Fra Noi Embrace Your Inner Italian
From a barrio of Buenos Aires to the top of the web development world, Norb Svanascini has been propelled by a simple but potent belief.
If ever there was proof of the power of positive thinking — and hard work — it’s Norb Svanascini. Born in a barrio of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and raised since the age of 11 in Bloomington, Indiana, he went on to launch one of the nation’s marquee website-development companies.
A philosophy major at Indiana University, Svanascini left during his junior year because he felt he could learn more in the real world than in a classroom. He married his childhood sweetheart, Charlene Billings, and moved to the Chicago area when he was in his early 20s to raise a family that grew to include three children: Elizabeth, Michael and Anthony.
He was introduced to the simple yet potent philosophy of positive thinking early in life and it has buoyed him throughout an early career that took him from delivering papers as a teen to selling insurance as a young man to earning a living as a business broker in his 30s, with several professional stops in-between.
That same can-do spirit continued to stand him in good stead when he bought a software development company in 1978, renaming it American Eagle. Churning out programs on diskettes from the basement of his Edgebrook home, he sold them to clients around the world with the help of his wife and kids.
And it sustained him as the company pivoted to computer resale, installation and networking in 1990, and then web development in 1995.
Flash-forward 30 years and AmericanEagle.com is one of the largest web firms in the nation capable of taking a client from concept and creation to hosting and maintenance as well as digital marketing across a variety of media.
The company has 700-plus employees working from offices in nine U.S. cities and three other countries. Hundreds of big-name customers include the likes of United Airlines, the CTA, Maryville Academy, the American Medical Association, the Green Bay Packers and Dairy Queen. It oversees billions of dollars in financial transactions annually and has earned hundreds of industry awards.
With the company now in the hands of his sons, Svanascini has had time to pursue passion projects, including “Life’s Harvest,” a book brimming with quotes and excerpts that have inspired him throughout his life. And three years ago, he launched “The Magic of Positive Thinking,” a monthly podcast he co-hosts with AmericanEagle.com senior content writer Al Edwards.
The duo covers a wide range of topics in their monthly half-hour segments, all with an irrepressibly positive spin. They include “Give … and Get So Much More Back”; “If You Can Drive a Car, You Can Succeed in Life”; “Learning Powerful Lessons from the Dandelion”; and “If You Can Learn One Thing in Life, This Is It.”
Fra Noi sat down with Svanascini recently to talk about his deep Italian roots and the philosophical rocket fuel that has powered his career and life.
Paul Basile: You spent the first 11 years of your life in Buenos Aires and Spanish was your first language, but your Italian roots run deep. Tell me about that.
Norb Svanascini: I had a genetic analysis done and I’m something like 97 percent Italian, and I mean from all over Italy, from Sicily to Venice. All four of my grandparents were of Italian descent: one was from Lombardia, one was from the Piedmont, one was from Liguria, and one was from Muggio, on the Italian side of Switzerland, right across the border from Italy. I’ve traced that ancestry back to the 1500s. Apparently they left Italy to escape the Catholic Church.
My wife, who was not Italian, she almost became one. My mother taught her how to cook and she would cook Italian like you would not believe. We used to go to Italy every year. One day, we were sitting on a bench in the Parco Borghese in Rome. There was a guy playing an accordion, there were a couple of people kissing on another bench and there were kids playing. My wife turned to me and asked, “Do you know what Italy is?” I said, “No,” and she gave me the best description of Italy I’ve heard. She said, “It’s life!” Isn’t that beautiful?
PB: How did you end up in Indiana?
NS: My father was a radio and TV engineer, and he used to work for RCA Victor in Argentina. He worked for an American manager and that manager was transferred to Bloomington, Indiana, to start the first color-TV factory in the world. He brought 12 engineers from Argentina with him and my father was one of them.
PB: So how did you come to embrace positive thinking?
NS: My father was a big fan of Norman Vincent Peale (author of the book “The Power of Positive Thinking”) and that got the ball rolling. When I worked in insurance, they were always promoting positive thinking. That’s when I was introduced to Earl Nightingale, who recorded “The Strangest Secret” in 1956. It was the first time a long-play record that was non-musical sold over a million copies. That album really changed my life.
PB: So what is the strangest secret?
NS: You are what you think about. If you think positively, you’ll get positive results. That has guided my life. That right there.
PB: What prompted you to do a podcast about positive thinking?
NS: I started it after my wife passed away. I wanted to leave some sort of legacy for my family and others. I see life as this incredible gift and I want to share that with the world.
PB: What can the listener expect from one of your episodes?
NS: I start every show by saying, “I get up in the morning, go to the window and I thank the good Lord for giving me this gift, this daily present called life.” My co-host believes in positive thinking as much as I do. We don’t practice or prepare for the show. We just start talking on a theme and we see where the conversation takes us. We give each other a hard time because we’re such good friends. We have a lot of fun.
PB: So what can the dandelion teach us?
NS: The dandelion doesn’t give up. It doesn’t matter what you do to it, it knows its purpose, it sticks to it and it keeps on coming back. We have to be the same way.
PB: And if there’s one thing to learn in life, what would that be?
NS: Your mind is like soil. Whatever you plant in it, it gives back. If you plant nightshade, which is a poison, that’s what you get back. If you plant corn or wheat or strawberries, it’ll give you back that. You have to cultivate good thoughts. People ask me the secret to my success. That’s it in a nutshell.
To listen to the podcasts, click here.
The article above appears in the July 2025 issue of the print version of Fra Noi. Our gorgeous, monthly magazine contains a veritable feast of news and views, profiles and features, entertainment and culture. To subscribe, click here.
