Become the Fire: Transform Your Chaos into Career and Life Success

A trailblazing Latina entrepreneur shows how to turn the obstacles that can especially block the progress of women and BIPOC into the unstoppable fuel of fulfillment, accomplishment, and success

What does it mean to become the fire? It means not allowing yourself to be in the fire, getting burned, but instead using the fire to ignite your motivation and drive, passion, and grit. It means not focusing on what you don’t have or can’t do, but instead leveraging what you do have and what you can do. It’s about seeing life’s fire as fuel to propel your success. Elisa Schmitz is no stranger to life’s fire. The child of a Puerto Rican mother and a Yugoslavian immigrant father, Schmitz knows what it means to feel like an outsider, and she learned to use her differentness to make a difference. As a child, she lived in Puerto Rico; war-torn Beirut, Lebanon; and finally Chicago. All along, she looked for and found what she needed to survive and thrive. She learned to read whatever situation she was in, one of the skills that led to her success as an entrepreneur – and one of the ten lessons she teaches here, which also include:

becoming visionary and owning your authentic self getting comfortable with being uncomfortable being gritty and courageous making friends with failure being your best, despite your circumstances

These practical, actionable lessons will propel anyone who wants to start something, grow something, or become something new and better. They provide a road map for dreamers who want to be doers, and for doers who need help turning their spark into a flame.