“Win more bees with honey than with vinegar”: Hofit Golan on having a luxury lifestyle

Red carpets, luxury restaurants and hotels, trendsetting designed clothes, lots of travels and lots of unstoppable dreams…. Hofit Golan definitely knows how to impress the audience and live a life of luxury.

In the exclusive interview, The Global Networker asked Hofit Golan about her way to success, her philosophy of luxury, her favorite travel destinations, and her aspirational goals.

You’ve been described as a fashion entrepreneur, travel and lifestyle influencer, public speaker, TV host, and actress. How do you manage to balance these various roles, and do you have a favorite aspect of your multifaceted career?

The great thing is that all the different things I do intertwine and support each other.

In the descriptions you’re reading, there are various things I’ve done over the years, not all at the same time. But they support each other, they let into each other, one role fed the other, and it’s also part of my natural evolution.

So I find it really easy actually to balance, because they all speak to things I love, to my passions, and therefore part of my natural way of life. I never work for things I don’t naturally want to do. For example, I love to travel, so I incorporate travel into my work. I love travel, so I incorporate travel into my work. I love fashion and red carpet and TV. So that became part of my lifestyle and part of my work.

In one of your previous interviews, you mentioned that success, to you, means being able to live freely, with health as your wealth and freedom as your luxury. Can you share specific moments or decisions in your life that have contributed to this sense of success?

I think I always understood that health was a big part of my life and my lifestyle.

When I was 14 I went to my mom’s kitchen with a bin bag and threw away everything that was GMO and not organic and unhealthy. I understood from a young age that your health is a key to longevity.

Once it came on TV that someone, I don’t even know who, had heart failure and dropped dead. And I remember it impacted me in the sense of like: “Wow, that’s terrifying”. So that’s how I understood from a really young age that if you don’t take care of your health, what good is anything else?

And then as a teenager, I was in Canada, and I felt very trapped. I wanted to travel. I wanted to see the world. I didn’t like being in Canada, in the suburbs. It was cold, and I came from a warm country. So once I understood that my passion is to travel, to be free. I felt like a caged bird, like a lioness in a cage — I just wanted to break free. I wanted to be able to go where I wanted to go. And I understood that the normal structure of society wouldn’t suit me, meaning that having a nice nine-to-five job in a suburban, setting and having a daily day routine, that was never going to be me. I just wanted to kind of follow my passions.

So as soon as I could escape that, I did. And my sense of success was, you know, being in my early 20s, arriving in Miami, and kind of sitting in the jacuzzi in December and going like: “Wow, I’m not freezing my butt off in Toronto. I’m in this city that I dreamt of moving to”. And I started getting a taste of that autonomy and the rewards of life.

Like fulfilling your dreams and just fighting for them and kind of making your destiny, not living out what people are telling you that your destiny should be. And that was my first taste of it. I never let it go.

Your philosophy on luxury emphasizes freedom and the ability to pursue your dreams. How do you navigate the challenges of maintaining this philosophy in a world where external pressures often dictate certain norms or expectations?

I find it very easy to maintain. It’s not even my philosophy. It’s my lifestyle rules.

Likewise, it’s very easy because I don’t bow to external pressures. Sometimes, obviously, you might feel a little bit of FOMO or pressure to be somewhere because it’s a cool place to be seen. And you kind of learn and you outgrow that. It’s just part of life. I think with the age comes a sense of wisdom.

But external pressures only work if you allow them to work on you. People cannot put their ideology on you if you don’t let them. So while I’m open to learning from others and learning from their experiences or welcoming their opinions, I stay true to myself and the loudest voice in my head is my own.

And that’s the most important thing. People are always going to try to project onto you their beliefs of what your lifestyle should be. A lot of that is their insecurities, led by the fact that they don’t believe they can achieve their own dreams. And so they’ll project limitations onto you to bring you down because it’s comforting to them. Well, it only works if you allow it. If you don’t hear those external voices, they’re not affecting you.

Don’t do things that harm you. Don’t do things that work against you. You need the right kind of voice, not pressure, but a support system. You need people who know when to support you and also confront you when you’re going the wrong way. And that’s the hardest thing in life, finding the right people to surround yourself with. But your gut will always tell you.

Your red carpet style is often described as “Old Hollywood Glam”. What inspired this signature look, and how does it reflect your fashion philosophy?

I think old Hollywood is definitely my style and new Hollywood is definitely not my style.

I believe that when you go on the red carpet, you’re not there to blend in. The more is more, and you have to go big or go home. That’s my philosophy. That’s my style. I think that the old Hollywood glamour, the elegance, that beauty, the sophistication, the opulence, the over-the-topness, while still being classy and feminine and being elegant is just something that we need to bring more of today.

I think that fashion sometimes has gotten a little too wacky, or it’s just not the way it’s supposed to be. Or a little too woke, or a little too depressing. And people need that joy and beautiful garment, just artistic and well done. And a gorgeous gown can never go wrong.

So for me, old Hollywood is definitely the way to go.

You attend lots of prestigious events such as the Venice and Cannes Film Festivals. Among these, Cannes seems to hold a special place for you. Could you elaborate on what makes Cannes your top choice and how it aligns with your idea of a perfect event?

Cannes is just by far my favorite event. There are a lot of events I’ve kind of reduced my attendance at. Like, for example, the Oscars — became boring and political and outright woke and just a snooze fest.

Whereas, Cannes is still this amazing event at the Côte d’Azur at the beginning of spring. I don’t know, it’s magical, if you will! It’s beautiful people from all over the world, very international. The fashion is always amazing. And the red carpet is just enigmatic. There’s so much energy in the events and on this beautiful backdrop of the south of France. Cannes is sort of where my brand identity was born. It was my first big red carpet breakout in 2005. And it is just always going to be my favorite event. The only other thing that comes close to it is Venice.

Your Instagram reflects a love for travel. How do you choose destinations, and can you share a memorable travel experience that left a lasting impact on you?

It is my favorite question a lot and I always find it difficult to answer. The trips are a combination of places I always want to go to, but also where work takes me. Sometimes I end up where work is taking me. Sometimes I’m just going to places that I dream of, and sometimes it ends up being taken to places where my dream is.

Actually, during COVID, everything shut down. I got to do a lot of bucket list traveling, go to the Dolomites, go to Bora-Bora, and go to places I’ve always dreamt of going.

Wherever I go, I try to show the best parts of this destination and share it with my followers. In terms of lasting memorable travel, I love being in the mountains. I love being on the islands. So Maldives is probably my top favorite. The French, Italian, and Swiss Alps are some of my favorite destinations, both summer and winter. Bali is magical but for different reasons. It’s the energy, it’s the hotels, it’s the service.

Each place holds its own magic, and each place is more magical during some times of the year. That’s why these places have high season, low season. So I love going to a place during the peak season.

So it is a question I get asked a lot, and it is impossible because I try to find the beauty and the joy in all places. I have an insatiable desire to keep going to more places and visit places that I fell in love with. I just want to keep going

Who or what has been your greatest source of inspiration or mentorship in your career and lifestyle choices? Are there specific individuals or experiences that have significantly influenced your journey?

I’ve never really had one specific person as my source of inspiration or a mentor. It was sort of like just a voice in my head, if you will, an understanding of listening to what I liked and also understanding the things I didn’t like. I was designing something like a business plan of the life I wanted to live in my head, and I designed it by how and where I wanted to live as opposed to what I wanted to do for a living. So I went the opposite way, I kind of chose where I wanted to be. And then figured out how to facilitate being there and built my whole life around that kind of way of living. I allowed that desire in my head. The voice in my head is very strong, and I listen to that and do my best to manifest the things that I’m.

With a significant presence on social media, how do you manage to balance sharing aspects of your life with maintaining a sense of privacy? Are there boundaries you consciously set?

I only share about 30% of my actual life on social media, and I have very clear boundaries. I think media is here to inspire, entertain, and share knowledge, but it is not like a fan page to me, and it is not like “here are all parts of me”. Likewise, I don’t go on there and rant about how I feel, or share personal stuff about family or my relationship.

I just try to inspire people and kind of wake up something in them through sharing certain parts of what I do, but not oversharing. I don’t think that people need or even want to see all aspects of my life, nor should they want to see all aspects of anyone’s life. I think that there’s a point where it’s unhealthy. You need to focus back on yourself, so I always try to send people back to focusing on themselves and listening to their own voices. And maybe using some aspects of my life that they might identify with to wake up aspects in their life that they should take action on.

Looking ahead, are there specific goals or aspirations you have for your career and personal life? What do you envision for yourself in the coming years?

I have multiple answers for that.

First, I believe you have to be really present and grateful for what you get. We’re always trained to constantly look ahead and want more. And the danger is that it forgets for you to be grateful for what you actually have, what you managed to accomplish. I want to protect what I’ve built, and I want more of the same and simultaneously more of the same but bigger and better.

I have built a home for influencers and creators where we bring our favorite creators with our favorite brands in beautiful real estate in Miami and all around the world creating this harmony between creators and brands and telling people cool hacks we’ve done for lifestyle, mainly health and wellness. We really enjoyed it and want to develop this concept into a bigger brand and got really great feedback about it because people get amazing experiences getting exposed to cool things that are beneficial to them. The people who attend the house get to meet cool brands and network with other cool creators. And vice versa, the brands get to meet cool creators and so it’s a nice way for us to put all our roads together for an ultimate win-win. We want to develop more public speaking on stages, more mentorship programs.

I try to be active with my community and try to respond as often as I can, and also listen to my followers about what kind of content they’re looking for. So far it’s been easy and enjoyable and my community for the most part been nice, kind and positive. I’m trying to grow that and remind people that you win more bees with honey than with vinegar.