It was only a year ago that Jessica Zweig visited Nashville and fell fast in love. Now she has a new office space, the second abode to her multi seven-figure branding company, SimplyBe. Agency, which she founded in 2016 in her hometown of Chicago.
Her new Nashville home is an enchanting white farmhouse, built in the 1800s, situated on 10 luxuriously historic acres that she and her husband are renting in Bellevue.
She smells of rose with a hint of vanilla. Her energy lands like spring. Despite being a bestselling author, self-made millionaire, and one of the most Googled female entrepreneurs of the moment, Jessica almost certainly makes every person who crosses her path feel worthy and significant.
Though it’s impossible to imagine, with her feline green eyes, kittenish style and celestial presence, she swears that, growing up, she was gawky and had a face full of acne. “I was insecure and all I wanted was to be accepted and cool. In the early days, before I became the woman I am now, it was my ultimate mission to find out how to be that,” Jessica says.
In the years after earning her bachelors of fine arts degree in acting from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, she and a friend, both young enthusiasts of the Chicago fashion, food and nightlife scenes, founded an online lifestyle magazine, Cheeky Chicago, in 2008.
Almost instantaneously, its fun-loving, witty combination of cosmopolitan flair and real talk spunk caught fire, especially amongst her 20-something counterparts. Which meant that gawky, uncool Jessica needed to step aside. A new and improved “It” girl persona would be running the show from now on.
Before long, she found herself bumping elbows with celebrities and high rollers. Posing for photo ops at swanky social gatherings. Strolling through velvet ropes and V.I.P sections. Publishing viral blog posts with the same ease that most would write a simple grocery list. It was as though everything she touched swiftly turned to gold. She’d become the envy of her formerly awkward self.
Or, had she?
“For a while, the success of Cheeky validated me. It was exciting, and it gave me a sense of falsified ego. Because I’d never been cool. But, the truth is that, behind the scenes, my life turned into a mess,” Jessica says.
Where there was no wifi connection and no cameras flashing, there was loneliness. Despite the magazine’s loyal following, she was financially broke, emotionally broken and physically exhausted. Though she was living in the city that had raised her, she felt a thousand miles away from home.
Eventually, she and her business partner weren’t speaking. They were also smothering under mountains of debt. The facade was getting harder to uphold.
How, she wondered, would she ever turn her light back on?
It was in the summer of 2013. Her body was shutting down. Every time she caught a cold, a simple sniffle and a sore throat would spiral into a severe sinus infection and a migraine headache. While her stubborn will was hellbent on blazing forward, her body was throwing up stop signs.
At 32 years old, after many months of medical exams and prescriptions, she was forced to undergo an intensive sinus surgery. This meant she was to spend six to eight weeks staring at her apartment walls, swathed in piles of blankets, resting in a chokehold of anxiety and frustration.
Desperate to reconnect with the world, one day she decided to throw on some clothes and venture across the street to a park to breathe fresh air.
She positioned herself onto a grassy knoll, Indian-style, taking in the balmy, cloudless June afternoon. Also fairly convinced that she was one thought away from a nervous breakdown.
Maybe, she thought, she’d try meditating.
“I’d never meditated in my life. I didn’t even know how,” she says, laughing. “But, I shut my eyes and turned my palms toward the sky. After a few minutes, I heard a voice–my voice, except it was much more sovereign and calm, say to me, ‘It’s okay. You’re allowed to rest. Just Be.’”
She’d been hustling so hard to uphold the public persona she’d created–the one that was far more glamorous and charismatic than the Jessica she’d managed to run away from. But she couldn’t run anymore.
“I’d been telling myself, ‘I have to keep feeding this machine. I have to get back to work. This is my entire identity,’” Jessica says.
Except, that day, pressed against the grass, alone, she realized it wasn’t.
Breaking her meditation, she opened her eyes and found herself staring directly at a tattoo on her wrist. It was one she’d gotten eight years earlier, but it suddenly had new depth and life and nuance, or, perhaps, had finally revealed its supernatural meaning. In her own handwriting, it read, “SimplyBe.”
It was as though 26 year-old Jessica had blasted out a memo of love and light into the ether–one that, though always visible to the eye, had been waiting for the most auspicious moment to meet the gaze of her future self, and in a strangely divine way, reveal the fullness of its message.
“I saw the tattoo and understood its meaning for the first time. And, instantly, I knew that whatever I did next, it would be called ‘SimplyBe.’”
There in the park, a seed was planted. And, a little more than two years later, Jessica founded her branding agency, SimplyBe, which blossomed into a garden of top tier clients, profits and accolades. Although, this time, it’s never been about notoriety. It’s about impact.
“I needed to go through the fire and feel the burn of my mistakes in order to learn how to serve. I needed to live inauthentically so that I could grasp the power of authenticity. That’s the only way I could stand in authority and teach it to others,” Jessica says.
In other words, she had to fumble in her relationship with money in order to learn the language of abundance. She had to chase all of the seductive things that proved to be fleeting and soul-sucking in order to discover what truly lit her up and motioned her down a pathway of contribution. She had to date all of the wrong guys who loved her in all of the wrong ways in order to learn the right ways to love herself. And Be loved.
While it ended in a way that she was desperate to be freed from, Jessica wishes to be clear about something: “The truth is that my experience with Cheeky wasn’t all ego and celebrity-chasing. It was a meaningful time because it helped me find my talent and sense of volition. It was my first journey into entrepreneurship, and it forced me into a direction that led to the life I’m living today,” she says
Today, SimplyBe. Agency employs 24 ambitious creatives, three of whom are in the new Nashville office, which opened in January.
Last February, she released her first book, Be.: A No Bullsh*t Guide to Increasing Your Self Worth and Net Worth by Simply Being Yourself, which quickly landed at the No. 1 spot on the Amazon chart in the Women in Business New Releases category.
Her podcast, SimplyBe. Podcast, is wildly successful, with featured guests like Sex and the City creator Candace Bushnell, artist, writer and Instagram sensation Morgan Harper Nichols, and fashion designer Rebecca Minkoff.
She confesses that many people, at least initially, misunderstand what she does, however.
“SimplyBe. Agency is a personal branding company, yes. But, really, we’re a personal empowerment company. For example, people come into our offices and they’re like, ‘I want the logo. I want the website. I want the big following.’ And, sure, we do all of those things and more; we’re brilliant at them. But, most of all, we teach people how to be authentic, magnetic and in service to others.”
So, then, what is the art of SimplyBe.ing?
“To SimplyBe. is to own who you are, because that’s what makes you magical. It’s embracing your evolution. It’s understanding that you’re here to teach what you’re here to learn. And, mostly, it’s believing that, no matter what, you’ve got you and the Universe has got you,” she says.
Jessica says she feels that her divine assignment is to help others wake up to their truth–the one that can only be found within. “I put myself out there in the world in a big, bright and shiny way because I understand that I have a finite amount of time to do my job, which I believe is to show others that every single person on this earth has the ability to make a profound impact. It doesn’t matter if you’re a barista or a bus driver or a CEO. Don’t take for granted your own power,” she says.
She then adds, “And always remember that anytime someone throws sludge at you when you show up as your authentic self, it’s because they don’t know their own light. It’s not that they’re mad at your light; it’s that they’re unconscious of their own,” she says.
Essentially, Jessica’s work is about inviting people to come back to themselves. It’s about moving away from the noise and letting yourself remember. So, how then, does Jessica come back home to herself?
“My true medicine is solitude. I love taking baths. I love to turn on a beautiful piece of music, connect with Spirit and draw. I love storytelling through art. Truly, as much as I have to be ‘on’ and in front of an audience, I restore my energy reserves through alone time,” she says.
And, most significantly, she loves burrowing inside the gentle pulse of her newfound respite. One ripe with Tennessee history, scenic charm, and peaceful landscape.
When she visited Nashville last August for her book launch party, after having fallen in love with the property through a screen, it exceeded her expectations. Tucked in its woods, there’s an old graveyard and horse stables. She calls it her “magical place.”
“The vibration of Chicago is high energy and kinetic, which is wonderful in its own way, but after my husband and I packed up our lives and our two dogs and decided to make ourselves at home here, surrounded by the vibration of creativity and nature, I found restoration. It’s teaching me how to have an even deeper relationship with myself,” Jessica says.
Her most treasured corner of the sprawling estate? The front porch.
“I get up every morning, pour myself a cup of coffee, step outside and listen to the birds chirp. I take in the sky and the air and the silence. And it’s just me, spending time with me. And that’s how I access the source of my own power. Me, just simply being.”