36 | SUCCESS SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

H E A R H E R

S T O R Y

© G

REG

G D

ELM

AN

; © K

EITH

MA

JOR

h ave a l w ay s love d w hen jou r n a l i s t s start their articles detailing the location where they met a notable person for an interview.

I like to picture the white tablecloth on the outdoor patio of the fine-dining

est ablish ment or the br ig ht, moder n liv ing room if the interview was done in the luminary’s home. So imagine my disappointment when I wanted to start this piece describing my interview setting and all I had to work with was, “I sat in my New York City apartment closet, next to the dirty laundry, staring at the computer screen, waiting for the Zoom meeting to start.”

Such wa s l i fe du r i ng produc t ion of t h is issue, a s we all grappled with the hopefully momentary realities of the pandemic. However, these 10 powerhouse women proved the old adage true: It’s not about where you are, but who you’re with.

Through hours of conversation, the women you’ll read about on the following pages opened up about all aspects of success. Here, they each share a moment in time on their respective journeys; a story you may not have heard before but one that, as you seek your own version of success, will shed light and truth on what success means and what it takes to get there.

I

37

10 DYNAMIC WOMEN SHARE THE TALES OF THE

CHALLENGES AND TRIUMPHS THAT MADE THEM WHO

THEY ARE.

AS TOLD TO KINDR A HALL

© M

ICA

H K

AN

DRO

S

Music has always been a part of my life, an ancestral t h i ng for me. Most of my mot her ’s side of t he family sang and wrote songs or were preachers or

evangelists. In the South, evangelists are synonymous with singing. My mother was a singer, Motown wanted to sign her. In fact, the first original song that I knew was one my mother wrote for me to learn the days of the week when I was a child.

I started w riting music af ter graduating high school. I was good at English, I was good at music so I just took those two things and put them together and started writing my own songs. Then in college, I took my first paycheck from the bookstore where I worked and bought a guitar (which apparently wasn’t a good guitar—someone saw it and gave me a better one) and I wrote more.

Then one night, around that time, I had w ritten three songs and decided to play them one night at a little spot in

Savannah, Georgia. I remember I closed my eyes and sang my song and when I opened my eyes again, everything had changed. People were standing and clapping. People had come in from outside to listen. All I remember was all these people—it was so dramatic. I went home and told my mother what had happened. Though she loved music, having had her own taste of the industry, she had encouraged me to pursue an education instead. But something changed that day.

Not long after that, I’ll never forget, I was walking past the kitchen and my mother stopped me and said, “Let me ask you a question.” I could tell she was serious. “Do you want to sing in the kitchen? And at church like me and your aunts? Or do you want to really take a chance to be a singer?” I looked at her and said, “I want to take a chance.” And she said, “Take it seriously.” And so I did, and I have for the past 20 years since.

I N D I A . A R I EFOUR-TIME GRAMMY AWARD-WINNING R&B LEGEND

38 | SUCCESS SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

© D

UA

N D

AVIS

D u r i ng t he ent i re jou r ney t here were so m a ny naysayers; friends in my ear saying this was a bad decision or that no one was going to buy f lowers

that are packaged. Even my parents. They were trying to be supportive, sure, but they were scared. I was using my life savings to start a business. To move to a different country (Vancouver to New York City). To put everything on the line based only on the belief in myself.

The interesting thing was, that’s exactly what I’d watched my father do. He immigrated to Canada, risked everything, and eventually started his own company where he put us to work learning everything there was to know about being an entrepreneur. Through his example I learned, I just have to trust my gut. The best thing I ever did was believe in my own dreams, which I know sounds cliché, but it really is the magic tool to help you get where you want to be. You have to trust your journey; you have to keep going. And I think that’s the best thing I’ve ever done.

The day I was leaving Vancouver to start a business in New York with my new boyfriend (now husband) I was at the airport with my parents who still weren’t happy about it. But, I remember it so clearly, my dad looked at me and said, “You know what? Good luck. Do it. If you have to come back you can come back. But just go for it.” And I started to cry. My mom started to cry. He kind of started tearing up. It was really emotional. But I felt like it was the proper sendoff. He knew this was what the universe was telling me to do. It felt amazing.

I’ll never forget that day, leaving my parents. Being on my own with all my suitcases, running through the airport so I didn’t miss my flight. Literally chasing a dream that’s now come true.

S E E M A B A N S A LFOUNDER OF VENUS ET FLEUR, A MULTIMILLION-DOLLAR FLOWER BUSINESS

The first book I ever wrote was called Peggy Meets E g g y. It w a s t h r e e pie c e s of lo o s e -le a f p a p er stapled together and I was about 4 years old. Then

when I was a little older, I started a magazine and I sold subscriptions to my family members. Even at a young age, and beyond the writing itself, there was something about the writer’s life that felt like such a strong sense of destiny.

But when I was a few years older, my father took me aside and assured me that while it ’s a nice romantic dream to be a writer, it won’t be so romantic when you’re grown and can’t pay the bills, So I took a 15-year detour and practiced law instead. And I was pretty ambitious about it, pretty engaged in it and I really liked the firm where I practiced. But I used to live in Greenw ich Village in Ma n hat ta n across the street from the Barnes & Noble, and I would often go there late at night after work. A nd one night I found this book called Do W hat You Are. It was a book that had you take the Myers-Briggs personality test and match your ty pe to your ideal career. A ll of the careers that are mapped to my type were things like social worker, psychologist, clergy person and… writer.

Then came the year that I was up for partner at the law firm. They came and told me that I wasn’t going to make partner. I remember I was really upset, but I asked for a leave of absence, I left the firm three hours later and I never went back. A week later I signed up for a creative nonfiction writing at NYU.

I sat in that classroom on the very first night of class and I remember so distinctly where I was sitting, right in the midd le of the 12-desk horseshoe a r ra ngement, and thinking, “Okay, I found my home. This is where I’m supposed to be. This is what I’m supposed to be doing. I will never be able to make a living at this, but I’m organizing my whole life around it.” And I have.

S U S A N C A I NBEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF QUIET: THE POWER OF INTROVERTS IN A WORLD THAT CAN’T STOP TALKING AND FOUNDER OF QUIET REVOLUTION

© D

AN

NY

GIA

NG

; © C

OU

RTES

Y O

F SU

SAN

CA

IN

40 | SUCCESS SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

The first ballet class I ever took was on a basketball court.

I was one of six kids. My mother was a single parent and we faced a lot of challenges—mov ing a lot, changing schools. And while this was the only life I knew, I became an extremely introverted child. I learned to keep my mouth closed to avoid criticism from other kids. I never in my whole life felt like I ever f it in. I never felt like I ever belonged anywhere.

Those first few ballet classes were no different.The class was f ree at the loca l Boys & Girls Club a nd

designed for kids like me—diverse students who maybe didn’t have the access or the means to be a part of the ballet world otherwise. I remember walking into the gymnasium, onto the basketball court and immediately feeling out of place. There I was, 13 years old, which is ancient in ballet years, being thrust into this class that was so foreign to me, hearing music that I’d never heard before, and having an instructor manipulate my body to put it into different positions. Not to mention I was the only person in the class who wasn’t in a leotard, tights and ballet slippers; I was wearing a T-shirt, shorts and socks.

I remember thinking, “No, this isn’t for me, I don’t fit in. I don’t belong here.”

However, a week or two later, the instructor offered me a full scholarship to train at her school. My mother allowed me to go and my stepfather took me to the local ballet store, Alva’s. I remember putting on the leotard and tights for the first time and they immediately felt like a second skin. They fit. I fit. This is where I belonged. And for the first time in my life, I soared.

A nd then, yea rs later as a sololist at A merica n Ba llet Theatre in New York City, there was the night of the Firebird ballet performance, and everything changed for me.

I’ll never forget that nig ht, a nig ht that a lmost didn’t happen as I was keeping a pretty severe injury under wraps because I knew if the artistic staff and physical therapists had known the severity of my pain, they wouldn’t have allow me to perform. But my shows were sold out at the Metropolitan Opera House and I knew that more than half of the audience would be black and brown people, which had never happened before at the Met. I knew that many of them were coming for the very first time. As a woman who never felt like she belonged, I knew how important it was that I dance that night. I told myself: “Even if this is the last night that I ever perform on the stage again, it ’s going to do something huge for the ballet world, and for my community within the ballet world.”

I remember coming out onto the stage for the first time and, though all I saw was a sea of darkness, I could feel the energ y. The audience was cheering for so long and so loud that I couldn’t hear the orchestra. I thought to myself, “Well, I don’t know if I’m on the music or not, but I’m just gonna keep moving and see what happens.” The pride, and love, and energy that I felt from the audience was palpable. I’ve never experienced anything like it since.

That was my first and only show of Firebird during that Met season. The next day I told the artistic staff about my injur y, was in surger y sometime later and it took several months for me to recover and return to the stage. But it was more than worth it.

The Firebird performance was the night I realized; this is not even me up here. This is me representing all of the incredible Black women who didn’t get a chance to do what I did. The Black women, in all fields, who paved the way for me to have an opportunity to stand on that stage. I know now my purpose goes beyond ballet—that this child who once kept her mouth closed—can now be the voice to represent so many who may feel like they don’t belong.

M I S T Y C O P E L A N DFIRST AFRICAN-AMERICAN PRINCIPAL DANCER WITH THE PRESTIGIOUS AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE

I remember thinking, “No, this isn’t for me, I don’t fit in. I don’t belong here.”

41

CO

URT

ESY

OF

UN

DER

ARM

OU

R; ©

GEN

E SC

HIA

VON

E

Before I was a n author, I was a teacher. A nd then I took a brea k f rom teach ing a nd I had a whole bunch of babies in a row. One, t wo, three—I have

five children now—and for a while I was having them every other year. Then, right about the time my third kid was about to turn 2 a nd, according to our spaw ning cycle, unofficially meant it was baby time, I had an idea.

I remember I was in the car with my husband, he was driving, we were going somewhere. A nd it was that safe space, you know, because he was driving and couldn’t look at me, when I said the thing I was about to say. I told him, “It’s time to birth something. I think this summer, instead of having another baby, I’m going to write a book.” And he was like, “Well, that’s an interesting thing to say.”

Interesting was a nice way of putting it. I’d never written a book. Nobody was asking me to write a book. I didn’t even own a laptop. We were struggling financially. We had all these babies, and we were barely making it month to month and I’m pretty sure my husband thought, since we weren’t having another baby, I could go back to the classroom and relieve some of the financial pressure. So for me to say that I’m not going back to work and am going to write a book, God bless him for not driving into a tree.

Not only that, he went home a nd boug ht me a $200 laptop off Craigslist, plugged that sucker into our dial-up internet and told me, “I’ll figure out a way to work from home one day a week so you can have time to write.” He really believed in my dream, and he put wind behind it. And here we are, 12 books later.

J E N H A T M A K E RSPEAKER, PODCAST HOST OF FOR THE LOVE WITH JEN HATMAKER AND AUTHOR OF FIERCE, FREE, AND FULL OF FIRE: THE GUIDE TO BEING GLORIOUS YOU

Growing up in the Bronx, there were days when we didn’t have heat and hot water, and I remember those struggles. Did I ever think that I would be

a federal prosecutor or writing a memoir or be a national talk show host? No, I didn’t. But I did know early on that I wanted to be a storyteller and somehow use my experience to help others and I didn’t let not knowing exactly how to do that stop me.

I always had the side gig. I had dreams that I always fed. While I was practicing law, I took a writing course. It turns out, the book I started writing during that course, is the book that comes out next summer and the person I took the writing course with, is my book agent. It all comes around which is why I think it’s really important to feed the side hustle. Do what you have to do to make ends meet, but also to diversify, dream and feed the hustle because you never know where it might take you.

EMMY AWARD-WINNING CO-HOST OF ABC’S THE VIEW, RENOWNED JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR OF I AM THESE TRUTHS: A MEMOIR OF IDENTITY, JUSTICE, AND LIVING BETWEEN WORLDS

S U N N Y H O S T I N

42 | SUCCESS SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

© M

ICA

H K

AN

DRO

S; C

OU

RTES

Y O

F A

BC

It was probably in third grade when I first processed that becoming a sports broadcaster was my dream. I’d always loved sports but was self-aware enough to realize that

I probably wasn’t going to make a living off playing sports. However, I used to watch a show called NBA Inside Stuff. Ever y Saturday morning, before big NBA games I would watch how the broadcaster, Ahmad Rashad, interacted with the players. He genuinely wanted to know the players’ stories and even as a child, I knew that’s what I wanted to do

What do you do to make a dream come true? You say yes! To all of it. The entire first decade of my career, I said yes to everything. Every appearance, opportunity, every chance at exposure. I was on a show called College Gameday, then I did college basketball and the NBA Playoffs. I was on the road all the time. Never home. I married my husband who was playing in the NFL and only had Tuesdays off, so we saw each other once a week the first two years of our marriage. Then I had my daughter and decided, “I’ll just bring her with me!” My daughter was on a hundred flights before she turned one. When I had my second child, tried to bring them both. Looking back, it was a disaster.

I started talking to experienced women in the industry—the ones who had kids like me, and every one of them said: “I have so many regrets.” Not one of them said, “I wish I would have said ‘yes’ more.” So I started saying No to the things that didn’t matter and Yes only to the things that did.

I’ll never forget the day, not too long ago, when my huband and I had a scheduling conf lict and I had to take my then 5 -ye a r - old d aug ht er w it h me t o C on ne c t ic ut for N FL Countdown at the last second. I set my daughter, Scout, on the side of the set with headphones and video and told her, “No matter what, don’t come on the set.” It was live TV.

At one point Randy Moss, who is an NFL Hall of Famer, one of the biggest personalities you’ll ever meet and is on the show, walked off the set during a commercial break. I didn’t think anything of it. It was only afterward, when my daughter kept talking about Mr. Randy hanging out with her to talk about Paw Patrol, that I realized where he went.

That might not be a big deal to people, but it mattered so much to me. It showed that my work family cared about my real family, which is my ultimate desire: to be seen as a whole person and not just a broadcaster. That is the real dream.

S A M A N T H A P O N D E RHOST OF ESPN’S SUNDAY NFL COUNTDOWN

For exa mple, I was at a meeting at the loca l Nationa l Bar Association, where people were talking about career development. It was a really rainy day. I got my aunt to watch my two babies. People were talking about juggling work and life. I actually stood up and sort of gave this unexpected speech about the myth of work/life balance.

Afterwards somebody came up to me and said, “You should be on TV.” I laughed and told her I thought of myself as a journalist, but I don’t think I’ll be plucked from obscurity. She said, “ Well, I think you have been plucked. Here’s my card.” She happened to be a producer for Court TV. I was on television probably a week later. It felt like home. I felt comfortable, like when I’m in a courtroom. A year later I had a contract with CNN.

Some believe in luck. I believe in the result of preparation meeting opportunity. Be prepared. Seek the opportunity and then seize it.

What do you do to make a dream come true? You say yes!

43

© A

LLEN

KEE

/ E

SPN

IMAG

ES

One thing that has been tr ue about me my whole life is that I ca n become ver y preoccupied w ith certain subjects. So preoccupied in fact, that I’ll

throw everything else down and start doing a huge amount of research. It happens to me all the time.

One time in particular, was during my law career. I was clerking for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in Washington, D.C. (a dream job, by the way), I went outside for a walk on my lunch hour. I remember I looked up at the Capitol Dome against the bright blue sky and I asked myself a rhetorical question. “What am I interested in that everyone else in the world is interested in?” I thought, “Well, power, money, fame, and sex.” And it happened, BAM! My mind exploded. I immediately started researching these subjects. I was stay ing late at work to research and researching on the weekends. Hours of research on this topic. I remember thinking, “This is the kind of thing you do if you’re writing a book.” But I wasn’t writing a book

about power, money, fame and sex… I was in law.Meanwhile, I began noticing my colleagues who were top

law students. And they loved law. They talked about law at lunch and at happy hour and were reading law journals on the weekend. And then I went over to a friend’s house who had a really boring looking textbook on her table and when I asked if that’s the kind of thing she had to read for her grad program, she said yes, but she’d read it on her own anyway.

That’s the day I realized I wanted a job that I loved as much as the law students loved law. Where what I was doing in my free time is what I would be doing for work. What was I doing in my free time? I was writing a book. I thought, “I could be a person who writes a book.”

I got to the point where I would rather fail as a writer than succeed as a law yer, so I wrote a book. My first book was called Power, Money, Fame, Sex, those same topics I thought of on my lunch break that day the sky was so blue.

G R E T C H E N R U B I NBEST-SELLING AUTHOR, PODCASTER, SPEAKER AND CREATOR OF THE FOUR TENDENCIES FRAMEWORK, EXPLORING HAPPINESS AND GOOD HABITS

44 | SUCCESS SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

© P

HO

TOG

RA

PHY

BY H

EATH

MO

ORE

I started getting into the whole self-development thing because I was a train wreck! Which is often how most people do it. I was in my 40s, I was living in a converted

garage, I honestly don’t even know how I was getting by and I just got really, really, sick of it. One of the ways I pulled myself out of the povert y hole was coaching people on writing their books.

Writing was something I was good at. I used to be a copy writer. I’d write one liners, ads and I’m really good at titles. I love doing chapter titles and book titles. Titles are my thing. Except when it came to You Are a Badass. I could not come up with a good title. It was the one book I’d worked on where the title came last.

So there I was, trying to come up with a title, banging a m i l l ion t h i ng s a rou nd a nd You A re a Badass kept coming up… but the thing is, the word badass was a word I personally never used. Honestly, it felt a little bit inauthentic but at the same time, it felt right. So I went with it.

I did not reinvent the wheel with that book. Ninety-nine percent of the stuff I wrote about has already been said and it got rejected by every publisher. Everyone said it wouldn’t sell. We got rejection letter upon rejection letter. Of course, when it finally did get published, it took off. I think the world was really ready for a new voice and a fresh perspective in the self-help world and You Are a Badass just spoke to people in a way other books didn’t. In the end, I realized the title wasn’t for me. It was for all the people who needed to pick up a book with a title different from all the rest.

J E N S I N C E R OBEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF YOU ARE A BADASS WHOSE NEW BOOK IS BADASS HABITS: CULTIVATE THE AWARENESS, BOUNDARIES, AND DAILY UPGRADES YOU NEED TO MAKE THEM STICK

Three months af ter my daughter was born, I went shoppi ng. I wa s i n a new-mom f u n k a nd rea l ly wanted to feel good about myself again; to feel more

like a woman and less like a mom. So I went to the mall and ended up having a really bad experience in a clothing store that left me crying in a dressing room, looking at myself wondering if I mattered anymore. I remember leaving the mall that day and, on the drive home, thinking there had to be a way to create a better experience for women like me. A place where we could walk in and feel comfortable, welcomed, valued and understood.

About that same time and for a similar reason, I got a part-time job at Crate & Barrel. For two years I worked there, helping customers and finding purpose beyond my home and children. While my friends thought it was silly I worked there, ever y day I looked for ward to walk ing through the big, glass front doors of that building. I had no idea what those doors would someday mean to me.

Between that first experience in the dressing room and the drives to and from Crate & Barrel, the concept for EVEREVE was born. A brand that reimagined the retail experience for women like me. A brand that now has 95 stores nationwide. A brand that we’re so grateful continues to thrive despite all the challenges and doomsday retail projections.

Then, ten years into creating EVEREVE, my co-founder husba nd a nd I decided it wa s time to sell pa r t of the company. As fate would have it and just by coincidence, one of the investors was the co-founder and co-CEO of Crate & Barrel, Gordon Segal.

One day a f ter a meeting w ith Gordon he decided he wanted to visit one of the Crate & Barrel stores on our way back to the airport.

I’ll never forget that moment, walking through the big glass doors of Crate & Barrel, a decade after it became my place to start living again, side by side with the CEO and my new investor. It was an out-of-body experience that was worth all of the effort and struggle to get there. A beautiful affirmation a lifetime in the making. ◆

FOUNDER OF EVEREVE, A NATIONWIDE FASHION AND STYLING COMPANY FOR WOMEN

M E G A N T A M T E

CO

URT

ESY

OF

JEN

SIN

CER

O; C

OU

RTES

Y O

F M

EGA

N T

AM

TE