Alexa Carlin takes on her health challenges, turning obstacles into opportunities

[News Bot]

Like a lot of people in their senior year of college, Alexa Carlin had a lot to look forward to. In January 2013, the South Florida native was set to graduate from the University of Florida in a few months, then start her dream job in New York that summer. She was also hours away from a party celebrating a major milestone in the latest of her entrepreneurial endeavors. But all that came to a sudden halt when she ended up in a hospital, induced into a medical coma, with a 1% chance to survive. She beat those formidable odds, but not without a lot of lessons learned along the way – and facing another health crisis soon after that would prove even more challenging. “My whole life just changed. My near-death experience was in my past. And I overcame that. But my autoimmune disease is something I'll never overcome,” says Carlin, now 31, recently married and based in Raleigh, North Carolina. “I realized, nothing's going to change unless I decide to change. And I had to learn how to adapt to what I couldn't control and say, this autoimmune disease is part of me, but it does not have to define what I can or cannot do with my life. And I at that moment stopped asking myself, why did this happen to me and started asking myself, why did this happen for me? And that really was a pivotal moment.”

Up until that time, Carlin had been on a fast and upward trajectory, a burgeoning businessperson, a trait she seemed to inherit from her dad, who was also an entrepreneur, specializing in sporting goods equipment. She says she always had this internal drive, which led her to being the first Student Body President elected as a junior (holding the position for two consecutive years), even though she was the shy new girl who had moved to a new town in middle school. Toward the end of her high school years, she founded her first business at the age of 17, designing and selling jewelry, donating a percentage of the proceeds to help build schools in Africa. After selling out her first run of bracelets, she kept that business going while she was in college, but it didn’t last past then. She admits that a lack of confidence held her back, as she wasn’t widely sharing what she was doing beyond word of mouth. She wanted to fit in, make new friends and so she never really spoke about her passion. She did the sales venture on the side and only her roommates knew. “I'd ride my bike to the post office after class and just kind of did what I had to do to make it happen,” she says. Carlin was determined to learn from that experience to step out of her comfort zone, and started a blog called Hello Perfect – aimed at helping young women gain confidence in themselves. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2022/06/AC1-1024x683.jpeg While the tech tools are enabling, her tenacity and resilience are just as important. “I pitched myself to 60 different small events and received 60 letters of rejection – or no responses,” she recalls. “I let that rejection sit with me for a few months before I stopped putting my dreams in the hands of strangers. I created my own events.” She spoke for free at first, to very small meetups – five to 30 people at a time. Then she started getting paid. Now she’s talking to hundreds, sometimes thousands, of women at each event. And reaching even more online. “I realized I needed to create a career that helps me achieve my dreams and my mission, while still understanding things out of my control,” Carlin says. “People needed to hear that my life's not perfect. I don't have it all together. I'm still going through all these challenges. But regardless of all those obstacles, I'm still chasing after my dreams. I'm still going after what I love.”

 

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