Courage is borne out of vulnerability, not strength.

Did the perfectionist in you just start shaking in its boots when you read this too? Same. But when you dive deeper into Brene Brown’s extensive research it all becomes clear. How many times have you seen someone at their most vulnerable and admired how strong and courageous they are? It’s because, as Brown told Forbes, “we’re hungry for people who have the courage to say, ‘I need help’ or ‘I own that mistake’ or ‘I’m not willing to define success simply by my title or income any longer.“

So why do we continue to view our own vulnerability as a weakness? One person who bravely pushed that fear aside (and proved Brown’s theory) is Dani Austin. After sharing an emotional video on YouTube about her struggle with hair loss, the Dallas-based fashion blogger received the opposite of shame and backlash. In fact, Austin’s 500+ strong community rallied around her in support, with some even opening up about their own experience with hair loss. Now, that video has over 700k views, and she has galvanized a vulnerable community of women who prove that vulnerability is actually the birthplace of courage, not weakness.

In honor of International Women’s Day, we partnered with our friends at PAIGE to put the spotlight on five incredible women who are marching to the beat of their own drum and walking it forward with an outstretched hand bringing the rest of us along for the ride.

Read on to hear how Austin dared to show up and be seen, and why it’s paying off in dividends.

CREATE & CULTIVATE: You decided to share your journey with hair loss in an emotional video on YouTube which now has over 700k views. How did summon the courage to share such a vulnerable part of yourself with the world?

DANI AUSTIN: If you ask my audience, my team, or me the values that are most important to us then we will say them in this order: transparency, vulnerability, and integrity. In January of 2019 the hair loss that I had been struggling with progressively for years, started to accelerate. As a female on the internet, there were several challenges with this. There was the standard of beauty that I felt the blogosphere had defined for me: perfect hair is a major part of that image. Seriously, think about it. Some of our favorite influencers out there have perfect hair. So when I was losing all of mine, despite my best efforts to prevent it, I had no idea what to do. Up until that point I had been open with my audience about some pretty real topics. But hair is such a symbol of femininity for a female that I just didn’t know how to open up to them about this one. Equally, I didn’t know how to show up for an audience of thousands of women and pretend like my hair-loss wasn’t happening either.

It took me about four weeks of having my hair extensions removed and starting to wear wigs before I had the courage to open up about it. That time was so important for me to experience this topic privately so that I could be strong enough to endure it publicly. I use the word “endure” because I really thought it was going to be the end of my career. I believed I was going to be pegged as the “blogger with the wig” [a term that I proudly own now]. But after I did share, I realized I was far from alone. I think that is what I know now that I wish I would have known then: that you are never alone in what you are going through.

My audience and I have grown up together. It’s like having 500,000 sisters going through life together. I used to think that courage was always being strong for them. But what my hair-loss experience taught me was that courage sometimes looks like the strength to be vulnerable too. Doing so surrounded me with a community of women who love, support, and often teach me new things about wigs every day. My girls are the real influencers out there.

In an interview, you said that the struggle to manage the shame and embarrassment from losing your hair was magnified by the pressure you felt to maintain a picture-perfect image as a lifestyle and fashion blogger. Do you still feel that pressure?

God has always been really funny to me. When I was born He made me bow-legged and forgot to give me a couple of teeth. I actually wore a Herbst appliance (if you don’t know it then Google it) until I was a sophomore in high school. There is nothing like trying to be a cool girl and having a metal contraption pop out of place at the popular table when you bite a sandwich. By the time I got into college, I had finally fixed my teeth and realized that my legs made me really good at track. Looking back, I am actually thankful for every bit of how those experiences shaped me into who I am today. It’s funny how it’s the hardships that we are most grateful for. Needless to say, I thought that I had survived my “awkward phase”. Then I got into blogging.

There are so many beautiful people in this world inside and out. But let me tell you that they are especially, on the out. I think a lot of women are feeling this from Instagram today but it’s very difficult to not let comparison seep into your mind as you scroll. In fact, part of what makes these amazing women so influential is because they do have things figured out. I would look to Hollie Woodard who had the best hair. I would look to HappilyGrey who had the best style. I would look to Courtney Shields who knew how to slay the makeup game. These influencers are truly inspiring and I would learn so much from them. I started to feel shame when I felt like I was losing attainability.

When you have hair you can always learn to tie a messy bun through a couple of tutorials. When you don’t have the hair to do it at all it’s a whole other set of emotions that sets in. That was my perspective when I first started realizing I was losing my hair. Shame and isolation were my natural reactions to the experience. But it was people like my mom and my husband that constantly reminded me of who I am. My husband reminded me that my identity wasn’t my hair or my online image or what people thought of me. And my mom realized how I was able to make lemonade from the lemons of my “awkward phase”. It took me a long time but eventually, I realized that hair loss doesn’t have to own me because I can (literally) own my hair. My husband took me to LA and we bought my first wig. Yeah, it wasn’t my real hair but we thought it looked pretty dang good.

It took me even longer to open up about my hair-loss and my adoption of wigs but the turning point for me was when I finally opened up in transparency with my girls—it was like the flood-gates opened. Thousands of DM’s, that I still get almost every day, about the shared experiences with hair-loss from others. Fifty percent of women at some point in their life will suffer from hair loss in different degrees of severity. I wasn’t expecting this to be part of my purpose but I think my confidence and comfort with it have been strengthened by the fact that it isn’t about me, it’s about creating content that can help others and inspire hope.

How we appear on the outside can impact how we feel on the inside. What do you wear to feel confident?

Lately, I have been wearing this wig I purchased from The Wig Fairy in Beverly Hills. It’s my first time ever experimenting with bangs. It has taken some getting used to for me but my husband is obsessed with it and I think it’s made me start feeling like a hot sassy mama lately. I love a good pair of sneakers too. I’m all about a sundress with sneakers, feminine but still functional.

What does International Women’s Day mean to you?

I grew up in a home with a mom that told me I could do or be anything. She never talked about the odds against me. She told me this with the knowledge that there was a time in history when women were not allowed to vote. She told me this knowing that there was a time in culture when I could not be anything I wanted to be. Instead, I was encouraged, if not actually relegated, to the specific roles society had planned for me as a woman: wife, homemaker, mother.

When International Women’s Day comes around each year it’s an important moment to reflect on everything women have pushed for and built together. Today I am a wife, a female-entrepreneur, and one day I hope to be a mother too. We are living in a beautiful time where the rules written for the role of a woman in society are being re-written. The challenge that goes out to each woman on International Women’s Day is to have the courage to accept the new rules and more-so believe in them.

It felt right today to talk about not who we were, not who we are, but what we all have the opportunity to become in this world in 2020. The best way to celebrate today is to just keep building, moving, progressing, and innovating forward. Because in 2020 women can really have it all.

You seem so bold and self-assured. What advice do you have for others who want to summon that courage too?

I would say to remember that you are uniquely made and there is only one of you. I believe that the internet tempts us into imitation. I struggle with it and I think the rest of females out there would admit they do too. Comparison is truly the thief of joy and prevents you from celebrating the originality that is truly yours. The media will always play a large role in this for women but I believe it’s our responsibility to rise above it. Maybe it’s just a baby step but I believe every woman should look themselves in the mirror every day and say I’m a hot sassy mama.

What is the hardest decision you’ve ever had to make professionally?

Yikes, there are too many. The first was announcing my hair loss. The second was telling my parents that I wasn’t going to PT school and instead was going to take my college education and make YouTube videos. The third was my husband quitting his job to work full time with me on the blog. The good news is all of them worked out!

What traits do you need to succeed as an entrepreneur or founder in the competitive start-up environment?

It’s important to delegate, learn, and serve every day. Delegate because there is no way to scale your business if you’re the one taking on every responsibility. I’m no genius and if I can do it, so can someone else. It may take a little bit of time to train someone but it’s worth the time and effort.

Challenge yourself to learn and constantly be evolving and challenging the processes and systems you’ve built. It’s important to stay on your toes. I never want to be too set in my ways. This industry is fast-paced so I think it is important to listen to your community and constantly be evolving.

Serve daily—your business isn’t about you, it’s about using your resources to serve and help others. How does your product or service serve people daily?

I am a true believer that you are only as successful as the people you have around you. I have tried to always run our brand like a business in the sense that we employ and value others to work on it with me. It is truly a team effort every day. My second hire to the Dani Austin brand was my husband when I convinced him to leave his job in tech to jump into this world with me.

Since then, we have been able to scale our team to two other full-time females who are now a part of the family. Create and Cultivate is a wonderful vision because it really does a great job of bringing strong women together to highlight that it is possible to do this as a woman. We need to hear the stories of grit, passion, dedication, innovation, work-life balance, and innovation from other women because it takes a lot of those elements to make a business successful.

How do you shake off the fear and doubt to pursue your innovation/dream?

Just take one courageous step at a time.

The filtered world of social media often hides a lot of hard work and hustle behind-the-scenes. What’s a lesson we can all learn from your mistake/s?

I think that in 2019 I learned that even though I believe so much in the power of transparency and “keeping it real” with our audience there are certain things that should remain private until the right time. I believe a lot of that for me had to do with getting married. Before I married my husband I had a wonderful boyfriend and a ton of girlfriends (online). I feel like from 2011 through 2018 we were all just 25-35-year-old females stumbling through life together in real-time.

I was so transparent with my life that most of the experiences, both good and bad, were in real-time usually through Instagram Stories. I would cry to my girls, laugh with my girls, have fun with my girls, and just overall try and include my girls in every single moment. I still do that, and now my girls love Jordan, but in 2019 we realized a very 21st-century problem. We had to learn which moments were only Jordan-Dani moments and which moments were valuable to involve everyone in.

The 2015 Dani would have told my girls the very day I started to lose my hair. The 2019 Dani took a couple of months to open up about my hair loss with them. By doing so, it created a healthy space for my husband to step up and be a husband. It allowed us to privately seek the wisdom we needed to navigate this issue in order to best serve others who were going to need it too. And most importantly, it allowed me to rebuild my confidence in an authentic way with the person I love most. Sometimes it takes dealing with issues in a “real” way to be able to keep it “real” on the internet.

What does it take to be the first and pioneer a new space?

The self-confidence to weather many years of being made fun of and mocked by others before it actually works. I really encourage everyone to do it though because the closer you can come to doing things for yourself versus what other people think about you the better off you will be.

Seeing people pave the way can give us the confidence to do it too. Name someone who walked it forward and inspired you to step up too?

Taylor Swift. She never lost her hair but she is my ultimate muse.