Aspire with Gwyneth Paltrow: Why Being Early Is Better Than Being Liked

Emma sits down with Gwyneth Paltrow for an unfiltered conversation about ambition, evolution, and the emotional toll of leadership. Gwyneth opens up about her radical pivot from Academy Award-winning actress to founder and CEO of Goop, the challenges of scaling a brand born from personal passion, and the intense public scrutiny that’s followed her journey. They dive into the emotional complexity behind ambition, navigating layoffs as a woman leader, and how Gwyneth balances personal growth with her brand’s identity. If you've ever wondered what it really takes to reinvent yourself—and stay true to your vision even when the world has strong opinions—this conversation is for you.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

  The most important thing I always say to founders like, is it going to kill you not to do this? Otherwise, don't. Don't do it. Don't do it. You know, it was so me, the way I got divorced. I was like, okay, like, what is the best way to do this? Like, let me go gather data from everyone who was raised. That's the beautiful thing about being a founder and an entrepreneur. Like, I don't think you ever learn as much about who you actually are and what you're made of.

• 1:00Emma Grede?

  My guest today is someone whose first name is all the introduction she needs. She's an Oscar-winning actress and the founder and CEO who built Goop from a simple little newsletter into a global lifestyle brand. Now, depending on who you ask, she's a visionary, she's a cultural lightning rod, she's out of touch, she's ahead of her time, she's doing too much, not enough, or maybe she's just doing what she wants to be doing and what only she can. Welcome, Gwyneth Paltrow to Aspire. I'm so thrilled to be here. I'm so happy to have you. Just really, really excited to have the conversation. It's an honor, honestly. You're so lovely for saying that. So I want to take you back a little bit because I think we all know you how we know you. We know you as Gwyneth, the actress, the Oscar-winning actress, I should say.

• 1:44Emma Grede?

  But I think that for so many people, you know, we think that there's a time and a moment in our career where there's a pivot on the horizon, where we're in something. And whether we like it or not, whether we need to or not, there's kind of this burning desire to do something else. And I'm so impressed with you because almost like at the height of your career, you decided, I'm going to do something else. So I want you to kind of take me back to 2008. Maybe it's even before 2008 when you were like noodling. What gave you the idea that you should start your own company?

• 2:18Speaker 01

  I guess idiocy, naivete, I mean foolhardiness. I was so lucky to have the acting career that I had. You know, my mom is an incredible actress. My dad made TV shows, so I grew up very much in it. And my mom, when she was on stage, she was like the most whole synthesized, like a live version of herself. And so I wanted to do that. You know, I wanted to be on stage and feel like that power that she was kind of radiating. And I had my heart set on that path and I, I never really even thought about anything else. I was like, this is what I want to do. This is what I want to do.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  And I did it. I had a lot of success. I wasn't good at saying no, so I was doing like three movies a year, five movies a year. And I really kind of burnt out. And also it was at a time, you know, I think, I hope Hollywood's a bit better now, but it was a bit, you know, the sort of sexist culture in certain respects. And I don't know, it's just, I had my daughter and I was just like, I think I need to not do this right now. Like I need a break. I need to put this down. I want to be home. Luckily I could afford to take a break and not go back to work. And I just kind of took three years and had my kids. And I really started to question

• 3:48Speaker 01

  why I had decided to act. Did I really want to? Did I still love it? It was like a lot, I, I kind of gave myself the space to examine it and reflect. And I was like, I just don't know how I feel about it. And at the same time, I had been doing movies all over and I had always had this incredible curiosity when I was, you know, filming in Naples or Paris or Toronto, like where do I go? And this is pre-internet, right? So like, where's the best pizza? Like, is there a good, you know, pajama store? Like where are all the cool kids going? And there was like no way to find that information. There was no like aggregation of, of.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  You know, tips that were resonant for me. And so I would, I would always take notes and I would ask like, the cool makeup girls, like, what, what bars do you go to? And like, even in Paris, sometimes if there was a really cool looking person, I would stop them on the street and be like, can you give me like, your five best Paris things?

• 4:45Emma Grede?

  Wow.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  So I kept these reams of information. And then at the same time, because I was acting and I earned money before my friends, and I bought a house before my friends, I learned to cook before my friends, and I learned to like, pick out wallpaper before my friends. So my friends would be like, how do I roast a chicken? Or like, where can I go buy wallpaper?

• 5:05Emma Grede?

  Were you that person at that time?

• 5:06Speaker 01

  And I was that person.

• 5:07Emma Grede?

  People would come to you for that.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  I was always that person. So finally, I was like, maybe I should just like, put all this in a website, you know, that was like, very new on the internet. And that was sort of, like, that's how basic it was and how like,

• 5:20Emma Grede?

  Really?

• 5:20Speaker 01

  heartfelt. And yeah, it was just-

• 5:22Emma Grede?

  So it wasn't like, let me create a business that takes me away from this Oscar winning life. It was actually, let me aggregate all of this information that I have somewhere.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  And then I think I had a secret, I was harboring like, a secret desire that maybe I could turn it into a business at some point. But of course, I didn't have the authority, I didn't know how. I, I, so I just thought, you know, I'll just, this is like, I have such a passion for me, I'm just gonna do this, and then I'll see maybe if anything comes out of it at some point in the future.

• 5:54Emma Grede?

  So at what point did you get the idea that this was something that you could actually monetize and turn into a proper business?

• 6:02Speaker 01

  So it's funny, because, so I think for about four or five years, there was no monetization.

• 6:08Emma Grede?

  That long?

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:09Emma Grede?

  Oh.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  I was just writing newsletters.

• 6:12Emma Grede?

  No.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  And people would stop me and say, like, what are you gonna do? And what are you gonna do with this? And I, I didn't know. I didn't, I didn't even know how to think my way around. Like, I didn't even know what business models could be applicable to something like this. Because this was like, pre, you know, this was really early.

• 6:30Emma Grede?

  Yeah, it's like, early. And so at this point, it's like, you, did you rope in a couple of like, journalist friends? It's like, what did-

• 6:35Speaker 01

  No, it was me.

• 6:36Emma Grede?

  No.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  I was by myself.

• 6:38Emma Grede?

  And you're like, tic, tic, tic, tic, tic, tic.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  I like learned how to mess around with Mailchimp and WordPress. And it was like me and I had an assistant and that was it.

• 6:49Emma Grede?

  And you would just make recipes? Did you, did you have a grand plan? Did you have like a content plan and an idea of what you're putting out? Or were you just like, this is what I feel like?

• 6:58Speaker 01

  This is just what I feel like.

• 7:00Emma Grede?

  Wow, so it really was that organic and it stays that way for four or five years.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  It stays that way.

• 7:04Emma Grede?

  Zero monetization.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  Zero.

• 7:06Emma Grede?

  But weren't you a bit like, I'm winning, but I need to like, I'm giving these tips. I need to see some kind of backend because I would be like that. I'd be like, what is, what is happening? I'm giving this free information out, somebody pay me. I'm always looking for someone to pay me.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  I know, but this is why you're where you are and this is why where I'm. So because I think as an artist, you create to create.

• 7:28Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  You create to give some, put something out in the world and you don't really think, I mean, of course you get a paycheck, but it's not kind of the burning reason why you're doing something. And it's only in business when you start to reframe it and think like, okay, what's the ROI on all my time? And so that was like a slower burn for me. But at a certain point, you know, and I had ended up investing a lot of money in this business.

• 7:50Emma Grede?

  Of course.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  I thought, you know, maybe, maybe I should try to think about how to monetize it. And, and then, and then other people were saying, you know, you've really got something here. You've got a ton of engagement and, and so that's when I started to think about how. And I started with some partnerships, basically. It was kind of like a mini media model.

• 8:09Emma Grede?

  Like brand partnerships?

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, like brand partnerships.

• 8:11Emma Grede?

  You said that you'd put a ton of money in. This was your own money or had you started to raise at that point?

• 8:15Speaker 01

  No, my own money.

• 8:16Emma Grede?

  So you took your own money that you had, you know, earned.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 8:19Emma Grede?

  And you just plowed it in thinking, I just, I love this. I'm a creative who wants to give something back and that's just where my heart says to go.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 8:28Emma Grede?

  Wow.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  That was it.

• 8:28Emma Grede?

  Unbelievable. Okay, so at what point did you have the realization that this is something that could pay?

• 8:36Speaker 01

  It's interesting because so we kind of had a media model at first and and people were paying and sponsoring shoots and and I thought like this feels fine, but it also feels like the reason that this works and is resonant with people is because it's really authentic. And I started to worry that if it was me being paid to talk about things, even though I was super strict, like it had to be a brand that I genuinely loved or used, you know, that makes the aperture really narrow. And also, I didn't want to be a content factory and I didn't want like a clicks model and all this. So I had done this piece, this content piece on the French pharmacy, like all of the great things that have, you know, and that like you go to Paris and it's like all the things.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  So I did a piece, a content piece on all the things that I loved from the French pharmacy. And it was like, you know, the Retin-A cream, the

• 9:28Emma Grede?

  Yeah, the Embryly, the Crely, like all the things we need.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  Homeoplasmin and all the things, you know?

• 9:34Emma Grede?

  I still use that.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Me too. And I was on the street and a woman stopped me and she said, oh, my gosh, I love Goop. I love your newsletter. I wait for it every Thursday. I love the piece on the French pharmacy. But she said, it was so frustrating because I was spent like three hours on amazon.fr, like trying to buy the lip balm. And she said, I wish I could have just clicked to buy it. And I thought, oh, my gosh, you know, this could actually be like commerce as a service as opposed to like a transaction.

• 10:10Emma Grede?

  Totally.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  And I was like, this is actually valuable for her if I if I offer things to buy. And so that's how the e-commerce started.

• 10:19Emma Grede?

  Wow, that's unbelievable. And at that point, I just don't think there were that many editorialized platforms that were doing that, right? Like even the model wasn't fully fleshed. It certainly wasn't what it is today.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Absolutely not. There was no, no, no model for that. There was, it was really, really early.

• 10:36Emma Grede?

  So you're, you're there, you understand there's a glimmer of an idea here. How do you go about building a team, raising money? I feel like, you know, because I think that we look at you and we're like, yeah, she has must have had it all figured out. But it does feel like this business came about in such an organic way. And so many people that are listening will be sitting in their corporate jobs or thinking about starting a business. Where did you start? How did you start with those things?

• 11:00Speaker 01

  So I was at, actually at a cocktail party in London, at a friend's house. And this woman came up to me and she said, hi, I'm Juliette, I'm a VC. And I was like, what's a VC? You know, and she was like,

• 11:13Emma Grede?

  Were you?

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had no idea.

• 11:15Emma Grede?

  English Juliette.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  English Juliette.

• 11:16Emma Grede?

  No, I love Juliette. I love Devolvent. I mean, she's one of my favorite people.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  She's incredible.

• 11:20Emma Grede?

  Yeah, she's incredible and a huge champion of female founders.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Huge.

• 11:24Emma Grede?

  Huge.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  And she said, you know, I really love what you're doing and what are you doing? And do you want to turn it into a business? And I said, I do, but I don't really know how to do it. And she actually introduced me to my first CEO, a guy named Seb Bishop,

• 11:39Emma Grede?

  Wow.

• 11:40Speaker 01

  whom I adore and I'm still really close. In fact, I just had his birthday party at my house last week. And he came on board and he helped me start to think my way around how to do this and how to build a team. And he was running Project Red at the time for Bono.

• 11:56Emma Grede?

  Right, yes.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  And he was ready to kind of go back into e-commerce. And so we started to build a team and started to do collaborations and started to, you know, develop a supply chain and, you know, build an e-commerce engine on the site, which we chose the wrong one, but that's fine. And it was like just a slow process of us thinking through how we were going to, you know, offer this curation and offer special product to people. And that was kind of like phase one. It was when I was in London, very early stages of Goop. I had another CEO.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  And then I was going to move back to LA or not, you know, move to LA. And unfortunately, his mother became ill with leukemia. So he couldn't come. And that's when I moved and I really started trying to run this thing kind of by myself.

• 12:54Emma Grede?

  So it wasn't like a conscious decision, I'm going to get rid of this guy and become the CEO. That just kind of happened to you. You moved back to LA. And what's like, what is, what does a business look like at this point? Was it like a functioning business with a staff and, you know, a set of, you know, priorities and a business plan? Or is it still something that you're just figuring out and tinkering with?

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Still trying to figure it out. I was trying to just get people around me who were really passionate. I had this little team in London. Um, which I knew was going to be really hard to keep while we were in LA. And so I was slowly kind of, I was repatriating the company here and I had this little barn out back in my house in Brentwood and, you know, slowly there was one woman there with me, then two, then three, then there were eight, you know? Then we were um, starting to build our own product lines and we grew.

• 13:47Emma Grede?

  Oh, you started that early?

• 13:49Speaker 01

  We started, I think in 2016, we started with our first product.

• 13:52Emma Grede?

  Okay, wow. But it feels, it's so, first of all, I think it's so interesting that you say you started to hire people that were really passionate.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:59Emma Grede?

  Because I always hire for passion and, you know, attitude over experience. You weren't trying to look for like, e-comm experts. You were like, who cares about what I'm doing?

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Yes, because I think in a way, the model is really evolving and it still is. And so I think one of the mistakes I've made, you know, subsequent to that is sort of like outsourcing um, expertise in a way where there's not flexibility. And I find with people who are really passionate, they're like, problem solving, you know, as opposed to like, I was here, this was the playbook, this is how it worked, this is what I want to bring to Goop, like, that tends not to work for us.

• 14:37Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  So sometimes I think, you know, it's difficult to find people who have domain expertise and are really passionate. But I, I agree with you, I think that passion is what's going to drive the curiosity and the problem solving more than domain expertise.

• 14:54Emma Grede?

  I couldn't agree with you more because I feel like when you get really seasoned experts, my number one thing is that you, I need you to also be flexible. Because if you're coming to me from any other company where you've had this like, real understanding of the business, I want that experience, but I need you to come to me and have the flexibility to do things differently.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Exactly.

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• 16:19Speaker 04

  Do you ever wish you could ask nosey questions about people's money?

• 16:23Speaker 05

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• 16:31Speaker 04

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• 16:38Speaker 06

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• 16:51Speaker 00

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• 17:26Emma Grede?

  So tell me about when you decided there's a business here and I'm actually going to go out and raise finance and take this very seriously.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm trying to remember what year it was. It was probably, you know, I want to say 2013, 2014, 2015, in there somewhere.

• 17:46Emma Grede?

  That's interesting because that's almost eight, well, six, seven years after you started. So a long journey of like figuring this out and trying to understand what it was.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  A long journey of trying to figure it out. And then I started to coalesce around like, I think, our unique proposition, which is to curate that clean beauty was super important to us. You know, we were so early in that space, people. And at that point, we were curating other people's products before we started to make our own. There was really no like, kind of more aspirational, efficacious, clean, truly clean, clean beauty. So we were like, okay, well, we'll make it. But we, the reason why we started to raise money essentially was because my, my biggest

• 18:35Speaker 01

  investor, he invested in another company and they were at their board meeting and they were reviewing the numbers for the, and early in the quarter, like all of a sudden, you know, say it was like customers down here, the customer acquisition count jumped way up. And then for the rest of the quarter, it was like a really high quality customer, like really, you know, they had come back and back. There was a great LTV and.

• 19:00Emma Grede?

  So your cohorts were banging, or they were banging in the other business.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  They were banging the other business.

• 19:04Emma Grede?

  Got it, got it.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  And my investor said, what happened on this day? And they said, we were on this thing called Goop.

• 19:13Emma Grede?

  Best thing to happen to him. He's seeing it somewhere else. You didn't even need to tell him.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  Exactly. So he called me, actually. Um, and that's how I, that's how I first took venture money. And how I started to put the plan together of how we were gonna do this and, and create a business.

• 19:34Emma Grede?

  Did you have a plan for the money and were you the CEO at that point when you raised?

• 19:39Speaker 01

  We had an interim CEO when I was kind of, um, learning. And so, which was really helpful because she kind of, you know, I still have a really hard time asking for money.

• 19:52Emma Grede?

  You do?

• 19:52Speaker 01

  I do. I, I, I don't like fundraising.

• 19:57Emma Grede?

  Really?

• 19:57Speaker 01

  I don't like it.

• 19:58Emma Grede?

  You're so good at it.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  I just don't, I just don't like it. I just.

• 20:01Emma Grede?

  You are kidding. Oh my gosh, I would love to be you fundraising. I'd be like in my ball gown, just like coming in. I would love it. I've arrived. I'd do a speech. I just, I honestly, I feel like it would be so powerful to be you fundraising.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  I, I think, and you know, I think also because when I went out and started doing it on my own. I think it wasn't, it's very, as you know, I mean, probably maybe not for you, but it was really hard.

• 20:26Emma Grede?

  No, it's bloody hard.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Hard to raise money. I think a lot of people took the meeting because their wife was a fan. They wanted a selfie.

• 20:34Emma Grede?

  Yeah, and they wanted to see you.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  They wanted to see me and they weren't serious about the business and I had so many no's.

• 20:40Emma Grede?

  Could you, can you detect that? Like, how's your bullshit? Oh my God. Do you, like, did you walk in and be like, I ain't getting this check?

• 20:46Speaker 01

  Um, at first I was like, oh, they're so nice. They're gonna write, you know? And then I was like, oh, this is just a selfie meeting. This is a selfie meeting.

• 20:55Emma Grede?

  Fair enough. That's like very, very difficult.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:57Emma Grede?

  So you raise your first bit of money. You have an interim CEO at the time. You have a plan for something that's really emerging. Is there a moment that you sit back and you're like, okay, this is a serious business for me now? This is something that's actually going to be my life and not kind of these recommendations and this fun sort of purpose driven thing for me. It's actually going to make it, make me a bunch of money.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Well, I'm still waiting for that to happen, but.

• 21:25Emma Grede?

  More about that later.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  But, but yes, I mean, I, I, I started to feel that. You know, what we were doing also had, like, I think our values are and were so strong.

• 21:38Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  I really believed in what we were doing. I really believe in, you know, not only clean beauty and clean products, but this idea of like being of service to busy, working mothers who want the kind of the best of the best quickly. They want to know how to optimize themselves. They want to know how I'm optimizing myself. You know, they want access to good information, good recipes, like they don't want to waste any time. And I love providing that. As I said, like when I started, that's who I always have been to my friends and I love being that for the women in the Goop community and the men too, you know. So I I thought it was a very worthwhile pursuit. And also, it's, it's really fun to sort of,

• 22:21Speaker 01

  you know, when you're an actor, you're kind of waiting for someone to give you a job. Like, you can't really express yourself, you know? It's like, if you're a musician, you can pick up a guitar. If you're a writer, you can sit down and write. But when you're an actor, like, what are you gonna do? Go in there and like do a monologue in the mirror, you know? And it's very frustrating.

• 22:41Emma Grede?

  I never thought about that.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  It's like you don't have agency. And I think this is why a lot of actors are drawn to become entrepreneurs, because it's kind of like a twin spirit, but you can actually execute on something that you, you know, you can ideate, you can execute, you can put it into the world, it's yours, and it feels like, but it does have that artistic streak running through it.

• 23:03Emma Grede?

  Yeah, no, I completely understand. And I think especially when you're in a business like the one that you've created, because it does feel so intrinsically you. There's things that we didn't use to say, that we didn't use to know, and you constantly have introduced new ideas, I think, to the culture, right? To the culture at large. But you also got your fair share of backlash for that.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:24Emma Grede?

  And I feel like for, well, certainly for women more generally, but female founders, female CEOs, they just get it so much harder than men. Did you anticipate that? And then, when it started to happen to you, because I feel like there's parts of, there's parts and times when, you know, the headlines of, I'm sure, have been very beneficial to your business, but there's also times where it just feels like it's just been vicious.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:50Emma Grede?

  And I wonder how you've dealt with that on both sides of it.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  So in the early days, it was really hard. It was really hurtful because, you know, it was coming from the best possible place. And, you know, and also, to be honest, I have always been really ahead of the curve. So I would talk about something, write about something, and people would freak the fuck out.

• 24:14Emma Grede?

  Yeah, we'd be like, what?

• 24:15Speaker 01

  And then, and now they're like, multiple, you know, it's like, I remember when I wrote my cookbook called It's All Good, and it was, because my son had really bad eczema, and the pediatrician said, you know, you gotta cut out gluten and dairy and sugar. I was like, with a toddler? Like, how? And so I did this book, and there was, you know, one headline that somebody should call social services on me, like, that kind of thing. And now, of course, like, gluten-free is like a trillion-dollar industry. So, but what started to happen was by pattern recognition, I could say, okay, I'm gonna say something, I'm gonna talk about, you know, how I'm addressing an issue, whether it's divorce,

• 24:56Speaker 01

  whether it's, you know, trying to get my kid off gluten for a time being, whatever. And everyone's gonna freak out, and then everybody's gonna adopt it. And, and so I, you know, I think, I, I was able to get that perspective. But it, it didn't mean that it didn't hurt. I mean, luckily, it's like, all that stuff always does drive traffic to the site.

• 25:21Emma Grede?

  Thank goodness.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  And one time I did, you know, like, a sort of sentiment thing, and even when, even like, if people were like, oh, we don't like Goop this week, because it's like, she did some, said something crazy, or we don't, you know, it always went up and to the right, like.

• 25:34Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  You know, the.

• 25:35Emma Grede?

  Yeah, we were still coming there to look and to buy, and the curiosity was such a huge part of what you had. And I, I do think that you introduced ideas, like, you know, Conscious Uncoupling. Like, I remember reading that and being like, what is she talking about? But then it was so, like, it was like, a revelation and a breakthrough. And it wasn't like it wasn't happening, but you put a label on it for people that was like, this is it, this is how you do it, this is what you call it, and this is what it looks like in real life. And it was just such a moment, I think.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And I mean, God, and at the time, if you can imagine, you know, I'm really suffering, right? I'm getting a divorce. I'm getting separated. I have little kids. And I really believed in what we were doing. I had, it's basically that all started because, you know, it was so me, the way I got divorced. I was like, okay, like, what is the best, you know, way to do this? Like, let me go gather data from everyone who was raised from a divorced family.

• 26:39Emma Grede?

  And figure out, what is the, what is the way to optimize for this situation?

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Optimize this. It's not what I want. You know, we all want to like be married to the parent forever, but.

• 26:48Emma Grede?

  Of course.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  So I was like, how should I do this? And I, I actually talked to a lot of people who were children of divorce. And the common denominator, what everybody said, it wasn't that their parents got a divorce. It was that their parents, it's that they, one, you know, a dad would drop them off the end of the driveway.

• 27:09Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Be like, I'll see you next week. I don't want to see your mother. It's that the mother would roll her eyes or say something bad about the father. And that was what had hurt the kids and caused the trauma.

• 27:19Emma Grede?

  No doubt. It's the dysfunction between the two parents playing out and the kids having to choose sides and decide what to do.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 27:26Emma Grede?

  And that is the opposite of the way your life works now because you have one big, beautiful blended family.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  It's really nice. And it, and it wasn't easy to do.

• 27:35Emma Grede?

  Mm hmm.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  You know, it was, it definitely took a lot of work. But I remember at some point, like, the therapist that we were working with, kind of was talking us through something and, and I had a penny drop. And I thought, you know, we're not a couple anymore, but we're a family. We are a family and we're going to be a family forever. And let's figure out how to be a family without being a couple. And so that's sort of how it all came about.

• 28:04Emma Grede?

  No, it's incredible. I do think though, you're someone who is so resilient and that is an attribute. No, I mean, I mean, you must be because otherwise you'd just be a puddle of a woman. The amount of mean things that have been written about you and said about you. And I often think that when I meet FEMA or any founders, right? Resilience is such a key attribute.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 28:26Emma Grede?

  When you start a business, because so much goes wrong, so much is thrown at you. So, you know, things that you could never anticipate. How do you think about building your resilience? Is this something that is just, it's in you and you were always like that? Or is it a muscle and you've trained yourself to become more resilient? I just wonder how.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:44Emma Grede?

  You even think of, or do you think about it at all?

• 28:47Speaker 01

  I don't think about resiliency. I, I, I was raised to be resilient.

• 28:52Emma Grede?

  Right.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  Um, my father really made me stand on my own two feet as a kid. You know, I think the ways in which, you know, we all grew up in a time where, you know, as we were talking about before. It was different, right? And so I think we all had some degrees of adversity in our households, which made us resilient. Then I chose acting, which is like seven thousand no's. You're not good enough. You're not pretty enough. You're not this, you're not that. And just, you know, kept going. And I think it's because like, it's almost like if you are holding your future and you believe like you can see it and you know that it's yours and it's for you and it's coming. You have no choice but to get up and just keep going, keep trying.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  You know, looking at something differently. What, what am I doing wrong? Why did I get this hit? Like, is there a better way I can say this or do this? And it's been like one long exercise in, in resiliency, I think. And I never give up. I never quit. Like, I think part of that is really intrinsic to me. Like, there are certain circumstances where, that I've been in where I feel like, you know, it probably would be a lot easier to bow out of this.

• 30:10Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  That's just not me. I'm like one of those things, you know, you punch and they pop back up.

• 30:14Emma Grede?

  Yeah. But it's so interesting because I think that is what makes an incredible entrepreneur because people imagine once you're out of a situation where somebody else is telling you what to do, that suddenly it gets easier. And I think when the decision is all on you to go left or to go right, it actually is so much harder. And there are things that happen in companies, and I know that you've been through lots and you must have over all of the years. There are so many difficult decisions to make.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:41Emma Grede?

  Is there ever a time when you are like, I actually can't do that. This is just too much. Have you had those moments in the company where you're like, I just can't go?

• 30:50Speaker 01

  Yes, multiple.

• 30:51Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  Multiple moments. I mean, I really thought when COVID happened that we were going to go out of business.

• 31:00Emma Grede?

  Same, same.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  I had one sort of period in our history where I had the wrong team and they were not, some of them were not putting the good business first and it almost all fell apart, like in a terrible way.

• 31:19Emma Grede?

  People that you trusted?

• 31:20Speaker 01

  People that I trusted. I was like, I'm done. I can't do it. Then I had, all of our money was in a bank that collapsed a couple of years ago.

• 31:30Emma Grede?

  Oh.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Remember that?

• 31:31Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Remember that?

• 31:31Emma Grede?

  That little crumble.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, that little thing. I was like, okay. Like, there have been so many, you know, even, and then even sometimes I think, because it compounds, right? And it's like, sometimes I've had days like that where, you know, I don't know, they changed the Facebook algorithm and you can't like get a customer.

• 31:52Emma Grede?

  You're like, what?

• 31:53Speaker 01

  And you're like, I quit. I just can't do this anymore.

• 31:55Emma Grede?

  I don't know how to make it work anymore.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  I don't know how. I can't scale this business if they keep changing the algorithm, you know?

• 32:00Emma Grede?

  So, same, same, same, same, same.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  So it's just like, I think it is, it does wear you down.

• 32:07Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  And some, some events feel catastrophic, like a bank collapse or when you are like, am I going to make payroll or not, you know? And some, some of them feel small, but I think I have them all the time. I think all founders have them all the time.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  And at a certain point for for me, anyway, I was like, when I gave myself permission to let it collapse, I was like, because that was the thing I was holding against myself. Like, if this doesn't work, I I am a failure. I am a bad person. Like, I am not worth it. And I sort of had to go through the exercise of like, if it fails, I will be okay.

• 32:52Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  It will fail.

• 32:53Emma Grede?

  It fails.

• 32:54Speaker 01

  And I will still wake up in the morning.

• 32:56Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  Like, I thought I had conflated it. I thought like, if it fails, I die. I fail.

• 33:02Emma Grede?

  And and And I can never do this again, and I'm not worthy, and it's because of me.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:07Emma Grede?

  And I think that that is such a female point of view.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  It is.

• 33:10Emma Grede?

  And I talk about this all the time.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  You're right.

• 33:13Emma Grede?

  Also, because we're not given grace, you know, in the media, in the business community. It's like, this woman did this thing again. And it's like, you know, men get to start and fail and lose and piss people's money away like all the time.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  It's incredible. It's incredible.

• 33:28Emma Grede?

  Such a double standard out there.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  I talk about this all the time, too.

• 33:31Emma Grede?

  Do you think that you've become better at dealing with those things? Or do you think that you'll forever relate to them in that way? And you've just like, you're strengthening that muscle to get through it? I wonder if it actually changes over the years.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  I think it does change because now I think what happens is like, I now have the experience and I have, you know, all of the Dharma, all of the work I've put in. And I I keep somehow making it through.

• 33:59Emma Grede?

  Yes, you do.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  And I keep getting to new milestones. And like, I'm not where I want to be yet, but like, it's been a lot, it's 17 years of this. You know, like, even though it wasn't a company at first, but sending out this newsletter. It's it'll be 17 years. So

• 34:16Emma Grede?

  Did you ever think?

• 34:17Speaker 01

  Never.

• 34:18Emma Grede?

  When you started that 17 years later, you'd still be doing this?

• 34:20Speaker 01

  Never. Never.

• 34:22Emma Grede?

  I just can't imagine.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  And I still love it.

• 34:24Emma Grede?

  You do?

• 34:25Speaker 01

  I still love it.

• 34:26Emma Grede?

  I love that you still love it.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  I love it. It's so hard, but it's so rewarding. And I love the people that I work with and I've learned so much. Like, that's the beautiful thing about being a founder and an entrepreneur. Like, I don't think you ever learn as much about who you actually are and what you're made of. Maybe in your marriage, but those are like, for me, anyway, those are the two most revelatory roles I've had in terms of like, getting close to myself and understanding myself.

• 34:54Emma Grede?

  Definitely. And I also think that if you are, you know, if you're the type of person that's constantly analyzing what you do, why you do it, why these things are happening, how you handle them. It is a little bit like in a relationship or parenting for me, I'm like, being a parent and being a founder and entrepreneur, these are the places that I am learning every day about myself, like it or not. And if I'm not learning, someone's going to point it out to me.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:17Emma Grede?

  Do you have those people in your life that you've been able to lean on? Or do you feel like you're a bit of a, like a solo person, creating your own thing? I just wonder.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, both. Like, I mean, you know, on the way in this morning, I talked to my brother for an hour in the car. Like, I'm very, very close with my family. My friends I've had, my best friend, Mary, we've been best friends since we were four years old. I have people around me who really have my best interest at heart. My husband, who is so brilliant and he's such a beautiful observer of, of behavior. And he will, he asks me questions in such a beautiful way, but that hold me accountable or that ask me to hold myself accountable for things. So I think I've never, I'm really lucky because it's never been my instinct to surround myself with yes people because I see that a lot.

• 36:12Emma Grede?

  You must.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  And I have never found that interesting, like.

• 36:17Emma Grede?

  That's interesting. In your own company, do you think, have you been able to bring those people into the business that are able to challenge you?

• 36:23Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 36:24Emma Grede?

  Because that's hard. Not, not everybody has that.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  That is hard. And I think, but I approach it like, I am, I am an extremely collaborative leader. And I think sometimes it's actually been to the detriment of the business. And so my work is more around. Being decisive and and feeling like it's okay if someone disagrees with me. This is what my instinct is telling me and this is what we're gonna do. Like, that's my lesson more than I need to hear the hard truth. You know what I mean?

• 36:55Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  So that's really why.

• 36:57Emma Grede?

  What I say is final and I'm going in that direction.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  It's so hard for me, Emma.

• 37:02Emma Grede?

  Is it really?

• 37:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 37:04Emma Grede?

  No.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  I want consensus. I want everyone to feel aligned and I know.

• 37:08Emma Grede?

  That is not what we think about you.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  I'm gonna have to.

• 37:12Emma Grede?

  That is not how I do it.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  I need to come shadow you, I think, for a week.

• 37:16Emma Grede?

  Well, it's interesting because I think that that comes from a place of, you know, I feel like I made a lot of good decisions and they're things that maybe went against the grain. And I would imagine for someone like you who has done things that we didn't even know existed or created products, that there was just like, you know, no obvious need for. But then suddenly we were all like, okay, we need this thing now. That you would feel conviction and that you would just be like, no, we're going my way. This is not a democracy. This is not a consensus building exercise. It's like, that's the way we're going.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  But when you've raised money, right? And you're trying to follow the data, you make, you can make data driven decisions. Like, people are coming to you and saying the data is showing us X. And you feel instinctually Y, right? And you're like, okay, I really think we should do this, but like.

• 38:07Emma Grede?

  Give me an example. Like, when has this happened to you and you're just like, oh, I can't like.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  Take our, the vibrator that we made, right?

• 38:14Emma Grede?

  I remember it.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  So.

• 38:16Emma Grede?

  I own it.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Okay, fantastic. So this was like theoretically a risky product to make.

• 38:23Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  Um, why would we do that? Look at our customer cohorts. They're into beauty and fashion. Like, why are we gonna make something like this? We had had certain products and wellness that were not our strongest products. Because, you know, also in retrospect, like, I'm not a doctor. I'm not a nutritionist. Like, I, I may think I am, but like. You know, and I may have like researched things to that point of being a nutritionist, but like I'm not, right? So like, why is somebody maybe gonna buy an ingestible from us more than from a doctor, right? So certain categories, like they had their really loyal people, but it was hard to really acquire customers. Also, the margins in wellness were terrible, so we couldn't really, you know, promote them properly.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  You know how that goes. But I felt really strongly that the vibrator was not only a wellness product, it was a movement. And that until we did our vibrator, you know, sexual wellness products were not on shelves from reputable sources, right? It was like the sex shop on the corner.

• 39:31Emma Grede?

  Gross stuff.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  Some gross, right? And it was like, to me, it was like, this is a real statement around the fact that women deserve to not feel shame about their sexuality. Like, pleasure is great, you know, especially if you're like a hard-charging corporate woman, like you have to...

• 39:50Emma Grede?

  You're gonna need that.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  Right. So it was like, should we, you know, I don't know, you know, the sort of customer data shows that maybe that's not the right, you know? And we did it, and it was super successful. And it was, I think, we started a really important conversation, and now like there are vibrators in Bloomingdale's, and that merchant says thank you to me for that, you know?

• 40:12Emma Grede?

  Yeah, I mean, that's like category defining. That's what we call it. You've done so many different categories in the business. How did you decide what to do, what not to do, and how to like ultimately, I guess, like decide to shut things down? Because everything from like the Netflix series, you have clothing, you have wellness, you have beauty, you've had like vitamin products. There's just been such a slew of stuff. And of course, the editorial platform still exists, which I imagine is a really heavy lift. So what does the decision-making process look like around those things?

• 40:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think like for the first few years, it was very exploratory. It was kind of like, do we have the latitude to go into this vertical and do it? And, you know, there were certain things worked better than other things. And I think kind of over time... You know, even even just understanding like really looking at the data and understanding like our customer really wants to read what we write. They really love our fashion point of view and they really love our beauty point of view. And so until we have so much cash on the balance sheet that we can experiment again, like, let's really focus on those three things and on our food vertical, which has been an incredible success for us.

• 41:29Emma Grede?

  This is a good food office.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  Oh, good. Thank you.

• 41:32Emma Grede?

  We are that Brentwood chicken salad and those little wraps. We are chowing down on those every day.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  I'm so happy.

• 41:38Emma Grede?

  Every single day. So, so good.

• 41:43Speaker 07

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• 43:45Emma Grede?

  I want to get into the business as it is today because it feels like a really new day in your business. And you know, I think that you you've kind of said, there was a brilliant article that I read yesterday where you said, you know, like the LTV on the vagina candle customer perhaps didn't shake out as you imagined it would. But it's a really important statement, right? Because we live and learn in our businesses about what's going to work, what is there for press, what's actually a scalable business.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:12Emma Grede?

  What, how was your customer shook out? And what does the company look like today?

• 44:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. So very strong in beauty and fashion and the food, of course. So we're really like strengthening our strengths. Our beauty business grew 40% last year.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  Well, it won't grow that as much this year, so don't worry. The economy is not working in my favor.

• 44:33Emma Grede?

  That is the new growth. That's what we're saying right now. Just take that one back to your board.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 44:40Emma Grede?

  Okay. You tell them, Emma said.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  I'm going to write that down.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  And our G-label business grew 50% last year.

• 44:47Emma Grede?

  That's incredible.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  So we really just want to focus on on those things. And also, I'm always refining. You know, it's like we've had this great multi-fashion business, but you know, as we continue to invest, it's like those, but that's a hard business, that marketplace, you know?

• 45:03Emma Grede?

  It's so hard.

• 45:04Speaker 01

  It's like.

• 45:04Emma Grede?

  It's so hard and you have to make a decision like, what are we going to win at? What are we going to be best at? Because that is read. And especially at your price point, it's a really competitive business. You've actually done a very good job. Like, I know if I want a cashmere sweater for five, six hundred dollars, like you do them beautifully. I know if I want a great stripy T-shirt or a great white shirt. Do you know what I mean? I feel like you have a lane and it's very focused. Like you've done a good job at that. But there'll be other places where I imagine you go, you've kind of gone off and you've gone on a tangent. What happens when you make a mistake? Because we all do them.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I own it and I pivot. Like, you know, take the multi-brand fashion business, for example, like that's how we started. And and it's sort of like, you look at a business like that and you're like, okay, well, we're not losing money on the business, like there is EBITDA in the business. But is that really the goop of the future? Like, or is there a better way to showcase other brands or the curation which people rely on us for without me buying the inventory, putting it in the warehouse, fulfilling it, dealing with returns and all the things that are going to erode that already like pretty narrow margin.

• 46:16Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  So I think I'm constantly trying to think about ways to make the business more profitable and really to lean into what the like, I'm trying to read the tea leaves of like, what is the customer trying to tell me with her behavior? Like, I know she loves the multi-fashion, but is there a way for me to do that in a way that actually strengthens the business? And so that's like, that's something that I'm focusing on a lot right now.

• 46:40Emma Grede?

  Yeah, and I feel like reducing complexity because when you get the opportunity to do a lot of things, it can be really enticing, right? You're like, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this. And seemingly the world is your oyster because when you're you, there's just so much opportunity out there. And and also, you know, I guess you could just kind of put the goop brand on so many things and make it work. So you just have to really reduce what you're doing.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Right, especially the way that I've always done it, which is. You know, I was joking with this friend of mine the other day of a celebrity who has a great business and like she just stuck her name. You know, I'm the idiot that's like building brick by brick and trying to find a co-man somewhere and like source raw materials. Like what kind of a moron. Like I did it like the hardest, longest way, you know? And so

• 47:30Emma Grede?

  Do you regret that?

• 47:31Speaker 01

  No, I don't.

• 47:32Emma Grede?

  No.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  I don't.

• 47:33Emma Grede?

  No, because you have product you can be really proud of.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  I do.

• 47:36Emma Grede?

  Yeah. I mean, I'm slathered in Goop body butter now with the retinol times three, three days a week. I'm like, this is good shit.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  It's some really good shit.

• 47:44Emma Grede?

  Right? But it has to be.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Yes. And I take that so seriously and I, I don't release anything unless it is the best possible product that I can release. Like I'm relentless. I'm a psycho perfectionist about product.

• 48:00Emma Grede?

  And if you've surrounded yourself with psycho perfectionists everywhere in the company?

• 48:03Speaker 01

  I have. I really have. Like especially, and more and more as we've kind of grown up into a proper company. Like you need to hire people, I think, who are holding everybody to the same standard as you're holding things. You know, it's like if a fabric is not good enough, like they need to feel it and touch it and send it back. Right? It's like, and that's really what gives me leverage too, is having people who have a high bar for excellence.

• 48:30Emma Grede?

  Absolutely. So what happens when you make a misstep? Because I feel like in my career, and again, we don't talk nearly enough about this. I've made so many mistakes. I've gone off on tangents where I lost money. You know, we started shoes at Good American. It feels like, oh my goodness, like why did we ever try to make sizes four through 14 in three different widths? Like if you wrote like a bad case for, you know, how to, you know, or a good case for how to lose money, that would have been it.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:00Emma Grede?

  And, and I also feel like that's something that I can write off and say, okay, that was a creatively bad decision. But there are other decisions I've made that have been, I guess more, I've taken them more personally because it's resulted in having to do a riff, you know, a reduction in force. And that as a, again, as a female founder is something that I took really, really hard. Are there moments for you when you actually just go? I I fucked it up and you and you do end up taking it very personally. How do you get over those things? And how do you even? I just wonder how you framework that in your business because you don't get everything, right? And I feel like we're setting people up for a fall if we tell them that we do.

• 49:40Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. I mean, I've made so many mistakes and, you know, so many of the mistakes are also like,

• 49:51Speaker 01

  not questioning, you know, especially because I felt like I didn't, I didn't finish, I didn't finish college, let alone go to business school. Like, I didn't grow up in a corporate environment. So a lot of my mistakes were around trusting people who were like, just trust me, not doing my own diligence, you know, to creating the wrong products, to, you know, like spending a ton of time on money and money on something that doesn't work. And I think we've had to, you just have to be graceful and admit defeat and refocus. And but, you know, you just touched on something like when I've had to do reductions in force, that's the hardest thing for me.

• 50:33Speaker 01

  And one of my friends works at Goldman Sachs and just every year they just cut the bottom 10%.

• 50:39Emma Grede?

  Cut.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  Just cut.

• 50:40Emma Grede?

  Yeah. As a matter of excellence, right? It's purposeful and it's like, we only want the tip of the top, the, you know, the cream.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 50:49Emma Grede?

  And therefore we're just gonna keep getting rid of the bottom. I think they do it face, but they do it so many of the best in class businesses.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  They do it everywhere.

• 50:56Emma Grede?

  Everywhere.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  And I think as women, we struggle to do that.

• 51:00Emma Grede?

  Mm hmm.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  I also think that when we do that, you know, it becomes a much more interesting story in the news than when men do that. Like, I don't read these stories about Google cutting, you know, doing their, you know what I mean?

• 51:12Emma Grede?

  Never.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:13Emma Grede?

  The stories don't.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  And they do it all the time.

• 51:15Emma Grede?

  Stories don't get written.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  No, they don't.

• 51:16Emma Grede?

  Because it's much more a story on the other side of how they've cultivated a, you know, like excellence within the workforce, right? It's written that way. It isn't about like, oh, my goodness, she over, you know, she over egged the pudding, she over expanded the business and now there needs to, you know, 20 people need to get fired.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 51:36Emma Grede?

  Have you figured out a way of, you know, I always talk about it as like killing my darlings. Like when I, when I decide like a project is over, a moment is over, we have to make a big change. How have you, how have you kind of? Figured out how you can do that without feeling the the heavy burden? Or is it just always heavy?

• 51:53Speaker 01

  You know, now I feel like I've gotten more clinical about it. You know, it's like, I think it's great to try. I think it's great to take risks. And sometimes the product market fit is just not there.

• 52:07Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  And it's not your fault, you know? It's or or sometimes maybe it could have been there, but you don't have the budget to, you know, like pour tens of millions of dollars into marketing something. And so you just sort of have to let it go. And I think it's important to admit defeat early. Like, that's something that I've learned too. It's like, if it if it doesn't, if it's not working, let it go.

• 52:34Emma Grede?

  Yeah, it doesn't get better later.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  It doesn't get better.

• 52:36Emma Grede?

  It doesn't get better later, but that decisiveness can be very, very hard to come by. It takes a lot of practice.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  It does.

• 52:42Emma Grede?

  It really takes a lot of practice. But you're there now.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  I'm there now.

• 52:46Emma Grede?

  And as the CEO, these things are your decision.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 52:50Emma Grede?

  Because you are the CEO of this company.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 52:54Emma Grede?

  Like, that is, that is your job.

• 52:55Speaker 01

  That is.

• 52:56Emma Grede?

  You're in the office all the time.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  That is it. Well, now I live in Santa Barbara, so I'm here less, but I'm here a lot.

• 53:03Emma Grede?

  Did you envisage that you would be the CEO, like from the from the outset? Because obviously you had a couple of people, then you had an interim. How long have you played that role?

• 53:10Speaker 01

  I've been CEO, I think, since 2016. So it's been a while. I really do love it. I think I I have dreams of like going back to being founder. You know, and having somebody else, especially the the parts that are harder for me.

• 53:31Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  Um, like anything that requires math or an Excel spreadsheet.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  Um, I love the strategy piece. But like, do I need to spend time on logistics and fulfillment? Like, I'm getting to the point where I'm like, you know, maybe somebody else, you know, should.

• 53:53Emma Grede?

  Could do that. No doubt. Maybe somebody else should do that.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  And maybe the business would be, you know, would find like, I don't know, new life if, if, I, I don't know.

• 54:05Emma Grede?

  Do you envisage that there'll be a time when you can, like, when you'll be out of the business entirely? Or do you just imagine transitioning into founder? Did you build, did you build a company actually that you could step aside from?

• 54:18Speaker 01

  I think that's why I didn't name it Gwyneth Paltrow. And, you know, I, and um, I really want this business to be a legacy that's bigger than, you know, one person. And, you know, I think what's hard is that I am a good and a cheap asset. So, you know, so like, if, if something's not working, they can throw me in a paid ad and, you know, it's like.

• 54:47Emma Grede?

  They are, they are always working right here, right? For sure.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  But ideally, I would like to get to the point where I'm less consumer facing and more like the heart, like the spiritual heart of the place and less the face of the place.

• 55:01Emma Grede?

  Yes, but if you could do it all over again, given what you've experienced and what's happened, would you be the CEO of Google?

• 55:08Speaker 01

  I think I would for a while because again, like I've learned so much about myself and it's so fascinating. Like, I love business. It's endlessly intriguing. The stakes are high. It's highly creative. It's also highly quantitative. Like, I don't know how else I would ever have exercised all these parts of myself.

• 55:32Emma Grede?

  No doubt. And you, I, I feel like you're very good at it. I mean, you have to have been to build a company to this side. What kind of leader are you?

• 55:41Speaker 01

  I think I am, I mean, I guess you'd have to ask the team, but I think.

• 55:48Speaker 01

  I'm a very collaborative leader. I think I'm very warm. I think I'm very inclusive. And I am learning to be, as I said, not only decisive, but I'm learning to articulate my expectations, which has been hard for me. So that's like, I'm really trying to hold people to KPIs and like have have the harder conversations more frequently.

• 56:14Emma Grede?

  Do you think that's harder because you're you, because you come into the room as Winnifat Pautrick? Like, there's a there's an expectation that you kind of have to be like a nice lady to people. You know, I don't think anybody has that expectation of it. They expect that I'm gonna be.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  I don't know. You know, I've never thought about that. But I, I mean, I think that having been famous for such, you know, I've been famous since I'm like 22 years old. I'm 52. So, you know, much more than half my life. And I think you subconsciously or unconsciously adapt to be a very famous person in the world. And I think it's part of, I take it as part of my role to make people feel comfortable. Because it can be a destabilizing thing. So maybe there's an aspect to that that I'm not totally aware of.

• 57:02Emma Grede?

  Yeah, I mean, I mean, I'm sure there is. There must be. But you build a business that's really, I guess, incredibly sustainable in that it exists in this lane of its own. And you believe it's going to be stable with or without you. I feel like that must feel like such a an achievement, no?

• 57:19Speaker 01

  Yes. I think we have a ways to go until I can completely bow out of the sort of consumer facing part. But I know it would work without me.

• 57:30Emma Grede?

  What would happen if you walked out tomorrow? Like if you left?

• 57:34Speaker 01

  I think the team would know what to do.

• 57:36Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 57:36Speaker 01

  And I think they would figure it out.

• 57:38Emma Grede?

  Yeah. I feel like it's such there's such clarity in the purpose of the business. I don't feel like it would be that difficult. If I was at Goop tomorrow, I feel like I'd be like, okay, I've got these three verticals and I know I'm not allowed to put any shit in the products.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  Well, do you want to come and run it?

• 57:52Emma Grede?

  I mean, no, no, who knows? You never know what's gonna happen in life. We'll see how this goes.

• 58:00Emma Grede?

  It's so funny. Oh, I love it.

• 58:02Speaker 01

  Take another job. Oh, my God. The lady with the most jobs in America.

• 58:06Emma Grede?

  No, no more jobs needed over here. Let's, uh, let's know that.

• 58:11Emma Grede?

  When you think about your ambition, you know, because I think that you are a person who is unapologetically ambitious and we've seen that in so many different facets from you. And so I just wonder like how you think about ambition at this point in your career when you have been famous for thirty years, like, what are you excited about now? What are you ambitious about?

• 58:33Speaker 01

  I have great ambition around Goop and really growing it, you know, now that we're kind of out of that post-COVID, like four-year, you know.

• 58:43Emma Grede?

  That was a moment.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  Um, and now let's, well, let's see what happens with the economy, but I, I have a lot of ambition around like getting this business to scale and getting Goop Kitchen and, you know, all over America. And also I think it would be great in the UK and in Paris, like.

• 59:00Emma Grede?

  Yeah, it was.

• 59:00Speaker 01

  What do you, do you want a predommager sandwich or?

• 59:03Emma Grede?

  Not every day.

• 59:04Speaker 01

  Do you want your chicken, Brentwood chicken salad?

• 59:06Emma Grede?

  I want my Brentwood chicken salad. I want my wrap.

• 59:08Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 59:08Emma Grede?

  Soggy sandwich. I'm an LA girl now, so I would say that.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  No predommager for you.

• 59:13Emma Grede?

  No, thank you. No, thank you. And what do you wish you'd have known when you started out? Like hindsight's such a fine thing and I always, I could come up with a list of fifty things I wish I'd have done differently. Do you, do you feel like that?

• 59:26Speaker 01

  I do. I do. I feel like I wasted a lot of time, if I look at it through that lens, like, on the one hand, I do get quite philosophical and I think like everything happens exactly as it should.

• 59:41Emma Grede?

  Same.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  And, you know, it's okay that the business has grown slowly and steadily. And, you know, I read once somewhere that there's a Chinese proverb that says the slowest growing vegetable has the most nutrients.

• 59:57Emma Grede?

  Oh, I love that.

• 59:58Speaker 01

  And so sometimes if I feel like, oh, I've wasted time or it's taken too long, I kind of go back to that idea that like we're always on the right timeline, even if we see. You know, friends or competitors do something more quickly. It's like, it's not our timeline and our timeline is what it is. But sometimes I look back and I think like, oh my God, like, why did I do that? Why did I, you know, why did I get off Shopify in 2015? Like, why did I do, can you explain, like, why would I do that?

• 1:00:29Emma Grede?

  I don't know why you did that. I'm still on Shopify.

• 1:00:31Speaker 01

  Okay, why would I get off?

• 1:00:32Emma Grede?

  Shopify is the best thing since sliced bread. I mean, honestly, it's just amazing.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  Right, so why did I do that?

• 1:00:37Emma Grede?

  I don't have an ad from Shopify. If you want to, if Shopify want to be here, please come. Because I am the shop, the advocate for Shopify over here.

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  Okay, well, I got off of it. Someone talked me out of it. They were like, you have too much revenue to be on Shopify.

• 1:00:50Emma Grede?

  Get out of town. They're the biggest company. I mean, Skims is on Shopify.

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  Well, this was when it was like, you know, right, exactly. Oh, I need, you know, I need to open stores and build yourself, right? You know how much money I've wasted?

• 1:01:03Emma Grede?

  Oh, I can't imagine. Yeah. And I do feel like, again, there's so much advice for female founders. You know, I can't tell you how many people I talk out of building their own warehouse or, you know, their own 3PL. I'm like, that's not your business. But I do feel like, especially with businesses where there's a talent at the kind of forefront of the business, there's a moment where you kind of have this period where there can be such incredible acceleration in what you do. And you either jump in that window or you ever so slightly miss it. And it's frustrating to me because I feel like in every company I've ever been a part of, I can look back, even though I feel like I lean into it as much as possible.

• 1:01:44Emma Grede?

  I can look back and be like, oh, goodness me, I should have been more, should have, could have, would have.

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  And it's hard when it's you as well, like, because, you know, again, like, the weirdest thing about me, I think, is that I'm actually an introvert. I don't like being in front of people. I don't like being in front of a camera. I don't, I hate public speaking. So I think that's also hard for me because my first career was all about that. And my second career is about that to a certain degree as well.

• 1:02:13Emma Grede?

  Yes, we all want you.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  Sometimes I'm like, it's the best thing for the business for me to lean into this, but I don't want to do it.

• 1:02:20Emma Grede?

  Do you give advice to younger founders? Like, do you, do you find you're there doing that? Because I know you invest in like a lot of companies and especially in female founders. What is your advice that you like to give most, most frequently?

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  Um, the most important thing I always say to founders, like,

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  Is it going to kill you not to do this?

• 1:02:43Emma Grede?

  Oh, that's a good question.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  Because otherwise, don't do it. Like, you have to know with every fiber of your being that you are alive to do this business. Otherwise, don't.

• 1:02:59Emma Grede?

  Don't do it.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  Don't do it. And then I think there are just like certain table stakes things that I wish somebody had told me at the beginning. I mean, luckily, I was obsessed with product like you, so I always made the best possible thing that I could make. But sometimes I think people like don't have a high enough standard. You know, especially in a consumer business, like, you know, you see what happens when it's a one and done thing.

• 1:03:24Emma Grede?

  Oh, yes.

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  And it's not a business.

• 1:03:27Emma Grede?

  It's not a business. That's not a business.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  Like, how are you going to obsess around keeping that customer and keeping them engaged and delighting them? It's like, it becomes a retention thing.

• 1:03:37Emma Grede?

  Yeah. And how, how did you do that? Like, do you feel like you were just born that way and you were the end customer? Like, how did you get into that point of constantly thinking about your customer? Because it's a difference between like making a product yourself and serving a, a customer base.

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  Because I'm her.

• 1:03:52Emma Grede?

  You are her.

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  I'm her.

• 1:03:53Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  And I know what I want and my customers deserve that.

• 1:03:57Emma Grede?

  Yeah, I think they do. And I mean, it's a really great way to think about it. So I think it's hard to be good or to be excellent at something that you don't feel intrinsically. And that you're really far away from being the customer.

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  I'm like one of the top five Goop customers.

• 1:04:12Emma Grede?

  Are you really? That's psycho. I love that.

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  I am.

• 1:04:16Emma Grede?

  Are they not giving you, I need to go back and do a deal for you and your own company. What is happening here?

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  My employment agreement is coming up, so I'll, I'll bring you in.

• 1:04:23Emma Grede?

  Renegotiation, it's about to happen. So how do you feel about ambition now? Because there was this amazing quote that you had, and I'm going to read it so I don't bastardize your quote. But you spoke about your relationship with ambition and you said, you have a healthy level of ambition, which I think is so clear from you. You know who you are and you want the world. First of all, that you just say that out loud, I want the world. Thank you very much for just being unapologetically ambitious. But then you said that there's a Another aspect that comes from damage, you say, I want that so a hole will be filled so that other people will find me worthy and lovable. I think I was dancing between those things.

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:59Emma Grede?

  And when I look at Goop, your family, the life that you've really curated around you, do you think that you've managed to balance that, like the the dance between this healthy ambition and the wounded ambition?

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:05:11Emma Grede?

  Did you, did you find a balance there?

• 1:05:15Emma Grede?

  Is it still ongoing in some way?

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  I think that will be ongoing until the end of my life.

• 1:05:22Emma Grede?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  Like, I think we all have a core wound. And I think we hopefully know what it is and we work on it. And it's a lifelong pursuit to make friends with that wound and heal from that wound and not make decisions from that wound.

• 1:05:39Emma Grede?

  Hmm.

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  Um, the other interesting thing is when you cross forty and then definitely when you cross fifty, there's this deepening that happens in your relationship with yourself. And this, at least for me, anyway, I've had this sort of like love for myself start to cultivate really post fifty. So, you know, I'm in the past couple of years. And I'm sort of shifting away from this paradigm of like, I need to be something such that this, you know? It's like, no, I just need to be me. And that there's so much power in like befriending yourself and being in integrity and saying what you think, even if it's unpopular, or even if you're going to disappoint somebody.

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  And it's this like incredible blossoming that I feel happening. And so I hope that continues to happen more than like, you know, because sometimes I still have my own personal scoreboard against myself, not against anybody else. And I can be quite punishing, you know, self punishing, like I can be very, very hard on myself. And so my hope is that I, as I continue to sort of soften into this next iteration of, of, of who I am and who I was meant to be, that it will be more of the healthy ambition. It's like, I still want the world. I still want to see things and learn and I want to taste food and I want to like risk stuff and I want to do things I've never done before.

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  But I don't want to do it because if I don't, it will prove to everyone that I'm a bad person.

• 1:07:17Emma Grede?

  Wow.

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  Does that make sense?

• 1:07:19Emma Grede?

  More than you could ever imagine. I feel like there's like, like a, a book, a manifesto, like something in there. Because I feel like fifty for so many women is such an age that you dread, right? And the way that you just described it is like an awakening and to get to that place where you have so much love for yourself and you can put yourself first. Like, I love that I, that version of turning fifty. Like, I'm here for that.

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  It's pretty great, I have to tell you.

• 1:07:50Emma Grede?

  It looks great on you. I mean, it really, really does. Um, I do something, I get on the group chat because I have some fierce group chats. I'm like, what do you want to ask her? So this is what they want to ask you.

• 1:08:01Speaker 01

  Okay, I love that.

• 1:08:02Emma Grede?

  This is for the girls in London.

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  I love this.

• 1:08:05Emma Grede?

  You're known as someone who still looks like yourself, which is so nuts. Every time I see you, I'm like, you just look like a better version of exactly what you looked like twenty years ago. It's really nuts. But you're very, you know, we know about Goop, we know about you, you're all about the natural beauty. Um, but is there something that you do that we should all be doing? What is it? Like, really, what is it?

• 1:08:27Speaker 01

  I mean, so I think it sounds dumb, but the women who look the best are the women who really take care of what they eat. It's like exercise, it's diet. I know, it's, it's true, though.

• 1:08:41Emma Grede?

  I knew you were gonna say that.

• 1:08:42Speaker 01

  It's like, it's really true.

• 1:08:44Emma Grede?

  I thought you were gonna go, so, there's this guy.

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  I know. Well, but there is, there, there is also stuff. I mean, of course, there's a lot of guys. Um, but I do think that in terms of like looking good, vitality, like you've got to hydrate, you've got to sleep, you've got to eat nutrient-dense foods, like you gotta limit alcohol, you gotta, I know, you can't smoke.

• 1:09:06Emma Grede?

  You can't smoke?

• 1:09:07Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:09:07Emma Grede?

  No, no, we're done with that.

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  Damn it.

• 1:09:09Emma Grede?

  Those days are over.

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  Those were the days.

• 1:09:11Emma Grede?

  In Paris with a cigarette, so chic, but no, not so much, not so much this game. Um, I, I wanted to ask you about, because you're very, very close to your kids. And I feel, I don't feel like there's a time that I've ever spoken to you where either they're not around or they haven't, they don't come into the conversation. Um, but you and your daughter, Apple, have a very, very close relationship. And I wonder if they've ever challenged you, or if she's ever challenged you on something that you've said or done in public.

• 1:09:41Speaker 01

  Oh, in public.

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  Hmm, I mean.

• 1:09:46Emma Grede?

  Cause you're like, it happens in private all the time.

• 1:09:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, she'll like, take the piss. Like she'll, like, one time I remember I was like, had my to do book open, you know, I still was like, writing down stuff with paper and a pen. And, you know, she must've been like, I don't know, you know, 13 or whatever. And she was like, make more vagina candles. You know, she'll like, make fun of me all the time. Makes fun of me on social media.

• 1:10:15Emma Grede?

  She does?

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Yeah, totally.

• 1:10:17Emma Grede?

  But she, I bet she's very, very proud of you though.

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  She's, she, I think she is. I think she, she, you know, I think she recognizes how hard I work. And she likes that I actually am a bit of a trailblazer. You know, I think she thinks it's cool.

• 1:10:32Emma Grede?

  No doubt. Absolutely no doubt. Which part of Goop still feels like you and what feels like it's just not so much?

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  It all feels like me.

• 1:10:40Emma Grede?

  Does it?

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:41Emma Grede?

  Oh, that's, that's so lucky.

• 1:10:43Speaker 01

  It really does.

• 1:10:44Emma Grede?

  I mean, that's an achievement. 16 years in that that business still feels like you. And I think it does.

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, it really does. Like, I still, I still care so much. I care about every article and, you know, every marketing campaign and every product. Like, I care so much. It's nuts.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  I know you do too.

• 1:11:07Emma Grede?

  I really do. I mean, I'm a borderline obsessive person. I mean, that's how I feel. I'm really proud of it. And what's one thing that people assume about you that's completely wrong, but maybe you secretly kind of love it?

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  I think people from afar, I think people can think that I'm cold or haughty or something. Like, I get, like, people have said that, like, oh, we thought you were going to be arrogant. We thought you were going to be, and I'm actually like, very warm and a huge dork, like goofy.

• 1:11:40Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  You know, like, I'm very goofy and warm.

• 1:11:44Emma Grede?

  You're very warm.

• 1:11:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:46Emma Grede?

  The first time I ever met you, actually, it was the second time. Second time I ever met you, we did a workout the first time. The second time, I'd started another one of my ill fated.

• 1:11:55Emma Grede?

  Just categories, an active line with Good American that is no more. But I bought a piece of the active.

• 1:12:01Speaker 01

  I still have that jumpsuit.

• 1:12:03Emma Grede?

  That jump, do you remember? You took off your workout clothes in your kitchen. You put on the jumpsuit. I thought, can I quickly take a picture? No, don't do that. That's weird. You put it on and you did the whole workout on it and you were like, this is amazing. And you gave me all this feedback and I was like, this is so cool.

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  Still have it.

• 1:12:20Emma Grede?

  And you sent me a picture of yourself in it.

• 1:12:21Speaker 01

  Still have it.

• 1:12:22Emma Grede?

  I can't believe that.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  I do. I love that jumpsuit.

• 1:12:24Emma Grede?

  Maybe it wasn't so bad, everybody. All right, we're going on to the rapid fire.

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:12:28Emma Grede?

  The first thing that you do when you wake up, please.

• 1:12:31Speaker 01

  Uh, cuddle my husband.

• 1:12:32Emma Grede?

  Oh, that's a good one.

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:34Emma Grede?

  What a good one.

• 1:12:35Speaker 01

  That's number one.

• 1:12:36Emma Grede?

  Yeah. And it's the number one thing that you should do. Um, what's the last thing you do before you go to bed?

• 1:12:41Speaker 01

  Cuddle my husband.

• 1:12:42Emma Grede?

  Oh, that's great. So cute.

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  And put in my earplugs and my mouth guard and my mouth tape and all the sexy stuff.

• 1:12:49Emma Grede?

  So sexy. I love to look at you.

• 1:12:54Emma Grede?

  These are, that's not what I signed up for, but anyway. Um, what are you currently aspiring for in your business life?

• 1:13:01Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:13:04Speaker 01

  Let's, that's such a good question. I'll narrow it down to one thing. I guess the number one thing and what feels like the most urgent to me is profitability.

• 1:13:15Emma Grede?

  Bloody good.

• 1:13:17Speaker 01

  You know, like.

• 1:13:18Emma Grede?

  It's hard.

• 1:13:18Speaker 01

  We're supposed to get, like, we have a whole plan and we're supposed to get, but I wanna, I wanna accelerate.

• 1:13:23Emma Grede?

  You wanna accelerate?

• 1:13:24Speaker 01

  I would like to, yes, I would like to accelerate.

• 1:13:26Emma Grede?

  Yeah, I understand that. I mean, it's, it's tough.

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:29Emma Grede?

  At the time when you started your business, profitability wasn't the.

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  Zero. No one cared.

• 1:13:35Emma Grede?

  No one cared. They were like, grow, grow, grow, acquire a customer, doesn't matter. And then all of a sudden you were like, oh, wow, I'm supposed to put money on the bottom line?

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  One eighty.

• 1:13:43Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  One eighty.

• 1:13:44Emma Grede?

  It really was. And I, I think that if I'm ever speaking to founders, I was very lucky because I had all of these. They hate it when I call them the old guys, but they are fucking old. Like I had these older guys that sat on my board that were like, don't listen to the young'uns. Those D to C fools over there, they don't get it.

• 1:14:00Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:14:00Emma Grede?

  And so John Howard and Andrew Rosen, and actually my husband Jens were like, ebitda, Emma. Learn the words, understand it, put money on the bottom line. Cause when shit hits the fan, and it will.

• 1:14:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:14:12Emma Grede?

  And it did.

• 1:14:12Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:14:13Emma Grede?

  That's what, that's what's gonna save you. And I, I, I'm so glad I listened and I just think. I don't know, I like, I thank God every day that that was the point of view because it's really hard to retrofit a business into profitability.

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  And so then, then you have like, you know, all these things that were built in order to, for that first model of direct to consumer where profitability didn't matter and it was all top line. And exactly like going back and undoing a lot of that stuff, like team size, office size, whatever.

• 1:14:44Emma Grede?

  All the things.

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  All the things.

• 1:14:45Emma Grede?

  All the things. Okay, I'm going to aspire to profitability.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  Okay, thank you very much.

• 1:14:49Emma Grede?

  Um, what is something that you're currently aspiring to in your personal life?

• 1:14:54Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:14:57Speaker 01

  It's such an interesting question because I feel like I'm coming into an era where I've really figured out so much balance and where I don't feel guilty about the things that I do to be restorative and regenerative. But I think what I aspire to is like to be out of the grips of this like crazy hormonal phase that I'm in.

• 1:15:21Emma Grede?

  Are you perimenopausal?

• 1:15:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:15:23Emma Grede?

  I learned that term from you.

• 1:15:25Speaker 01

  I want perimenopause to end. That's what I aspire to.

• 1:15:28Emma Grede?

  It's bullshit, right?

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  It's bullshit.

• 1:15:29Emma Grede?

  Perimenopause and then menopause. So like, you're just gonna go into the next.

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  Well, I'll tell you how that goes when I get there.

• 1:15:35Emma Grede?

  I mean, again, another conversation you started, I did not know the term. I did not know the doctor. I did not know what was happening. And you were like, maybe. I was like, no.

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:15:46Emma Grede?

  Thank you for that. Um, what's a book that's changed your life?

• 1:15:50Speaker 01

  Oh, there's so many. Um, I always go back to Mary Oliver's poems.

• 1:15:56Emma Grede?

  Oh.

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  Like, she's like going to church for me.

• 1:16:01Emma Grede?

  Oh.

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  And so I have different copies of her different books all over. And whenever I need to sort of reconnect with that feeling of like purpose and that, you know, the world is so much bigger than me or any failure that I have or any disappointment or any happiness, I, I read Mary Oliver.

• 1:16:22Emma Grede?

  Oh, I love that. Okay, that's a really fantastic answer. What is something that you valued when you were starting out that you don't now?

• 1:16:29Speaker 01

  Hmm. I feel like I still value all the things that I started out valuing. I mean,

• 1:16:38Emma Grede?

  That is very interesting.

• 1:16:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:41Emma Grede?

  In itself.

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  I still have that, all those feelings of like, you know?

• 1:16:46Emma Grede?

  No, that is a perfect answer. Then I asked you the other way around. Is there something that you value now that you actually didn't back then?

• 1:16:54Speaker 01

  Yes. Having the hard conversations. It's like, almost every mistake that I've ever made comes from me not saying what needed to be said in the moment because I didn't want to rock the boat or hurt someone's feelings. Every single mistake. Like, when I'm on my deathbed, when I look back at my life, those will have been the mistakes that I made. Like, I didn't have the hard conversation when I needed it professionally, personally.

• 1:17:25Emma Grede?

  Wow. What an incredible insight to end this on. I feel like there's so much learning in that again because it's so hard. It's so hard for so many people to just have that level of honesty. And also, not even just with other people, but with yourself often, right? You're like, not truthful and honest and admitting things to yourself. And so it becomes really, really difficult

• 1:17:49Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:17:50Emma Grede?

  to make the right decisions and to have the right conversations.

• 1:17:53Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 1:17:54Emma Grede?

  Wow.

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  So that's an area that I don't compromise anymore.

• 1:17:58Emma Grede?

  Good for you.

• 1:17:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:59Emma Grede?

  How incredible. I love having you on. Thank you so much for the conversation.

• 1:18:04Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 1:18:05Emma Grede?

  Thank you, my dear.

• 1:18:10Emma Grede?

  If you're loving this podcast, be sure to click Follow on your favorite listening platform. While you're there, give us a review and a five-star rating and share an episode you loved with a friend. We'll be so grateful. Aspire with Emma Grede is presented by Odyssey. I'm your host, Emma Grede. Our executive producers are Corinne Gilliard Fisher, Derek Brown, and me. Our executive producers from Odyssey are Maddie Sprung Kaiser, Leah Reese Dennis, and Jenna Weiss-Berman. Justine Dom is our senior producer. Our producer is Kristin Torres. Sound design and engineering by Bill Schultz. Angela Peluso is our booker. Original music by Charles Black. Video production by Evan Cox and Kurt Courtney. Social media by Olivia Homann.

• 1:18:54Emma Grede?

  Special thanks go to Brittany Smith, Sidney Ford, my teams at Jones Works and WNE, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Hilary Schuff, Eric Donnelly, Kate Hutchinson Rose, Tim Meeke, Sean Cherry, and Lauren Vieira. If you have questions for me, you can DM me at aspirewithemagreed. Greed is spelt G R E D E. That's aspire, A S P I R E, with me, Emma Grede. Or you can submit a question to me on my website, emmagreed.me.

• 1:19:28Speaker 09

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