The Place: Bouldin Creek Cafe

The Cup: Cappuccino for both of us.

The Background: Twitter strikes again! This time, I got a tweet from a connection in LA, Jenn Hoffman. She told me she had a friend who had just moved to Austin who would be perfect for the project. She mentioned her pal had been a successful film producer, and in the last year had launched a beauty business.  Sounded interesting! Jenn made an email intro, and ta da!

Tirzah is full of surprises. She doesn’t watch TV, she moved to Austin for love, she has no advice for anyone (and a very good explanation why). She is full of joie de vivre and that joy of living is evident in every moment spent with her. You’ve met someone at some point in your life who was calm, yet infused with energy. You felt both peaceful and excited in their presence. You looked forward to being around them and that time shared was, dare I say, magical? It’s rare, but you know what I’m talking about. That is Tirzah! Before we get into her story, let’s cover some:

Common Grounds:

1. What’s a food you can’t live without? Pizza.
2. What’s your guilty pleasure? Dark chocolate.
3. How did you make your first buck? I had a paper route when I was 11. I had to have my parent’s permission, because in Canada you had to be 14 to work. I remember I delivered to a funeral home and to all these elderly people. I woke up so early. Those were my first, hard-earned dollars.
4. What is something you’ll regret not doing if you don’t do it? That is so hard for me because I really believe in living life with no regrets. If I felt like I’d regret not doing it, I’d just do it, because I can’t live with regrets.
5. What’s the best gift you ever got? My niece, who is also my Goddaughter. She’s the most precious thing in the world to me. Being her Godmother is the most special gift.
6. What’s your favorite place to eat in Austin? Kerbey Lane. What is up with their pancakes? {Um, other than they are fluffy circles of magic and happiness?} I’ve had the pumpkin ones, the blueberry, the banana. They’re all so good. {Yes, I told her about the seasonal lemon poppyseed.}
   
7. What’s your favorite way to unwind? Depending on my mood – yoga or a glass of wine.

Oh Canada

Tirzah’s story begins in what she refers to as, “The Texas of Canada” – Alberta. More specifically, a small town in Alberta is where she was raised.  I knew she moved to Austin very recently from LA, and I was curious how she got from Canada to California. She says, “About five minutes after I graduated from high school, I moved from my small town to Vancouver.” Once there, she got involved in the film industry which is what lead her to Los Angeles. She continued work as an actress and did some modeling, before she eventually discovered she preferred being behind the camera rather than in front of it. Tirzah is modest and doesn’t talk much about her career as a film producer and director, but a quick search on IMDB shows she’s won a few awards for her work.

Austin Calling

Austin is a town made up largely of people from other places. A few coffees back, Neil Blumofe remarked that when he was in New Orleans, people always asked, “What high school did you go to?” In Austin, people ask, “Where are you from?” Here, it’s assumed you are from somewhere else. The story of how people got here is always an interesting one, and for Tirzah, it was an answer I hadn’t heard before. “I fell in love with a fireman.” What?

It’s true, Tirzah met and fell in love with a fireman who just happened to live in Austin. On the surface, perhaps not the most convenient relationship – with a thousand or so miles separating them. One visit to Austin though, and she was not just in love with a fireman; Austin had also found a way into her heart. {Warning: it does that to people! Don’t come for a visit unless you’re ready to pack up your stuff and move here.} 

A Business is Born

Just over a year ago, Tirzah launched a new business and Austin was a city that fit the profile for a great third location – after Santa Monica and West Hollywood. What’s the business? It’s called Blink Bar and they are experts at one thing – amazing, affordable eyelash extensions. They pride themselves on doing one thing and doing it well. Eyelash extensions are a relatively new craze, with what most might consider crazy prices. Many salons charge $250-350 for a full set. Tirzah wanted to be sure it was accessible for anyone with eyelashes – from the girl going to her first prom, to a new mom who wants to feel made-up but doesn’t have time for it. It’s also great for women who, as they age, start to lose their lashes. At $89 for a full set of synthetic mink lashes, the price point is a large part of the booming success. The second part of the success has to do with the technique – which is actually how this whole business got started.

Tirzah has a friend who is a well known actress, and the two of them tried the lash extensions a few times, but were always disappointed. Tirzah told me after spending lots of cash and two hours of time, she was horrified when she saw the results – which she referred to as “Porn Star Lashes”. She removed them immediately. Her actress pal was working on a film in London and invited Tirzah for a weekend in Paris. {Ooh la la!} Her friend was busy the first day so she set up a salon appointment for Tirzah. She said she was so jet-lagged that she fell asleep in the chair, and when she woke up she was amazed. She’d finally found the lashes she dreamed of.

Blink Bar exists because after that great experience, Tirzah decided to learn the technique for herself so she could hook up her friends. Back to London she went, and learned the process from a man they refer to as “The Spielberg of Lashes”. Back in LA, word spread quickly of her new skills and she went from doing it 2 days a week to being swamped with requests. Luckily, she found the process meditative and really loved when her clients were so thrilled with the natural looking results. The best businesses are created in response to a need.

Blink Bar Austin is now open for business and there are plans to expand to 10 locations by the end of the year. Three locations are planned for Dallas, one in Houston, one in San Francisco and a couple in NYC.

Making a Home

Wow! You’d think opening the Austin store would be the most significant thing that’s happened to her in the last 30 days, but it has to share the spotlight with another big milestone – buying a house. She describes the location and I tell her I know exactly which house it is. Not just because it’s my job to know, but also because it’s around the corner from my house. I often remark, Austin is a very big small town.

You might guess that Tirzah has no time for scratching things off a bucket list, but you’d be wrong. She and her boyfriend have a shared item they are crossing off together in just a couple of weeks. They are headed to Machu Picchu. Another bucket list item is a hiking trek in Maui she read about where you have to carry all the bare necessities in with you.

Surprise

What’s something people might be surprised to learn about Tirzah? She tells me it’s probably her fascination with quantum physics. She said in 1999 she went backpacking though Europe with a bag filled with books by Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking and Noam Chomsky.  She suspects this might be a surprising tidbit for some people to discover about her.

Other books that Tirzah found impactful in her life are Revolution From Within by Gloria Steinem which she read when she was 17, and more recently, Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg. Although she doesn’t yet have children, she said she feels grateful to have found a partner who is so supportive of her career and knows he’ll continue to be no matter what life brings for them.

Lessons Learned

Success or failure – which is the better teacher? For Tirzah, the unequivocal answer is – failure. But she questions how we even define a failure.  She says, “I used to work as an Aircraft Interior Designer and worked a lot for celebrities. It’s a title that’s fun to say at parties. But what I found was that it was much less creative than I had hoped it would be. I spent most of my time dealing with FAA issues and fire proofing. I guess that could be seen as a failure. But I think situations like this offer opportunities to find out what you’re made of, what you love and what drives you. In that context, nothing is ever a failure.” She adds, “Having said that, I am a huge fan of following your charm. Where things flow and the path of least resistance – that’s where I like to live. ‘OK, eyelashes – that’s a business? Cool.'”

Find Your Bliss

What if happiness was the barometer for professional success – how would Tirzah make her living? She tells me, “Exactly what I’m doing now. I’m a big believer in doing what you love and trusting that the money will follow. Surround yourself with great people and things you love.”

Two qualities Tirzah appreciates most in others are vulnerability and heart-centeredness. She says, “Vulnerable – it’s the thing we all want least to be and yet it’s the number one thing we’re drawn to in another person.” Isn’t that interesting. And true. Tirzah and I spent a moment gushing about how much we adore the TED talk Brené Brown did on vulnerability. If you haven’t seen it – I promise it’s 20 minutes well spent.

An issue facing society that Tirzah is pretty passionate about is something she refers to as a “crisis of consciousness”. She feels we need to elevate our consciousness and stop leaching off of other people. But the #1 thing she feels could create major, immediate change is an untangling of government from business. She says, “I want to preface this with, ‘I am a huge fan of capitalism.’ But if we could unravel the ties between government and corporations, we would solve a lot of the problems in society. From food to healthcare to insurance – our priorities are dictated by the biggest spenders.”

Beauty Advice

The best advice Tirzah ever got came from a beautiful woman she met when she was 18 or 19. She asked the woman for a beauty secret, thinking perhaps she’d hear about an oil or cream. The woman said, “The key is to always keep your heart open. You will be hurt. You will fall in love and have your heart broken. But be conscious of it, take time to heal and then love even more next time.” Tirzah says, “I live by that.”

Calm Your Mind

I have found that most successful people have habits or rituals they make a part of each day that contribute to their happiness and well-being. For Tirzah, her answer is, “Without question, for me it’s mediation. I’ve been meditating twice a day for eight years and it keeps me sane. I liken it to Central Park and New York City. Without Central Park, NYC would explode. Meditation is the Central Park in my life.”

As someone who has tried, over and over, to establish a regular meditation practice and calm my monkey mind, I need to know more. Tirzah said she felt the same way. She tried a few different techniques but when she discovered Transcendental Meditation (TM), she knew immediately it was something she’d do for the rest of her life. The results were immediate. She tells me it’s not that one way is better than the others. It’s about finding a method that resonates. For her it’s TM. Her experience is what lead her to do some work with The David Lynch Foundation.  Pretty remarkable organization.

Better Together

For a long time, Tirzah believed that if she could just be independent and strong, nothing could ever get to her. She’s learned the opposite is true and it’s opened her up to love and bliss. She says, “Strength comes from vulnerability and being open and connected to other people. My goal used to be, ‘To be independent and self-sustaining.’ I’ve learned that the joy in life comes from being interdependent. It’s the give and take that makes for a beautiful life.”

If Tirzah had just 30 seconds to make a speech to the world, what would she say? “Nothing. I would say nothing. I don’t believe you can tell anyone anything. I am full of opinions and beliefs, but I tend to keep them to myself unless I’m asked. Everyone is on their own path, doing what they’re doing. Just because something is true and resonates with me, doesn’t mean it will be true and resonate with someone else.”

It’s hard to argue with that. I think it’s one of the reasons I love this Coffee With a Stranger project so much. I sit with someone and get to hear their story (or a least a tiny piece of it). I hear about their joys and their heartbreaks. I hear about what matters most to them and I hear their truths. I then have the privilege of sharing those stories with you. Sharing stories – that’s it.

This project has made me aware that there’s room for all of our truths. But Tirzah’s story offers a clue to the secret of making it work. An open heart. We talk a lot about being open-minded, but I would argue it’s not our mind that needs opening. An open mind doesn’t leave one vulnerable. It’s the heart that’s exposed to vulnerability. But it’s also that heart that allows for joy, friendship, personal growth and love. With a closed heart, none of that is possible. A life of beauty is created when you make the choice to open up – knowing you are vulnerable, and doing it anyway.  Vulnerability is like a warm light, shining from within. Turn the light on, my friends, and shine!

To learn more about Tirzah’s business, Blink Bar, visit the website. Or better yet, stop in and visit or schedule an appointment today!