Cynthia DeSoto’s personal journey has evolved into a new business, started a movement and produced a unique book inviting others to discover “what does it mean to be beautiful?”
Cynthia DeSoto is on a mission to change the way that we see beauty. Having spent 21 years in the beauty industry as a sales executive, trainer and speaker for the Aveda Corporation, and owner of an Aveda concept salon and spa in Seattle, Cynthia is now taking on the unthinkable by challenging the world — and the multibillion-dollar beauty industry — to rethink its definition of beauty.
Many of us have experienced critical junctures in our lives that make us rethink our assumptions or our values and how we see the world. Six years ago, Cynthia found herself in one of these moments when, after two decades of being a successful executive and business owner, she and her husband
decided to have a baby.
“I was 42 and pregnant and my husband, Alden, came home one day to find me bawling on the couch,” shared Cynthia. “I had realized that I was having a hard time seeing beauty in the world for myself. I didn’t feel beautiful. I asked my husband, ‘How will I lead and guide this new baby unless I find the answers for myself first?’”
Cynthia's son Gage during Thanksgiving vacation in San Diego 2009
Since that day, Cynthia has been on a personal journey, drawing on her vast knowledge and experience in the industry to find universal truths about beauty. Inspired by Aveda’s mission of helping clients not only look beautiful but feel beautiful, Cynthia knew that somewhere down the road she would share her journey and invite others to join her in this quest.
Leveraging her experience, Cynthia formed a new company, Anzuri, and reached out through workshops and speaking engagements share her message. “It was in the workshops that Anzuri finally found its voice and started a movement,” she said.
Cynthia’s message resonated with hundreds of workshop participants as they embraced the search for beauty all around us. Ranging in age from 10 to 70, participants were led to that “aha” moment when they realized that beauty lives in the combination of their experiences and in embracing their own beauty. Think of someone you consider beautiful in your life. They may not fit the “standard” of physical beauty, and yet that combination of everything mentioned above is what makes them beautiful.
Understanding that this concept seems simple and yet is often difficult to grasp, Cynthia developed the 7 Expressions of Beauty. These seven expressions contain themes such as character, wisdom and vitality, for example, and act as both an inspiration and a guide for an individual’s self-exploration.
While Cynthia knew that there would be demand for a book sharing Anzuri’s message, she also knew it would be a long process to find the right format. “Beauty lives in the experiences we have,” she said. “I knew this book needed to be an experience in and of itself in order to get our message out and penetrate the heavy stereotype that prevails in our society today.” A handful of years later, Cynthia finally found the right format, and the Anzuri book, Changing the Way the World Thinks About Beauty, debuted for the 2009 holiday season. This book is the product of over six years of journal writing, travel and personal and professional exploration by Cynthia into really understanding beauty.
Finding a Name
Cynthia has been an entrepreneur for more than 15 years and still finds one of the most excruciating processes of starting a new business is often one of the most simple — giving the brand or company a name.
Against general advice and sentiment, Cynthia decided to stay true to her message — that beauty lives in the experiences we have. “We found trying to encompass such an important issue in a single word or phrase was an exhausting undertaking. This has been one of the biggest pain points of the whole process,” she admitted. After deep contemplation and against general advice not to use the word “beauty” for fear it would align them with the message of beauty being in the physical, Cynthia chose the word Anzuri, a combination of two Swahili words meaning “origin of beauty.”
“If you have a question, you have the capacity for an answer”
-Cynthia Desoto
“We are still an evolving company that is dealing with a very broad topic. It took a lot of cosmic thinking to find this name,” Cynthia said.
Instrumental in helping Cynthia discover the name for her organization, Tom Seeberger is not only her business partner for Anzuri but also one of her best friends. While she credits him for helping her create what she couldn’t have done on her own, she also cautions others like her who contemplate creating an organization with a partner — and even more so, a best friend — the journey is not always easy and friendships can be fragile.
Finding Balance
Mother, wife, sister, friend, entrepreneur, writer, inner beauty activist, movement maker: Cynthia is certainly no stranger to multi-tasking in her life. Aside from her efforts in launching Anzuri and promoting the book, she also owns an Aveda Concept salon and spa in Seattle called Caruh with 25 employees, is married and has a 5-year-old son, Gage. Cynthia’s days are filled with meetings and the healthy yet hectic chaos that managing two businesses, overseeing her salon’s renovation and preparing for a trade show entail.
Time management is still something she is working to improve in her life. “My days are filled with meetings. I find that I do most of my work at night when my son is asleep and the house is peaceful and quiet,” she said. At the end of the day it is the passion and desire that are essential to achieving her mission.
Cynthia has made great steps toward better time management by hiring an operations assistant who she finds is really in tune with her needs. Cynthia has found it invaluable to really engage with an assistant if you have one in order to develop and nurture your relationship and make it more valuable for both of you. “Let them be involved in order to get more of a whole picture of how things work and really be able to help,” she said. “Be together in person as much as you can and your assistant will learn from watching you, how you react and how to act on your behalf.”
Overcoming Obstacles
Starting a new venture is not a way to get rich quick. We often hear stories from entrepreneurs whose first few years are filled with financial distress — be it leveraging their life savings, not being able to pay bills, or just not having enough money for things such as housekeepers or caregivers. Cynthia is no stranger to this and she willingly shares a unique and creative way she has overcome one financial hurdle in her life.
“Don’t assume when you start a business that you’ll have much extra money in the beginning,” Cynthia said, recalling a time when they were lacking the funds to hire a live-in caretaker for their son.
She used her creativity combined with the resources she had to find a solution. Realizing that they possessed a bargaining chip that many have but few would consider using, Cynthia and her husband offered their home’s master bed-and-bath suite in barter for a live-in caretaker, creating a win-win situation.
“Being a great parent requires that I be a happy person,” said Cynthia, who has found a healthy balance between work and family by accepting what is best not only for her family, but also for herself. “I give myself permission to engage with my son in the ways that I really love to be with him,” she said. “I also give myself permission to have others care for him that do the same.”
Cynthia’s journey that began those years ago as she prepared for her son’s birth and contemplated the world he would be born into can inspire anyone with a desire for knowledge and pursuing a passion. “If you have a question, you have the capacity for an answer.”
“When it’s the right thing to do, our fear doesn’t matter, we just have to do it,” she said about following her passions. “When we let our fears get in the way, we let ourselves become smaller.” Cynthia is on a journey, and with the future of Anzuri full of possibility her passion is stronger than ever. She is focused on handing down a better world to her son. Even if it takes her a lifetime to make a dent, she is willing to champion a cause worth fighting for.
BY DAWN MENA
I love looking at all of the amazing art work that you have!