Sophie Chiche

Author, life strategist, and keeper of the rubber duck.

What’s with the duck?

There’s a rubber duck on my desk. It has one job: remind me I don’t have to figure everything out alone.

When I’m stuck, I ask. When you’re stuck, you ask. Because what’s hard for me might be easy for you, and what takes you three hours might take me ten minutes. The point isn’t to be good at everything. It’s to be surrounded by people who are good at different things—and to actually use each other.

We’re not meant to do everything alone. We’re meant to do extraordinary things together.

Duck it. Just ask.

A few things about me

At five, I opened a pencil store in the sandbox.

I learned English listening to Supertramp.

I moved 5,642 miles with $1,200 in my pocket.

I grew a wellness company from $11 to $10 million.

I’ve worked with Nelson Mandela and Arianna Huffington.

Every trip back to Paris, I buy a pencil to remember.

The longer version

I’m told that when I was five years old, I was given four pencils. I sold them on the playground, bought eight more, and promptly opened a pencil store in the sandbox. My parents worried I’d start too many silly businesses, skip college, and amount to nothing. For a while, they were right.

I took a destructive detour—three packs of Marlboros a day, Nutella my main food group, 350 pounds, and very few hours awake in class. We partied hard. Then my best friend, Gina, died of an aneurysm when we were 19. After her funeral, I looked in the mirror and understood something clearly: if I kept going, I was heading the same way. In a strange and painful way, she saved my life.

I moved 5,642 miles away and started over.

Changing direction is hard when everyone expects the worst of you—especially when you expect it of yourself. I left my native France for the U.S. with $1,200 and all the English I’d learned listening to Supertramp. Distance helped. No one knew my story. I could write a new one.

I lost 200 pounds. I earned a Master’s in Journalism and Psychology. I became a correspondent for French magazines, wrote three books, worked on projects with Nelson Mandela and Arianna Huffington, and grew a company from $11 to $10M. I speak English now.

I know my story isn’t your story. But I’m pretty sure you’ve lived your own difficult chapters. I know what it’s like to feel lost and not see a way out. I know the courage it takes to choose differently—and the value of having guides along the way.

What I’ve learned about the human spirit is this: it wants to be free. It wants to overcome. It wants you, the hero, to win in the end. I’ve taken everything I’ve learned and turned it into simple methodologies that help people rewrite their stories, build bridges between their past and their future, and move toward what they truly want.

Every time I go back to Paris, I buy a pencil to remember where I came from.