Real Business Beginnings 07: The Business of Staying Whole
When Karissa invited her to participate in this series, she questioned whether she even qualified as having "a business." She creates immersive artistic experiences combining music, performance, technology, philosophy, and transmedia art. She tours internationally, runs exhibitions, leads workshops, manages teams across continents, and teaches.
She requested to be called Janaína, after the Afro-Brazilian goddess of the sea, to protect her sovereignty amid migration realities and political climates. Her story illustrates a deliberate choice to prioritize alignment over scale.
Understanding Scale and Rejecting It
Janaína studied business fundamentals and completed millionaire mindset training. She understood the mechanics of arbitrage. "I understood the logic," she explains, but recognized she couldn't devote her life to this model. The disconnect between her values and profit maximization became clear: speculation felt unfair, even if mathematically sound.
Navigating Institutional Constraints
After two decades as a full-time university employee, she transitioned to part-time independent scholarship. University politics, bureaucratic barriers, and limited creative freedom exhausted her. Her PhD journey tested her conviction — her director initially forbade her from researching virtual reality in contemporary art. When she persisted despite losing funding, family pressure, and illness, her work eventually gained recognition at Miami Art Basel.
Building Global Work with Local Integrity
She doesn't replicate the same show across cities. In São Paulo, she hired 84 local musicians for a month-long exhibition. In Marrakesh and Granada, the experiences differ. This commitment to uniqueness demands coordination across countries and careful leadership.
Restructuring for Sustainability
By 2019, growth accelerated beyond healthy management. She worked twelve-hour days while physicians urged five hours weekly of exercise. Recognizing this imbalance represented maturity rather than failure, she restructured to protect her wellbeing. She views her career in seven-year cycles: building, refining, reaching alignment, then restructuring.
Legacy Beyond Conventional Measures
She questioned whether sacrificing motherhood for her artistic practice represented genuine loss. She's concluded her legacy exists through her artistic body of work, students, collaborators, and the experiences she creates. Daily musical practice grounds her. "I like the person I built," she states simply.
This narrative resists the startup mythology of endless expansion. Instead, it demonstrates choosing ethical integrity over financial maximization, building meaningful global work without abandoning values, and recognizing that restructuring to preserve health represents success, not failure.