Welcome to TLC!
Hello!
I’m Celeste, but I go by Cee, and I am so humbled that you’re here. When God placed The Leaven Company into my heart, I thought it would be something that I would passionately do alongside something I felt I needed to do. A side hustle, if you will. Something quick and easy, a dibble or a dabble, a 100-meter race type of work followed by heavy breathing and much time between the next quick dash. I didn’t expect to launch a business that could be my full-time job.
As I began to build this business with some brilliant and capable people in their respective fields, I started to see myself in the thing God told me to do. I remember reaching out to a friend to help me make these words make sense to you all (shout out to my sister-friend, Mika!), and explaining to her what TLC is all about, to which she responded, “Celeste, this is so you.” I was so caught up in, “I need to do this for God,” that I forgot that God knows me better than I know myself. He placed gifts and talents inside of me and showed me a way to use them for His glory! He also showed me how to unlock that revelation in others, too. I was so taken aback by that simple revelation through Mika’s text that I missed my stop on the NYC subway. No lie. Yet, my sense of direction was as clear as ever.
So, welcome to TLC, where the C also stands for Cee.
I never imagined that I would curate an online community in any form, and I certainly didn’t imagine I would be publicly sharing my thoughts and insights in written form…ever. The truth is, I’ve always loved to write. In school, I preferred papers over exams any day of the week. At work, I’m one of the first people to raise my hand to write or edit anything at all. And in my personal life, I am my friends’ resident text message creator. It is a running joke amongst my best friends that I can write, what we call, “a P,” short for a paragraph, without blinking. Need to write up an email to your human resources department? I’m there. Tired of one of your girlfriends telling you the same story about a boy who just won’t do right, and you need to figure out the right way to word that in a text? I’m your girl. Or maybe you’re tired of the boy not doing right and want to end things in a classy but affirmative way. Pick me! All jokes aside, I’ve written through every season of my life. Writing has always provided me with a sacred place to make mistakes.
The term leaven is described as:
(1) a substance, typically yeast, that is used in dough to make it rise.
(2) a pervasive influence that modifies something or transforms it for the better.
(3) permeate and modify or transform (something) for the better.
In Luke 13:20-21 NLT, Jesus says, “What else is the Kingdom of God like? It is like the yeast a woman used in making bread. Even though she put only a little yeast in three measures of flour, it permeated every part of the dough.”
My ultimate goal is to be “a little leaven” to others. My sessions will start with prayer and end with me finding a way to help you in any way that I can. I can develop a strategy almost as fast as I can write a break-up text. I’ve helped many people and companies create winning strategies through creative thinking, risk management, and exercising faith like a mustard seed. Similarly, I’ve seen strategies fail due to poor execution, misguided motives, and lack of good counsel; at TLC, only the former will take place!
Many of my sessions will be private; to be a little leaven to those who aren’t in my sessions and workshops, I will share my tips, tricks, and scripts (scriptures). And don’t worry, they won’t be your gimmicky “5 ways to start a strategy” write-up. I’m talking real, under-the-surface, Spirit-led revelations to becoming your best business self with a sprinkle of humor, a lot of testimony, and maybe even some guest writers from successful businesses (this is me manifesting). I am no social media influencer queen, so this is my way of sharing pieces of who I am, authentically.
More to talk about soon, but if you’ve made it to the end, thank you: one, for reading my thoughts, and two, for believing in TLC so much that you took the time to learn about the person behind the business. I pray that God shines his face upon you, and if no one has told you this yet, He loves you so much.
Cee
