DREAM WEAVER: CHAPEL HILL'S LARA CASEY EMPLOYS A SKILLFUL MULTIMEDIA APPROACH TO EMPOWER WOMEN TO SET COALS AND REACH THEIR DREAMS.

• Author: Wanbauch, Taylor

Lara Casey has cultivated a multimillion-dollar business that she says has helped more than 50,000 women achieve their goals and dreams. As CEO of Chapel Hill-based Cultivate What Matters, Casey, 39, created the company's popular PowerSheets Intentional Goal Planner, Bible journals and other faith-based merchandise and has authored two books. Cultivate What Matters has 10 employees, customers in 65 countries, and has amassed nearly 150,000 followers on its Instagram and Facebook pages.

Casey also leads an annual conference that empowers attendees to set personal and career goals called the Making Things Happen Conference, which hit its 10-year milestone in March. The list price for next year's two-day conference is $2,195. Her new sold out event, Cultivate Your Year Live, kicks off Dec. 9, with about 250 attendees.

"I think the unique thing about us is we don't just sell a product," Casey says. "We walk with you every step of the way. So when someone buys a product from our shop, through our newsletters, through our content that we put out, we really are coaches. We're helping people along their journey."

Casey, who is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University and also studied at Yale University, started and ran Southern Weddings magazine for more than a decade before ending publication in 2018 to focus on Cultivate What Matters. She and her husband, Ari, have three children and live in Chapel Hill.

She talked about her work in an interview edited for clarity and brevity.

* WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO START YOUR OWN COMPANY?

My story is not typical. I have a degree [that involves] music and theater, and I thought that was what I was going to do when I got out of college. [Instead], I fell in love with the world of wedding planning. It was very similar to what I had done in school in a lot of ways. ... All of these things that I'd seen in theater with music and finding the words to tell somebody's story. You get to use all these things to bring it together and create this magical celebration of a marriage.

Fast forward a year, I got married and a year later, [my husband] was deployed with the Marines. I was very nervous for him during that time. I really needed a project to keep my mind occupied. And so late one night, I got on my little 13-inch PC and I thought to myself, "What if I made a wedding magazine?"

This was way back before anyone was doing wedding magazines besides the bigger publishers like Brides magazine or Martha Stewart Living. There...