”



<a href="https://nosotrostequila.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Nosotros Tequila</a> won the double gold, best tequila blanco of the show and best tequila blanco across all categories, which included major brands like Casamigos and Patrón.



“It kind of gave us that outside validation that we really needed as a brand,” Soto says. “Especially in our category of somebody else saying, ‘These guys have something that’s good.’ And from there, we were able to start setting these appointments…. It was just enough to kind of get that initial movement.”



Total Wine became their first major client, opening up the door to places like BevMo!, Gelson’s and Bristol Farms.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-leaders-in-the-tequila-industry">Leaders in the tequila industry</h2>



At one point, Nosotros Tequila was the largest self-distributing tequila and mezcal company in California. The brand was awarded $1.5 million in funding led by NewBound Ventures and valued at $40 million. Arbanas and Soto were named <a href="https://www.forbes.com/30-under-30/2023/food-drink?profile=nosotros-tequila-mezcal" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2023</a> and have expanded from just the two of them selling from backpacks to a staff of 26 selling in seven states.



Now, as leaders, they have more leverage to make decisions that matter. This means choosing to work with Citlali Ovalle, one of the few female master distillers in Mexico, at the women-run and -led Destiladora Del Valle distillery in Tequila, Mexico, co-owned by Celia Maestri, who is dedicated to promoting women in the spirits industry. They use 100% recycled glass bottles, corks made of sugarcane and labels made from agave fibers left over from the cooking process.



Much like the tequila they make, whose plants take years to mature, the profound changes that happen with time are realities they understand quite well. So, too, is the human element involved in the entire process, and it’s something they’ll never sacrifice in favor of volume or geographical reach. For them, the people part of tequila—the nosotros—is what matters.



“We didn’t start this yesterday, and we didn’t start this with $10 million,” Arbanas says. “When I get the privilege to talk to people [who] run restaurants or people [who] make cocktails, that’s the biggest thing I try to hit home.” He knows they’re serving up something far more valuable than the big-dollar brands by <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-stand-out-from-the-competition/">differentiating themselves</a> because they prioritize “human capital and hiring good people—and just being good people.”



This article originally appeared in the July/August 2024 issue of <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/">SUCCESS</a> magazine. Photo courtesy of Nosotros Tequila.

Founders of Nosotros Tequila speak on company growth and becoming the largest self-distributing tequila and mezcal company in California.

Founders of Nosotros Tequila speak on how they grew as a company and became the largest self-distributing tequila and mezcal company in California. | SUCCESS

Business Lessons From Nosotros Tequila Co. | SUCCESS.com

Nosotros Tequila: How Two Friends Created the Largest Self-Distributing Tequila and Mezcal Company in California

Business Lessons from Nosotros Tequila | SUCCESS

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At the age of 8, standing on a field in Mexico City, playing flag football with a group of 16-year-old girls, Diana Flores could never have known she’d fall in love. That fast, agile little girl who grew up watching her father play tackle football—a sport allocated to men, who also got paid to play—would never have imagined herself as a star. Not even when she was 13, playing on an all-boys flag football team, and outrunning them all, in the <a href="https://nflflag.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">NFL FLAG Football</a> League in Mexico City.



Even when she earned a spot on the Mexico Women’s Flag Football team at just 16, darting and bobbing across the field with the force of a tornado, she still didn’t see the game as a viable career path. How could she? She didn’t see women flag football stars in the NFL or in commercials representing the sport. She didn’t see stadiums full of fans cheering for women, all of whom could give any male player a run for their money.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-diana-flores-is-changing-the-game">Diana Flores is changing the game</h2>



Yet here she is—a <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/why-are-role-models-important/">role model</a> for what’s possible. Not just for women in flag football, but for women in all sports. A model for what’s possible for girls who don’t want to have to answer questions about their value, their talents or their right to be on the field.



If you ask Flores what she most wants to be known for, though, it’s one thing: promise.



The promise that the future she didn’t see as a girl will not be the reality for girls today. The promise that flag football will pay a living wage, allowing women to quit their day jobs and give everything to the sport instead of struggling to pay the bills while also playing the sport they love. The promise that Latinas and women will see themselves represented in sports arenas everywhere, for any sport, but especially for flag football.



“It’s a very inclusive sport,” Flores says, adding that “one of the things I love the most about flag is that it has no stereotypes regarding athletes. So no matter who you are, no matter where you’re from, no matter your strengths, you can always find a place on the field.”







<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-rise-of-flag-football">The rise of flag football</h2>



Though Flores says the non-contact sport—which can be played co-ed by people of any age—was around even before she began playing 19 years ago, its meteoric rise in recent years is impressive. The NFL calls it one of the fastest-growing sports, with more than 20 million players in over 100 countries.



Some of the best predictions for the sport come from those connected to tackle football, like <a href="https://www.nfl.com/author/troy-vincent" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Troy Vincent Sr.</a>, executive vice president of NFL Football Operations, who says, “When I’m asked what the next 100 years looks like when you look at football—not professional football—it’s flag. It’s the inclusion and the true motto of ‘football for all.’”



These words, and the statistics that validate them, mean everything to Flores, who says these milestones help bring interest and awareness of the game. In turn, this means there will be more people who invest in the sport and make big decisions that would allow women to one day “make a living from playing the sport we love.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-diana-flores-super-bowl-commercial">Diana Flores Super Bowl commercial</h2>



In addition to the success Flores and her team experienced at the <a href="https://playfootball.nfl.com/discover/video-gallery/the-diana-flores-story/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">2022 World Games</a>, there’s one other competition she has found herself a part of that may help expedite that dream: the Super Bowl.



She was the star of the Emmy Award-winning Super Bowl LVII commercial, <a href="https://nflflag.com/run-with-it" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Run With It</a>, which focused on her circumnavigating obstacles put in her path while people tried to grab her flags. Tennis legend <a href="https://www.billiejeanking.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Billie Jean King</a> helped her by slamming a door on those who got in her way (a striking metaphor for real-life challenges faced by female athletes), and Flores was jumping over roofs like a true action hero while many famous NFL players watched her triumph.



“It was an amazing experience for me to be able to work with incredible people—the NFL players, Billie Jean King and all the people behind the scenes,” Flores says, adding that the best part was the acknowledgment that “we all knew that what we were doing had a big purpose, that the message was empowerment. The message at the end was a message of unity.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-voice-for-the-latina-community">A voice for the Latina community</h2>



The unity goes beyond sports for Flores. “Another thing I really feel proud of is giving a voice to my Latina community,” she says. “That was a very powerful moment in the Super Bowl when [for many in my community, it was the first time] we heard our native language being spoken at a big platform like the Super Bowl.”



<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/representation-matters-5-tips-for-creating-a-business-worth-supporting/">Representation matters</a>, and Flores is passionate about being a leader not just for her sport but also for her country and culture. She remembers a particularly poignant exchange she had with a Latino family who sent her a message after seeing her commercial.



“[They told me], ‘We have been struggling with our daughter to speak Spanish because [she] feels ashamed,’” Flores recalls. She adds, “That’s a thing that still happens. [Kids] feel ashamed to speak Spanish at their schools because they feel that they are the only ones.” The parents told her, “‘We haven’t been able to make her feel proud until she watched that Super Bowl commercial. And one of the first things she saw was the Mexico flag on you. And when she heard you speaking Spanish, she felt super proud. And the day after, she went back to school and just started telling everybody that she was from Mexico, too, and all the kids started asking her, how do you say hello in Spanish? How do you say this in Spanish?’”



“And all the mentality changed,” Flores continues. “To hear those kinds of stories was like, wow. I didn’t even imagine that a thing like that could have that impact. And probably that changed her life or many other young kids’ lives [in] the way they see themselves.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-fame-and-women-s-flag-football">Fame and women’s flag football</h2>



Eventually, Flores noticed that people who didn’t know about flag football were starting to recognize her.



“The most amazing thing about that for me is that they discovered a new sport,” she says. “They discovered that women belong in football.”



Flores is also an ambassador for <a href="https://about.underarmour.com/en/stories/2023/08/diana-flores-joins-under-armour-as-the-first-flag-football-globa.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Under Armour</a>, making her the first flag football athlete to sign a sponsorship deal with any major athletic company. She’s also the first flag football player to have a jersey in the <a href="https://www.profootballhof.com/news/2023/diana-flores-becomes-first-flag-football-player-with-artifacts-in-pro-football-hall-of-fame/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Pro Football Hall of Fame</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-being-a-role-model">Being a role model</h2>



She joined the Mexico Women’s Flag Football Team at age 16 with the goal of becoming quarterback but did not achieve that <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/5-tips-for-setting-realistic-goals/">milestone</a> for nine years. She says she wasn’t immediately able to play the position she loved because she was still a rookie on the team.



“[There was] this stigma of ‘How are you going to be a good leader if you’re the youngest player of the team? How are you going to manage the pressure?’... I remember hearing a lot of times, ‘Oh, but you’re too small; you’re too short,’” Flores recalls.



Besides challenging the stereotypes others may have had, Flores says one of the most important things she learned was that she couldn’t control everything. What she could control was her perspective. For her, that meant changing her <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/everything-you-need-to-know-to-become-a-great-leader/">leadership</a>, how present she was and how connected she was to her teammates.



Ultimately, her willingness to work hard and never give up allowed her to create the kind of future that her 8-year-old self, standing in a field in Mexico City, could never have imagined.



“This was never my dream because it was not a possibility, period,” she says. “So right now, to be able to remind the girls or show the girls that this is now a possibility for them, that now they can dream this big, because now it is a reality—it is the biggest blessing. I take that as a big responsibility, because I’ve realized that what we do as athletes has a bigger impact than on the field. It is more than the game.”



“Being a role model means more than being a good player… it means <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-im-building-a-powerful-legacy-in-a-mans-world/">building a legacy</a> for the next generations. It means opening doors and honoring what other women have done before us, for us to be able to be where we are,” Flores adds. “I feel very proud and excited to be part of this movement of change that we’re living right now regarding women in sports. We’re finally building the platform that we have deserved.”&nbsp;



This article originally appeared in the <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/subscriptions/">May issue of SUCCESS+</a> digital magazine. Photo by ©Trevor M Smith.

Diana Flores is one of the biggest flag football stars in the world. Learn how she advocates for the Latino community and women’s sports.

Diana Flores is one of the biggest flag football stars in the world. Learn how she advocates for the Latino community and women’s sports. | SUCCESS

Changing The Game: Flag Football Star Diana Flores Is an Advocate for Women in Sports

Changing The Game: Diana Flores and Flag Football | SUCCESS

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Once upon a time, Danny Taing sat in his living room, stuffing subscription boxes with his mom.



If a drone flew over that room in 2015, you’d see bags of snacks scattered across tables and tumbling from three giant suitcases he brought back from Japan. You’d see simply designed postcards tucked inside each box alongside handwritten notes, which Taing meticulously wrote to thank the 20 subscribers he had. Yes, 20.



Those were the early days, when “bootstrapping” and “beta testing” were the words of the day. Now, the living rooms Taing shares with his husband in Shinjuku, Tokyo, and New York City are for sitting or being interviewed for stories at 1 a.m.—since many reporters call from the United States—just a few hours before he has to catch a flight for a business meeting.



Today, he has added new words to his lexicon, like “Series A” because he raised $22 million at a $100-million valuation; “growth” as he acquired subscription box company Japan Crate; and “Nasdaq,” which he opened earlier this year alongside the nonprofit Gold House, which champions Asian Pacific creators and companies.



The man who stuffed boxes by hand with his mom now has employees in a warehouse in Japan stuffing and shipping 20,000 to 30,000 boxes a month to customers in 100 countries for his company <a href="https://www.bokksu.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bokksu</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-danny-taing-s-success-story">Danny Taing’s success story</h2>



But how did he grow to become an entrepreneur success story eight years after his fourth—not first—startup idea that would become the foundation for his e-commerce empire?



The answer: appetite.



It was Taing’s love for Japanese snacks, and the important cultural traditions they carry, alongside his love for the country and its language (which he studied at Tokyo’s Waseda University) that cemented a future he could never have imagined.



<figure class="wp-block-image alignleft size-large is-resized"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/SnackBox_Seasons_Hero_Square-1024x1024.jpg" alt="product image of orange Bokksu box surrounded by oils and other snacks " class="wp-image-73162" style="width:300px"/></figure>



As the son of Cambodian-Chinese refugees of the Khmer Rouge—who escaped to New York City in 1979—young Danny Taing watched his parents work tirelessly to build a life for their family in America. His father was a dishwasher and his mother was a seamstress before they opened their own retail store. Bootstrapping was already in his DNA, as was the blueprint to build something from scratch, though it would take him some time to fully realize this.



Taing never set out to become an entrepreneur. After graduating from Stanford with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and communications and a master’s in sociology, he worked in business development at Rakuten in Tokyo and in digital marketing at Google in Mountain View, California. The plan was to become a software engineer, but when his friend and fellow Stanford alum convinced him to drop out of the computer science program he was pursuing at Columbia University to co-found a project with him, he thought, “What’s the worst that can happen?”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-redefining-the-word-failure-nbsp">Redefining the word “failure”&nbsp;</h2>



The products that have made many business owners successful would not be what they are without the many alterations, tweaks and, sometimes, failed attempts they endured first. But what does <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/why-failure-is-good-for-success/">the word “fail” mean</a>, really? It’s nothing more than trying and not having your efforts turn out the way you thought—or perhaps hoped—they would. This was what happened for Taing, who tried three different businesses before finding the right fit. First there was a consumer-to-consumer marketplace similar to Craigslist, then an online tutoring company, then a career coaching and interview prep platform.



“By that point, I was like a year into this whole startup idea journey,” Taing recalls. “We hadn’t even launched anything, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I need to actually make something work.’ And that’s when I came up with the idea of doing Bokksu because it has built-in retention because it’s a subscription box.”



When his friend didn’t want to join in the endeavor, Taing decided to launch on his own. He found that since he already had the experience of forming a company, he was able to go from concept to beta launch in two months.



He says he doesn’t consider anything he did prior to Bokksu a failure, as his experiences taught him more about what he actually wanted to be doing with his time and talents. “All of those ideas were learning experiences that built off each other that then built to me ultimately doing Bokksu,” he says.



But that certainly doesn’t mean building Bokksu was easy. Far from it.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-challenges-of-founding-bokksu">The challenges of founding Bokksu</h2>



Because the world of shipping food-based subscription boxes was so new, Taing says there were nonstop challenges—the biggest one being, “How do I get these snacks?”



<figure class="wp-block-image alignright size-large is-resized"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Bokksu_SnackBox_Lifestyle_23_Square-1024x1024.jpg" alt="product image of hand dropping potato stick snacks into a ceramic bowl next to a bright pink bag of the potato sticks" class="wp-image-73163" style="width:300px"/></figure>



He had no supply chain, so he purchased premium, regionally made Japanese snacks from high-end department stores in Tokyo and brought them back in suitcases. At the time, Taing says there were around 20 players in the Japanese snack subscription box space, but what most people outside Japan knew about the country’s snacks consisted mostly of pop culture-oriented treats like Kit Kats, Pocky, sodas and candies.



“I was doing something very different from everybody else,” Taing says. “I was the first, and, at the time, only—for a long time—player getting into more of the authentic regional… snacks that I think Japan is much much better at and much more famous for inside Japan.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-danny-taing-sets-himself-apart-from-the-competition">Danny Taing sets himself apart from the competition</h2>



To understand how famous Japan is for snacks, and why <a href="https://amzn.to/3N5sOFU" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">what Bokksu offers</a> is so different, Taing says it’s helpful to understand omiyage, a custom in Japanese culture of gifting a premium souvenir to others after returning from a trip.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“In America, I feel like souvenir is this idea of this keychain… you maybe gifted somebody or you get yourself,” he says. In Japan, “it’s very much like you get this gift box of 12 individually wrapped snacks from this region in Hokkaido you went to… then you bring it back, and then you share it with your family or you share it with your co-workers.”



Every snack has a story, he says, because they’re generally from a family business in a specific region of Japan that uses local ingredients and has some history attached to it.



At Bokksu, he tells the stories of those products and the people who make them, not in a simple postcard he made, but now in a 24-page magazine created by five staffers. And that staff, which has evolved from a party of one to 75, is just as important to his business operation as his mission. As a gay Asian founder, Taing is proud that 80% of his team identifies as <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/embracing-diversity-increasing-inclusion-in-the-workplace/">BIPOC</a>, female and/or <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/beyond-performative-rainbows-how-businesses-can-support-the-lgbtq-community-for-and-with-pride/">LGBTQ+</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-bokksu-s-secret-its-people">Bokksu’s secret? Its people</h2>



Focusing on people has made all the difference in Danny Taing’s business model, proving that even with competition in a crowded marketplace, you can still carve out a niche and uphold a <a href="https://hbr.org/2019/11/why-are-we-here">mission that matters</a>.



Because the families Bokksu works with have been producing the same snacks for generations, they take pride in what they’re doing and care about preserving their family legacy more than profit.



“I love that mission because, in my opinion, [it’s] a win-win for everybody,” Taing says. “The customers win because they get to taste quality, delicious snacks that not only taste good but have a story behind it… The vendors win because their family legacy can go on, and they can sustain their business in a way that is profitable…. And then, of course, for us… we get to also win because then we kind of bridge and… elevate everybody along the way and help bring the world a little bit closer.”



Photos courtesy of Bokksu.

Danny Taing founded Bokksu, the hit Japanese snack subscription box, in his small apartment. Now, it’s an international sensation.

Danny Taing founded Bokksu, the hit Japanese snack subscription box, in his small apartment. Now, it’s an international sensation. | SUCCESS

Thinking Outside the Box: How Entrepreneur Danny Taing Is Bringing Japan to Your Door

How Danny Taing Founded Bokksu—And Became a Millionaire | SUCCESS

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Bertony Faustin Oregons First Black Winemaker Abbey Creek Vineyard founder sitting at a wooden table in overalls in front of wine barrels

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This is not a story about wine.&nbsp;



However, it does feature 15 acres of grapes growing on 50 acres of land in the west hills of Portland, Oregon; two tasting rooms tucked into the borders of the famed Willamette Valley; and a farmer in Carhartt overalls driving a tractor through verdant fields.



Bertony Faustin, the man behind <a href="https://www.abbeycreekvineyard.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Abbey Creek Vineyard</a>, is transforming the fruits of his labor into products that have both oenophiles and newbies scrambling to fill their glasses. But listen to him for just five minutes and you’ll realize his story goes beyond tannins or minerality.



Make your way into <a href="https://www.abbeycreekvineyard.com/visit-us.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Crick</a>, the winery’s original property in the bucolic North Plains, and you might hear the gentle ripple of water flowing through the creek while gallons of macerating grapes slosh in barrels. Walk into his tasting room, The Crick PDX, and you might hear a curated selection of ’90s hip-hop spun by a DJ, laughter from the birthday party of a 70-year-old grandmother or engaged conversation between strangers. No matter which of Faustin’s spaces someone might discover, they all provide the same sensation: a profound sense of belonging.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-bridging-two-worlds">Bridging two worlds</h2>



While the act of belonging makes no sound, its absence can feel as loud as a thunderstorm.



Coming from two vastly different cultures, Faustin knows that clamor by heart. His parents and two siblings came to Brooklyn, New York, from Haiti in 1969. Faustin and two other siblings were born in the United States.



“Growing up in New York in the ’80s, it wasn’t cool to be Haitian….” he recalls. “Haitians shunned you because you weren’t Haitian enough, and the American kids… shunned [you] because you were too Haitian. So we lived in this weird dichotomy mixed between two worlds and two lives.”



Faustin’s identity was further complicated by the fact that there were expectations around his career path.



“If you’re not a doctor, lawyer or engineer, you’re a failure to the family,” he shares. “[My parents’] lives were so difficult, and they had nothing, so in their minds, the only thing that would make you successful is these titles.”



Though he longed to rebel from these prescribed ideas, his guilt of never being enough led him to attempt a pre-med path, only to stop and start classes enough times to realize it was never going to happen. His compromise was to become an anesthesia technician, which allowed for flexibility in finding work in other cities. He had his sights set on California, but after a job took him to Oregon, he met his wife, started a family and planted what would become his first of many roots in the state.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-bertony-faustin-finds-his-true-calling">Bertony Faustin finds his true calling</h2>



When his father unexpectedly died in 2007, Faustin experienced a profound shift—realizing that <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/john-c-maxwell-how-to-carve-out-your-lifes-passion/">life was too short to be unfulfilled</a>. And though he didn’t immediately know what would drive that fulfillment career-wise, he figured that using the resources already available to him would be a good place to start. His in-laws had 5 acres of grapes on their property in the west hills of Portland, and although he wasn’t a drinker, and knew next to nothing about the taste—or the making—of wine, he quit his job in anesthesia, bought their property and became a winemaker.



Though Faustin didn’t have a particular passion for wine, he did have a catalyst spurring him forward: his DNA. He knew if his parents could come to the U.S. without speaking the language or having a degree and could find success, then he could make wine.



He didn’t read how-to books or get any industry certifications, but he did attend a wine school in Salem, Oregon, for three months, dropping out after realizing he had something no one else in class did: grapes.



“Everyone in the program was interested and passionate about wine, and I was like, ‘Well, I got grapes,’” he laughs. “I was the only one in the class who actually had a vineyard.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-abbey-creek-vineyard-is-born">Abbey Creek Vineyard is born</h2>



Fifteen years later, he still has something many others don’t: a product people go out of their way to experience. His North Plains location differs from wineries in other parts of the state in that it’s very much off the beaten path, and you only end up there on purpose—the purpose, for most visitors, is Faustin himself.



It’s not difficult to understand why. His voice unfurls the way a cigar does—first with a larger-than-life expansiveness, filling the room and then dissolving into the fibers of your clothes such that the memory of its presence sticks with you long after you leave. He’ll spout profound, sometimes goosebump-inducing bits of wisdom that he’s learned along the way, which he imparts to his customers. Then, he’ll open his soul and invite you into <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/lewis-howes-on-the-power-of-vulnerability-and-authenticity/">vulnerable conversations</a>, laying bare his struggles as a means of authentic connection.



He says his life has always been filled with darkness, pointing to moments of his youth where it was easiest not to get happy, “so you didn’t get sad.” This way of thinking, he says, where he failed to believe in anybody, also meant that he didn’t believe in himself. Today, he admits to <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/youve-been-conditioned-into-low-self-esteem-heres-how-to-get-it-back/">owning his broken parts</a> and not being afraid to be vulnerable about his experiences, as he believes it’s the shared experiences that connect us to each other.



“I finally understand that I am enough, and this last journey with the wine industry and everything that I do has allowed me to see some of that,” he says.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-it-s-bertony-faustin-who-draws-people-in">It’s Bertony Faustin who draws people in</h2>



The profundity of his message is the real elixir that brings people through his doors, because if you ask Faustin, wine is merely the delivery mechanism for something greater.



Take an experience he had at his Crick PDX location, which he says tends to draw more travelers and those attending conventions.



“One day, I had four Black women… come within 15 minutes of [each other],” he says.



The women told him they came because they heard about his story. Thirty minutes in, he watched them move to the same table and share their food with each other. Because of his influence and the platform he created, he was able to catalyze an experience like that for others.



He recalls another experience where three different groups came through his winery. When he asked how they got there and why, they all said it was because of him.



“I’m like, ‘Well, no, you came from Florida…. What else are you doing in town?’ and they’re like, ‘Nothing. We came because of you.’ And it still [messes] me up,” he admits. “But if I don’t at least acknowledge and try to celebrate or understand the influence I have on others, it’s almost a disservice to them.”



Creating spaces where people feel they belong is so important to Faustin that he’s willing to remove himself from a massively influential industry by speaking out about how systemic issues like institutionalized racism, colonialism and privilege obstruct minority winemakers from flourishing.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-red-white-and-black-documentary">The Red, White and Black documentary</h2>



To shine a light on the disparities in the wine industry, he created his own production company to make the 2018 documentary <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7056988/">Red, White and Black</a>. The film details the challenges and successes of Oregon winemakers of color and in the LGBTQ+ community who have often been excluded from industry recognition.



In the film, Faustin shares that, “historically, in the U.S., a winemaker is a white male who has had privileged access and opportunity. Being a minority in any industry, you’re being looked at. Some days it rolls off your back, and other days it hurts.”



The hurt shows up when customers come into his tasting room, asking about the winemaker. When he tells them he’s the winemaker, he says he often gets confused looks.



“And then they’re like, ‘Well, you don’t have a vineyard, do you?’” he adds. “And I’m like, ‘Yeah. I’ve got a 50-acre property,’ and it was always, ‘Well, how?’”



The “how” is a question worth unpacking, as it speaks to the history of equitable distribution of land in this country.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-two-sides-of-being-oregon-s-first-black-winemaker">The two sides of being Oregon’s first Black winemaker</h2>



The Oregon Donation Land Act of 1850, which gave white males and their wives 640 acres of land, explicitly excluded Black people from owning any land. In 1920, <a href="https://www.tennessean.com/in-depth/news/american-south/2022/11/16/the-receipts-documented-discrimination-against-black-farmers/69609225007/">African Americans accounted for 14% of the nation’s farmers</a>, yet today, that number has fallen to about 1%. When you dial it down further to Black-owned wineries, the number is <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/19/business/wine-diversity/index.html">less than 1%</a> of the approximately 11,000 wineries in the U.S. In Oregon, the first recorded winery was in the 1850s, yet the first Black winemaker in the state was Faustin in 2008.



It’s a fact that changed the way Faustin shows up. Like, literally.



“The industry told me in 2008 that I was Oregon’s first Black winemaker,” he says. “I didn’t care; I wasn’t doing it for the industry. I didn’t do it for anyone.”



It was a title he didn’t publicly own until 2012, after recognizing the opportunity he had to create a platform that wasn’t dictated by anyone else’s rhetoric.



“We hear the term ‘token’ all of our lives,” he says, “but I finally decided that someone needs to see. And that’s the thing: I won’t be their token ever. I’ll be my token every day because I get to choose the value of that.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-commitment-to-representation">A commitment to representation</h2>



Once Faustin embraced the limelight, he says he started seeing that the industry said he didn’t look the part. His solution? Show the industry who he truly was—a wine farmer who wears his overalls everywhere he goes.



“I wear overalls to black-tie events—with a button-down and tie… and you’d get this tuxedo guy who shows up and wants to know why,” he says. “And now I get to talk about representation without it being this tense subject.”



His commitment to authentic representation got him noticed by Carhartt, and he was invited to be a part of their 2018 #FriendsOfCarhartt campaign, which the company says celebrates “real, hard-working people and all the good things they do.” Faustin was featured across social media platforms, and his appearance in the company’s #ThankYou campaign about mentorship was aired live during college football games on ABC and ESPN.



“What I took away from that is showing up as you are every day,” he says, even when it doesn’t feel good. “Because we don’t get to choose who we influence; we get to choose how.”



How he influences is not unlike the way he makes wine: He lets it be. He believes nature is the best winemaker, and the grapes and yeast will do the important work. People, if given the right conditions, will do the same. This is what Faustin hopes for everyone who walks through his doors.



“One of the things I say all the time when people come to see us is, ‘You know how you walked into the door, but it’s up to me, how you leave,’” he says. “Now, imagine if not just businesses, but imagine if everybody who you ran into, you thought about that. You get to change or decide how they leave you. I think it would be a different world.”



This article originally appeared in the <a href="https://store.success.com/by-media/success-magazine-nov-dec-2023-tamron-hall.html">November/December 2023 issue</a> of SUCCESS magazine. Photography by Dan Hawk/Courtesy of Bertony Faustin.

Bertony Faustin, founder of Abbey Creek Vineyard, is so much more than Oregon’s first Black winemaker. Here's what drives him.

Bertony Faustin, founder of Abbey Creek Vineyard, is so much more than Oregon’s first Black winemaker. Here's what drives him. | SUCCESS

The Evolution of Bertony Faustin, Oregon’s First Black Winemaker

Bertony Faustin: Oregon’s First Black Winemaker | SUCCESS

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