Where will you be in a decade? Lessons from 2016.
There’s a new trend on social media: post your 2016.
I was intrigued. Who was I a decade ago?
Plus, if you know me, you know I’ll never turn down a reason to reflect.
So I went back through my photo album. And it ended up being one of the most productive exercises I’ve done in a long time.
One thing first: caution, what you’re about to read is the highlight reel. ⚠️
What it doesn’t show is that I was also navigating some of the most challenging — even traumatic — personal moments of my life during that same season. (I just didn’t document those in photographic form — is that even a thing?).
Anyway, a more accurate description of this season of my life was this:
Here we go, 2016:
January — I started the year on a positive psychology retreat — on a catamaran in the West Indies.
🌴 Behind the scenes: I turned down a couple opportunities that looked good on paper to follow the breadcrumbs and invest in what I was fascinated by: the brain, stress, and how humans perform under pressure.
🌴 Lesson: investing in my internal operating system paid more dividends than any accolade ever has.
February — A film crew came to NYC to follow me around for a documentary called Coffee for All.
🎥 Behind the scenes: it looks glamorous, but I’d spent four years carrying an entire (heavy) Unimatic coffee setup around Manhattan, telling my story to anyone who would listen. At the time, there was no “Netflix future.” Two years later it landed there — and ran for seven years.
🎥 Lesson: plant so many seeds you forget where you planted them. Don’t keep score. Keep showing up.
April — I co-hosted an event at the Peter Lik Gallery in SoHo to celebrate 100+ women entrepreneurs who had just started businesses.
🥂 Behind the scenes: I remember looking around thinking, how is this even real?
🥂 Lesson: don’t wait to be picked. Celebrate yourself. Celebrate others. Make celebration a habit.
June — I flew to LA to be interviewed by Kathy Ireland about the methodology I’d created for building confidence in young women entrepreneurs — work that later morphed into BRAVE®.
🎙️ Behind the scenes: the studio team was moved to tears… and they told me it was the only interview they’d ever done in one take. No cuts. No redos.
🎙️ Lesson: show up before you feel ready. Bravery is the bridge between “I can’t” and forward motion.
July — I co-hosted a retreat for women entrepreneurs at Julia Child’s summer house in Provence, France (and yes, there’s still a Unimatic coffee pot on her iconic stove)! Then I went to Southern Italy to film the next chapter of “Coffee for All” in my Dad’s hometown.
☕ Behind the scenes: two years prior, I hadn’t spoken to or seen that family in decades. I knew my Dad carried shame around losing touch with them. But I thought about who I wanted to be, took a deep breath and made a phone call. That resulted in a reunion that, a year later, made all this possible.
☕ Lesson: connection returns when you’re willing to be BRAVE.
September — I went to IMD Business School in Lausanne for my high performance leadership certification.
💪🏻 Behind the scenes: I was the youngest in the room by ~20 years. Out of the 77 participants, who were all executives of huge companies, I was one of seven women and one of two Americans. Holy in-over-my-head! I wondered why the program director invited me. On day two, he pulled me aside and said he could see me being an instructor there one day…
💪🏻 Lesson: It’s possible to feel like you don’t belong, even when you’re in exactly the right place. You just can’t see as far down the road as someone who’s a bit taller than you… And this year, exactly ten years later, I get to go back… as an instructor!
December — I attended Seth Godin's conference. I’d met him before and handed him a business card (if you’ve ever gotten one of my coffee business cards, you know… they’re pretty unique). I said hi at the break and to my astonishment, he remembered me. Then, when he got back up on stage, he said: “You’ve got to find Elisabeth here in the audience. She owns a coffee company and the way she talks about coffee makes me want to drink it. That’s branding.” Whoa!
🪩 Behind the scenes: If there was ever a pinch-me moment of shock-and-awe, this was it. I spent three hours with him the next day and it changed my whole life and started a mentorship that has now lasted a decade. This past summer, he even met my fiancé and daughter.
🪩 Lesson: The word remarkable breaks down to: able to be remarked about. So, do the weird thing. Put your business card in a little bag with coffee beans that smell amazing. No, it’s not economical. No, it’s not scalable, but it’s memorable. And it makes you "able to be remarked about."
What 2016 really gave me
This exercise wasn’t about the accomplishments. It was about the person I was becoming.
I can see the conversations I was willing to have — braver than I’d been before — and how each one pulled me forward.
I also saw a trend that might not have made the “reel” because it wasn’t always fancy, big or loud:
In January, March, May and October I gathered with my circle of women. All entrepreneurs and leaders. All curious, supportive, hungry.
In hindsight, every time my life leveled up, every time I achieved a big goal or had a big breakthrough, it happened after I put myself inside a container with other women — a retreat, a program, a community, a room where conversations were so honest that they created not just motion, but momentum. Where I shed limiting beliefs, old armour and the internal noise that followed me around. Where I became more “me”… braver, bolder and more alive.
This exercise made me realize something that I’ve never given voice to:
All the bravery that showed up in my outer world, was built in those walls with those women... in community.
Going back through that year — and doing this exercise — made me realize something simple and wildly important:
We need community.
And more specifically for me, women need other women.
Not as a vibe. As a strategy.
Because those rooms… they recalibrate you.
They integrate everything you’re learning in real time.
They hand you the kind of confidence that makes you do things that don’t make sense on paper — things that should probably be impossible.
That accountability. That reflection. That steady “I see you” from women who get it — it’s not extra.
It’s part of what allowed me to do what I did then, and build what you see now.
And remember that asterisk from before, that made me able to maintain positive momentum through a tough time?
I only have these highlights because those women helped me focus on building positive momentum.
I could easily have collapsed into the challenges.
But I had something that pushed me through.
I was learning. I was growing. I was creating.
And I had a community that reminded me of that — and reflected it back to me until I could hold it myself.
So here’s the realization this 2016 exercise gave me:
There’s one thing my work has been missing.
My job is to build community, but I haven't been specifically gathering women.
I’ve spent a long time not wanting to be pigeonholed — because I genuinely believe men need to learn how to have conversations that work, too. We all do. This skill is human.
But what I don’t want to let go of is this:
I love supporting women — intimately and powerfully — as the whole woman and as the leader. Because who we are doesn’t just impact our work, who we are builds our legacy.
So I’m considering starting a small mastermind for women who want development and growth that changes how they lead and how they live.
This isn’t a course, although we will absolutely be learning together.
This is a community, a container that builds confidence, capacity and culture.
I might call it legacy out loud. (If you’ve been around a while yes, this could be a rebirth). Because when we learn how to have conversations that work, we stop avoiding, shrinking, fixing and forcing and start living our legacy out loud through how we respond and relate to others and most importantly, to ourselves.
If you’d want to be in it, will you reply and tell me? All of you on here. Please. I want to hear from you.
“Yes — I want this.”
“Yes, but only if it includes ______.”
“Not for me, but I know exactly who needs it.”
Whatever is true for you.
I’d love to build this together.
Bravely,
Elisabeth
