Exaustivo, Intenso, Incrível: Proof That the Hustle Pays Off
Six months in São Paulo feels like eight years.
My face is marked with acne scars from stress breakouts (PCOS and stress do not mix). I’ve spent hours painting a ceiling to fix shoddy Brazilian labor (thank God I’m the daughter of a painter), installing yet another piece of studio furniture by hand (why do I have to do everything?), hunting down the right pendant light kit in Portuguese, and fighting tooth and nail to finally claw back my título de capitalização from my mentally unstable ex-landlord.
And yet—I’m still standing.
I’m in a new apartment, in my dream neighborhood. I’ve got a brand-new workshop table resized perfectly to my space at no extra cost. My start-up expenses are lower. The pieces are finally falling into place and some days I honestly cannot believe it. It’s all happening.
I often tell people I’ll be a completely different person by the end of my first year here and I’ve only been here six months. The grit it takes to survive the grind here is unlike anything I’ve experienced. Life in Brazil isn’t simple for anyone—Brazilian friends tell me their own bureaucratic horror stories, and it’s clear: this country does not discriminate when it comes to serving up a challenge. The Brazilians are a beautiful bunch, but survival here takes a certain fire.
Just this week I was talking to a good friend—another Black American entrepreneur—about this. She’s living her best nomadic life in Cali, Colombia after a stint in Salvador, Bahia. We always circle back to the same truth: what we faced in the U.S. wasn’t easier, just different. Like job-hopping in corporate America—trading one kind of pain for another, earning more but paying for it in other ways.
I guess everyone knows about America.
Yet, what’s the difference? Brazil’s challenges are life lessons I could never get behind a desk. I also thought I was the queen of networking in the design industry, but jeitinho brasileiro* is the big leagues. Here’s what it’s taught me so far:
My workshop table got resized at the last minute, free of charge, because I made friends with one of the woodshop leads and became one of their best customers.
After four months of toil with Vivo (apparently gringos can’t get plans), I got internet installed thanks to an altruistic first date who let me use his CPF for an account sign-up.
My landlord, skeptical of my non–9-to-5 life, eventually signed over a long lease in one of the most coveted neighborhoods here after seeing what I’m building with Tree Likkle Herbs.
My Brazilian homegirl cursed out a contractor in Portuguese after he botched my ceiling repair, saving me R$400. Now friends vet all my project quotes before I hire anyone.
These wins have sharpened me. I’m more demanding about quality. I’m unapologetically discerning about who I let into my life. My Portuguese has gone from survival-level “Leite vegetal no meu café, por favor” to fluid conversations about my identity and the importance of my work. Most importantly, I trust my intuition more deeply than ever—my ancestors are always speaking (literally) and are my guidance and protection in most everything that I do.
I came here as an outsider adapting to the environment. Now I move like a woman who belongs here. I don’t know who I’d be if I’d let fear keep me in the sunken place of the “American Dream”—but I know she wouldn’t have grown like I have in these last six months.
And yes, this is hard, but I’m doing it, and it’s paying off.
Vamos lá.
*jeitinho brasileiro — a uniquely Brazilian way of solving problems through creativity, improvisation, social connections, and bending rules to navigate bureaucracy or difficult situations. It’s part charm, part resourcefulness, and sometimes a bit of rule-breaking to “make things happen.”
