Do Cool Sh*t (2 page)

As I sprinted through the streets of downtown Miami toward the docks, smoke could have been coming off the wheels of my luggage. I needed to make this ship. If I had to, I would take a running start,
Mission: Impossible
style, and plummet headfirst into the freezing water to catch that vessel. No stuntman; just me. In a sundress.

I had traveled all around the world. My passport held stamps from India, Japan, Africa, Australia, all over South America and Europe. But up to this point, I had never been on a cruise, and I had certainly never been on any trip that put me in the same place as one thousand of the top entrepreneurs in the world.

In other words, this was a trip of a lifetime and there was no f-ing way I was going to miss it.

Off in the distance,
I could see the faint outline of this
massive
ship that looked about to set sail. A horn blared. I had already been sprinting for fifteen minutes, with my bags scratching my legs and the straps cutting through the skin on my shoulders.

I got closer . . . I was so out of breath . . . closer . . . there’s the ramp! Get on the ramp! Another horn. They’re
leaving
? Wait!

I made it with just enough time for me to hurdle the rope and land on the boat safely before the walkway was removed.

Why did I have to make this so hard for myself? Every time I go anywhere, my life turns into an action movie where I’m sprinting around, when it could very easily be a nice, slow-paced romantic French film. If only I’d leave one hour earlier.

I wiped the sweat off my brow, readjusted my bags, and casually strolled onto the deck.

As I stepped onto the first level of the ship after checking in, I couldn’t believe who I saw.

It was Richard Branson, my entrepreneurial hero. He was sitting at the bar, sipping a drink and regaling eager young entrepreneurs with a story. His white-blond hair blew gently in the wind. This scene was the perfect first mental snapshot—one that I’d remember for years to come. I was so excited to see him; I tripped over my heel, caught myself just in time, and kept walking. I decided I was too flustered by my harried arrival to meet him yet (and I was still sweating my ass off from running).

The boat was magnificent. There were five floors and two gorgeous outdoor levels where everyone could enjoy the waves and the sun during the day and the stars at night. There was a big DJ station and dance floor on the second level, and I knew immediately that’s where I would end up every night. People were milling about with their luggage, finding their cabins and exploring just like I was.

I spotted Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos.com), Blake Mycoskie (founder of TOMS), Gary Vaynerchuk (founder of Wine Library), and a slew of other founders of leading nonprofits like Charity: Water, Pencils of Promise, and Invisible Children. It was incredible!

I grabbed my cell phone out of my pocket to call Radha (my twin sister) to give her the play-by-play, but as I tried to dial, I realized my phone didn’t work. One of the ship workers saw me fussing with my phone, so he approached me and told me that cell phones didn’t work on the boat.

Really? So nobody would be able to make any calls? That meant that we would actually have one less distraction while we were communicating (and hopefully collaborating) with one another for four straight days. I loved that idea! What better way for fresh entrepreneurial ideas to be shared than without any technological aid, just through words, eye contact, and smiles?

I pulled out my four-day itinerary and saw that I had to be in the auditorium for the opening session at 4:00 p.m., during which Richard Branson would be speaking. Wow, Summit Series, who put together this cruise, didn’t waste any time bringing out their superstars!

I was also pumped to read that the Roots were the cruise’s house band and would be playing every single night along with big-name DJs like Pretty Lights and Axwell from Swedish House Mafia! Unreal.

I could attend morning yoga sessions, as well as large and small talks on everything from environmental and social innovation to personal empowerment—there was just so much to do! I was so impressed with the execution of this event.

Summit at Sea was an invite-only event, so I felt grateful to be invited. I had started a successful small business at age twenty-six, and the point of the summit was to bring together up-and-coming entrepreneurs and young talent with established industry leaders.

I played back in my mind the events that led me to be on this boat. My entrepreneurial adventure began with a frustrating recurring stomachache that sparked the idea to open the first lactose-intolerant-friendly farm-to-table pizza and local craft beer restaurant in New York City. We called it
SLICE
(now called
WILD)
and it serves farm-fresh pizzas with no hormones, additives, or other crap in it, and supports local farms and businesses.

I had opened my first restaurant on the Upper East Side of Manhattan at the end of 2005 on a shoestring budget, and I called on every favor I could to make it happen. I was twenty-six years old and had never worked in the restaurant business, but I was convinced that a farm-fresh healthy pizza concept was going to change the way people thought about their favorite guilty pleasure. At the time, it was still early in the game for
local
and
organic
to be mainstream terms, and it was a struggle at first to convince people that healthy pizza actually didn’t taste like cardboard. We were one of the first alternative pizzerias in New York to offer gluten-free and vegan options, and being a pioneer in this industry certainly didn’t make the journey an easy one.

During the cruise, I
was excited to learn as much as I could and meet as many people as I could, especially the great leaders who I had admired from afar for so long!

One of the greats on the cruise was Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos
.com. I figured since he was a guy who started two successful businesses and sold them by the time he was thirty-six for a collective $1.4 billion, he probably had some
good
stories to tell and some even better advice for a young entrepreneur like me.

Around sundown, I saw that he was sitting at the bar on the second floor of the boat and quite a few people were milling around him, trying to speak with him. I’m not usually the shyest person in a room, but it took me a few circles around the bar to muster up the courage to walk over to him.

Why was I so nervous? Why couldn’t I just go up to him and say something? He was a human being just like me. But the fact that he had achieved so much at such a young age was incredibly intimidating to me.

As I passed by him on my laps and watched him make small talk with a bunch of people, I made a call: I decided not to say anything to him at all. I could tell from his interactions with other people that
he
was shy. He liked to talk to people for sure, but he had a lovable awkwardness about him and you could tell that he preferred to listen more than talk. He seemed like the kind of guy who would be more open in a one-on-one setting, so instead of adding my small talk to the rest he would endure that night, I decided to stand across the bar from him, stare at him until he made eye contact with me (who cares if I looked like a complete stalker?), smile, and wave. He smiled back.

And that was it. It didn’t matter that he didn’t remember me at all—I had the smile, which meant I had the in! I knew that I would get in touch with him when I was back in New York. (He had put his e-mail address down at the end of one of his presentations on the boat, and I had it securely in my notebook.) Mission accomplished.

The rest of the trip was a dream. It was one of the first times I had met so many like-minded people, all wanting the same thing: to create new businesses that had cultural and social relevance, and with real societal impact.

I tagged sharks for science; had in-depth conversations with artists, poets, top entrepreneurs, and change makers; and I danced every night with my new friends on the boat’s main deck, with the Roots jamming away.

The day after I
got back from the cruise, I sent Tony an e-mail with the subject heading: “Great meeting you on the boat at Summit!” (though we technically hadn’t met and he probably had zero recollection of who I was).

In the body of the e-mail, I wrote a few sentences about me and briefly described my farm-to-table pizza concept, and then I mentioned my new social enterprise called THINX, a technologically advanced pair of beautiful, leak- and stain-resistant underwear for girls to wear during their periods. THINX also solves a global menstruation management problem for girls in the developing world (clearly unrelated to pizza). I told him that I would love to speak with him about the new idea and see if a partnership with Zappos.com could be formed.

He responded within minutes. (He’s good like that, even though he sometimes receives more than two thousand e-mails every day, as I later found out. That’s what happens when you generously put your e-mail address at the end of every presentation.) He said that he would be in New York in mid-May and that he’d like to come to my restaurant.

Wait. Really?! I had to read his e-mail twice to be sure I wasn’t dreaming it. I wrote him back and set up our meeting.

It had taken me a couple of years of messing up and figuring stuff out before I was able to make enough money to open up my second location in the West Village. I had always dreamed of opening a place in this beautiful part of the city, and I am incredibly proud of it, so it was quite special to arrange for Tony to meet me there.

I remember reading Tony’s book,
Delivering Happiness
, in which he mentions that pizza was one of his favorite businesses as it brought back great memories from his Harvard days. It was something we had in common, and it would be a great icebreaker to begin our conversation.

The day Tony was planning to come by, I brought my partners in the THINX venture: Radha (my twin sister) and Antonia (our other partner). Just like when he was on the boat, Tony started off by observing in the corner of my restaurant, quietly listening to the three of us excitedly talk about our new business. I was so glad I brought Rads and Antonia because their presence immediately made me more comfortable and confident.

What happened at this meeting was quite special. Antonia, Rads, and I always get really excited when we talk about pretty much everything, so in this instance, the excitement caught on. We told Tony our idea for THINX; we talked about our other concept Super Sprowtz, and we talked about the restaurant, and then we talked about the Downtown Project, which was the big project that Tony was working on. By the end of our conversation, Tony had come out of his quiet shell and we were having one of those really great conversations—you know, the ones where you end up interrupting each other and going off on tangents as you get more excited. I couldn’t believe how energetic Tony was—it was a much different side of him than I’d witnessed on the boat, and it was wonderful to watch.

Tony said that he was interested in supporting our new project, THINX, and connected us to his merchandising and sales team.

Hooray!

But, to my amazement, that wasn’t even what he had come in to talk about.

Rather, he wanted to partner with me to open my pizza concept in Las Vegas!

His latest endeavor, the Downtown Project, is to revitalize downtown Las Vegas, and he knew that the downtown area was in desperate need of tasty, healthy eateries.

He wanted my restaurant to be an integral part of the new development. (It just goes to show you that you never know what wonderful, unexpected surprises can come from being brave and introducing yourself to new people.)

Wow. I had to take a breath. I had spent six years building my business, mostly on my own, from scratch, and I was finally getting my first big break! And it was with Tony Hsieh?! I couldn’t believe it! I really do think that one of the big things that sealed the deal for him was our excitement and passion for our ideas. Genuine excitement builds believers. It just does.

Downtown Las Vegas—Six months later, 3:00 a.m.

I
was up late, chatting with Tony, who by now had become a good friend and business partner, and he told me that he always loves asking people this question: “Why do you want to be successful?”

Many people would answer: “Because I want to make a lot of money.”

Then he would ask, “Why?”

They would respond, “Because I want to pay off my loans or I want to buy a really great car or house.”

Not satisfied yet, he would ask again, prompting them to really think about it. Eventually, he would get down to the real reason: “Because I want to be happy.”

When you ask someone “Why?” enough times, the answer most often ends up with “Because I want to be happy.” Try it. It works!

And my own definition of success has certainly changed over the years. When I finished college, it was financial freedom. I had student loans to pay off and not much in the way of savings, so I became an investment banker in an effort to make all the money I could and ended up wanting to gouge my eyes out instead. After that tough experience, I learned the hard way that you
can
find ways to enjoy what you do, work with people who you like,
and
make money rather than working simply to be financially free.

Later, after I started my business, my definition of success changed again and became “freedom of time.” I was bound with both hands to my business and I never saw my friends and family and could never take any time off. Being able to bring someone on who could operate my restaurant was the best thing I had ever done. Now that I am no longer the only one keeping my business afloat, I can think about forming strategic partnerships to grow it and think about the bigger picture.

Now my definition of success is living to my full potential. I want it all. I know now from experience that it’s possible to have a growing, successful business and a passionate relationship, to be in the best shape of your life, to give back to your community, and to push your boundaries when it comes to new adventures. It took years of searching, but I think I might have figured it out. I know how to be happy.