We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Anita Faye. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Anita below.

Anita, appreciate you joining us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

I left a very lucrative corporate job on June 30, 2021. As I drove away from the parking lot, I literally let out a yell and said, “Oh my God! This is real. I just left my job. Ok, Lord let’s go!”

The reason I left my job was to launch a new, patent-pending handbag line which–oh, by the way–is completely new to me. But I had a dream that kept haunting me and was validated during a visit with my mom in 2019. Turns out, my mom had also been sitting on similar ideas. That’s a fun story to share also.

For most of my life, I played things safe. I’m a responsible person who looks and thinks ahead. I’m a sequential thinker. I want to make sure I’ve covered my bases, planned for rainy day scenarios, have ample life and health insurance, etc. So leaving a ‘safe’ thing via a corporate job with a steady paycheck and benefits was (and is) completely scary. It’s a huge risk. But life without risks does not bring rewards. And I was ready for change.

As of this submission, I have a prototype for my product. I’m working with a Los Angeles manufacturer and preparing for my first sales cycle. I’ve received great feedback from U.S. and international patent examiners and I already have design patents issued in multiple countries; just waiting on the utility patent to follow suit.

I am truly more happy than I’ve been in decades. I am in a great headspace and I feel like the sky is the limit. And in many ways, I feel more authentic now that I am walking in creative freedom. I’ve always been a creative person, having grown up singing, songwriting and performing. So exercising my artistic chops in new ways has brought great joy.

I would love to share my story and encourage others to pursue their passions and higher calling. It is worth it.

Anita, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am an artistic multipreneur. I am a singer/songwriter, voiceover artist, and handbag designer. Before pursuing a full-time, artistic life I was a C-suite professional in corporate America.

My new handbag line is a patent-pending product made from vegan leather which is also interchangeable. I am most proud of the fact that I made a total life shift in order to bring the dream to life. I have design and utility patents pending, and I’m proud to say that I am collaborating with my mom on the line. I even named it after her (Lavāda) as a tribute.

The primary gap I saw in the handbag space is high-end bags were all made from animal leather and are extremely expensive. But as more and more people are becoming eco-conscious, making changes to their diets, and looking to be good stewards of their environment, they want more choice. And for women on the go, they also don’t have the time or desire to swap out their bags to go from day to evening or function to function. I also think the pandemic has helped us realize we’ve been holding onto a bunch of stuff we don’t really need or won’t use. So women have been ditching the unnecessary bags cluttering their closets.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I had to unlearn the fallacy of having enough time to get to my “one day” items. How many times have we told ourselves, “I’ll get that one day” or “one day soon, I plan to X, Y, or Z?” Well, in 2019 I lost 3 family members within the span of 6 weeks. I found myself devastated and hurt and traveling in a whirlwind between Tennessee, Georgia, and California. One loss in particular was close in age. And this was the biggest wake-up call of all.

Time is our most important and most valuable resource. But it only holds the value we ascribe to it. It’s so true that life is short. And if we’re not doing the things we want to do, have purpose to do, and help us realize our greatest potential, we are truly wasting time.

The lesson I learned in recent years is that tomorrow is not promised. I’ve said that over and over for years. But this time it’s far more than a cliche’ for me.

Oh, and a great book I would recommend that touches on this topic is Someday is Not a Day in The Week by Sam Horn.

Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

I think NFTs are an exciting development. I will admit that I am still learning about them and have not yet launched my own, but I am looking at how they may fit my business going forward and I don’t want to miss the boat.

In my opinion, NFTs are similar to crypto currency (which I have invested in). The similarity is that they are disrupters, they live in a different ecosystem, and they are not controlled by central authorities (although I do think that could be their downside, too).  And in that way, they’re a bit nerve racking to people. How do you control them? How do you ensure value can be scaled and fraud minimized?

For creatives, I think the sky is the limit for NFTs and we are just beginning to learn ways to implement them in a meaningful way. And that’s what excites me.