Beeta Hashempour
Lifestyle Blogger & Writer
Tell us a little bit about yourself! What made you start Mon Petit Four?
After my first trip to Paris in 2010, I fell in love with France and French culture. I became a full-fledged Francophile and found myself so inspired by the architecture, people, fashion, art, and food in France. The food was particularly delicious and changed my entire approach to cooking and diet back home in the States. I ended up ordering a bunch of French cookbooks when I came home from that trip and started mastering as many of them as I could, simplifying them to easy recipes I could create in my own kitchen as a home cook. I ended up sharing these recipes on a blog with the intention of sharing my hobby with family and friends, but I soon learned that there were many strangers who were also enjoying my recipes and shared my love of France. This prompted me to take a more professional and intentional approach with the site and eventually launch my brand Mon Petit Four®, which is now an entire French lifestyle brand that goes beyond just food and seeks to connect others to the spirit of France and French living.
What are you most passionate about?
I am very passionate about slow and artful living. I find that in a time where everyone is consumed with doing as much as they can in as short of time as possible, I treasure doing things with pleasure and intention.
Where do you gather inspiration from?
From France, of course! But also from the beauty around me. If you slow down in life, you allow yourself the opportunity to tune into all the beauty that surrounds you, which can inspire the most delightful things.
If you could invite any three people to your dream dinner party who would they be?
Honestly, probably none of the influential people I look up to as I'd feel like a nervous wreck trying to make a meal for them! Ha! My favorite dinner parties are the ones where I have my good friends over, where we can just laugh, be comfortable with each other, and have long and deep conversations that allow for hours to pass by without us even noticing.
What advice would you give to your younger self?
Don't worry about what others think and don't worry about following the path that's expected. For many years, a lot of relatives and friends didn't understand what I was doing online or how I could ever make a career out of it. They thought I was wasting my intelligence by not using my degree to pursue law school and follow the more traditional path. While I'm proud of myself for staying resilient and not giving up, there were many times I allowed their opinions to affect me and cause me to doubt myself. I also always felt like the odd one out because I wasn't doing the "normal" things friends around me were doing. I wasn't focused on getting married, having kids, or the white picket fence life. Even today, I'm often going "against the grain" and living a very unique life compared to my peers. The reality is, however, if I had let their opinions completely get to me or allowed my discomfort around taking the unknown path divert me, I wouldn't be where I am today, which is running a business that I love and living a life that I adore.
What quote or saying do you try to live by?
I tend to live by the idea of "believe it before you see it." This is all about you creating the reality that you want. People are always looking for the evidence of what they want before they commit to believing it exists or can actually happen. The truth is that the path of least resistance to whatever it is you want is to believe it already exists and is true before you see the tangible manifestation of it in your life. Long before I was making a full-time income in my business or living in Paris like I wanted, I was telling myself that I was a CEO and making big and important decisions. I was looking at Parisian apartments before I had any clue as to how I would afford one or get the visa to move. I didn't let the "how" affect my belief that I was on my way to this "dream" reality, or get hung up on the fact that, at that time, my business was a side-hustle and I was actually living with my parents rather than a beautiful, Parisian pied-a-terre. If you believe something for long enough, your brain will start to believe it too, and the actions you take and energy you carry will start to reflect that. Then, the Universe has no choice but to deliver an exact match to what you're putting out there.