Transcriber: javeira celedon
Reviewer: Anna Sobota It’s 8 a.m. I’m on the 39th floor. Midtown Manhattan. 51st and 6th Avenue. It’s almost my turn. I’m about to go and present
on a $500 million office portfolio. And at that very moment,
everything tightens up. I can’t feel my fingers. I can’t really see. My heart is literally beating
out of my chest. And at that moment, I know I need to get out of there
as soon as possible. I sprint to the elevator. I sprint down 6th Avenue to Central Park
just to catch my breath. Everything that I’m doing feels wrong. I’m nervous. I’m scared.
I’m having another panic attack. And yet, everything about this
is uncomfortable. And yet, everything about this
was supposed to make sense. I was following my roots. I was doing everything
that I was meant to do. I’m from New York, grew up
just 20 minutes outside the city, and I was following the path that my mom had so beautifully created
for myself and my two sisters, working in finance. She spent 40 years in real estate,
in finance, in New York. And I was doing the exact same thing,
working in real estate private equity. I was following my roots,
following my path, doing everything
that I thought made sense. But, at that moment I realized [that] when it comes to roots,
roots are really complicated. They're messy, they're tangled,
they're everything. And so what made sense on the outside
absolutely made no sense to me. I’d been banging a circle
into a square for so long and I needed to make a change. And that’s what brought me to Chapel Hill to try to find that,
to clean the slate, to start over and find the roots that made sense. And so I came to Chapel Hill
looking for that and I tried to find that. I went to different groups.
I did different markets. I went to California, tried the tech thing,
flew to consulting and marketing - other things than in real estate; anything to try to make sense. But the one thing that kept
coming up for me was I couldn’t believe
there wasn’t a bagel shop here in Chapel Hill, and that blew my mind. And that just natural frustration, natural excitement of
”I need some bagels in my life” is what started Brandwein’s Bagels. And it wasn’t after becoming
an entrepreneur, there was no history -
we had no family recipes. The thought of me baking
was truly just incredible. I can barely put two pieces of bread
together to make a sandwich, but I knew I wanted a bagel. There was something about it
that always felt right for me. I’d been eating bagels
as far back as I could remember. If you opened up our freezer, there’s just a million aluminum foil rolls
filled up with bagels, and that was home. And that brown paper bag
on the kitchen counter just felt right. For a moment, everything felt okay. And so as I’m in Chapel Hill,
falling in love with the people, falling in love with this town
and this community, I'm finding this opportunity with bagels
and I'm doing the MBA thing all along. But I kept coming back to working
on recipes, talking about the idea, talking about being in a shop,
what it would feel like, what it would be like
to actually have a bagel shop and create that community of just a place that has really hopefully good food
and a place that that feels good. And so when it came time
to finding my summer internship, many people go the traditional route
of the investment banking and private equity life. For me, I’d sort of fantasized a whole year
about having a bagel shop. And so I decided,
“Let’s go work in a bagel shop.” “Let’s see how that feels.” And for me, standing in front of a 500 degree oven
for eight hours a day, getting burns everywhere but running around the corner
and yelling out “Hot sesame!” and seeing people’s eyes perk up and having the hustle
and the bustle in the shop and the customers and everything. I knew that I was doing something that was fun. And when you think about roots,
I felt like a seven-year-old again. I was going back outside and I was playing every single day
with this idea of a bagel shop and I couldn’t stop doing it. I wanted to figure out the finances. I wanted to figure out
how to make the best bagel, what it would feel like,
who you would hire, what our mission and values were,
all those things. And that is what felt natural. And so, when I thought
about this idea of speaking for TEDx and doing the TEDx talk
and thinking about roots, bagels for me was just something
that was fun, I was passionate about it. And only when I thought back about, yeah, there is this deep connection
with bagels there. This bagels has been this thing
that’s been part of my life since the very beginning. I did realize that your roots
are everywhere. They are this tangled mess. And so my advice is, follow the things that feel good. Follow the things
that make you feel happy. And when you look back upon it, somewhere in that mess is going to be
the path that makes sense for you. So, thank you so much
for letting me share my story. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
