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I'm Gwyneth Paltrow. This is the Goop Podcast, bringing together thought leaders, culture changers, creatives, founders, and CEOs, scientists, doctors, healers, and seekers. here to start conversations, because simply asking questions and listening has the power to change the way we see the world. Here we go. This week, we're sharing a gem from the Goop Podcast archives. Welcome to the Goop Podcast. I'm Gwyneth Paltrow. And today I'm joined by my friend, Greg Renfrew, an entrepreneur, a change maker, and the founder and former CEO of Beauty Counter, where she helped spark the clean beauty movement in the U.S. Now she's channeling everything she's learned into her next chapter, Counter, a fresh take on clean beauty, focused on transparency, performance, and impact. And we are proud to be bringing it into the goop world. I wanted to sit down with Greg to talk about reinvention, what clean really means today, and how she's rethinking everything from ingredients to leadership. So let's get into it. Welcome to the Goop Podcast, Greg. Thank you. It's so good to have you on. You have, you know, we've been friends for a long time now. We have. We're getting up there.

You have me, I'm getting up there. You're still, luckily for you, a few years behind me.

No, but I'm right, I'm right. I'm neck and neck with you. And, you know, we, I'm trying to think when we first met. It was quite a while ago. we had a lot of mutual friends here on the East coast. And I knew that you were a serial entrepreneur starting really amazing companies. And then I really got to know you when you started beauty counter, which was your, was that your third business? It was my second real business.

I had the wedding list first. I mean, I did some little things. Okay. So tell me a little bit about

your entrepreneurial journey. Start at the beginning. So I think it really started for me

really early on. I mean, I think that I grew up in a family that by most standards was well positioned, but my parents got divorced and my dad got sick and we fell on difficult times. And so we had some financial insecurity up and sort of a lot of ups and downs when I was growing up. And as such, I always spent a lot of time trying to figure out ways I could

make money because I always wanted to do things and my parents encouraged me you know to to do

Thank you.

the things I wanted to do but that I was going to have to find that extra cash to do it and so I don't know I always started solving problems so like when I was you know in college I started a cleaning company because I wanted to go on something called Semester at Sea and I wanted to go around the world and I wanted to see it I don't know I was always babysitting catering you name it but it's it's been kind of in I think it's who I am it's always been part of me I've always seen things and wanted to address those issues and hopefully make some money while doing

it. Right. Are you the firstborn in your family? I am. Yeah. I noticed like a lot of us are firstborn. I think we sort of feel that responsibility either financially or emotionally or otherwise organizationally. I think a lot of us become founders who are firstborn.

You know, that's interesting. Yeah. I have a younger brother. You have a younger brother. I, I have always, I, well, I also think there's like a lot of subtle pressure put on the first born to be the achiever, to take care of the whole family, to kind of prove, you know, or not so subtle pressure. Or you discussed this too, or not so subtle pressure. Yes. So yes, I think it's, I've always, I've always felt an enormous sense of responsibility to help take care of my family. And so, and I don't think that that was emphasized as much with my brother.

Yeah, I think that's the same in my family as well. I think first born children to kind of also, you know, I don't mean this like very pejoratively, but we sort of bear the brunt of a lot of the dynamics that, you know, haven't been smoothed over yet. It's like, you know, by the time someone gets to their fourth kid, they're like, yeah, whatever, it's fine. You know, but the first one, there's like this incredible expectation and a lot of projection. For sure. I've been thinking about that a lot lately. so tell me about the wedding list how you started that that was your first foray real thing i started

the wedding list so i actually got married for a couple months when i was 25 how many months five five in total and actually ironically i just bumped into the to him for the first time in literally 30 years no in the charlotte airport about three weeks ago when i was coming back from doing a new counter event, which is crazy. I hadn't seen him forever. But when I was going through the whole process of not just my own wedding, but in that age, when you're in your early to mid twenties, you were going to all these weddings and your bridesmaids. I hated all the bridesmaids dresses. I just couldn't stand the things. I thought I looked terrible. They were cheap. They were expensive, but hardly made. So I started a bridesmaids dress company. That was kind of my first little thing. It was not successful, but we did about 40 weddings. And during the time that I was running that company and after my very short lived marriage, I decided to move to London and was introduced to a woman named Nicole Heinmarch who had started something called The Wedding List. And at the time it was a shopping service used by a lot of well-to-do families in London. And I thought, well, this is kind of interesting. Maybe I can sell my bridesmaids dresses to her. So I went and met with her and she said, you know, we don't really do this in the UK. But she and I kept in touch i was in london and i moved on to hong kong and at the time i was working in finance which was not really that compelling for me and i called her back and i said listen i want to bring this concept to the states would you be interested in partnering and i think we can bring this online because i actually think that buying a wedding gift is more of a commodity once someone knows what they're comfortable spending if it's on someone's list they should be able to buy it online. Right. Which I know seems crazy now, but this was 1997 or eight. Wow. That's early. It was really early. Really early. First true multi-channel retail businesses. And I remember pitching up and down Sand Hill Road, the convenience of online purchasing to a bunch of guys that were like wedding presents online. No, thanks. No, no, thanks. But anyway, that was

my first real business. And then did you sell that business? So the business of Martha Stewart

in 2001. I stayed on with her for a year. I mean, I learned a lot from her.

Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting. She's been such a cultural force for so many decades and like this unbelievable businesswoman and kind of started industries. And did you see the documentary on her? It was so fascinating, interesting. She's probably a firstborn too.

You know what? I think that she did so unbelievably well at the time. She made the average American woman become a goddess in her home on a budget. She showed her how to do it. She showed her how to lay a table, how to make things that she couldn't necessarily afford to buy or impress her friends. She did a really incredible job with that. And I respect her for that because at the

time, I mean, no one was doing that. You know, there's something I think about, like, I don't know. I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Like where do domesticity and feminism, like how do they overlap? You know, do they do they not?

especially with all the sort of like trad wife stuff that's happening at the moment and the backlash to that, but also the embrace of domesticity. And I feel like she had a brand of domesticity that was very like independent, you know, which, which I think is very inspiring. It's like, I'm, I'm doing this on my own terms kind of thing, which is, which was very new.

Yeah. I mean, she's, she's a force and also a brilliant marketer. And as you said, she's, she's continued to have cultural influence and she reinvents herself over and over again yeah i mean it's really unbelievable it's amazing she's done a lot of really great things and i do think

that women take pride in their home so you sell the company in the martha store that's your first

exit and then what's next well then i would then i was uh i engaged at the time so my husband mark and we went to south africa and i went and volunteered in the townships because i just needed to get a palate cleanser. That's a nice way of saying it. Yeah. I just needed a breather. I wanted to do something different. And also I just, I think like you, you and I have this in common, but I have an insatiable appetite for learning and travel and new cultures. So we went and spent some time in South Africa. And then I came back to New York where I was living and started doing consulting for Bergdorf Goodman and for Best in Company, some smaller brands, intermix, et cetera, and was hired by the Hilfigers, by Tommy and Susie Hilfiger, who at the time owned this children's clothing company called Best in Company, which was like an old established brand that they were trying to bring back. And I had done a small consulting project for them within Bergdorf's earlier. And so I was like, well, this is really cool. And they, the offer was amazing and it just seemed too good to be true. And it was because I got fired in front of my team via messenger. Wow. Oh my God. I've never even heard of that. It was funny. I mean,

I laugh about it now. I mean, it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. But anyway, it does, you know, it's, I find those things so humbling, like those, those moments in life where you're told no, or you're terminated or like, they're so defining and then, and how you react to them in the moment. and then like the long, long tail of it. So what, what did that feel like?

I mean, was it, you know, I knew that it wasn't, it was an incredible learning experience because I think one of the things that I learned was, I mean, I was cocky, right? I started the wedding list. I sold it to Martha Stewart, not that it was necessarily so successful financially for me selling it. Cause it wasn't, but I was sort of one of those like new entrepreneurs and, you know, you know, cause you've been in every single magazine, like getting photographed and I thought it was cool. like maybe you are cool I am cool you're cool whatever I thought I was cool so I come into Best in Company and Susie is an incredibly creative person and she's extreme in that way like she's extremely creative and I didn't know how to manage her and Tommy had asked me to sort of hire hired me to turn the business around and get it to profitability but I just disrespected her and I didn't what I didn't do was learn how to pull out the brilliance from her right and so when i was fired i wasn't really that i mean the way in which i was fired i was shocked right being fired was not surprising because the business wasn't going as well and i and it's from that day of ford i've always felt like there is no place for arrogance in the business place or just arrogance in life like i just don't like arrogant people you can have confidence in yourself but i i mean it was so humiliating i mean can you imagine you're sitting in the middle of a meeting in front of your entire team and someone serves you papers and walks you out the door and wow Like, I'm sure I cried into my wine that night, but you know, I got over myself. I don't go into situations now, assuming I know more than the person with whom I'm speaking or the person that ran it before me.

Were those kind of the fundamental lessons out of that? Like the sort of humility that it brought or?

Yeah. I mean, I think that what I've learned is that highly creative people, you need to create environments in which you can constructively criticize their work because it's so personal and so subjective. Yeah. And so I've learned how to manage that without just in a meeting, just saying, you know, I don't like the color of your blue jeans or whatever, when that person was so proud of the choice of that color or whatever. So I think I didn't, I learned how to handle creative people because they're, they're critically important to business and you can't just let them do whatever they want in isolation either. There's a balance there, but I think that was a real, real learning is how to work with creative people in a way that's constructive and where they feel supported, but also understand the business side of it. And I think also just don't be cocky. Yeah. It's just not, it's just not a good trick.

No, it's not. So how do you manage your own creativity then? Cause you, you're, you are a business person and you're also an incredibly creative person. You have incredible taste, you know, you, you have a great personal style, like everything you, you touch, like I think of you as a very left.

brain, right brain person. So how have you been able to kind of manage those aspects of yourself?

You know, that's a good question. I think that, well, first of all, thank you for the compliment. I think I've honed my personal style and gotten gained confidence over the years and what I feel looks good on me, but what I feel is representative of who I am and, and all of that. And I think that clothing is actually such an important representation of ourselves and our values and And I so often see people dress in things that they feel so uncomfortable in, and then they don't present nearly as well as they could if they just wore whatever felt best for them. I think in terms of balancing creativity and the business side of my brain, I'm not a numbers person. I've had to work really hard to understand how, I mean, even today, looking at spreadsheets and discounted cash flows and all this stuff, I can still, no matter how hard I've worked on this, it does not come naturally to me. Whereas brand and the emotional connection to a consumer and why someone might want to make a purchase and how to communicate with people, that is much easier for me. But I've always, from the earliest days, looked at business as the conduit through which I can affect change and provide solutions and have fun. And so I guess I find business to be challenging, but I do think it is a real creative expression. And I think it's really fun when it's going well and when you're not exhausted to be able to solve problems for people that make them happy. I mean, you do it all the time. You've done this so brilliantly over the years as an individual and with Goop is just being able to answer questions that people are asking or anticipate what they might ask in the future and having the confidence to hit something head on and then try to provide an immediate solution, whether that be through

education or a product or both. I think it's fun. Yeah, I do too. And I think strategy is super creative and problem solving is super creative. But I just ask, cause like for myself, they're always, I mean, I am really a creative. And so as you know, I've had to learn how to operate a business on the fly and it's been, and it's been so interesting to sort of like have to constrain myself to do what's right for the business. You know, if I was unconstrained, I would do all manner of amazing creative things that probably bankrupt us, you know? Yeah. But the thing about the thing,

one thing I've learned because I've now been living in Los Angeles for 17 years. And one thing that I've learned about creatives and specifically actors also that have enjoyed success in their career is so often it's not about how talented they are as an actor or not, or a musician or anything else. It's about how they've actually thought about strategically about themselves as a brand and how to create longevity and sustainability and how to manage the people around them. And I think you've done that particularly well. And yeah, we all have to hold back. I mean, I, you know, every day my team is like, Greg, no, we can't do all these things. So I'm like, okay, well, I had 10 ideas. I know three of them are brilliant. Five probably are worthless. And two, maybe we put in a parking lot, but you guys need to help me have the discipline and help me figure out which ones we can truly monetize and which ones really add value. I need that support around me.

Yeah.

Like you. Otherwise, I could think of a million fun things to do.

Right, right. So I really got to know you when you were launching Beauty Counter in Los Angeles. So for those listening who might not know, Greg launched Beauty Counter, which was really one of the first, I think the first clean beauty brand that really ever hit the market. I mean, obviously, there were sort of health food store, you know, patchouli moisturizers and stuff like that. But you were the first person who really went into incredible detail in terms of, you know, what was safe in products, what wasn't. You were the first one that sort of, you know, took the government head on in terms of like the lack of legislation that had existed for decades and decades around personal beauty. and as you know, like pioneered the whole movement. I mean, really like you're the first one. So tell me a little bit about how clean beauty or clean ingredients or like, how did you start to get interested in this space? Why did you become passionate about it? And then tell me a little bit about the process of, you know, ideating how you would turn it into a business.

it this entire journey started for me in 2006 one of my really dear friends lila rose had gone to see an inconvenient truth and we were having breakfast the next day in the west village and she said greg I've just seen this movie and it really rocked my world. And it was all about the environmental health movement and what was going on with the environment. And she said, look, you're a very direct outspoken person. You're also pretty well connected. Like you need to become a voice of the environmental health movement. And so I said, okay, I'll watch the film. And I did. And that film really shocked me because I realized as a consumer that I was doing a lot of things that were truly detrimental to the health of the earth. And then concurrently, I was sitting in New York in my early 30s or whatever, and I was watching so many of my friends get sick. I mean, you and I have a lot of mutual friends. I had good friends, men and women, different types of cancer. I had so many friends struggling with fertility issues. I had so many friends who had given birth to kids with pretty significant health issues, and I started to wonder, what the hell is going on? What is the connection between the health of our earth and human health? And one of the things I came to realize over a several-year period, I wasn't like, was that there are all these toxic chemicals and those chemicals are wreaking havoc on our health and the health of the earth. And with that in mind, you know, like you, I started making a lot of changes, like taking my shoes off at the door and trying to change my household cleaning products. Like there were a lot of things that became obvious to me that I could do that were better for me and also better for the earth, you know, recycling, you know, getting rid of my plastic containers and switching to glass. But then I sort of took it one step forward and was trying to figure out you know and i'm not i've never been a huge makeup like beauty person but you know i enjoyed skincare whatever i couldn't find any products that met my needs because to your point earlier i think that there were all these sort of eco birthday brands which are fine yeah but they appealed to a very specific segment of the audience and then if i looked at the brands that i'd known and loved and grown up with that all of us know all of those brand names they were filled with all these chemicals of concern and i thought well why am i being asked to compromise my health in the name of beauty? Why can't I have both? Why can't I have products that are super chic, that I love, that I want to put on my body or on my face that are also significantly safer for my health? And that's really what made me decide to take the risk of starting Beauty Counter so naively. I mean, I knew nothing about beauty. I literally called one friend of mine who worked in hair care at L'Oreal and I said, I don't know anything about this industry. Can you begin to educate me on this? And that person led me to another person you led me to another person and it was a it was a long process yeah how did you even like because

you know the guidelines weren't established this is like years before people were kind of creating their own portals for what was clean and what wasn't clean like how did you even begin to discern what ingredients weren't like were you online because this like this this was not readily

available it was really hard I mean I started working on this in late 2010 and we didn't launch till March of 13. And really, it took us that long. You know, it was a combination of asking a million people. So seeking out people from the environmental working group, you know, like Hank Hook and those guys reading Stacey's, Malcolm's book, Not Just a Pretty Face, talking to people, you know, that were really, you know, involved in the health movement. I was introduced to this man, Bruce Akers, who was a green chemist. And I remember saying, I want chemical free. And he started laughing at me. He's like, there's no such thing. Everything's a chemical. He's like, everything's a chemical water's a chemical like i was like okay okay so i'm learning you know it took a long time that i just was was talking to a whole bunch of people and then i was introduced to some people that were working on taking legislative action mia davis who was working with me at the time was was doing something i can't remember what it's called now safe cosmetics something anyway i just started talking to people and and it took a long time and i ultimately hired Mia and some other people around me to try to help educate me. I mean, I said this to you earlier before we started, I still can't pronounce half of the things that are in these products. I mean, I think it's incredibly complicated. Yeah, very complicated. And I don't pretend to know everything. But I do know is that we want endocrine disrupting chemicals, neurotoxins, reproductive toxins, et cetera, known carcinogens out of our bodies and out of our homes.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it sort of seems like it should be table stakes, you know, So when you look back now, I mean, and you think about the brands, you know, the sort of clean beauty movement that's come and, you know, all of the big retailers have sort of clean beauty shops. We were talking about this earlier, and I think this is something that we've talked about a lot, but there's a lot, a lot, a lot of greenwashing that goes on or non-toxic washing or whatever we want to call it. you were talking about, you know, being in a retailer and they put you next to a clean brand and it's actually one of the most toxic brands on, on the market. So like as a consumer, how do we, how do we start to understand what is actually clean and what's not, or what's on the edge?

mean i remember our first one of our first people at goop who we hired when we were doing our clean beauty had worked for you blair and i used to call her you know from stores and be like breed her ingredient because i had no idea you know it's like this is in the clean section is it clean she'd be like put that down and walk out of the store you know people still come to you with their

sunscreen i'm like i know you don't want the ava benzo and oxy benzo i'm not sure what all the other not any things are but yeah no it's hard it's really hard i mean i think that that's one of the things the reasons that we went after the state and federal government on these issues is that there is no well first of all there is no clean standard and there was no such thing as clean but also consumers are left to their own devices to try to navigate these murky waters and understand what means what and what what's clean and isn't and i think that now like i'm proud of the movement that we built and you you were instrumental in building that there are a group of us that built this clean beauty movement over time but what's happened now and i think this is probably when i think about what my opportunity is now with counter it's how do we set a definitive clean standard once and for all right and how do we all and it doesn't mean that i'm perfect and i can hit every single thing that we set but if we all really set a high standard how do we set that standard then how do we get the retailers yeah to come along with this because one of the things that's really hard right now for consumers is that every retailer is to find i mean i'm talking large big box retailers they're all defining clean differently and so how as a consumer and a lot of it is total bullshit and it is and it's it's serving their own their own needs not the needs i mean i've been in and you and i have worked with some of the similar retailers i've been in conversations at times that are like well you know our guests don't really care about that i'm like well i think they would if they knew what was in that and so they say well no some of them only want clean i'm like no no you should just if you all took a stand right and started holding your brands claiming to be clean, accountable for what they're saying that they are, like the whole

industry would move forward. It's true. I mean, you know, at Goop, for example, we, we have an incredibly stringent platform. Like, you know, I think we're, we are by far like the strictest and, you know, I have worked with brands to reformulate so that if they want to sell on Goop, there are just certain things that we don't allow. My, my makeup artist in LA, Georgie right now is in the process of, you know, she's like, ah, you know, you guys are such a pain in the ass. I'm like, I know, but you know, I think it's super important and these hidden ingredients that actually are incredibly harmful. And to your point, like there's a reason that there are so many health issues and there's, you know, I mean, I think all of the endocrine, the fertility issues you're talking about, I mean, there, we, we used to slather ourselves in endocrine disruptors, you know let alone like fire retardant on everything and and and all of the things that we we breathe in you know every day so i think personal care is like i mean that's i mean you

put it on your largest put it exactly every single day especially you know someone says someone people have asked me in the past like if as an average consumer if i am trying to navigate this and i have a limited budget what would you do and i said first of all i would be shopping fragrance free yeah because most of the offensive so many of the offensive chemicals are hidden under international ip law and so they're not disclosed and so at least you know you're taking out some of those harmful chemicals like phthalates that bind that scent to your skin and they so closely mimic our endocrine system that the body doesn't know to reject it you know and i've said you know think about like your body lotion if you're putting that on all over your body every day and if you can't afford it then literally just go put some coconut oil on or olive oil or something because those things you know they go into your skin and they're in there they're not coming out again, right? So I think that I'm always trying to help people prioritize their spend and their thinking when they're shopping with whichever brand. Yeah, absolutely. So let's

talk a little bit about the beauty counter journey for a minute. So because it had a really interesting business model that you created and a ton of traction and the business grew and grew and grew, did incredibly well. Will you tell me a little bit about sort of the trajectory of the business? How did you decide to create this? I don't know. I find it so empowering. You empowered women to sell the products kind of, right? It was, you were very limited at first in terms of distribution points. It was really through women. You know, I think that when I started Beauty

counter I wanted to almost create an underground movement because I felt like all of the shelves were controlled by the incumbents all of the large brands you know those conglomerates controlled every single shelf across America and it doesn't matter whether it was in Walmart or Bloomingdale's or Bergdorf government or anything in between so they didn't want the story of safe ingredients getting out there because they were the ones that were putting these chemicals into the products and you know marketing their you know walks for breast cancer all these other things that they were all doing you're like you've got to be kidding me so i kind of wanted to create a bit of an underground movement and catch them by surprise i also think and you know this better than anyone that we we trust people more than companies and the government more times than not we trust our friends and i thought we had an important story to tell and it needed to start with education because at the time when i started beauty counter most americans like more than 80 percent of americans had absolutely no idea that there were chemicals of concern in certain of the products that they were using right and we'd only banned 11 ingredients in the u.s that you had banned or restricted almost 1400 not all those are commonly used in personal care products but you know other countries were taking notice of this and i thought we need to educate and how better to do that in the light of fire under the asses of a bunch of women who care because these are the women's that are struggling with fertility these are the kid ones whose sisters have breast cancers these are the ones whose children are ill and they care deeply about these issues and so a friend of mine said you know if you considered like a direct selling model to which i was like hell no like you know i'd always heard about these people that are over promising and under delivering but when i started to look at it i thought wow this is interesting we can actually power up a group of women who can educate their communities their friends their family they can earn a living and for many of them do it while sitting in their home and taking care of their children or doing it through their Instagram feed or whatever. And it just sat found like, to me, it was like a more compelling direct to consumer model than just going back to the big box retailers who were

not going to want the story to get out. Very disruptive and empowering again for,

and, and was it a commission based? Yeah, they got paid commission and, you know, it's not dissimilar to affiliates today yeah i think that you know you were paid there were a lot of things that that came up in the old business that people didn't really understand they thought people were able to buy a whole bunch of inventory itself from their homes that wasn't the case we shipped everything through our e-commerce platform unless we shipped something like for our relationship with you all but they got to pay the commission on the sales and then a very very small percentage of them built a team and they could get paid on other people's times but it was like a tiny piece of that and a tiny piece of the business but you know it's also interesting because people don't like that team building aspect of those companies but it's exactly like corporate america everyone builds a team right you know but anyway it was it was an interesting business bottle but we did also want people to have the choice just to go to beautycounter.com to shop with us at cube ultimately towards the end we had a partnership with alta so we were always trying to or do collab with target or whatever we wanted to make sure we were reaching as many people right and then also used those women to power up our advocacy efforts because we really wanted them to help us pass new pieces of legislation on both the state and federal level. And they

did exactly that. Right. I mean, that was incredible to watch you go do. I mean, you single-handedly cleaned up a lot of ingredients that are in personal care. I mean, there's probably still a bit further to go, but you made incredible headway. And I know it was

the first law since the 20s is that right it was the first time since 1938 that they had actually updated a major piece of federal legislation it wasn't fdr was put in in something in place as part of the oh my god the food drugs and cosmetics act of 1938 or whatever and it wasn't until then and we held about 2 000 meetings on the hill on both sides of the aisle and i finally testified in front of congress on behalf of our entire community and i do think that we were instrumental on passing MOCRA. We're not the only reason it passed, but I think we really did help put that issue on the map. And, and, and, and it was so empowering for people to be able to meet with their member of Congress to tell their personal stories about why this matters, why our health matters so much. Yeah. Because I think sometimes people forget your, your health is literally your

greatest asset. Yeah. And I think, you know, we've been a bit tricked in terms of, you know, like i think i mean in the capitalist culture where you know profit is valued above all i think and cheap ingredients which are potentially harmful valued above all you know i think we've been sort of trained to lose that immediacy of like food being medicine or personal care being medicine the things that we're putting on us and and eating you know it's like they've managed to sort have put barriers between right so you I think it's so important and I and it's been really interesting too to see the younger generation really clinging to this and really you know I anyway like my daughter's friends like they are very aware of environmental toxins which I think is fantastic because it's it's you know the consumer are the ones who move the markets right and those are the ones who are going to change an ingredients panel like if they stop buying buying something then

then the companies have to listen.

I think people forget how powerful, people think about voting in political elections, but they forget that every single day you're voting with your wallet and the choices that you're making, purchasing. And I do think that in many ways we sold our souls in the name of capitalism in this country. And I think that it is incumbent upon us and brands, because I do think what you said is true. I think that brands can move a consumer market way faster than a nonprofit organization. People fall in love with brands. They are emotionally connected to brands. If Nike tells you to just do it or whatever, people listen to these brands. And so we have opportunities as brands to actually move markets in a positive way. And I do think that the business and commerce can be used as an engine for positive change. I think you and I both feel very strongly about this. And I think we both try in earnest to do that. And there are a lot of people that criticize us and say, oh, you're fear-mongering or you're full of shit. But actually, no, we're just doing the best job we can to try to help prove to the world that you can have a business that can be financially successful, but that also can have positive social impact and take care of the earth. And I don't, I think when you talk about, you and I have both have kids and we have similar age children. I mean, I worry about this for them. So someone better start thinking about a triple bottom line and thinking about, well, what happened to those workers in the field? We did that whole mini documentary series on, on Micah. We went to physically audit our minds and we found four-year-old children mining the mica that we were using in our products and instead of hiding from it or switching to synthetic we said okay how do we work with non-profit organizations on the ground to help create systemic change because there's no other opportunity for those families to put food on the table yeah i mean there's a lot going on out there and when fashion's certainly hearing a lot about it right now but beauty and personal care is right there bit of a reckoning there yes yeah

so you grow beauty counter to like 300 million dollars in revenue huge number and you get approached to sell it you sell the company for almost a billion dollars right a billion exactly

somehow i had mine as a woman i was like billion dollars is important to me it was something that i felt like we need to demonstrate as women that we can hit these these marks yes so you sold to

Private Equity. We were, all of us and all of your friends and all in the founder community, so proud. And I remember once being at a gathering with you with a lot of female entrepreneurs and you talking about your exit. And it was like this heart swell of pride from all of us. It was such an incredible achievement and accomplishment. Do you remember that one? I do. I remember exactly And then you had, I think, a similar story that a lot of people have when, you know, private equity, you know, of course, they start out with all of the right intentions, like buying a brand and the value of a brand, the emotion of the brand that you're talking about, and then set out to scale it further. can you talk a little bit about what that was like and then you lost control at a certain point i just think it's so there's so many interesting lessons for founders and ceos in your story

i i you know i i always remind people because you know when you look on the surface of someone's brand or the person they seem everything seems always seems so great and successful like you know it's like oh I remember one of my friends said something about about the brand and they're like god they were just like an overnight success and I said overnight success is like 10 years 24 7 that's overnight success yeah yeah it's hard yeah so when I sold the brand it was May 20th was the day we close of 2021 and actually that was a really important day for me because it's my father's birthday my dad died a really long time ago of cancer right so you and I have had that in common I was in my 20s when he died and so I just thought it was really cool that it was his birthday and I remember that and I cried that whole day I was so proud I mean I still you know it's like as a woman to have started a business and sold it for a billion dollars it was just a huge moment into and to have represented all these amazing women to get to where we were was awesome and I felt so proud and then unfortunately for me I think that it was it happened concurrently like exactly at the time that the world opened up I think you and I talked about this this summer where everyone had come out of the pandemic, where they were really inwardly focused. The only thing you could really spend money on was your food and your skincare and things like that. And what happened? Well, we were selling through women and many of them went on holiday as they should, got out of their homes. People redirected their spend to retail and to travel and other things. And our business stumbled that summer. One of the things that's been said often about brands and mine in particular at the time was, oh, we used to have this COVID bump. I'm like, No. I think we flawlessly executed COVID. I think we nailed it. What I don't think I flawlessly executed as a CEO, I didn't anticipate what it would be like for both our sellers and our clients when we came out of the pandemic and they had to reimagine how they were doing business. And we had a hard summer. And that October after, you know, five months later, they told me they were going to remove me as CEO and that they were going to look for, you know, a more established beauty CEO to come in and replace me, which was very hard to hear. Right. I mean, I was, I mean, I remember exactly where I was. I was on my way to parents weekend for my daughter's eldest start of Phoebe's parents weekend. And I was in the airport and I remember just, you know, hanging up the phone and like crying all the way up there. Cause I didn't want it. Cause I really felt like I was capable of running the company. And I felt like for eight years, I'd done a pretty damn good job. And I did recognize that we weren't growing as quickly, but we were still growing and

everyone else was struggling too yeah that was tough yeah and so then how did you how did you manage through that because you still had a role at the company like what internally what what was that like for you to sort of have to forcibly shift into something else and still be a team member and I'm just so curious about like your the inner workings of you during that time yeah I mean

I, look, I don't think I'm very good at it. You know, I had to do that when I sold my company to Martha Stewart's office and it was Martha's company and everything was about Martha. And I was like, it's hard when, you know, and I think that's partially ego and partially just, it's hard to watch someone else take over your baby and tell you, it's almost like having, I mean, I haven't experienced this, but, but, but you have, but it's like having somebody else help raise your children. And you're like, well, like I know them better than anybody. Like, what do you mean you've made that choice for my, my child? And again, maybe they're doing it with the best intentions, but it's not your, it wouldn't have been your decision. Right. So it's very emotional and hard. So I, I really wanted to publicly put on a good face and smile and say that I was welcoming in this new CEO, but I was dying inside. And, and quite frankly, he came in and wanted nothing to do with me from the very first day he canceled our first meeting and arrogance again i think assumed because he had been a seasoned beauty ceo that he knew better than i did and i think one of the great learnings for all of us is it's so easy to come in from the outside and look at i could come into goop and i could look at all your problems and be like why did you make that decision why did you do this i could have done it but the reality is you don't have the context you don't know what happened in that moment or why that choice was made and of course, some of those decisions were bad decisions, but also sometimes listening to people that built it, understanding who has the institutional knowledge is actually very valuable. And so if I could say anything to founders, one is, you know, recognize your worth. You may not be the best operator. There may be a better scaler in terms of operations, but your gut instinct is right about your business. And I think that that was immediately ignored, which was really hard,

which is why we basically couldn't work together. Right. And so at some point he was no longer

there, right? Well, I, he had me removed immediately. So I, he and I only worked together for, I think three or four months and then I was gone and I was gone for two years. And during the two years, he made some really poor choices that led to a place where the board called me back in, in the fall of 2023 to say, would you come back in as CEO? We think you're the right person to lead the company and what was that what did that feel like i mean you were like on a beach you were chilling finally it was like i tried to say this to like friends of mine it's like you are totally in love with your boyfriend or your husband or whatever well this is what it was like this is actually how this all went down so i'm in love with my husband and he leaves me for this brighter shinier hotter woman but we got to go to the family weddings together we've got kids who have a smile about the whole family and act like i'm thrilled that he's now married to this woman and smile in front of my children and act like it's all good right but meanwhile I'm seething with anger and then like let's just say two years later he decides that girl isn't actually his one and he really wants me back right like you've got to be kidding me I just got over you like I finally got over you and I and you know because you saw me and I was crying I was going to therapy and I was like I was doing anything I and everything to try to move on yeah this was such a huge part of my identity and I was still in love with the business yeah and working with the women and then the second I'm like okay I'm out I've got this I'm finally you know mark my husband was finally like you got to move on and I did and then they called of course it's like this is like dating 101 the minute you don't care about the guy anymore right they're gonna call so I think that you know they called and at first I was like well and then I just said no I really I don't I think I've actually like for my own emotional well-being I don't think I can go back there but then you know they really said they need you and I thought about that community of women right and I thought like I owe it to them and and we still have work to be done and so I went back in in February.

2024 to try to turn the company around at that point what was the revenue number half of what

it had been so when i when i sold the company it was close to 400 million when i came back in it was just over over two wow okay and it was no longer profitable but it was just too late i mean honestly it's funny because at the time you know quickly made the decision not to continue to invest or the private equity firm and i was really upset with them at the time and it's funny I've spoken to them since I realized now they saw what I couldn't see because I was so emotionally

attached that it just was too late. It was. And what, what does that mean? It's too late. How?

I just think it was that there were, there'd been so many decisions made over a period of time that

had you lost trust with the customer? I think it was a couple of times. I think that we had,

I think we had degraded the brand a little bit because we were, it was constantly on promotion. Right. You've seen this happen on brands. When brands aren't doing well, then it's like, Let's just discount more and more and more. So I think that there was that trust loss with the women.

Right.

Because we had gone from being a very emotionally driven, purpose-driven community with a female founder to a very corporate, transactional. Right. So I think that was really hard for them. And there had been changes made to compensation. A lot of things had changed, some of which I agreed with, but it was still really hard. And then I think that from a branding standpoint, I think, again, they kind of decided they wanted to change all the branding and remove the founder from it. There were a whole bunch of things that went on, and I think that it wasn't going to work, which is why we went into foreclosure. I mean, we were in breach of our debt covenants. I didn't even really know what debt covenants were at the time. Now I do. I know a lot about all these things now, but I think it was just a little too late at the time.

So did the company file for bankruptcy?

No, we actually didn't file for bankruptcy, but we did go into foreclosure. okay and we had been honestly from the fall of 23 straight up until when we went into foreclosure we had been trying in earnest to find a home for the company right to either find a financial sponsor or a strategic to purchase it or you know that we talked a couple direct selling companies like we've been talking to anyone and everyone and there were people that sort of excuse me were circling around it but no one actually actually put in a viable offer right to buy the

Right. What do you think the, like looking back, what decisions, what were the wrong decisions that were made by the, by the leader at the time? What would you have done differently when you look back, you know, at the, at the person who took over and the decisions that were made then? Like, what would you have done differently?

well first of all i would never have removed all the people that had all the institutional knowledge including the founder that doesn't mean that you can't put the founder in a different role but i think to not talk to the founder listen to the founder understand the founder's original vision and all the events that led to where you are i think that's just that was unwise i think the poorest decision, in my opinion, was trying to take a purpose-driven, community-based business where people really believed in what they were doing and were emotionally attached to both the products and the purpose and the advocacy efforts, et cetera, and try to turn it into a traditional big box corporate beauty brand and use an old school beauty playbook to meet the needs of the consumer. And when you take an industry disruptor and you try to take a old school beauty or any industry, it just doesn't work.

Right. No, I've seen that as well at Goop, like people coming in and trying to apply an existing playbook or one that worked for them at a previous place. And I think it's very rare that that works I think every brand is so unique I mean unless it's you know literally just like the same factory in China making the same things and you know it's just how much money you're putting behind something if but if it's a real brand you know it requires I think a degree of contemplation and adaptation and flexibility like you have to always create a new playbook And I think you have to always create a new playbook for yourself at every iteration of your own business, right? Because markets change and, you know, algorithms change and consumers change, et cetera. So it gets foreclosed. You watch your business that you founded kind of fall apart.

Yeah.

And then you get the brilliant idea that you're going to buy it back.

yeah brilliant or crazy yes or both you know it so i was on spring break when this all went down and it was

sort of like over the weekend, Thursday was the drop dead date. We were going to go into full liquidation on the Thursday. And on the weekend, say this without crying. I remember my daughter, Georgie saying, mom, like, you just cannot let this die. She was using her like last vitamin C serum that we had. And she said, mommy, you've worked so hard. Like you just can't let this die. Like you just can't mom. And my son, Jamo had been like trying to sell the fragrance that they put into the market. And he was, I mean, my son literally only posts like lax things in his friend's sports things, but he was, he was buying it and trying to sell it to his friend's mom. I mean, it was just like, and they just said, you can't let it die. And, and I just thought about all those women, you know, that had worked so hard to help build it. And, and, and so, but I was scared. I mean, I was petrified, you know, do we have enough money? Can we afford to do this, et cetera. And then I got a phone call on the Sunday night from my lawyer who said the banks have just called and there is no deal. You are the only possible deal. Do you want to buy the company? They want you as the founder to take this back. They believe in what you did. I mean, it's actually quite an extraordinary story. Wow. I mean, I really respect the guy from Bank of America that called to say this, this woman built something special. Like we want her to have it back. We're going to, we're going to lose our money either way, basically. But we, we think she deserves, it wasn't just Bank of America, it was JP Morgan. It was a syndicated, it was syndicated debt, but, but either, but anyway, they all, they all came to me and said through my lawyer, we want her to have it back if she wants it. And so I sat down with Mark and my kids and, you know, I was just like, Oh, like, can I do this? Like, it's so scary, but we decided to do it as a family, you know? And then I did it. And then I literally had like a full blown sobbing, hysterical, like panic attack, like two days later, like, Oh my gosh, like, Oh my gosh, what have I done? Because you know, there was so much, we bought the assets, but there was all this debt that had been on the business. And, you know, I mean, there was just so much going on. I thought, Oh my gosh, i mean like what have i done i mean i was i do remember sitting on the floor at my house with my family and with lindsey doll who had been one of my partners i mean just hysterically sobbing thinking why did i do this yeah why did i do this like i'm really i was genuinely scared because the complexity of the business and what i had taken on and what was i going to do with it i mean it just was i was petrified genuinely petrified so take me through what was the next step and the subsequent step so the next step so that was we I think I purchased the business on the 19th of April of last year and I made the really difficult decision on May 1st to shut the business down well I made the decision maybe the day or two before and I had to let go of all the associates of the company there was no money left so there was no severance I mean I had to tell all the women who built their lives with us that that we were shutting down and you know it was and then I had to of course receive the backlash from that which was hard and you know you've you've I don't

know how you deal with it but it's hard to be publicly you know just you know because it hurts and you and you you you're trying to do the right thing and it's you know you're disappointing everyone um but I felt like the only way that I could be the only way forward was just to to let to die and to start a new company and to begin anew. It had to all be reimagined. As I said earlier, it wasn't working anymore. And the complexity was extreme. And the cost of trying to turn it around would have so far exceeded anything that I could raise in any short period of time. It would have been tens and tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars. And that just wasn't going to happen. And so I made the difficult, but in retrospect, I genuinely think the right decision to just shut the whole thing down right as hard as it was at that time and then

did you retain the formulas and the product like how did you bought the assets so i was able to

retain the formulas we had inventory that we were able to sell down which was great you know we got locked out of our office immediately so there's all the stuff that because we owed money for rent but actually technically you're not supposed to do that in the state of california but they locked us out so i never could go back in and get anything so i had kind of what i had digitally But, but I was able to get, you know, we had our customer database and we had our formulations and we had some of the old assets.

So did you, did you set out, did you go back to the, your commands and start over with the formulas? Did you?

Every single one of them. Well, there had been this huge skew proliferation and then also all these new contract manufacturing partners, because of course mine weren't the right ones or whatever. so you know he had added all these other ones in and you know I think one of the things I've learned in business is you you want to be really important to a few people not just not important to a lot yep because when things go wrong which inevitably they do you want to have that relationship so I actually went back but I had to renegotiate every single thing because there was an inordinate amount of debt and so it was the same conversation over again and where are you getting the capital to do this at this point so i so i put in a bunch of my own money and then i raised a little bit of money and from some of my old investors and then one new person i mean i literally did all this in about 48 hours wow and then i started calling the manufacturing partners and i said look this is we're in a shit situation i am so sorry you're in this position i don't take responsibility exactly for where we are but here's the deal i would like to move forward with you i'm going to greatly reduce the number of i'm going to dramatically reduce the number of skews and the number of people with whom we work and if you want to play ball you're going to have to work with me because i don't have the money to pay you right now and i'm not going to ever have the money to pay you so it was actually incredible testament i think to the brand we built and to how amazing some of these companies are i mean there are a lot of companies out there like you know and i and you know what i'm gonna say who they were because you know people don't also in our industry ever talk about everything's a secret right yeah and like all these guys came to the table and they're like we got you greg wow i mean it was amazing like i literally when we launched like i was so appreciative of what they did and that just shows the power of relationship and people and because there's no way we would have been able to do this without all these companies because they were losing their shirts too because they put all this money they were owed all this money they had you know batched all this product that could no longer be sold and it was it was hard but they were amazing people were really amazing to us I mean I I and so many of my old teammates that were no longer with a company like they came back and they said we're gonna help you and all of you guys like everyone rallied it was I'm sorry it was just super nice to see people rally around you when you've gone through a difficult time because it also just saw like the power of women supporting each other you know it's been quite a journey but but I feel so appreciative of the outpouring of love from what anyone from the you know the warehousing people to the amazing not THL they

weren't, they were terrible. Well, you deserve it. And I think what you built and what you're building now, really extraordinary companies. And so women positive and in so many, you know, from so many directions so was there a decision around not keeping the name beauty counter and

going to counter tell me about that you know i i really felt that the only way to enter the market again and you and i both know this you know the market is well first of all the beauty market in general is completely saturated and now there are a lot of million brands claiming to be clean whether they are or not is a whole other story but yeah i think that i felt that the only way path forward was to reimagine everything from the packaging to the branding to certain of the formulations of course we have some of our tried and true favorites to the business model like I didn't you know it's 2025 I launched in 2013 what was innovative in 2013 is it's like antiquated today right so I really I gave myself last summer to take the time to think and I said everybody look I'm you guys are we have a small team you're gonna get paid but I don't really know what we're going to do I don't have a plan right now like you know I didn't have a strategy so brave which is so weird but I mean I didn't have a strategy because I literally made the decision in 48 hours so I said to everybody and to myself like I'm gonna for myself the next couple months to think on this and to talk to people I went out you know I talked to you I talked to I called on a whole bunch of people like you were super helpful I called you know Bobby Brown got her advice on how she started her new brand whatever I just was talking to people that I cared about that had done different things in and out of the industry and tried to gather as much information and then made the decision, looked at where I felt we had an opportunity to come back into the market. One of the things I felt strongly about was that we were always counter to the industry and Beauty Counter was named that name because it was the intended double entendre of going counter to the beauty industry. But I thought it was also limiting and there was positive and negative biases towards that name. And I thought just limiting, you know, counter felt right. It felt right. And we all felt really good about it.

It's a great name.

And I just thought, and then, you know, we reimagined all the packaging because I felt like it needed to be fresh and new.

Right.

And more cohesive. And I didn't like where it had gone.

Right.

And then I just really looked at where's the white space. And I think one of the things that I felt strongly as I looked at the products we sold and to whom we sold them, and as a woman who's well into her 50s now, I think that older women are largely ignored by the industry.

Yeah.

But yet we're loyal. we have the money to spend and we care about our health and we care about we are making more conscious choices for the most part and so what one of the things that had gone wrong with the

they're trying to be everything to everyone. And so I really decided I was going to lean towards that older demographic because that was really who we had in the first place. I mean, yes, we had younger people using the product, but in general, she was sort of 35 up and maybe even 40 up. And so I thought, why not really lean into her and give her something that she's going to love and not worry about being everything to everyone right now.

So what are you doing differently now, this time, this go around?

Well, I'll tell you one thing I'm doing. I'm really focused on profitability because I don't ever want to worry about money again because you and i both know that with with like you know at the time you know when we were all building businesses like over the last decade but that until a couple years ago it was always growth at all costs all they wanted you to do was grow until they didn't until they wanted you to be really profitable and that's not just like my private that was that's across the industry yeah so one thing i'm really really focused on in money is not my strong student ask my husband i like to spend money but it's like really being very careful in the choices that i'm making yeah really focusing on new and in in technology that's easier for people to use way less skews i mean i think when i came back in we had something like 235 skews and now we've launched with 19 and by the end of the year with color cosmetics we'll have about 31 to 35 i think that's the right amount yeah yeah yeah let's do a few things well right i i think i'm doing that differently i'm not letting some what which was happening not looking at what other people doing i keep saying like guys we have to build business on our own merits and not copycat of the brands and whatever like what can we do well yeah what can we do really well and i've said to the team if you don't feel and i have the confidence to say this now if you don't feel so strongly about that product that you'd literally be willing to risk your job over it and i'm not saying your job is at risk but i want you to feel that strongly about the products we're putting into the market then let's not do it yeah so i think that's different and i think i'm different i mean you've known me for a long time and you've seen me in insecure moments and really insecure moments i was really insecure for a couple years after beauty counter when i was out i didn't know who i was i remember showing up at an event a gathering that you and i were at in utah and i i mean i remember this so distinctly like you gave me a hug and then you quickly turned to someone else and i was like am i not important anymore i mean it's crazy how your mind can go there but you start to feel this way and so i feel calm not every day but i feel calm i feel conviction yeah i feel high level of humility but i also have confidence that we can do this it's not going to be easy and it may be a lot smaller but i want to i want to reimagine the business model the distribution i want to meet the needs of today's consumer and i really want to uplift women as i do it yeah and democratize it you know for women that's incredible we'll see

it's amazing to hear you talk about it are you going to use the same are you going to use

consultants again yes we named them brand partners this time brand partners we're not people aren't building teams anymore because that got became complicated for a whole number of reasons but i think that we really do believe in community-based commerce i believe the brands and communities are kind of one in the same yeah i mean goop is a community yeah you know better than anyone i mean it's it's not i mean yeah you're a brand but but it's about values and it's about what they're seeking to understand and learn and they they look to you and they look to your brand for that and i think similarly people knew what we stood for they knew that that we were walking the walk and we were transparent and they wanted to associate and so I think I believe that you know the most influential people are always your friends and and women listen to other women so I do believe in that business model but I wanted it also to be reimagined and I also wanted to have like some of our own stores again and we're so super excited to be launching in group in a couple of days because that partnership's always been really great for us yeah we're excited too thank you Yeah. No, I, so, you know, it's funny because I, over the years, people used to say, are you guys competitive with Goop? And I said, why do you always say that? I feel like we're alibis. Yeah, completely. And, and, and we're all trying to help each other. And we've shared so openly things. There are a lot of brands out there that want to keep their things secret. I'm the opposite. I want to, I want to work with other brands because there's so much room for all of us to be successful and all of us to help women along the way. Great. And tell me how the brand

partners reacted because I remember, you know, there was a lot of upset like you've touched on before when you sort of collapsed the model and the business. So are some of those women coming

back into the fold? Yes. And some are not. And some are not. And that's okay. And you know, I tried to be really respectful at a really difficult time, especially to those women who had built large teams and really relied on the income. I mean, it was a very difficult conversation, But I did try to be crystal clear to say the opportunity that you have today will be different. And if this is your, you know, if you are relying on this income, I encourage you to consider other companies. And we actually spoke to other companies in the direct sales world to try to help create soft landings for other people. Because, you know, one of the challenging things when you build through independent consultants is it's not so easy. It's not like the corporate world where you can just easily just go from one thing to the next. next and get paid the same amount of money it doesn't work that way and so right those were difficult conversations but I do think that we have it was funny I was looking I did I did an analysis we have a hundred I think it's like 120 people that have shopped with us from the very first day in March of 13 of the old company are still shopping with us now it's not a ton of people but wow it's a long time to shop the same brand and I think that there are a lot of there are thousands of women that we chose to limit the number of people who could start so I wanted to work out the kinks and get it right and co-create some of it with them but we do have quite a few people that were representing us before and that are back and are really passionate i bumped into one this morning and she said i'm just so happy you're back thank you because it meant a lot to

a lot of people absolutely yeah what i mean what you built was incredible and it is incredible i feel very bullish about this this beautiful second incarnation it's i hope so so as we're on the goop podcast you know i want to talk to you a little bit about kind of maintaining sanity maintaining energy drawing boundaries i think it's so difficult as a founder and i have to say i think not to pat myself on the back but i have been working in therapy a lot around this issue like this. I think we all do get so burnout. We are laden with so much responsibility and it's very, very hard. I think when there's so much on the line to draw boundaries for yourself or create, you know, 20 minutes in your day to walk outside or whatever the case may be. So have you consistently found yourself throughout your career in stages of burnout? Are you in one now? Because you're literally back at square one right now. And how are you approaching that? Like, it's so unsustainable. We know how stress impacts, you know, you talk about not putting chemicals on your skin, stress is as dangerous. So how are

you approaching that now? I think that I don't feel, I don't feel burnout right now, but i am feeling a little overwhelmed yep because how do you define burnout well i think for me burnout is when i feel apathy like i'm apathetic and i feel like it towards anyone and everyone in my life and my work right where i just feel like i don't it's not even an energy thing so much as it's just you're done indifferent yeah and i can and and it's in my and i can feel it in my family my family can feel it my husband can feel it my work is just kind of meh so I think that one of the things because the majority of the people that are working for counter I had worked with before and not all but a lot of them are and we promised ourselves this time around that we wouldn't work at the frenetic pace that we were working at in beauty counter because it was and you know people used to always say it's a marathon not a sprint but but yet when you have the pressure of institutional investors which by the way everyone does and this isn't specific to any one institutional investor the pressure's on 24 by 7 yeah and so I think that I have worked really really hard recently on myself for the last couple of years and on learning how to confidently say no to things that I used to and again I think some of that's because I'm more secure than I used to be but also knowing what really matters And when, when I was out of work and I was no longer the founder and CEO of this beauty company that people knew about or didn't know about, I, I found that I didn't know who I was and, and I had to lean hard on my friends and my family. And it reminds you that that is really what matters, right? Is yourself, your family, your friends, et cetera.

So, and your, your inner life, your relationship with yourself.

A hundred percent. and you know i i feel for the first time in a very long time very at peace with who i am i feel really good and that's taken me a long time yeah and so i think that right now i'm saying i think when you talk about creating boundaries because you do i mean you do you were like you guys are out of my house like we're having to do it done and we all give you shit about it but like the reality is like you have to create these boundaries i remember when i was running beauty counter before i used to say to people they would meet me at school and the mom some mom very kindly would say oh you're georgie and i or you know phoebe's whatever we're in the same class would you want to meet for coffee in the beginning i would say yes and then i would blow it off blow it off blow it off and then i'd finally meet and i'd be resentful because i didn't have time and then i got to the point where i would just say you're gonna think i'm really rude but i'm just gonna tell you it's it's not gonna happen because i can only focus on my family and on my business and on my existing friendships right now and I'm so sorry I don't mean to be rude

I just don't think at this moment in my time, I have the capacity to take on a new friendship. So I can tell you that we'd have coffee, but we won't. And good for you. And people were taken aback at the beginning, but I got comfortable with it because I, and I've also gotten comfortable with saying, no, I can't talk to your daughter's sister's boyfriend's friend's girlfriend that wants to think about what they might want to do in beauty on Saturday afternoon. You know, there's only so many hours in the day.

I know.

So I am trying to be, be, be thoughtful in my choices of how I'm spending my time work wise be as efficient as humanly possible with my work hours far more decisive I'm not second guessing myself I remember one one of the people that worked for you at one point in line sure for me you and then me again at different points of time and she said one of the things I loved about Gwyneth is she's super decisive and I'm trying to be very decisive clear in my communication because if you're not if you're indecisive or you're trying to keep everyone happy or you're blabbing on in a meeting like it's such a time suck yeah and then i'm trying to really focus on what i'm eating and putting in on my body i exercise all the time i really think releasing endorphments that you know i'm trying to be careful my consumption of alcohol and sugar because

these things all add up they do especially at our age they really do yeah you know we've talked

about this whether it's menopause working fatigue it's like and trying to be present and and i'm not very good about this. And I'm trying to get better about this, like putting my phone down and looking my daughter in the eye and Georgie, especially be like, mom, I get off that phone. But you know, just because we're addicted to these things. So they were built to be addictive, but it's like putting it away and just being fully present for dinner or whatever that walk

is with your friend. You have to be, you have to, I think the quality of your life starts to erode so much if you're, you know, and you hijack yourself like with busyness and you're not present you're not in your body and then your body starts to bark at you like you're not listening

to yourself it's a slippery slope it is i also think that i've learned to calm down when the shit hits the fan yeah like we were going to launch a couple weeks ago we launched on june 25th and one of our top newest most exciting products fell out of stability and for people that don't know the industry that means like the the oil and the was separating from the lotion and it was making it a little bit runny and it was perfectly safe for health but it wasn't the experience that we had wanted for the customer and the old me would have flipped a switch right freaked out and i was like okay well what's plan b right so that so we sent out an email to all of our customers saying sorry some of you already bought it it's not going to be here for a couple months it is what it is we're being transparent and and not allowing myself to to go crazy over things that i cannot control yeah because that creates so much stress in your body and and in your entire your community or your team that is unnecessary because stuff is always going to go wrong.

Every single day something goes wrong. Yeah. I think that's absolutely right. It's sort of how you are reacting to the problem at hand is everything, right? And I think when you get to where you are as a founder, you know that ultimately it's going to be okay. And even if it's not okay, it's okay. Like look at everything you've gone through and here you are today, having just launched, relaunched this beautiful brand and it's okay. And it's going

to be okay. Yeah, I agree. And I think the other thing that I do think is, and I, and I don't mean to play the like mother female card, but I do think we hold ourselves to these standards that oftentimes are just like unrealistic. Yeah. And when I mean, what I mean by that is, and i used to say this to the women when they were selling you know what i actually sent my kids one you know with lunch boxes once with literally nothing in them i just screwed up that day you know and there are days when i'm having a huge fight with my husband and i don't feel like going to work and i'm tired or i look like shit yeah and we don't have to present perfection to the world like the world is not perfect we're not perfect mothering is not perfect marriage is not perfect life is not perfect and I think somehow we feel as women that we have to do it all perfectly all the time and we just don't and I always say like you can have it all in life just get off just have it all on the same day or even in the same month or even in the same year and there are moments in time where you're going to lean into your kids or you're going to lean into your spouse you're going to lean into your work it's okay yeah it's okay it doesn't have to be perfect all the time it's never going to be perfect no and us trying to strive for perfection if there's one thing I can do as i'm aging is try to help younger women know that like it's okay not to be perfect yeah you're never going to be i know and the beauty industry is is setting a standard up there that is just unrealistic yeah because they're air touched and they're they've got you know different filters we're talking about social media and you know and it's causing so much harm to women thinking that they're you know this they have to be this one they can't beat because that person

actually isn't that either. No, it's true. And it's, I think it's causing a lot of anxiety in the younger generations and a lot of body dysmorphia. I mean, I think we obviously had all that in our generation too, but now it's like on steroids because all day, every day. And as you say, they're, they're designed to be addictive. And so much of the message in social media is like, you're not enough. Like you buy this and you could be, be that. One of the things that

we said internally that we are committed to is not creating problems that our products will solve right i think that's what we do right oh you've got wrinkles let us help us you with your fine line and wrinkles well is it is having a wrinkle a problem right no it's just part of the aging process and it's inevitable yeah and i think that and you know there was that whole what's is it america ferrera that did the whole line in barbie's like you have to be this but not this and it's just like we need to as women embrace where we are in life yeah pump each other up and yes beauty can make you feel more confident more sexy or more fun it's fun yeah but it doesn't mean that you're not good enough as you are that's right we've got to give ourselves a bit more grace 100 and and that goes women to women too it's not just beauty industry and it's not we often you know we'll say well the men no we do it to each other and we and one of the things that you're so you are so incredible that when it is pumping up and lifting up other women and other brands and other founders like you've had such an enormous impact on the lives of so many people and not because you're an actor not because you've started goop even yes all those things but it's it's about you lifting up other women without asking for anything in return it's it's it's something that if more people were doing this like the world would just be a better place because we need more women empowered and we need need more women to have the confidence that they have a voice that matters and I I applaud you and appreciate you for doing that even even just having me on this podcast I'm like having me talk about my story I hope my story helps other women know that they can do it and it's going to be hard but they've got this yeah I mean what what

more can you say that's perfect thank you for doing you're the best I really appreciate it and

I, and I do mean that. I really, I have to say like this, the last couple of weeks have been super emotional. And I think that, you know, when, when you post and stuff, it's like, it meant a lot to me because I didn't ask you to do that. And, and it just, it means a lot because I, I try in my daily life to like, if you always ask me like, why'd you post about someone else's beauty brand? I'm like, cause I actually use the product and I love it. Like, why would I not? Right. Right. Like, why are we not helping each other? Right. But you know, not, not enough people are. So

It's true. Well, I'm, I'm so, I'm so happy that you did this. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in. This has been a presentation of Cadence 13 studios. I hope you'll listen, follow, rate, and review all of our episodes, which are available for free on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts.