We recently connected with Nancy Solari and have shared our conversation below.

Nancy, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Nancy Solari is an inspiring example of living the life you want with a positive mindset, regardless of the challenges you face—and she is no stranger to adversity. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Nancy faced tremendous hardships during her childhood and teenage years. She witnessed domestic violence, her parent’s divorce, her sisters’ battle with eating disorders, and her mother’s fight against breast cancer. Unfortunately, the trials she experienced continued, and at the age of sixteen, Nancy was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a progressive retinal disease that leads to blindness. Over the years, Nancy experienced subtle yet significant vision loss, but rather than allowing the disease and her painful past to dissuade her from following her dreams, she chose to persevere.
As her life progressed, Nancy adapted to increasing blindness, yet she continued to face immense challenges: sexual harassment in the music industry, financial instability, battling suicide, infidelity, and miscarriages. Rather than allowing these difficulties to crush her passionate spirit, Nancy remained optimistic, turning hardships into growth and harnessing her experiences as fuel to guide others in overcoming their own obstacles.

Nancy, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

At heart, I am a very ambitious, fearless, loving person. As a child, I truly thought anything was possible. However, at 16 years old, I was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa. The doctor told me I was going to be blind by 40 years old. However, I was very optimistic that there was going to be a cure. Today I can only see lights and darks and my eyesight is blurry. Knowing that my vision was going to get worse, I made it a priority to go to college at the University of Oregon. I graduated with degrees in broadcasting and psychology. My goal was to be a host of a talk show. As I went along, I had many successful careers but my vision loss led me to switch gears every few years. My very first job, out of college, was production at Good Morning America and Enerttainment Tonight but due to my vision changing, it became harder to read a teleprompter and keep up with technical tasks. Then I transitioned into the music industry, but found it difficult to perform on stage with the bright lights and navigate dim studios. I decided to take the next 13 years to focus my attention on selling real estate and became a top producing realtor in Los Angeles. My vision diminished to the point where I had to give up driving and forced myself to rely on taking up to twelve buses a day to do showings. Ultimately, I decided to retire and accept my new reality.

Through my own need to make adjustments and reset a new vision for my life, I noticed that others were going through the same struggle. This is when I started Living Full Out in an effort to assist people in realizing their goals and helping them to create a path to achieve them. Initially, we shared the Living Full Out message by motivating corporate audiences and providing one on one coaching. Once that was off and running, a radio station, KFWB, reached out to us and they wanted me to host a weekend life coaching program. In time, the radio show grew nationally. In 2015, we created a web based version of the Living Full Out show which became a success.

While I was grateful for my professional achievements, I recognized over the years that it was nonprofits who taught me how to live independently and access tools to thrive. I made it my mission to find a way to give back to these essential organizations which is why I created NonProfit MVP. It is a competition show that I host, where they learn fundraising techniques, how to improve their social media presence and get their message across to viewers.

In all, I live by the motto “you don’t need sight to have vision” so even though I am legally blind, I am still that ambitious, fearless, loving person. My goal has always been to guide people to achieve what they were always meant to be. My coaching assists people into finding the balance between passion and work. When we are able to hone in on our natural gifts, we can truly live full out.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

At a young age, I realized that trusting my intuition was my superpower. That is where I earned the name “fearless flyer.” One day, I decided to go out in a wave runner with a friend even though I am legally blind. We were going full speed and I was feeling as free as ever. Until we hit a huge wave and were in danger of almost tipping over. My friend had jumped off in fear. There I was, legally blind, on the wave runner alone with no clue how to stop it. At that moment, I grabbed the handles with all my might. Going at full speed, my instincts kicked in and I made a hard left, unaware if I might hit something. In the far distance, my friend screamed “hit the gray button” and that would’ve been helpful if I could seen any of the buttons. As I was going around in a large circle, I finally felt a button and not knowing what would happen I pushed. Thankfully, the wave runner slowly stopped. While it would’ve made sense to head back to shore, we still raced the waves and had a great time after that. This experience taught me how to prepare for things in advance because of my vision loss but I will never stop being a fearless flyer!

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

As the CEO of Living Full Out, I have learned that when it comes to operating and running a team, everyone has limitations. As a legally blind owner, I have to find my own work arounds to keep up with my team. It is very important to me as a leader to understand if any of my staff have their own challenges. I find that it is useful to meet people where they are when it comes to learning styles or needs. By providing training materials in both video and written form, it gives my team multiple ways to digest the information. This has allowed us to create a corporate culture that is confident and collaborative.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://livingfullout.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/living_full_out_show/?next=%2F
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/living-full-out-inc./posts/?feedView=all