How Mayssa Chehata Built Behave Through Life’s Hardest Season | Be Anomalous by Sai Menon
Off Script
In this episode of Be Anomalous, Mayssa Chehata joins me for a deeply honest conversation about entrepreneurship as identity work, rebuilding your life while building a company, and what it really takes to keep going when everything feels like it’s falling apart.
Mayssa is the founder and CEO of Behave Candy, a better-for-you candy brand created to remove sugar from the food system without asking people to give up joy. But this conversation goes far beyond CPG, startups, or product-market fit.
Before Behave, Mayssa built her career inside some of the most recognizable brands in culture — including the NFL, Uber, SoulCycle, and Daily Harvest — learning how systems work, how power moves, and how ideas get scaled.
But her story doesn’t start in a boardroom.
She grew up as a first-generation Tunisian-American, moving between cultures and never fully belonging to any one culture. That early experience taught her how to read rooms, adapt quickly, and survive in environments that weren’t built with her in mind — skills that later became foundational to her leadership style and entrepreneurial journey.
In this conversation, Mayssa is radically candid about the personal cost of building something from scratch. In the span of a single year, she got married, divorced, checked a parent into rehab, and continued building her company — all while navigating anxiety, financial pressure, and the nervous-system reality of entrepreneurship no one prepares you for.
We talk about intuition versus logic, why “go big or go home” nearly broke her, and how trusting her own taste and voice ultimately brought her back to the work.
This episode is for founders, creatives, and anyone rebuilding their life while carrying responsibility — for a business, a family, or themselves.
If you’ve ever felt caught between ambition and survival, stability and self-trust, or between knowing when to quit and when to keep going — this episode is for you.
🎧 Listen to the episode:
What You’ll Learn
Why entrepreneurship is as much about nervous system capacity as strategy
How growing up between cultures shapes adaptability and leadership
What “go big or go home” really looks like behind the scenes in CPG
How to trust your intuition when external advice gets loud
Why women deserve to want money, power, and influence — out loud
The difference between quitting and honoring the right stopping point
How to build something aligned without abandoning yourself
Favorite Quote
“My mom told me to marry rich. I said, Mom, I am.”
A reflection of Mayssa’s belief that women don’t need permission to want wealth and that money, power, and influence are tools women deserve to hold.
Favorite Book
📖 The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success — Deepak Chopra
A book Mayssa returns to again and again, using it as a daily grounding practice to reconnect with purpose, flow, and trust, especially during the hardest seasons of building.
In This Episode, We Cover
(00:00) Mayssa’s origin story and growing up between cultures
(05:30) Corporate life, ambition, and learning to speak up
(12:00) Leaving stability and stepping into uncertainty
(18:30) The nervous system side of entrepreneurship
(26:00) Fundraising, money, and early mistakes founders don’t talk about
(34:00) Trusting intuition when logic isn’t enough
(41:00) Power, money, and rewriting what success looks like for women
(48:00) Knowing when to keep going — and when to pause
Referenced in This Episode
Low-sugar and better-for-you CPG innovation
Nervous system regulation and entrepreneurship
Founder intuition vs. external validation
Women, money, and power dynamics in business
Adaptability as a leadership skill
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