“Everything is figureoutable.”

These words from Marie Forleo burrowed in my brain, like a secret weapon to draw on whenever startup life got too scary, too overwhelming, too MUCH.

It worked.

I’ve admired Marie for years. Her mantra of “building a business and a life you love” totally resonated with me, because really, why can’t you have both? I love her sound bites of wisdom (aka “tweetables”) and how she dances at the start of each MarieTV episode. She just speaks a language that I connect with as a female founder.

courtesy of Marieforleo.com

 In the early days of my business, I made a list of inspiring female entrepreneurs that I dreamed would one day use Flytographer:

Oprah
Ellen
Sara Blakey of Spanx
Alli Webb of DryBar
Marie Forleo

I loved playing make-believe in my mind, imagining how delighted they’d be with their photos, how much fun they’d have touring Paris, Dubai, Tokyo with their local Flytographer, how they’d call me and tell me how happy they were that I’d invented this business – pretty much exactly how I felt towards each of these powerhouse women who came before me and built incredible brands that I adore.

A couple of weeks ago this dream came true. I was riding a tram in Lisbon with Shay from my concierge team. We’d had an incredible meetup the day before with our Lisbon Flytographers, so we were already in good spirits. As we zipped up and down the steep winding alleys of Chiado, we got a message saying that Marie Forleo had posted about us on Instagram.

Captured by Mary and Maurizio in Ravello for Flytographer
Captured by Mary and Maurizio in Ravello for Flytographer

This is how we reacted to the news!

There is no better gift than having someone you deeply admire give you an authentic shout-out.

I’m going to keep my crazy dreams going, and continue playing make believe about future conversations I’ll have with my list of dream female founders (which now includes Whitney Wolfe Herd of Bumble and Emily Weiss of Glossier, amongst others). Why? Because it’s super fun to dream, but also, if luck has anything to do with it, they just may come true one day.

Dream big, friends.

– Nicole

Captured by Mary and Maurizio in Ravello for Flytographer