Hello lovely humans,

This week we meet Julia Parsons.

At the height of her corporate journey, she helped take a company public. When she went looking for a piece of jewelry to mark the kind of milestone most people spend a whole career chasing, she couldn’t find a single brand that understood why a woman would buy it for herself. So, disappointingly she didn’t buy anything. But she didn't forget. This is her story.

The Definition of Success Is Dated

For most of her life, Julia knew exactly who she was. Fifteen years of becoming an expert in product and marketing across fast-growth Bay Area startups. She landed early at Lyft, became an executive, and helped steer the company through its IPO. That day marked both a career and a financial summit for her. Like many of us, she loved the pace, the people, the ambitious work. But, as she puts it, so much of her identity was tied to that version of success.

According to the goal we've been told to chase, the money and title is everything. That's the dream, until you actually get it. Then you are left wondering if that's all there it. That mythology of what success is runs underneath so many of the people in this Second Harvest community. The story that your résumé and your self are the same thing.

Alongside that story, and this is especially true of women, apparently celebrating your own achievement is somehow unseemly. Don't make a fuss. Be humble. Give the attention to others. But these are just stories to keep us small. Julia started to feel the unease that came with this story. So, when Julia’s husband was offered a role in Paris and the family decided to go, she got the rarest thing a busy person can expect: a very real opportunity to stop and wonder out loud, "What does this mean for me and women like me?"

The Scary Answer

The answer, she admits, was frightening to accept. She wanted more from her next chapter than a title and a paycheck. She didn’t want another big job (there was one waiting for her in Paris if she wanted it.) Julia wanted purpose, creativity, and alignment with who she had become. In her own words, "I wanted freedom." She wanted to build her own thing. And she already knew exactly what it was.

Across her career, the work that lit her up was never the title or the kudos. It was bringing people together and helping them succeed. And the late timing is not the liability the culture insists it is. Starting a business in midlife is the perfect time to do just that. The people most likely to build something that lasts tend to be the ones who have already lived a first chapter. Experience and wisdom are just the raw material you need to forge something new. So that's what Julia did.

Rituals Where None Existed

Today Julia runs Incredible Rising, a fine jewelry brand and community built so that women can celebrate their achievements together. She hosts gatherings around the world where women receive their milestone jewelry and mark the moment surrounded by other successful women who genuinely want to see them win. As she describes it, she is creating rituals for women where none existed before.

The company exists because of a milestone she never got to celebrate the way she wanted to. The brand is named for its customers. And the work is, at its heart, an act of witnessing personal success. Julia insists that even achievements that don’t come with an obvious title or promotion or finish line still deserve to be seen.

Building it has been far less linear than the career she left. She has had to get comfortable not having all the answers, redefine what ambition even means to her, and separate who she is from the résumé that once made that question so easy. She is still ambitious but the ambition has space in it for meaningful work, creativity, family, community, freedom, and a life that actually feels like hers.

What Julia’s Story Reminds Us To Do

The climb to the top of the ladder is never the bravest part of your life. The ladder is predictable and brute force will get you to the top. The braver work is figuring out what you really want and then crafting that with intention. Especially when the answer deep in your chest no longer looks like the path you are already on.

That is the work this whole community is organized around. Not reinvention. Rather, we embody the unglamorous, slightly terrifying project of noticing which definitions of success you actually chose and then finding the nerve to mark the milestones that matter, even the ones that show up without ceremony.

Julia’s milestone passed by unmarked once. She has made sure that hers or anyone else’s can now be celebrated. "After years of becoming who you thought you were supposed to be," she says, "you get to decide who you want to become next."

Consider this your reminder that you don't need anyone's permission to do just that.

With love, Richard & Devon

P.S. We're running in-person workshops for midlife entrepreneurs this month and next. If you're starting a business, or have started but want help getting momentum, join us in Weston, MA on August 27th and September 10th. Here's the link to learn more and register.