Verna Bohn, is the founder of CurvesIsFashion.org an advocate of empowering young women through STYLE and positive Self-Image. She is also the CEO of StyleMaldita.com a beauty care essential company.
On those tough days, what motivates you to get up and start your day?
It’s my family, my mission and my faith. Those three keep me going. I got it from my mom. There are tough days, and I feel like I’m falling astray, and just give up. But I always get reminded of how my mom use the same motivation. It was tough life for her raising 6 kids as a single mom with single income, she worked hard and made a big sacrifice and totally forget about herself and dedicate her life to us and sent us all her 6 children to university. I wouldn’t know what to do if I was in her position. But she’s right, in moments of giving up, those three things really take me back to the right path so I can keep going in this beautiful journey called life.
What is your secret to staying hungry for success?
There’s three basic reason… First, I don’t want my mom’s sacrifices to go in vain. My greatest thanksgiving and highest appreciation I could ever give to my mom is being successful myself. Second is my kids, I want them to see me as a success they look up to, so they can also choose success when they will be on their own. Third is my project: The Amazing Her (please check out curvesisfashion.org). This project, is all about empowering young girls. My focus group right now is the remote tribes in the Southern Philippines, who don’t have a lot of opportunity to be aware that each of them has potentials to do great things for themselves and to be a powerful woman they could become. I need to be successful, not only financially, but morally, emotionally and socially. I have to fill my cup in order for me to be able to share it to others.
What is the biggest lesson you learned from failure?
Failure is not the end but a gateway to get better. Rejection, sense of loss, stress are some of many terrible feeling that come with failure. However, if we condition our mind and not dwell in it, we will get something good out of it. I have realized that failure is the opposite of success, which means that we could never appreciate our success until we define failure, we will never reach success until we experience failure. It’s part of the journey, we just need to know how to get back up and go on and choose the path to success. With the right mindset, failure is indeed the greatest teacher we’ll ever have. I can personally testify that, when I founded my two companies. It will always be a challenging but enjoyable journey, with the acceptance that failure and victory will always be in the mix.
Three things that make me feel powerful are…
Courage, Influence, faith. COURAGE to do things, I could never have imagined doing, because I was scared or was not very confident of my ability to do it. But I took courage, and realized I can actually do it., it is when my courage came to life, and have achieved it that thing that I always thought was just an impossible dream. INFLUENCE, when I got to share my courage to women, who had the same struggle as I had, and hoping they could use my achievements to influence them and encourage them to keep striving high while upholding strength, self-acceptance and STYLE. FAITH, because that’s where my strength come from, my will power and my confidence. When all these three are happening in harmony with me, that makes me feel really powerful.
My greatest recent accomplishment was, it was always my dream to be a CEO of my own company. Just recently I have finally started up my own lip care company StyleMaldita.com. I was inspired by my two teenage daughters. I always have chapped lips, and my two daughter always notice it. So what they did was they did a little research on mixing home made lip exfoliator that moisturizes at the same time. I was so impressed that it motivated me to have it formulated and manufactured for sale….
Lastly, I am really grateful that I have collaborated with pursuit 365. What an amazing and inspirational book. Being in it, made me feel I belong in a small society of powerful women, whom each one has their own little story of the how’s and why’s, the ups and downs on their path to success. I have the same spirit as these women, and it makes me proud.
Connect with Verna:
Instagram: @curvesisfashion
