WE Convention 2025: Candace Bushnell, International best-selling author It's really about investing in yourself, and putting your time and money into your business."
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This article is featured in our special WE Convention 2025 supplement, a collaborative publication by the WE Council and Entrepreneur Middle East.
Candace Bushnell arrived to NewYork at 19 with a typewriter and the audacity to believe women's stories mattered. From her early days as a freelance writer for Mademoiselle, Self, and Esquire, Bushnell developed a voice that was sharp, daring, and unapologetically female. She rose to fame with her New York Observer column Sex and the City, which became a bestselling book and iconic HBO series.
Through ten novels, Bushnell has chronicled the lives of women navigating love, ambition, and identity, making her one of the most influential voices in women's literature. Through her books and television series, Bushnell's work has influenced and defined two generations of women. Bushnell is the winner of the 2006 Matrix Award for books, and a recipient of the Albert Einstein Spirit of Achievement Award. With wit and candor, Bushnell now takes audiences behind the scenes of her journey. Her talks peel back the layers of the modern world's biases while offering real-world insight into writing, resilience, and reinvention.
CAREER
"It was about being willing to do without when I was young. It was about being willing to live in crappy places and really about delaying gratification in order to find the time to write and invest in myself to develop those skills. It's really about investing in yourself, and putting your time and money into your business."
MONEY
"I'm not sure if other people can apply these principles but I'm very conservative about money. My parents never ever talked to me about money when I was young as it was considered in bad taste. Plus, being in a creative field means you never know when your next check is coming in, so I learned a long time ago to save for a rainy day. I try to have little to no debt, although that seems to be very difficult for young people to do these days."
LIFE
"The mindset I would recommend is to enjoy it all! Enjoy the process, enjoy the opportunities and the paths your pursuits take you on."
SUCCESS
"Most people have a pretty good idea of what success is in the larger world—after all, we're fed a constant barrage of the glamorous lifestyles of the rich and famous. But the feeling of success and satisfaction comes from the inside, not the outside. I think it's about a job well done. It's about loving the process. Loving what you're doing."
