Property Manager by Day: Entrepreneur and Pageant Queen by Night. 

I want to introduce you to someone I stumbled into — and couldn’t stop thinking about afterward.

I went to meet the new property manager of my building.

I’d just moved in. There had been a transition — a new face behind the desk — and relationships matter to me. I wanted her to know who I was.

Her office is in the back of the first floor. Small. Barely any natural light. We chatted. She was warm, professional, easy to talk to.

And then she mentioned — almost in passing — that she’d just come back from a pageant. That she was the first runner-up at Miss United States.

I stopped.

I looked at the person training Amber. I looked at Amber. I looked at that dim little office.

She laughed. “You caught me in my Clark Kent phase.”

That was my introduction to Amber Bruce. On Instagram, she describes herself as “Entrepreneur | Creative Personality | Queen.”

I knew immediately I wanted to get to know her.

She just wanted to try one pageant.

That was the whole plan. A bucket list item. Something she could say she did once and move on from.

She didn’t move on.

That one pageant took her to Fashion Week in New York. It landed her in Chicago auditioning to be the face of a brand — she didn’t get it, she told me, but it was a great experience. It turned her into a pageant producer. It sparked a podcast. And it led her — through conversations and connections she never saw coming — to open the Empress Suite, a size-inclusive formalwear boutique in Federal Way, WA serving women in sizes 00 to 24.

“I never thought that when I signed up for
that one pageant, that’s the journey I would be on.”

She couldn’t have planned it. Not because she isn’t a planner — she is. But none of what came next was visible from where she started. It only showed up once she started moving.

I think about my own journey when she says this. I didn’t start coaching with a perfectly mapped vision of what it would become. Something pulled at me and I followed it. What this work has become, I couldn’t have invented from where I started.

You don’t see the path by studying it. You see it by walking it.

Getting to know Amber Bruce.

She wakes up early. She rides her Peloton. She journals — not the I am kind, I am smart, I am important kind of journaling, she told me, laughing. Just dreaming on paper. Because the moment you write something down, it becomes a plan. And plans, she’s learned, have a way of becoming real.

She has a village. Her mom — an Aquarius to Amber’s Libra — is her best friend, her ride-or-die, and her most trusted reality check. When Amber floats a big idea, her mom doesn’t say no. She says: okay, what does that look like for you? She asks the grounding questions. Makes Amber think it through. And holds her up when the thinking gets hard. Her boyfriend — once convinced pageants were a reality TV show — is now on her production team. And a mentor in the pageant space helped her think through the business plan for the Empress Suite, showing her possibilities she hadn’t considered before she’d even opened.

And then there is the red bedazzled microphone.

Amber is a karaoke queen. In her home, there is a hierarchy: her red mic, her mom’s purple mic, and a black mic that — in her words — nobody wants. The boyfriend is on the black mic. He has a couple of songs. He tries to deny it.

When she worked at Ulta Beauty, she’d show up with the red mic and spontaneously interview customers. Welcome to Ulta. What incredible things are you planning on achieving today?

The red mic. That’s the thing. It’s not about the big leap — it’s about showing up as exactly who you are.

What the journey actually looked like.

Amber doesn’t sugarcoat it.

She went back to work after going full-time in her business. Health insurance is real. Over a thousand dollars a month out of pocket is real. Betting on yourself, she’ll tell you, isn’t one dramatic moment. It’s a series of unglamorous, eyes-open choices made again and again.

She had friends who cheered loudly for the Empress Suite and never walked through the door. She learned to take enthusiasm as feedback on the idea, not as a sales projection. She says it without bitterness, which is the part I find most impressive.

At 25, her timeline fell apart. Everything she thought was supposed to happen by a certain age — didn’t. And what she found on the other side wasn’t a new plan. It was something better: you can build a life around your dreams without sacrificing the living part.

“You can’t stop where you are, because you only know where you’ve been.”

I’ve come back to that line more than once. It’s the kind of thing that resonates when you’re already ready to invest in yourself — in your thinking, your mindset, your capacity for what building something actually asks. That’s who I work with, on both sides of the leap.

The thing I keep thinking about.

I went to meet my property manager and introduce myself.

I left thinking about what it means to follow one pull — just one — and see where it goes.

Amber didn’t have a master plan. She had a first step. Then another. Then a conversation with someone who knew someone. Then a space she’d been driving past for months that suddenly made sense. Then a boutique. Then a podcast. Then a pageant stage.

When I asked her to describe her business journey as a movie, she didn’t hesitate: The Wizard of Oz. Disorienting at first. Different from the inside than it looks from the outside. Full of color and storms and people she never expected.

That’s been my experience too.

“You can’t stop where you are,
because you only know where you’ve been.”

Amber Bruce just wanted to try one pageant. That was her first pull. She said yes, paid attention to her joy, stayed open — and found the spark that pulled her forward.

What are you open to? And what could it spark?

If something is coming up, I’d love to hear it. Email me at pierre at pierrebradette dot com.

With inspiration,

Pierre

Certified Professional Coach

P.S. Amber is the owner of the Empress Suite in Federal Way, WA, and the host of the BGE Podcast (Big Goddess Energy). If she sounds like someone you want in your orbit, she probably is. Find her here.

If Amber’s story is stirring something in you, that’s probably worth paying attention to. The people who find their way to me are already ready to invest in themselves. In their thinking, their mindset, their capacity for what building something actually asks. If that resonates, I’d love to have a conversation. Grab 30 minutes with me here: Think Out Loud with Pierre.