She was standing at an airport salon counter in New York City when a stylist looked up and said she could not believe someone was asking about her product, because the shelves were already empty. The woman asking the question was the one who had created it. For the founder of the professional hair care brand It’s a 10, that moment in the airport was the answer to a question she had been carrying for years: how do you know when you have actually made it? What followed was a hug from a stranger who had promised herself she would one day find whoever built that brand. That is the kind of organic passion, she says, that no marketing budget can manufacture.
From one bottle to nine figures a year
The founder of It’s a 10 did not start with much runway. Her first company failed entirely, and she and a business partner relaunched with a single bottle because that was all they could afford. She stayed in that partnership for a decade before buying her partner out, and she is now what she describes as the only Latina female brand of her size that is 100% owned by its original founder. By the time she sat down for an interview aboard a yacht at a Fort Lauderdale marina, her best single year had crossed nine figures in revenue. She now runs 15 companies. ‘I’m addicted,’ she said plainly. ‘It’s a game and I’m addicted.’ Asked what leisure looks like at that level of wealth, she paused: ‘What is leisure? Leisure to me is really getting to do what I love and getting to share it with people I love.’ Building, she confirmed, is the leisure.
Earlier in the day, at Miami‘s Design District, a woman stepping out of a baby blue Bentley offered a sharper version of the same logic. She had owned a fitness company called Solidcore for nearly ten years before selling it in 2023. Her equity shares at the time of sale were worth about $90 million, with the company valued at just over $300 million. The initial investment that produced that outcome: $175,000. ‘I would bet on myself every day and twice on Sunday,’ she said. ‘There is no better bet than me because I know I am going to win.’ She wakes up at 5:36 a.m., trains at the gym six days a week, plays beach volleyball two to three hours a day five days a week, and cooks her own food. The discipline, she says, is not sacrifice. ‘I didn’t feel like I sacrificed anything. I loved every part of it.’
The financial infrastructure that keeps the money
A third interview, with a woman in the oil business who arrived at the valet at YOLO driving a G-Wagon, filled in the operational side. Her peak single-year revenue across her companies ran between six and seven million dollars. Her biggest single deal, a $28 million transaction she closed at an airport in Puerto Rico at age 21, paid her a commission she described only as ‘hefty.’ On the question of taxes and wealth protection, she was direct: trust accounts, diversified portfolios, business write-offs, and a team that earns while you sleep. ‘When you build the right team,’ she said, ‘they make money for you in your sleep.’ On borrowing: ‘Close mouths don’t get fed. If you don’t go to the banks, if you don’t try to find lenders, you are not going to know what you need.’
The Solidcore founder offered the sharpest single line of the day on this same theme. Asked for the deepest quote she carries, she answered without hesitation: ‘Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.’
The airport hug that changed everything
The It’s a 10 founder, standing at that salon counter with empty shelves in front of her, watched the stylist run around the corner and wrap her arms around a stranger. The stylist had promised herself she would hug whoever created that product.
That airport in New York City is where a self-made Latina billionaire said she finally knew the work had landed somewhere real. She has been doing this her whole life, she noted, and it goes faster than anyone expects.
