“You make a plan and God laughs,” shrugs Bethenny Frankel, chef, author and one of the stars of Bravo’s The Real Housewives of New York City. She is promoting her new non-diet nutrition book, Naturally Thin, which she admits is never something she set out to do. She elaborates, “It doesn’t matter what your plan is as long as you’re going forward. My dreams are bigger than I could ever imagine, but they’re coming true 
now.”
As a little girl, Frankel probably never dreamed of being a best-selling author, a national spokesperson, or on a hit reality television show. She admits that none of this was ever something she could have imagined, but she rolled with everything and it has taken her to great heights. “You don’t have to know what you want for the big picture but know what you want for that moment,” Frankel advises. “I’m thirty-eight years old and I’m…still figuring it out.”
As a single woman and entrepreneur, Frankel seems to be the opposite of what a show with the word “housewife” in the title would want. In fact, everyone from her publicist to her friends told her not to go on such a show, but it had the Bravo name behind it and she knew she wanted to build a brand, so Frankel went for it anyway.
Frankel credits a strong work ethic but it is also her ability to “think outside the box” and always put herself first that has made her such a success. “Check yourself before you wreck yourself,” Frankel smiles when discussing the message she hopes young women take away from her book. “You can have fried chicken; you can have a margarita; you can have something when you’re PMSing. Just do not say ‘today I was bad and tomorrow I’ll be good’ because there is no bad and there is no good. Food is not your best friend or your enemy; it is just food. Be able to walk away from it.”
Frankel is wickedly smart and fiercely independent, embodying the fearless “go-getter” attitude that is necessary to succeed in business, let alone the entertainment business. She has never relied on her name or any man to pave (or pay) her way. “I was engaged three times. They were rich…gorgeous and they lived for me. My friends were telling me ‘what the hell is wrong with you; you broke up with them?’…[but] I would not sell out. You can’t do anything that isn’t going to make you happy.”
Frankel is self-sufficient and talented in many ways, but her greatest strength is in knowing that throughout everything, you have to figure out what you want and be true to it. Every woman owes it to herself to listen to (and trust!) her gut instinct and be unfaltering in her pursuits. It is only then that widespread success can be achieved.