We were lucky to catch up with Dominique Bellamy recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Dominique, you’ve got such an interesting story, but before we jump into that, let’s first talk about a topic near and dear to us – generosity. We think success, happiness and wellbeing depends on authentic generosity and empathy and so we’d love to hear about how you become such a generous person – where do you think your generosity comes from?
I think I get my generosity from my grandfather. Growing up, I played baseball in the local South Side Chicago Little League and my grandfather was the groundskeeper for the parks that me and my brother played at. He would tell us how he wanted the parks to look nice for the kids and for them to have a safe place to come and enjoy themselves. He would do things like have coolers of water, Gatorade, and pop for the kids and their families who were watching the game. And he did this every summer for years, before and after we were done playing.
As I got older, I began to understand how he was giving back to his community. I also saw how he never asked for anything in return. And that exemplified true generosity because he didn’t gain anything from doing this, he wasn’t doing it only for his family when we played at the parks, but truly to help make the community better.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I grew up in Chicago, IL and sports was always apart of my life. I played baseball and basketball throughout my childhood and eventually played college basketball. After graduating, like a lot of college athletes, I didn’t go pro in my sport and began working in corporate America. I started as an Insurance Underwriter for a few years and going to school part time to earn my MBA. After finishing, I changed careers to wealth management as a Financial Advisor. These weren’t my passions as I didn’t feel like I was truly helping people. I eventually found a fintech company with a mission to help make financial advice more accessible to everyday people, and my primary role is as a Product Enablement Manager.
Outside of work, my passion has become running. I ran my first marathon in 2019 and haven’t stopped since. I’ve run 15 marathons since then, traveling to places like Paris, Hawaii, New York, and Chicago. In 2023 I started a run club called Sunday Runday LA. This has become my focus because it’s more than just a run club. We’ve grown into a community that supports each other. While running is the focus and is what brings us together, it goes beyond running. In 2025, I hope to grow into an even larger community and expand into other wellness spaces. Follow on Instagram @sundayrunday_la to learn more about us and all of the things we have planned.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
1. Self confidence. I think this comes from challenging yourself and seeing yourself be successful at things.
2. Curiosity. Wanting to learn from others will help give insight to whatever it is you’re looking to do but also open your mind to new things. I’m not sure how to improve aside from just being open minded.
3. Discipline. Consistency is the key to success in anything. I think starting with small goals and being consistent to achieve those goals will translate over to whatever bigger goals you may have.
We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?
I do think you should go all in on your strengths because we can’t do everything. It’s nice to develop skills in other areas and at least know how to do things in other areas. But you can partner with others to make up for the areas where you need improvement. I believe trying to do everything yourself will hold you back from achieving the full potential of the business, non-profit, or whatever venture you’re building.
I think a good example of this was with our run club, I wanted to build a website for the club and I create a SquareSpace account to do so. Of course, they make it easy for someone to build their site, but I’ve never built a site before so it would take me time to learn how to do it here. Using my community and allowing others to use their strengths, someone was able to build the site in a day or two, where it would’ve taken me at least over a week. And my version would not have looked as good. It’s not that you can’t improve where you’re not strong, but for efficiency sake, develop your strengths and use others to make up for the areas where you’re lacking.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.sundayrundayla.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sundayrunday_la/
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