Mayssa Chehata is the founder of BEHAVE Candy, a low-sugar, clean-label candy brand that just landed in nearly 2,000 Target stores nationwide and sold out within the first week.
But here's what you might not know. Two years ago, Mayssa was calling her lawyer to ask what bankruptcy would look like. She had left a dream career at the NFL, Uber, Daily Harvest, and SoulCycle to build a candy her diabetic father could finally eat. But after manufacturing failures, two reformulations, and a product she privately didn't believe in, she made the hardest call of her life: she paused the entire company for over a year. She moved to Mexico City because she couldn't afford her apartment in New York, personally guaranteed a bank loan, and hit what she calls her rock bottom. Then, with sixty days of cash left, she and her co-founder made one final plan. They called it burn the ships. Mayssa handed off everything and made TikTok videos all day, every day. Two weeks in, one video went viral and doubled the business overnight.
In this week's episode, Mayssa shares why Uber was her real business school, the gut feeling she ignored for two years about her own product, and what it takes to shut down and rebuild a company from scratch. She opens up about how a manifestation book gave her the courage to leave corporate and the inner child work that finally unblocked her. She shares the daily practices that pulled her out of burnout, from meditation and journaling to nervous system regulation, why her coach told her the business wouldn't work until she fixed everything underneath it, and how she went from brute-forcing twelve-hour days to learning that a regulated, healthy founder builds a better business. Whether your business is thriving or barely surviving, this episode will change how you think about success, failure, and everything in between.
In this episode, we’ll talk to Mayssa about:
* Why working at Uber felt like an entrepreneurial crash course. [02:49]
* Building an ownership mindset by creating opportunities from scratch. [06:59]
* The first signs she was meant to become an entrepreneur. [10:41]
* Chasing wealth vs. discovering a mission worth building. [14:29]
* Why she waited two years before launching the company. [20:16]
* Navigating manufacturing challenges and finding the right production partner. [23:17]
* How her father's diabetes inspired the idea for Behave. [25:23]
* How manifestation gave her the confidence to leave corporate. [27:32]
* Raising her first funding round and taking the leap into entrepreneurship. [33:11]
* Launching Behave during the uncertainty of the pandemic. [37:21]
* The product mistakes that nearly destroyed the business. [40:09]
* Why she decided to pause production and completely reformulate. [46:41]
* Surviving financial uncertainty, debt, and the threat of bankruptcy. [48:38]
* Why getting funding still wasn't enough to save the business. [55:36]
* Why a celebrity partnership wasn't the breakthrough they expected. [56:57]
* Rebuilding herself through inner child work, spirituality, and manifestation. [58:11]
* Betting everything on TikTok and finding a viral growth strategy. [01:01:40]
* How one viral video transformed the business and led to Target. [01:05:08]
* Growing beyond DTC by building a retail-first business. [01:06:40]
* Redefining productivity, healing burnout, and leading from a healthier place. [01:09:45]
This episode is brought to you by Beeya:
* If you or anyone you know have been struggling with hormonal imbalances and bad periods, go to https://beeyawellness.com/free to download the free guide to tackling hormonal imbalances
* Plus, get $10 off your order by using promo code BEHINDHEREMPIRE10
Follow Yasmin:
* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yasminknouri/
* Website: https://www.behindherempire.com/
Follow Mayssa:
* Website: https://www.eatbehave.com/
* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eatbehave/
* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/
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