A teacher by heart, a writer by trade, an entrepreneur by choice.

I've been "playing school" since I was five. My favorite birthday gift to this day is my first real chalkboard. One year I asked my parents to take me to the teacher store instead of the toy store — true story. When I graduated high school, I gave my favorite teachers wallet-size photos with a note on the back: "See you in 4 years as a faculty member." Four years later — five days after college graduation — my high school called and asked if I was ready to start teaching.

I moved to San Diego, got my Master's, and landed my dream job teaching college — with no money to show for it. So an inner voice nudged me to start a business, and it literally never occurred to me that I wouldn't succeed if I just worked hard enough. I walked into US Bank right before the market crashed, and they handed me $40,000 and said, "good luck." A few months later, that loan wouldn't have existed — and neither would any of this.

My first business, Claudio's Italian Ice — named after my dad, an Italian guy right off the boat — flopped. West Coasters had no idea what Italian ice was, and farmers markets meant 6 AM setups for $100 days. Right before I quit, friends brought my Italian ice to a party and started mixing it with alcohol into low-calorie cocktails. Everyone loved it. That party became Bare Organic Mixers.

For years I wore every hat from manufacturing to marketing and delivered 60-pound cases out of the trunk of my Hyundai. On the hardest days, one thought kept me going:

"Someday you're going to combine your knowledge as a teacher and your experience as an entrepreneur, and you'll help people find success faster."

In one month I lost my relationship, all three side jobs, and my business was tanking. So I stopped, reassessed, and meditated like my life depended on it — and six months later, with two mentors' help, I sold my "Bare baby" to a leading natural foods company. I became the face of the brand: Forbes, the LA Times, People, Pacific Magazine's 30 Under 30, and a stint on Bravo's Millionaire Matchmaker.

Then the inner voice said it was time to go — and before I could act, I walked into work one morning and was laid off with 50 other people by lunchtime. I was 31, on unemployment, sleeping in my best friend's office-turned-bedroom with a Walmart clothing rack for a closet. Heartbreak and a hard season of depression sent me down the personal-development rabbit hole — three separate times — where I studied triggers, patterns, stuck points, and the stories we tell ourselves. I call these "ditch moments." They became the entire foundation of my work.

I wrote down a Jack Canfield-style goal: by September 2016, I'd be making a specific income doing what I love every day. I read it every morning and night, visualized it, and let go of the outcome. Ninety days later, in the same week, I was offered a college course to teach — called, I kid you not, "The Pursuit of Happiness" — and my first business consulting contract. I'd tripled my income, and I was finally teaching because I wanted to, not because I had to. The inner voice from the Hyundai years turned out to be right.

Every moment of suffering in my life traced back to the same root: the fear-based stories I was telling myself on repeat. The work I do now — with executives, founders, agents, and teams — is the process I built to change that: uncover the old story, read it aloud one last time, and turn the page. I even give a talk about it called "I f*cked up so you don't have to." Because that's the honest job description.