Business: Entrepreneur
Business
Entrepreneur: Brooke Israel
Advice to Teens
"When I was a teenager, I had a difficult time fitting in. In elementary school, I was a chubby girl with frizzy hair. I had good friends, but didn't always feel like I fit in.…Later in high school, I desired to be and look just like the girls on the cover of Vogue. I became unhealthily thin and even more insecure about my body and the way I looked….It was hard to not be jealous and influenced by models or people you envied. I think most girls were going through the same thing."
"There were times I didn't get along with my mom, dad, and sister, for they had no idea what it was like to be me. I felt a lot of pressure to be perfect. I had self-esteem issues…it really built my character. But in looking back, it's sad I spent so much time worrying about that…I didn't see the bigger picture. When you're young, you worry so much about how you look, what people think of you…it's so exhausting…it took too much time. Confidence is key. I didn't have it, but it developed in time. I truly believe that it's important for people to reinforce each other."
Bumps and Detours
So how did she get it all together? There were some bumps and detours. After graduating from La Pietra High School, Brooke went off to Bentley College, a business school in Boston, to study finance. It took 30 months to discover she was miserable in a world without much art choices. So she transferred to Lesley University AIB (Art Institute of Boston), where she completed her finance degree and took up a second major in art. Her passion started "oh-so-small." Brooke reminisces, "I used to make my own small pieces of furniture, which I laugh at now…I never received carpentry training, but I used to go to the Ace Hardware store with some measurements…but they still looked good!"
While completing her degree in finance and for sometime after college, Brooke worked at a hedge fund firm in Boston, where everybody handled millions of dollars. "It was a small company…but after a while, I realized that's not what I wanted to be doing for the rest of my life." It was "on-the-move" again.
Chance of a Lifetime
Brooke came back to Hawaii and attended Chaminade for a while to study interior design, before heading for San Francisco to pursue her Masters in Fine Arts (M.F.A.). That's when the lightning struck. The chance of a lifetime surfaced by way of a phone call from Honolulu. Brooke's sister, Shyrah, alerted her to a store space opening up at Ward Centre, and a decision had to be made IMMEDIATELY — like, by the end of the day! (Shyrah, by the way, is part-owner of Quiksilver Youth stores, as well as Roxy.)
Brooke had always dreamed of opening her own store…Was there agony and fear? Yes! Eventually, her passion, her dream, and her love of designing outweighed the uncertainty of whether she can do it. "And there was also the fear that I wouldn't get this opportunity again."
After her decision to make the dive, it still took a year for the conception stage — working on the business plan, dealing with the contractors, designing the store, traveling all over Asia and purchasing the goods, etc.
Warehouse Workout
Brooke is now heading into her third year of business. Is she living happily ever after? She's happy, but that doesn't mean there are no problems. As a business owner, she finds herself faced with tough decisions. She is often down at the warehouse at 7:30 in the morning, unloading enormous containers — sometimes working through midnight. She and her helpers get filthy and tired. "We tell ourselves, someday, we're going to pay to have somebody do this. Right now, we call it the warehouse workout!"
And then, there were the errors. "There is a lot to learn about the export-import business. We learn from errors though, and you just have to eat your pride." In fact, Brooke went into her business knowing nothing about importing. "We made many mistakes. I used to get depressed. My sister always says that it goes with the territory. It was a hard way of learning, but the best way of learning because it sticks in your head."
Greatest Joy
So what gives Brooke Israel the greatest joy in her life right now? "God is the biggest joy in my life. I keep telling myself He won't give me any more than I can handle. Customer reaction in the store and some of their great comments give me joy. Friends and family support are also sources of joy in my life. I can't imagine myself not working.…I tell people, 'Don't just settle if you're not happy.' I want to be able to tell my kids that I had a great life."