Today we’d like to introduce you to Lauren Short.
Hi Lauren, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Evolution has become one of the defining themes of my life. I believe we are meant to keep learning and refining who we are. Sometimes that means having the courage to begin. Other times, it means recognizing when we have outgrown something we once worked incredibly hard to build.
I have experienced both.
My journey into entrepreneurship began in 2022 when I started Highlite, a creative marketing and multimedia agency. It was my first business and became an incredible chapter of my career. I worked on projects I genuinely loved and helped businesses tell their stories through photography, video, branding, websites, social media and marketing. Our work earned 22 Platinum awards along with other recognition, and I proved to myself that I could turn my creativity into a successful business.
I was proud of what I had built, but I was also placing enormous and unnecessary expectations on myself. There was always another accomplishment to reach and another opportunity to prove that I was doing enough. I became too dependent on recognition from others to validate whether I was successful.
The complicated part was that I was receiving it.
The awards came. The business grew. People recognized my work. Yet I wasn’t as fulfilled as I thought I should be. Eventually, I had to ask myself why I was looking outward for something I needed to find within myself.
At the same time, another important part of my career was developing through movement. I became a certified Advanced Level 2 Lagree instructor and taught at local studios. I also developed Stretch, a class that incorporated yoga and intentional stretching into the Lagree workout. I loved helping people become physically stronger, but even more meaningful was watching that strength change the way they saw themselves.
Yoga had been personally important to me for years, and I eventually felt called to explore it more deeply. I wanted to connect more intentionally with myself and my spirituality while following my passion for yoga into teaching. Completing my 200-hour yoga teacher training became much more than another professional credential. It gave me the space to examine the life I had created and ask whether it was truly aligned with the person I was becoming.
That changed everything.
I began to recognize how easily our identities can become attached to accomplishment and how much of my happiness I had allowed to depend on how I was perceived. I still wanted to be ambitious and create exceptional work, but I no longer wanted achievement to come at the expense of my peace. I wanted to make decisions from a foundation of self-love and acceptance rather than a need to prove my worth.
That realization changed the way I viewed marketing too. I still believed deeply in its ability to connect people with meaningful ideas and businesses worth discovering, but I had seen how easily the industry could become consumed by appearances, status and attention.
I wanted to remove the ego from marketing and let the good thrive.
Eventually, I made the decision to close Highlite. The business had not failed, which in some ways made the decision more difficult. I wanted to end it on a high note while I was still deeply proud of what I had created. Highlite represented the version of me who was brave enough to become an entrepreneur and discover what she was capable of. I didn’t need to reject that version of myself. I needed to honor what she had built and build again from a stronger foundation.
That regrowth became Eudaia.
Eudaia means “living with a good soul.” The name was inspired by the ancient Greek concept of *eudaimonia*, which centers on human flourishing and living a meaningful life guided by purpose and virtue. I was drawn to that philosophy because it reflected what I was searching for in my own life and what I wanted this next chapter of my business to represent. Success could be about more than recognition. It could be about creating a life and body of work that felt meaningful, aligned and genuinely fulfilling.
Eudaia is a reimagining of the creative work I began. I continue to offer personal branding, photography, website design, social media, video and marketing strategy, but the intention behind the business has evolved. It is built on a stronger foundation of self-love, acceptance and peace. It represents my belief that we can pursue excellence without allowing recognition to determine our worth.
Today, I am especially drawn to working with people who are refining themselves. They may be pursuing a calling they have ignored, building something more aligned with who they have become or realizing that they have evolved while their brand has not evolved with them. I understand that experience intimately.
I want to help people uncover what they genuinely stand for and give them the creative support to represent it authentically. I believe our morals and ethics belong in our marketing. Strategy and integrity can coexist, and success should not require us to manufacture a personality or compromise who we are. I want to connect with people who are seeking something deeper than recognition and awards and help them build something that is an honest reflection of what they want to contribute to the world.
My work continues to evolve beyond marketing as well. I teach yoga and fitness, work as a tarot reader and continue exploring the intersection of movement, wellness and spirituality. I am also bringing these worlds together through coaching focused on self-representation and personal branding, fitness and wellness, and spirituality. While they may look different on the surface, I see the same purpose running through all of them: helping people become more connected to themselves and more confident in who they are becoming.
My own journey has taught me that becoming our best self is not a destination. It is an ongoing process of learning and refinement. I have failed and started over. I have also succeeded and chosen to redefine what success means to me.
I am grateful for both.
I hope I am always willing to keep learning and improving while following my heart. I want my work to help other people recognize their own value, pursue what feels meaningful and have the tools to represent themselves authentically. I believe that as we become more aligned with who we truly are, we begin to see doors that the previous version of ourselves may never have known were there.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It definitely has not been a smooth road. When I look back, some of my biggest challenges came from simply not knowing what I didn’t know.
When I first considered starting my own business, one of the things that held me back was everything I didn’t understand about running one. I was a creative. I understood photography, branding, marketing and how to bring an idea to life, but I knew very little about finances or how to properly structure a business. That lack of confidence was one of the biggest reasons I dragged my feet before finally taking a leap of faith. I remember signing up for QuickBooks and essentially deciding I was going to figure it out as I went.
Unfortunately, not having the right financial systems and bookkeeping in place created problems for me down the road. I’ve since been able to correct those issues and surround myself with people who excel in the areas where I don’t. Finances still stress me out, but the experience taught me something incredibly valuable: asking for help is not a weakness. Sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself and your business is recognize what you don’t know and bring in people who do.
I faced a different challenge when I began building teams and collaborating with other creatives. I found incredibly talented people whose work I admired, but talent didn’t always translate into the same level of commitment to deadlines, communication or client expectations. That was difficult for me because I cared so deeply about the work and the experience I was creating for my clients. I had to learn that not everyone is going to care about something as much as I do.
And that’s okay.
That realization helped me become much more intentional about who I work with, while also letting go of the expectation that everyone should approach their work exactly as I do.
One of the more painful challenges has been seeing my creative work copied or watching other people take credit for ideas and work I created. I think that can be particularly difficult for creatives because our work is personal. You can protect yourself through contracts, documentation and intellectual property protections, but there are limits to how much control you have once something you created enters the world. When you have put your heart and soul into something, watching someone else exploit it can cut incredibly deep.
One of my greatest struggles through all of these experiences has actually been learning acceptance. I used to spend a lot of energy wishing I could change what had happened, how someone had behaved or a decision I had made without knowing better. Learning to accept those things hasn’t always come easily to me, but it has been incredibly beneficial.
Acceptance has helped me distinguish between what I can change and what I simply have to learn from. I can ask for help, build better systems, choose my collaborators more carefully, protect my work and set stronger boundaries. I can’t rewrite the experiences that taught me those lessons.
Learning that has allowed me to spend much less energy fighting the past and much more energy building what comes next.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
At my core, I am a creative. My work is rooted in marketing, photography, branding and storytelling, but what I specialize in is taking an idea and figuring out how to bring it to life in a way that feels thoughtful, cohesive and authentic.
Through Eudaia, I work with businesses and individuals on personal branding, photography, websites, social media, video, content creation and marketing strategy. I especially love personal branding because it allows me to understand the person behind the work. Before I think about what something should look like, I want to understand who someone is, what they are genuinely good at, what they believe in and what they want to contribute. From there, I can translate those things into a brand that actually feels like them.
I think one of the things that sets me apart is the range of creative skills I have developed throughout my career. I can help develop the concept, photograph it, create the content, build the website and think through how it should be marketed. Having experience across so many parts of the creative process allows me to see how all of those pieces work together rather than treating them as separate deliverables.
I’m also interested in using those skills to create experiences, not just traditional marketing projects. Rescue Dog Yoga has been a beautiful example of that. I’ve had the opportunity to help create these events alongside Who Rescued Who, bringing together yoga, community and animal rescues in a way that feels joyful and meaningful. Being able to take an idea, build an experience around it and then watch people actually come together because of it has been incredibly rewarding.
What I’m most proud of is being able to use creativity in so many different ways. My work has earned 22 Platinum awards along with other recognition, which I am incredibly proud of, but I’ve learned that meaningful work isn’t always the work that receives an award. Sometimes it’s creating something that helps a business grow, helping someone finally feel represented by their brand or building an experience that brings a community together. That’s the kind of creative work I want to continue doing.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
If there is anything I would want someone reading this to take away, it is that you can restart at any time. You are allowed to change your mind, outgrow goals that once meant everything to you and redefine what success looks like. You are not behind simply because your life doesn’t follow the timeline you once imagined.
You’re allowed to succeed. You’re allowed to fail. You’re allowed to get back up, begin again and make choices that bring you closer to the person you want to become.
Starting over doesn’t erase everything that came before it. You carry those experiences and lessons with you. Becoming your best self isn’t about reaching some perfect, finished version of who you are. It’s about continuing to learn, evolve and realign with the life you genuinely want to live.
You are never too late to begin again.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://yourguidelauren.com
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/yourguidelauren
- Facebook: http://facebook.com/yourguidelauren
- LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/laurenshort
- Youtube: http://youtube.com/@yourguidelauren
- Other: http://eudaiacreative.com
