Deepica Mutyala dyed her hair blonde and wore blue contacts trying to be like the cool kids in her Houston suburb. But soon she realized: being herself was in. Fitting into western beauty standards was out. Enter: Live Tinted, Deepica’s brainchild. Today, she shares how she turned her online community into a beauty brand that celebrates every shade of skin and in between.
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On Managing Her Parents' Expectations of Her
Deepica: I put myself in their shoes and realized they don't mean to make my life difficult. They don't mean to say, "you must go be a doctor or else, because I'm trying to make your life miserable." From their perspective, they wanted me to live the American dream and in their eyes, the American dream was to be respected in America. And respect in America comes from being educated. That's the kind of mental journey I went through. I realized, it's not that they don't believe in me. It's not that they don't wanna support me. They just want to assure the highest percentage chance that their daughter will be happy, successful and respected in America. I just had to let them know that I got this. This same self-belief that I had when I quit my job, I had to fake to my own family in the beginning to be like: I've got this figured out. We're gonna be fine.
On Taking Time to Celebrate your Success
Deepica: if you don't sit back and smell the roses and actually say to yourself, I am successful, it'll just be a constant hamster wheel of going and going. And so I did have that moment recently. I, I, I don't know if it was, I think it was like a life coach or someone who I spoke to that just said, I need to be proud of what I've done this far and recognize that I am successful exactly where I am today. And the rest should feel like a cherry on top rather than like, you must exit your company and become a unicorn, billion dollar business in order to be considered successful.
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