ICYMI - BESTIES is featured in Entrepreneur Magazine - click me.
I have spent the last 20 years running a PR company I started when I was 22 years old. My life has been consumed with communications and strategy work for some of the biggest organizations across entertainment, sports, and technology.
And now, I am slinging mushrooms!
I love this for me + my (very platonic) bestie/formulator/business partner, Billy.
I remember meeting Billy in 2018 at some (painfully) LA “social spot” where we were both dragged by a mutual connection to see and be seen/scene over $30 cocktails (which is like $60 now). The lamer the crowd, the cooler the glassware, though! Have you ever noticed that?!
Anyway, Billy and I were drawn to each other that afternoon. “Kismet” feels too strong and borderline disrespectful to his longtime girlfriend, Nichole (hey, girl!), but I think our bullsh*t barometers read abnormally low on both sides when we first met. Which, in LA, can feel like two MI5 agents inadvertently bumping into each other on intersecting missions. Billy and I are notoriously “burn after meeting” agents at events like that, but we stayed in touch.
He was developing CBD products for Hollywood’s elite at that time. I was building, launching, and sustaining brands for other people through my PR agency. Our thesis was, there is probably something to do together that is (first and foremost) fun, and mutually beneficial.
We tinkered with some ideas. Nothing was gelling. Was it too forced? Was it just bad timing? Were we just two more people who meet at an LA mixer and try to make something that is far greater than the sum of its parts in an effort to reach their max potential/justify their existence? Ugh, how basic.
Billy moved from LA back to New England. I got married to a super random dude. The pandemic hit. Our attempts to work together fizzled into sporadic texts just to say, “Hey, hope you’re well,” etc. It happens.
Cut to: Spring 2023. I was freshly divorced and shaking it off. Woof (IYKYK). I was also a few months into a microdosing regime to help me bounce back after a lot of heaviness. Which, for the record, I was terrified to introduce mushrooms into my wellness routine. As outlined in the Entrepreneur article, it had been nearly 20 years since eating any form of mushroom, and that last encounter had me out. of. my. mind. Given that I run a global PR agency, I cannot afford to be…you know…lit.
I get a call from Billy. Not a text. Is he OK?? We catch up on life. He shares with me that he lost 3 of his closest friends to contaminated pharmaceuticals and that he has been working on a mushroom blend as an alternative to other forms of treating heaviness. On cue, I tell him about my divorce, my challenges with work/family, and how I have been microdosing on mushrooms to reset myself, and it’s been a complete game changer for me.
Huzzah! 5 years later, we found our thing. Not just rooted in having fun working together and shared skillsets, but anchored deeply in personal things that have unfolded in our lives since we first met. Billy was motivated in a new, unexpected, and unwelcomed way to create something to help people elevate their mindsets. I surprisingly flipped from “keep your dirty mushrooms away from me,” to, “mushrooms gave me agency of my life again,” and I was on my first emotional upswing in many, many years.
There is something so special about all of this that I have never felt in my 20 years of PR (which, I love my PR company AKA my first born), but BESTIES hits deeper notes of “personal,” and the reception has been beyond anything Billy and I could have imagined.
Thank you for trying BESTIES, sharing BESTIES with your bestie, and giving purpose to the work these two besties have put into all of this.
Xo,
Tess & Billy (Co-Founders, BESTIES)
