Stop into any Target store across America and the name Tabitha Brown may stand out to you.

Brown is known to many of her fans and admirers as a health and cooking expert, a motivational speaker, an actress and comedian, and a home and kitchen designer. However, she says it hasn’t always been easy getting her start.

“I’m living in the life God planned for me because it feels like home,” she said in a recent interview. “In my core, it feels completely normal. Like it was always supposed to be this way.”

Yet this apparent success did not come out of nowhere. It has been a 20-year journey.

“I had been pursuing acting for 20-plus years, and every time I would have an audition or if I booked the smallest role, it didn’t matter what it was, I would come home telling my husband, ‘This is going to be the thing that blows me up.’ It didn’t matter if it was a commercial or if I were in the background, it didn’t matter. I was just filled with excitement in knowing God was going to do something big.”

Yet acting was not to be her starring role.

After failing to break through as an actress, and running out of funds, she became an Uber driver in 2017.

That December, she created a video review of a Whole Foods Market vegan BLT sandwich. The video went viral, and Whole Foods hired her as a brand ambassador. Later, she created a TikTok account to share vegan recipes, cooking tips, family moments and encouraging advice. Within five weeks she had 2 million followers.

Today, she’s a multi-platform influencer. One outgrowth of that influence has been three new lines of apparel, swimwear, accessories, home and office items, food and kitchenware products at Target.

An irony is that her newfound success feels so natural that her husband was worried about her.

“My husband came to me about two or three years ago and he said, ‘Babe, listen, all those years when it was a bunch of little things, when you were struggling you were so excited and now that it seems like your dreams are coming true and you don’t seem as excited. So, I’m concerned about you.’”

“I’m exactly what God had planned for me to be all along.”

She replied: “I realize now I’m where I’m supposed to have been. So now I feel like I’m at home. I’m exactly what God had planned for me to be all along.”

To her fans and followers, Brown preaches perseverance: “I’ve never measured the time; I was just doing it. And even the times when I thought I was going to give up, when I thought I couldn’t do it anymore, I kept going. I kept pursuing. I guess quitting has just never been an option for me. I have this desire that lives inside of me that I want to make people feel good and bring value to their lives, so that keeps me going.”

That is sustained by prayer, she said.

“My prayer life is like having a real conversation with God. I come to him humbly, but I also come to him honestly and simply in asking and going to him for what is happening in my life. In 2017, I started doing these videos God asked me to do. I was being obedient. And as I saw my life start to change, my prayer consistently was for God to enlarge my territory.”

Along the way, the physical healing she sought came through dietary changes. Which in turn created the way many Americans first came to know her, through her cooking videos.

“I want to be a willing vessel to say to God, ‘Take all of me and allow your work to be done through me every day. That’s always still the prayer.’”