How to Act As If: Lisa Price Teaches Us How to Manifest Like a CEO
There's a version of manifestation that gets talked about a lot online. Vision boards. Affirmations. Believing it before you see it. And then there's the version Lisa Price has been quietly practicing for 33 years — opening bank accounts with no money in them, recording announcements before deals are signed, and writing in a journal about a paid-off mortgage before she could afford it.
That's not wishful thinking. That's a practice. And it looks a lot more like work than most people expect.
Lisa Price is the founder of Carol's Daughter, one of the most iconic Black-owned beauty brands in the country. She started it in her Brooklyn apartment in 1993, grew it into a nationally recognized brand, sold it to L'Oréal in 2014, spent a decade navigating the public backlash that followed, and then bought it back. She joined me on She's So Lucky this week and did not hold back on any of it.
What Does "Acting As If" Actually Look Like?
Before the L'Oréal acquisition closed, Lisa wasn't sitting around hoping it would happen. She was preparing as if it already had. She opened a bank account with no money in it. She recorded the announcement and had it edited and ready to go. She did 18 months of hard work — keeping secrets, attending meetings, missing her son's college visit — all while the outcome was still uncertain.
This is what acting as if actually looks like in practice. Not pretending problems don't exist. Not bypassing the hard work. It's making a decision — internally, privately — that the thing is already done, and then moving accordingly.
Lisa has been journaling this way for decades. She talked about finding old journals years later and reading entries like "I'm so grateful I no longer have a mortgage to pay" — written before it was true. Three years after she paid it off, she found those pages.
If you've ever wondered whether manifestation actually works or whether it's just rebranded optimism, Lisa's answer is somewhere in the middle: it works, but it requires you to be in motion at the same time.
How to Handle Public Backlash When You Know You Made the Right Call
The day the Carol's Daughter acquisition was announced, Lisa did a press run. She shared the news with her team. She went on television. By the time she looked at her phone that evening, she was being called a sellout.
She never left. She was still there, still running the brand, still showing up every day. But the narrative had already taken hold, and it followed her for nearly a decade.
What she says about getting through that period isn't complicated, but it is hard: you have to know what you built and why you built it. When the outside noise is loudest, the only thing that holds is your own clarity about your intentions.
A conversation with Iyanla Vanzant helped her reframe it entirely. Iyanla asked her one question — "Were any of them in the basement with you back then?" — and that was it. The people who weren't there when you were building don't get to define what it means when you sell.
That principle applies well beyond beauty brands. If you've ever made a decision that was right for your life and still had to defend it publicly, Lisa's story is the permission slip you didn't know you needed.
What Success Doesn't Solve
One of the most honest moments in our conversation came during the rapid fire at the end. I asked Lisa what success hasn't solved, and without hesitating she said: confidence. And security.
After 33 years of building one of the most recognized brands in beauty, she'll tell you plainly that those things don't come automatically with the wins. If anything, visibility amplifies the insecurities you already have. The internal work runs parallel to the external achievements — neither replaces the other.
She also talked about taking a mental health break in 2024 when she seriously considered retiring. Her therapist told her to get some sleep before making any decisions. She took almost six months off. And then she came back and bought her brand back.
That's the thing about building something for the long haul. The pivot, the pause, the recalibration — those aren't failures. They're part of the plan.
The Gratitude Practice That Actually Works
Lisa shared a daily gratitude practice she did for about a year that changed how she moved through her days. Every morning she wrote five things she was grateful for — but the rule was they had to be small and specific. Not health. Not family. The barista who got her matcha right. Someone who held a door open.
The idea is simple: when you train your attention toward the small moments of abundance, you start to walk through the day in a different state. You're not waiting for the big thing to feel grateful. You're already in it.
It's one of those practices that sounds easy until you actually try to do it consistently. But if you're looking for somewhere to start with shifting your mindset without overhauling your whole routine, this is a good first move.
Lisa Price has been building, pivoting, and showing up in public for three decades. This conversation is for anyone who has ever had to defend a decision they knew was right, or who is trying to call something in and doesn't quite know how to start moving toward it.
Episode 351 of She's So Lucky is out now. Listen on Spotify and YouTube. 🍀
