Join me in the studio as I hang out with a longtime friend of mine who is making her own dreams come true!

Carolina Vengoechea is a Miami-based entrepreneur, award-winning fashion designer, master colorist, and Team USA dragon boat athlete. After two decades in the beauty industry, she combined her love for innovation, design, and technology to build solutions that empower both beauty professionals and consumers.

She bootstrapped her own startup doing hair from her Beaubar van, a mobile salon solution that started during covid and sparked the creation of the Beaubar app, a beauty marketplace where users earn rewards and Haircolor Drop, an AI based next-generation at-home hair-color kit crafted by professional colorists and delivered ready to apply.

Her mission is to push the beauty industry forward by blending technology, artistry, and real-world experience while inspiring women to pursue their fullest potential through creativity, self-growth, and discipline.

You'll love this feel good energy!

Links for Carolina:
Beaubar: https://www.beaubar.com
Beaubar Us: https://www.beaubar.app
Haircolor Drop: https://www.haircolordrop.com

Links for your host, Deirdre:
Imdb: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1255825/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deirdrelorenz
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@deirdrelorenz
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deirdre.lorenz.the.original
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/deirdrelorenz

If you love Hollywood legends, this is for you! What a deep dive that this tremendously insightful and, at times, wildly surprising conversation turned out to be. Multiple New York Times Best Selling author and former film critic for The Oregonian and KGW (the NBC affiliate in Portland) Shawn Levy joins me to discuss his newest masterpiece, an extensive book titled CLINT, The Man and the Movies. This conversation covers many notable points on Academy Award winning actor and director Clint Eastwood, and many of the revelations that surprised both of us from his life and career. The conversation moves to another of Shawn's books that I feverishly read and soaked up, The Castle on Sunset, which is an astounding biography on the hidden, yet famous (and some would say, infamous), Hollywood gem, The Chateau Marmont. We then discuss Shawn's storytelling podcast Glitter & Might, The Lou Wasserman Story. This man is one of the reasons Hollywood is Hollywood, but nobody knows his name! Oh, and I'm not sorry to say that we have a total Oregon love fest at the end. Yes, we both have Oregon family pioneer stories. We laughed, we cried and so much more. This episode is an adventure movie in itself!

We are back in the virtual Upgraded Podcast studio with my friend, the talented and renowned still photographer and visual storyteller David Charles Lee. We share our fun memories meeting on a couple of his brother, filmmaker Spike Lee’s, sets. Then, we discuss David’s travel dreams, current projects, his more than 100 film and show credits (and missing his credits on projects including The Wire!!), and the challenges of organizing a vast and growing collection of photo archives. David shares about his family, the value and love of creativity in his family, and how he loves storytelling from all angles. We packed in too many gems to count in this reunion conversation. This is a must listen. Thank you, David!