April 13, 2023 • 38 mins
These days, a lot of actors double as entrepreneurs. Yet no one has had their finger on the pulse quite like Gwyneth Paltrow. Before everyone else was doing it, the Academy Award winner started a newsletter with personally curated recipes, travel tips, beauty items, and more. That grew into the lifestyle brand Goop. From its clothing line to its podcast, Goop’s offerings have captivated customers who are just as obsessed with health and wellness as its founder. Gwyneth sat down with Bob to discuss how she came into her own as a CEO. When she became an entrepreneur, a retail job at Penny Whistle Toys was one of the few non-acting gigs on Gwyneth’s resume. Listen to hear how that early experience, plus belief in service to others and staying true to herself have been among the keys to her success.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeartRadio.
So many people when I started were like, what the
hell is she doing? Like she has this good day job,
Like what is this? I lacked the boldness even to
think through a business plan and think this is what
I want in three years, Like I had to collect
(00:23):
the courage along the way to become that kind of leader. Hi,
I'm Bob Pittman. Welcome to Math and Magic, Stories from
the Frontiers and Marketing, where we explore marketing from the
math to the magic, and our guest today fits right
into that. She once said that really interesting things happening
at the intersection of instinct, intuition, and data. She's Gwyneth Paltrow,
(00:48):
probably best known for her screen career as an actor
with lots of awards, Academy Award, Golden Globe, Emmy, had
lots of great roles, but today we want to focus
on her as an inneventative and successful entrepreneur, starting with
an idea and exploding it and the multiple business is
all tied together by her vision. She's from a creative family.
(01:10):
Her father was a producer, her mom and actor. Yet
somehow Gwyneth had the business Gene from Stocking Toy said
an alternative toy store Penny Whistle on Madison Avenue in
New York, to founder and CEO of Goop. She said,
the drive and vision of an entrepreneur. She made the
Loop La New York, London and now was back in LA.
(01:32):
Gwyneth welcome, Thank you very much. This is my life.
You covered everything well before we get into those stories.
We're really going to boil it down you in sixty seconds.
Sounds good. I'm ready to go Early Riser, night out,
Early Riser New York or la ooh tie New Order
or psychedelic furs, beach or mountains, beach cats or dogs? Dogs?
(01:57):
Are you crazy? Theater or set them up? Theater? Introvert
or extrovert. Introvert, It's about to get harder. Childhood Hero,
my Dad, Professional Hero Brian Chesky, first job, Penny Whistle Toys,
favorite pasta shape RIGATONI, favorite play a street Carnaan desire,
(02:19):
favorite performance by your mom a street Carnian desire, favorite
vacation spot the exumas. Favorite Goop product are all in
one face oil prefer beverage, green tea, and what's something
you can't live without? My husband and children. Let's start
(02:40):
with the obvious question. You've had such an amazing and
busy career acting, what was the pull to business, and
more specifically to start your own business? Stupidity, naivete. I
don't know. I guess I always have felt like I'm
a relatively entrepreneurial person, though I don't think I would
(03:01):
have defined it that way. But when I look back
at being an artist, I think all artists who find
some success at it, all artists who are able to
provide for themselves by doing their art, are by definition entrepreneurial.
Like you have to have so much of those same
qualities of self belief and abject drive. And I know
(03:26):
it surprises a lot of people when artists become entrepreneurs,
but it doesn't surprise me because I think we are
all very cut from the same cloth. I've always been
a very independent person, and I think I've always wanted
real agency, and unfortunately, in an acting career, you're always
(03:48):
waiting for other people to let you express what needs
to be expressed. You need permission from the director, or
you need to get the part, so you need permission
from the producer or the studio or whatever. And I
found that very frustrating that I couldn't create and put
things into the world, and I found myself being slowly
(04:09):
drawn to this entrepreneurial space. You know, in the early
days of the Internet, it was such an exciting time
to watch businesses being created in this whole new way
and to see all of these, you know, existing business
models being disrupted and disintermediated, and I don't know, I
(04:32):
just thought it was fascinating. I also was very very
passionate about the lifestyle space, and I felt like I
wasn't seeing anything that really spoke to me or answered
my questions. And that was kind of the the early
impetus towards starting to explore how I might participate in
(04:52):
the space and how I might found a business. And
before you start a goop, you sort of put your
toe in the water a little bit in this space.
Could you give us that origin story. When I was
a kid, really starting my movie careers nineteen, I've always
been kind of obsessed with food and travel and culture
(05:17):
and art. I mean, my dad raised me in a
way to be very receptive and excited about these things,
and I was very much his child in this way.
So when I would go and do a film. You know,
this is pre Internet. I would find myself living in
Toronto or Paris or Rome or you know, Atlanta, and
(05:38):
really wanting to understand what the best of the city was.
What did this city have to offer by way of
not only food and culture, but you know stores and
were there any cool yoga studios? And there just wasn't
a way to find this information. So I would go
(05:58):
around the city and I would ask people. You know,
if I saw like a cool looking girl in Paris,
you know, in a cafe, I might ask her like,
what are your favorite shops? I would ask crew members,
you know, what is your favorite place to get a
sandwich or a coffee? And I started to collect all
this information about cities and then I thought, I've aggregated
(06:21):
all this information. I should put it somewhere. So that
was like the very early, early early, you know, Colonel
of A. Then what became Goop. We're going to talk
a little bit more about Goop, but I want to
first jump back in time a little more. You stocked
toys at penny Whistle and Madison Avenue for folks who
were not New Yorkers of that era. Penny Whistle had
(06:43):
the cool and unusual toys in the day when unusual
was hard to find back then. It was started by
Meredith Brokaw, Tom Brokaw's wife. I lived above the store
for a few years in yearly eighties. Oh my gosh,
I actually know it. Well, how did you wind up
at Penny Whistle? Well, my father was adamant that both
(07:03):
my brother and I got jobs after school, so we
moved to New York City, and in seventh grade, you know,
I sort of set out on Madison Avenue and poking
my head into stores and seeing if, you know, they
needed any help. And so they took me at Penny Whistle,
and I was very excited. I mean, my father was
(07:27):
a self made guy. He had an incredible work ethic,
and I think he was nervous to some degree to
be raising two kids on the Upper East Side of Manhattan,
going to private school and living in a townhouse. You know.
I think he saw around corners and saw how that
could lead to a certain entitlement that he really really
(07:49):
wanted to fight again. So we were working. I mean,
my brother worked at the Double Duck Delhi on the
corner of ninety second in Madison. I worked at penny
Whistle I worked at. My next job was at Kindersport,
a ski store. Although I didn't realize when I was
a kid that when you go on spring break, you're
(08:11):
supposed to ask permission from your boss. So I sort
of missed a week of work and I came back
and they said, no, you didn't show up for work,
like you're fired. So that was also a great early
lesson for me in business. But it was a great
place to work, and as you said, the curation there
(08:31):
was so cool and so different, and I think that's
where I started to understand the power of curation. Besides,
you have to show up for work to keep your job.
What other lessons did you learn from those experiences. I
learned about the importance of the customer, the way that
people interact with a customer, to really make the customer
feel like they're having a special experience, and to keep
(08:55):
the back very tidy. That's good lessons. You went to
Spain for two months in high school? How did that
change your view of yourself or the world. It was
like an earthquake in my life in the best way.
I mean, it just completely dismantled so many existing structures
(09:15):
of who I thought I was, and how I saw
the world. I was really dropped in it into this
wonderful family in the middle of Spain, in a very
small city where nobody spoke English in the family, and
I had to adapt so quickly and learn the language
so quickly. And I was completely enchanted by the culture,
(09:41):
the way they saw the world, the way they came
home and had lunched together every day and closed their eyes,
you know, for twenty minutes and then went back to
school or work, the importance of eating together family. You know.
I had never been around the rituals of Catholicism, for example,
which I found quite foreign and beautiful. I feel like
(10:04):
I came home a completely different kid. So let's move
on a little bit. A striking number of the successful
folks on this podcast having college dropouts. Bob way me included,
why did you drop out? Well, I was at the
University of California at Santa Barbara, which is a fantastic
(10:24):
school and probably the most beautiful school in California. But
I really really wanted to be acting. So I had
sort of hooked up with an agent and I would
kind of drive back and forth to Los Angeles an
audition or you know, I had gotten a very very
small part in a film, was basically like an extra.
(10:44):
And I'll never forget my father, who was a very dry,
hilarious New York Jew saying to me, you know, you're
doing both of these things very badly, meaning I wasn't
properly trying to act, and I wasn't properly trying to
go to school. And you know, with the support of
my parents, I decided to drop out to see if
(11:07):
I could pursue an acting career. It sort of felt
like it was burning a hole in my pocket, like
I had such urgency to get out there and do
it and try it. And I felt on some level,
you know, again this abject stupid self belief, like I'm
gonna make it. I'm gonna make it. I know I'm
gonna make it, and I just need to get out there.
And at some point my parents said, Okay, we'll support you,
(11:29):
go give it a try. Well, it obviously worked out
for you. I think the first time I met you
was with the Robin Hood Foundation, which for those who
don't know, is the innovative poverty fighting nonprofit in New
York City. And I wasn't really taken because your career
was on a tear. I think you had already won
an Academy award in your twenties, and you had one
(11:50):
amazing role after another, yet you found time to help
your fellow New Yorkers in need. Can you talk a
little bit about how you think about this part of
your life. Yes, man, it was a whirlwind. I mean
you articulated it correctly when you said, me doing what
kind of one project after the next. It was a
fast and furious time. I spoke to somebody, you know,
(12:11):
when I was having like an overwhelming time, like after
the Oscar and everything. My father was sick, my grandfather
was sick, and I remember talking to somebody who said,
you know, being of service is such a great way
to stay focused on your true north, like who you
are as a person. So I did a few things
to be of service, and Robin Hood was certainly one
(12:34):
of them. I mean, it's, as you know, it's a
fantastic organization. I was so happy to be supportive. I mean,
all of the money from that organization goes into the
hands and the mouths of people who really needed, as
opposed to so many of these charities where it's all
going to salaries and overhead. So I felt very proud
to help. Let's jump ahead. Now, let's jump to Goop
(12:57):
and you, as an entrepreneur, founder and CEO, you started
pulling together all this information you had and you wanted
to share it. What year did you really start Goop
and what was sort of that critical moment from I'm
sharing my information to hey, wait a minute, I think
I got a business idea. So it's funny when I
first pressend on my mail Chimp account of my first
(13:21):
Goop newsletter that was in two thousand and eight, and
I had no idea that it would become a business
or how I would monetize it as a business. I
was just writing content from a very authentic place of like,
this is what I found that I love. This is
a great place to get the best cheese in London
(13:42):
and all that kind of stuff. And I found that
it had a lot of traction. And I found also
that I was really positively impacting these businesses that I
was talking about, and I thought, wow, Okay, there's something here,
like the people are trusting the curation. I think it
(14:04):
was unmonetized for about five years and then it was
having such an impact that people were coming to me
and suggesting that I monetize or really just asking me
how I thought I could monetize it. And you know,
at this point, I'd spent a lot of my own
money running it, and I thought, well, gosh, wouldn't it
(14:24):
be amazing if I could actually turn this into my job.
So I started figuring it out. I met with a
guy in London called seb Bishop who had been in
the e commerce in the early days, and he was
running red for Bono, and he was interested in getting
back into the for profit sector, and we sat together
(14:46):
and started to strategize, you know, how we would build
it out. And we started with kind of an immediate
revenue stream, which was through ads and then some native content, etc.
But my passion really lay around creating product. But it
was done very very slowly and very organically. We kind
of dipped our toes in the waters. Our e commerce
(15:09):
shop was first with collaborations with other brands, so we
weren't doing much design or supply chain or fulfillment or
anything like that. Then we had a bunch of other
brands that we were aligned with it we were selling
and then you know, then we got our first warehouse.
It's very iterative. It was slow, and I think that
I was really discovering what the business was as we
(15:32):
went along. What were your expectations of it? Were you
just along to see where it went? Or did you
have a vision of ten years, twenty years, here's what
we're building. You know, honestly, I felt like I wasn't
given the permission to have ambition in that way around it.
I was very timid. I think so many people when
(15:54):
I started were like, what the hell is she doing?
Like she has this good day job, Like what is this?
I lacked the boldness even to think through a business
plan and think this is what I want in three years,
Like I had to collect the courage along the way
to become that kind of leader. And I don't think
I was ready to be CEO myself until I was
(16:18):
ready to do that, and so that was probably seven
years ago. I allowed myself to think, you know, it's
okay to have ambitions, to really want to build something
that's meaningful and impactful. And so I still feel like
we're very much in the process of building that. More
(16:38):
of Math and Magic right after this quick break, Welcome
back to Math and magic. Let's hear more from my
conversation with Gwyneth Paltrow. This podcast is about marketing, so
I have to ask this question, why the name Goop? Well,
(17:01):
I was seeking advice from an old friend of mine
whom you might know in New York, Peter Arnell, of course,
legendary marketing guy. He was amazing. He was so instrumental
in helping me meet you know, the first guys who
helped with web development and everything. And I said, I
just don't know what the name should be because I
really don't want it to be my name, Like my
(17:24):
ambition would be to build something that would be far
greater than me, and it could stand for something that
people would understand, and so I don't want it to
be my name. And Peter came up with the name Goop,
and I thought he was nuts. I mean, I thought
it was such a weird sounding word. And he said, no,
it's your initials with two o's in the name. And
(17:46):
I was like, what is that supposed to mean? And
he said, you know, all big internet companies have two
o's in the name, you know, whether it be Facebook, Google, Yahoo, whatever.
So I said, okay, Peter, I'm going to trust you,
and then Goup was born out of that. Daily Candy
had a successful editorial newsletter, Guilt had successful commerce, but
(18:08):
the combination of the two editorial and commerce was very elusive.
Why were you able to bring them together? What was
the secret? I think the secret was for so long,
I was so allergic to being transactional in that sense,
and I'll never forget. I published one issue of Goop.
(18:31):
I published an article on the French pharmacy, which I'm
sure you know when you go to Paris or anywhere
in France, the pharmacies there are so cool and they
have like, you know, homeopathic things, and they have like
all this special stuff. And so I wrote a piece saying,
you know, this is this great you know, burn cream
(18:52):
and these probiotic tampons, and there's this great lip bomb
and all this stuff. And a woman stopped me and
she said, oh my god. I loved that article on
the French pharmacy. But it was so frustrating for me
that I couldn't just click to buy everything. I was
on Amazon dot fr or trying to buy this and
(19:13):
that and searching, and it was the first time that
it occurred to me that transaction could actually be a
service as well, and that you didn't have to push
product for revenue. If you made or curated things that
you really believe in and thought were going to genuinely
(19:34):
elevate someone's life in some way, that you could do
what we then called contextual commerce. And we've always stayed
true to those principles. You know, we're obsessed with clean
beauty and we have the highest clean beauty standards in
the business, and so I think when people come to
the website, they understand that, and they understand that there's
(19:55):
a really strong point of view. You know that I
have a very strong point of view around fat. So
even when we were just buying, like from a wholesale
perspective and had a multi brand matrix, it was very specific.
When we started g label our clothing line is very
very true to me. So I wouldn't have been able
to sleep at night if I felt like I was
pushing something on somebody. You've been doing some very successful
(20:20):
Goop podcast How did you discover podcasting and do you
think of it as a separate business or is it
integral to your entire brand development. I think I understood
pretty early on in the game what podcasts were and
why they were valuable. And I think, you know, we
have always been a content first company, and sometimes we've
(20:42):
indexed too heavily into that, right, and so we're not
driving enough revenue because obviously you want to grow and
grow in a profitable way. But content is so critical
to why we are relevant as a business, and we're
always looking at various channels we can proliferate with great content,
you know, whether that's a Netflix show or whether it's
(21:04):
a podcast, or whether it's our digital content, etc. And
I think a lot of brands have caught up to
this as well, some with I think more relevancy than others.
But there's a content creation piece. I think that's really
important for driving a modern omni channel, direct consumer brand.
And so the podcast is such a great way of
(21:28):
folding that in. I mean, it is a revenue stream,
right because we sell ads on it, but it also
is a way to always articulate our curiosity goop to
really dig deeper with experts and doctors and amazing people
that we have on and I think podcasts are such
a great forum. I love listening to podcasts and I
(21:51):
listen to a lot of them. I think it serves
two purposes. There is the revenue stream and then it's
also again like the content. What's interesting is that you've
jumped into a lot of areas. To people thought you've
gone through sort of all the issues of starting a business,
but you've gone into retail when others are scared of it.
(22:12):
What's the secret of knowing when is the time for
that next step? And how did you wind up doing retail? Yeah,
and I think that's a really relevant question too, especially
as we expand into wholesale with our eponymous beauty products
as well, because you know, I think there was this
desire to stay like purely direct to consumer for so
(22:35):
many brands like Goop, and then I think we all
started to see, Okay, we might need to broaden where
are we offering these products. So I personally think that
retail is super important for a brand because it's where
the customer can come in and touch and feel and
sort of be immersed in a brand experience. And that's
(22:58):
why the experiences in the stores need to be so good.
Because if I'm going to sell our great face cream
on Amazon or Sephora, both of which we do, I
need the brand halo to be really strong, like I
need the Goop brand to be intact when someone's adding
a cream to their Amazon cart. And I do think
(23:22):
that omni channel is really important for modern brands, and
retail is such an important piece of that. Now. I'm
not necessarily saying we would go and open a hundred
retail stores, but I do think that having the right
store and the right experience in the right market, it
works as a customer acquisition tool, it works as a
(23:44):
client telling tool, and I think you can really make
people forge a strong relationship to a brand in a
retail store the way that you just can't digitally. You know,
It's interesting. Two folks told me very similar stories as
they began retail. Ralph Lauren told me he was starting
his retail stores but way back when because he wanted
(24:05):
to show the department stores how to merchandise his product. Well,
Steve Jobs, when he was talking about the Apple stores
the retail stores, said, nobody makes my product look special.
I need to build my own to show people how
to do it. But it's interesting. They both said, basically
what you just said, that it is all about sort
(24:26):
of making it come to life and showing people what
it should look and feel like talk to me a
little bit about Some people call it work life balance,
some people call it work life integration. How do you
make it work well? You know, being a mother and
raising my children has been by far and away the
most important aspect of my life, so as any working
(24:49):
parent does, that balance is so important to find. And
then I think how you define boundaries around each thing
are so important to find. And I think it's an
active process. You know, at one point in their childhood's
trying to do everything at the same time was not great.
But then in COVID, you know, we would all be
(25:10):
around the kitchen table and I could be doing emails
and they could be doing homework, and it felt like
a sort of shared activity. But you know, I turned
fifty in September, and I did a big inventory of
my life and what I thought was working and what
I thought needed some improvement. And I think continuing to
(25:30):
set boundaries around free time, time to be present with family,
time to really unplug on the weekends, like that's become
very critical for me. I used to spend Saturdays and
half of Sundays working, thinking, catching up, making notes, and
I've really delineated between my work week and my weekends.
(25:54):
Now that has been very, very important to me. Also,
you know, meal times really guarding times. We don't let
any phones at the table at all at the house
and even with guests. You know, people sometimes are like,
you're gonna tell me I can't have my phone at
the table, and I say yes, because I want to
hear what you have to say. I want to watch
you think through something. I don't want anybody to be distracted.
(26:17):
And you know, these days, so precious little of our
time is just full of presents, and so I've realized, Okay,
I can't do two things at the same time, and
I want to be fully present in what I'm doing,
whether you know, I'm with my kid or whether I'm
at my desk or at a meeting. So let's talk
(26:37):
a little bit about the lessons you're passing on. You
talked about your dad and some of the things he
gave you, work ethic, appreciation for beautiful things, real sense
of design, taste, etc. What are one or two really
important lessons you've tried to impart to your kids. I
think kindness above all. Manners are really really important me.
(27:00):
Table manners and proper manners. I just think that, you know,
doors open for a young man or a young woman
that is polite and kind and empathetic. You know, my
parents were really great about letting me dream big and
supporting that, and so I really want my kids to
(27:21):
know that that is possible, like that dreaming big is
actually great, whether something manifests or it doesn't. You get
to know yourself and be really close to yourself when
you're dreaming about what you could be. And to me,
being friends with yourself and knowing yourself deeply is kind
(27:42):
of the great unlock in being a human being, you know.
And you can't say to a kid, hey, just be
yourself because it sounds like a platitude. So I try
to foster conversations around where the felt sense is a
visceral understanding of who they actually are and what is
important to them and who they want to be, even
(28:03):
if or especially if it doesn't align necessarily with what
I think is right for them. So, as a disruptor
and someone who has push boundaries, how do you cope
with criticism professionally and personally, mentally and physically, And by
the way, what do you tell your kids about how
to handle that? Yeah, you know, I've been through a
(28:26):
long road with this stuff, you know. I sort of
became famous when I was probably twenty two years old.
I learned very quickly to make a distinction between the
projections of people who do not know me and the
people who love me and want the best for me,
(28:48):
even if they have to say something that might be
hard to hear. And I learned I've understood very early
that strangers who criticize you for whatever their reason is right,
and maybe it's well now for clickbait or now, it's
just to momentarily feel better about themselves because they're releasing
(29:10):
some venom, whether that's you know, online or on Twitter
or anywhere else, that has nothing to do with me.
I'm merely a projection that they're sort of using for
some gain that they're looking for. And I was really
able to, i don't know, really make the mental shift
(29:32):
into understanding that it had nothing to do with me. Now,
some criticism is really helpful, So you want that filtered
out right, Like, sometimes it's super important to hear those things,
But if it's coming from someone that I don't know,
I always try to remember that there will be a
(29:54):
piece that's projection, and you know, we live in a
culture where we don't know how to process through our
feelings very well. Like we don't have rubrics for wow,
this happened to me. This feels terrible, and I'm going
to make sure I process it out. So when we
(30:16):
don't do that, those feelings get stuck in our bodies
and they have to come out. So they come out
in hating someone or something or being mean about it.
It offers a temporary relief to somebody's own pain. So
I think I also understand that very well as someone
who frankly has spent all of my adult life like,
(30:38):
I've always been on a pursuit of taking full accountability
for myself, and that's you know, sometimes it's uncomfortable to do.
This is related to that. How do you think about
corporate culture? It is undeniably your company, so the culture
is yours. How do you think about deliberately building that
and what does it stand for? How do you use it?
How do you evolve it? It's definitely evolved over time.
(31:01):
And as you know, I didn't grow up in a
corporate culture, right, so I didn't start as an associate
and work my way up. So I kind of started
as a founder and so you know, you miss a lot,
like I've been playing catchup for a lot of these
years and learning on the job, which has been amazing.
(31:24):
But sometimes I think you don't start to think about
these things until things are not working well. Right, So
when it was just me and a few girls, like
in the little barn behind my house, it just felt
great and we all communicated. And as the company grew
and as I had less direct interaction with people every day,
(31:47):
and in a couple of pockets like culture started to
go a bit sideways. I was like, wait a minute,
wait a minute, this is not what we're doing. And
you know, having to make hard decisions around, for example,
certain people at company who we're creating a bad culture
and having as CEO to take responsibility for that and
make hard and necessary changes, or also really taking the
(32:12):
time to step back and think about, okay, like what
do we want it to feel like to work at
Goop and what is important to us and you know,
understanding like the communication is the foundation of this stuff
and creating pillars like here we say our pillars culturally.
We speak straight, we listen generously, we are for each other,
(32:33):
we honor commitments, We acknowledge and appreciate, we include an align,
and we are accountable. So it's really living those values
every day. And I think you have to model it
from the top, you know, Like for me, for example,
I always had a hard time with the first one
speaking straight because I'm a pleaser. I don't want to
(32:53):
hurt anyone's feelings, and so I really had to overcome
that and sort of base through incredibly difficult, uncomfortable things
to just speak straight. And so I think it's always
an ongoing process. But I think culture has to be
at the forefront of any leader's mind because without a
(33:17):
work culture that especially that mirrors you know, what you're
trying to put out into the world. It's an issue.
So if you could, what advice would you give your
eighteen year old self, gosh, I mean, I think it
would be around what I alluded to be for with
my own children, around the importance about being radically yourself.
(33:43):
And you know, I think well Shakespeare said it best
when he said to thine own self be true and
that sort of radical come what may, loyalty to yourself,
and the come what may part is the hard part,
and I think that's something that we learn with age,
(34:05):
but I wish I could have had just a little
bit more of that, you know, before I turned forty.
Can you compare and contrast the life of an actor
with the life of a CEO. I think they're very different, Bob.
I mean, I am such a nine to five or
at this point. You know, when you're an actor, you're
(34:27):
all over the world. The hours are nuts. You know,
you're working at three in the morning on a night
shoot like you never know where your next job is
coming from, who you're going to work with. You never know,
as I said before, if your creativity is going to
be expressed in the way that you're hoping it will.
(34:47):
As a CEO, my mindset has shifted so much from
kind of the lone artist to being the head of
a culture and a culture of people who are aligned
towards EXE shooting on the same vision and hopefully doing
it happily. And so with that come structure and routine
and okayrs and all this stuff that my actress has
(35:11):
no idea about the actress that dwells within me. So
I think, apart from the kernel of hutzpah that both
jobs really need in order to be successful, I think
the lives are incredibly distinct, so we end each episode
(35:31):
of Math and Magic by giving a shout out to
those who influenced or inspired us through the analytical side
and from the creative side of marketing and business. There's
one person in the world that has both that I
have met, and that's Whitney Wolf heard from Bumble, who
(35:56):
is so analytically driven and so wildly creative. And it's
just she's like a fountain of ideas and problem solving.
That's fantastic where one person gets them both. Gwenneth, You've
had a remarkable journey, amazing experiences, some wonderful lessons. Thanks
(36:19):
for sharing them with us today. Oh thank you so
much for having me. I appreciate it. Here are a
few things I picked up in my conversation with Gwyneth. One,
provide meaningful service. Business should be more than just transaction.
From working with charities to providing wellness to her customers,
(36:42):
Gwenne's stays grounded by making sure the work she does
can make a meaningful difference in people's lives. To bottle
from the top. When you're the face of a company,
you need to live the values you preach. Healthy company
culture is an important part of any business. Setting an
example for your colleagues, give you a strong foundation to
build upon. Three prioritize your values. Everything comes down to this,
(37:07):
but it might be one of the hardest lessons to learn.
Goop is successful because it is a unique extension of
Gwyne's interest and beliefs. Building something that's so personal can
be challenging, but in the toughest times, knowing yourself in
both life and business will ensure you stay on the
right path. I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening. That's it
(37:37):
for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to Math
and Magic, a production of iHeartRadio. The show is hosted
by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sidney Rosenbloom for booking
and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no small feat.
Our editor Emily Marinoff, our engineer Jessica Kranchich, our executive
producers Nikki Etre and Ali Perry, and of course Gail Raoul,
(37:59):
Eric Angel, Noel and everyone will helped bring this show
to your ears. Until next time,
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeartRadio.
So many people when I started were like, what the
hell is she doing? Like she has this good day job,
Like what is this? I lacked the boldness even to
think through a business plan and think this is what
I want in three years, Like I had to collect
(00:23):
the courage along the way to become that kind of leader. Hi,
I'm Bob Pittman. Welcome to Math and Magic, Stories from
the Frontiers and Marketing, where we explore marketing from the
math to the magic, and our guest today fits right
into that. She once said that really interesting things happening
at the intersection of instinct, intuition, and data. She's Gwyneth Paltrow,
(00:48):
probably best known for her screen career as an actor
with lots of awards, Academy Award, Golden Globe, Emmy, had
lots of great roles, but today we want to focus
on her as an inneventative and successful entrepreneur, starting with
an idea and exploding it and the multiple business is
all tied together by her vision. She's from a creative family.
(01:10):
Her father was a producer, her mom and actor. Yet
somehow Gwyneth had the business Gene from Stocking Toy said
an alternative toy store Penny Whistle on Madison Avenue in
New York, to founder and CEO of Goop. She said,
the drive and vision of an entrepreneur. She made the
Loop La New York, London and now was back in LA.
(01:32):
Gwyneth welcome, Thank you very much. This is my life.
You covered everything well before we get into those stories.
We're really going to boil it down you in sixty seconds.
Sounds good. I'm ready to go Early Riser, night out,
Early Riser New York or la ooh tie New Order
or psychedelic furs, beach or mountains, beach cats or dogs? Dogs?
(01:57):
Are you crazy? Theater or set them up? Theater? Introvert
or extrovert. Introvert, It's about to get harder. Childhood Hero,
my Dad, Professional Hero Brian Chesky, first job, Penny Whistle Toys,
favorite pasta shape RIGATONI, favorite play a street Carnaan desire,
(02:19):
favorite performance by your mom a street Carnian desire, favorite
vacation spot the exumas. Favorite Goop product are all in
one face oil prefer beverage, green tea, and what's something
you can't live without? My husband and children. Let's start
(02:40):
with the obvious question. You've had such an amazing and
busy career acting, what was the pull to business, and
more specifically to start your own business? Stupidity, naivete. I
don't know. I guess I always have felt like I'm
a relatively entrepreneurial person, though I don't think I would
(03:01):
have defined it that way. But when I look back
at being an artist, I think all artists who find
some success at it, all artists who are able to
provide for themselves by doing their art, are by definition entrepreneurial.
Like you have to have so much of those same
qualities of self belief and abject drive. And I know
(03:26):
it surprises a lot of people when artists become entrepreneurs,
but it doesn't surprise me because I think we are
all very cut from the same cloth. I've always been
a very independent person, and I think I've always wanted
real agency, and unfortunately, in an acting career, you're always
(03:48):
waiting for other people to let you express what needs
to be expressed. You need permission from the director, or
you need to get the part, so you need permission
from the producer or the studio or whatever. And I
found that very frustrating that I couldn't create and put
things into the world, and I found myself being slowly
(04:09):
drawn to this entrepreneurial space. You know, in the early
days of the Internet, it was such an exciting time
to watch businesses being created in this whole new way
and to see all of these, you know, existing business
models being disrupted and disintermediated, and I don't know, I
(04:32):
just thought it was fascinating. I also was very very
passionate about the lifestyle space, and I felt like I
wasn't seeing anything that really spoke to me or answered
my questions. And that was kind of the the early
impetus towards starting to explore how I might participate in
(04:52):
the space and how I might found a business. And
before you start a goop, you sort of put your
toe in the water a little bit in this space.
Could you give us that origin story. When I was
a kid, really starting my movie careers nineteen, I've always
been kind of obsessed with food and travel and culture
(05:17):
and art. I mean, my dad raised me in a
way to be very receptive and excited about these things,
and I was very much his child in this way.
So when I would go and do a film. You know,
this is pre Internet. I would find myself living in
Toronto or Paris or Rome or you know, Atlanta, and
(05:38):
really wanting to understand what the best of the city was.
What did this city have to offer by way of
not only food and culture, but you know stores and
were there any cool yoga studios? And there just wasn't
a way to find this information. So I would go
(05:58):
around the city and I would ask people. You know,
if I saw like a cool looking girl in Paris,
you know, in a cafe, I might ask her like,
what are your favorite shops? I would ask crew members,
you know, what is your favorite place to get a
sandwich or a coffee? And I started to collect all
this information about cities and then I thought, I've aggregated
(06:21):
all this information. I should put it somewhere. So that
was like the very early, early early, you know, Colonel
of A. Then what became Goop. We're going to talk
a little bit more about Goop, but I want to
first jump back in time a little more. You stocked
toys at penny Whistle and Madison Avenue for folks who
were not New Yorkers of that era. Penny Whistle had
(06:43):
the cool and unusual toys in the day when unusual
was hard to find back then. It was started by
Meredith Brokaw, Tom Brokaw's wife. I lived above the store
for a few years in yearly eighties. Oh my gosh,
I actually know it. Well, how did you wind up
at Penny Whistle? Well, my father was adamant that both
(07:03):
my brother and I got jobs after school, so we
moved to New York City, and in seventh grade, you know,
I sort of set out on Madison Avenue and poking
my head into stores and seeing if, you know, they
needed any help. And so they took me at Penny Whistle,
and I was very excited. I mean, my father was
(07:27):
a self made guy. He had an incredible work ethic,
and I think he was nervous to some degree to
be raising two kids on the Upper East Side of Manhattan,
going to private school and living in a townhouse. You know.
I think he saw around corners and saw how that
could lead to a certain entitlement that he really really
(07:49):
wanted to fight again. So we were working. I mean,
my brother worked at the Double Duck Delhi on the
corner of ninety second in Madison. I worked at penny
Whistle I worked at. My next job was at Kindersport,
a ski store. Although I didn't realize when I was
a kid that when you go on spring break, you're
(08:11):
supposed to ask permission from your boss. So I sort
of missed a week of work and I came back
and they said, no, you didn't show up for work,
like you're fired. So that was also a great early
lesson for me in business. But it was a great
place to work, and as you said, the curation there
(08:31):
was so cool and so different, and I think that's
where I started to understand the power of curation. Besides,
you have to show up for work to keep your job.
What other lessons did you learn from those experiences. I
learned about the importance of the customer, the way that
people interact with a customer, to really make the customer
feel like they're having a special experience, and to keep
(08:55):
the back very tidy. That's good lessons. You went to
Spain for two months in high school? How did that
change your view of yourself or the world. It was
like an earthquake in my life in the best way.
I mean, it just completely dismantled so many existing structures
(09:15):
of who I thought I was, and how I saw
the world. I was really dropped in it into this
wonderful family in the middle of Spain, in a very
small city where nobody spoke English in the family, and
I had to adapt so quickly and learn the language
so quickly. And I was completely enchanted by the culture,
(09:41):
the way they saw the world, the way they came
home and had lunched together every day and closed their eyes,
you know, for twenty minutes and then went back to
school or work, the importance of eating together family. You know.
I had never been around the rituals of Catholicism, for example,
which I found quite foreign and beautiful. I feel like
(10:04):
I came home a completely different kid. So let's move
on a little bit. A striking number of the successful
folks on this podcast having college dropouts. Bob way me included,
why did you drop out? Well, I was at the
University of California at Santa Barbara, which is a fantastic
(10:24):
school and probably the most beautiful school in California. But
I really really wanted to be acting. So I had
sort of hooked up with an agent and I would
kind of drive back and forth to Los Angeles an
audition or you know, I had gotten a very very
small part in a film, was basically like an extra.
(10:44):
And I'll never forget my father, who was a very dry,
hilarious New York Jew saying to me, you know, you're
doing both of these things very badly, meaning I wasn't
properly trying to act, and I wasn't properly trying to
go to school. And you know, with the support of
my parents, I decided to drop out to see if
(11:07):
I could pursue an acting career. It sort of felt
like it was burning a hole in my pocket, like
I had such urgency to get out there and do
it and try it. And I felt on some level,
you know, again this abject stupid self belief, like I'm
gonna make it. I'm gonna make it. I know I'm
gonna make it, and I just need to get out there.
And at some point my parents said, Okay, we'll support you,
(11:29):
go give it a try. Well, it obviously worked out
for you. I think the first time I met you
was with the Robin Hood Foundation, which for those who
don't know, is the innovative poverty fighting nonprofit in New
York City. And I wasn't really taken because your career
was on a tear. I think you had already won
an Academy award in your twenties, and you had one
(11:50):
amazing role after another, yet you found time to help
your fellow New Yorkers in need. Can you talk a
little bit about how you think about this part of
your life. Yes, man, it was a whirlwind. I mean
you articulated it correctly when you said, me doing what
kind of one project after the next. It was a
fast and furious time. I spoke to somebody, you know,
(12:11):
when I was having like an overwhelming time, like after
the Oscar and everything. My father was sick, my grandfather
was sick, and I remember talking to somebody who said,
you know, being of service is such a great way
to stay focused on your true north, like who you
are as a person. So I did a few things
to be of service, and Robin Hood was certainly one
(12:34):
of them. I mean, it's, as you know, it's a
fantastic organization. I was so happy to be supportive. I mean,
all of the money from that organization goes into the
hands and the mouths of people who really needed, as
opposed to so many of these charities where it's all
going to salaries and overhead. So I felt very proud
to help. Let's jump ahead. Now, let's jump to Goop
(12:57):
and you, as an entrepreneur, founder and CEO, you started
pulling together all this information you had and you wanted
to share it. What year did you really start Goop
and what was sort of that critical moment from I'm
sharing my information to hey, wait a minute, I think
I got a business idea. So it's funny when I
first pressend on my mail Chimp account of my first
(13:21):
Goop newsletter that was in two thousand and eight, and
I had no idea that it would become a business
or how I would monetize it as a business. I
was just writing content from a very authentic place of like,
this is what I found that I love. This is
a great place to get the best cheese in London
(13:42):
and all that kind of stuff. And I found that
it had a lot of traction. And I found also
that I was really positively impacting these businesses that I
was talking about, and I thought, wow, Okay, there's something here,
like the people are trusting the curation. I think it
(14:04):
was unmonetized for about five years and then it was
having such an impact that people were coming to me
and suggesting that I monetize or really just asking me
how I thought I could monetize it. And you know,
at this point, I'd spent a lot of my own
money running it, and I thought, well, gosh, wouldn't it
(14:24):
be amazing if I could actually turn this into my job.
So I started figuring it out. I met with a
guy in London called seb Bishop who had been in
the e commerce in the early days, and he was
running red for Bono, and he was interested in getting
back into the for profit sector, and we sat together
(14:46):
and started to strategize, you know, how we would build
it out. And we started with kind of an immediate
revenue stream, which was through ads and then some native content, etc.
But my passion really lay around creating product. But it
was done very very slowly and very organically. We kind
of dipped our toes in the waters. Our e commerce
(15:09):
shop was first with collaborations with other brands, so we
weren't doing much design or supply chain or fulfillment or
anything like that. Then we had a bunch of other
brands that we were aligned with it we were selling
and then you know, then we got our first warehouse.
It's very iterative. It was slow, and I think that
I was really discovering what the business was as we
(15:32):
went along. What were your expectations of it? Were you
just along to see where it went? Or did you
have a vision of ten years, twenty years, here's what
we're building. You know, honestly, I felt like I wasn't
given the permission to have ambition in that way around it.
I was very timid. I think so many people when
(15:54):
I started were like, what the hell is she doing?
Like she has this good day job, Like what is this?
I lacked the boldness even to think through a business
plan and think this is what I want in three years,
Like I had to collect the courage along the way
to become that kind of leader. And I don't think
I was ready to be CEO myself until I was
(16:18):
ready to do that, and so that was probably seven
years ago. I allowed myself to think, you know, it's
okay to have ambitions, to really want to build something
that's meaningful and impactful. And so I still feel like
we're very much in the process of building that. More
(16:38):
of Math and Magic right after this quick break, Welcome
back to Math and magic. Let's hear more from my
conversation with Gwyneth Paltrow. This podcast is about marketing, so
I have to ask this question, why the name Goop? Well,
(17:01):
I was seeking advice from an old friend of mine
whom you might know in New York, Peter Arnell, of course,
legendary marketing guy. He was amazing. He was so instrumental
in helping me meet you know, the first guys who
helped with web development and everything. And I said, I
just don't know what the name should be because I
really don't want it to be my name, Like my
(17:24):
ambition would be to build something that would be far
greater than me, and it could stand for something that
people would understand, and so I don't want it to
be my name. And Peter came up with the name Goop,
and I thought he was nuts. I mean, I thought
it was such a weird sounding word. And he said, no,
it's your initials with two o's in the name. And
(17:46):
I was like, what is that supposed to mean? And
he said, you know, all big internet companies have two
o's in the name, you know, whether it be Facebook, Google, Yahoo, whatever.
So I said, okay, Peter, I'm going to trust you,
and then Goup was born out of that. Daily Candy
had a successful editorial newsletter, Guilt had successful commerce, but
(18:08):
the combination of the two editorial and commerce was very elusive.
Why were you able to bring them together? What was
the secret? I think the secret was for so long,
I was so allergic to being transactional in that sense,
and I'll never forget. I published one issue of Goop.
(18:31):
I published an article on the French pharmacy, which I'm
sure you know when you go to Paris or anywhere
in France, the pharmacies there are so cool and they
have like, you know, homeopathic things, and they have like
all this special stuff. And so I wrote a piece saying,
you know, this is this great you know, burn cream
(18:52):
and these probiotic tampons, and there's this great lip bomb
and all this stuff. And a woman stopped me and
she said, oh my god. I loved that article on
the French pharmacy. But it was so frustrating for me
that I couldn't just click to buy everything. I was
on Amazon dot fr or trying to buy this and
(19:13):
that and searching, and it was the first time that
it occurred to me that transaction could actually be a
service as well, and that you didn't have to push
product for revenue. If you made or curated things that
you really believe in and thought were going to genuinely
(19:34):
elevate someone's life in some way, that you could do
what we then called contextual commerce. And we've always stayed
true to those principles. You know, we're obsessed with clean
beauty and we have the highest clean beauty standards in
the business, and so I think when people come to
the website, they understand that, and they understand that there's
(19:55):
a really strong point of view. You know that I
have a very strong point of view around fat. So
even when we were just buying, like from a wholesale
perspective and had a multi brand matrix, it was very specific.
When we started g label our clothing line is very
very true to me. So I wouldn't have been able
to sleep at night if I felt like I was
pushing something on somebody. You've been doing some very successful
(20:20):
Goop podcast How did you discover podcasting and do you
think of it as a separate business or is it
integral to your entire brand development. I think I understood
pretty early on in the game what podcasts were and
why they were valuable. And I think, you know, we
have always been a content first company, and sometimes we've
(20:42):
indexed too heavily into that, right, and so we're not
driving enough revenue because obviously you want to grow and
grow in a profitable way. But content is so critical
to why we are relevant as a business, and we're
always looking at various channels we can proliferate with great content,
you know, whether that's a Netflix show or whether it's
(21:04):
a podcast, or whether it's our digital content, etc. And
I think a lot of brands have caught up to
this as well, some with I think more relevancy than others.
But there's a content creation piece. I think that's really
important for driving a modern omni channel, direct consumer brand.
And so the podcast is such a great way of
(21:28):
folding that in. I mean, it is a revenue stream,
right because we sell ads on it, but it also
is a way to always articulate our curiosity goop to
really dig deeper with experts and doctors and amazing people
that we have on and I think podcasts are such
a great forum. I love listening to podcasts and I
(21:51):
listen to a lot of them. I think it serves
two purposes. There is the revenue stream and then it's
also again like the content. What's interesting is that you've
jumped into a lot of areas. To people thought you've
gone through sort of all the issues of starting a business,
but you've gone into retail when others are scared of it.
(22:12):
What's the secret of knowing when is the time for
that next step? And how did you wind up doing retail? Yeah,
and I think that's a really relevant question too, especially
as we expand into wholesale with our eponymous beauty products
as well, because you know, I think there was this
desire to stay like purely direct to consumer for so
(22:35):
many brands like Goop, and then I think we all
started to see, Okay, we might need to broaden where
are we offering these products. So I personally think that
retail is super important for a brand because it's where
the customer can come in and touch and feel and
sort of be immersed in a brand experience. And that's
(22:58):
why the experiences in the stores need to be so good.
Because if I'm going to sell our great face cream
on Amazon or Sephora, both of which we do, I
need the brand halo to be really strong, like I
need the Goop brand to be intact when someone's adding
a cream to their Amazon cart. And I do think
(23:22):
that omni channel is really important for modern brands, and
retail is such an important piece of that. Now. I'm
not necessarily saying we would go and open a hundred
retail stores, but I do think that having the right
store and the right experience in the right market, it
works as a customer acquisition tool, it works as a
(23:44):
client telling tool, and I think you can really make
people forge a strong relationship to a brand in a
retail store the way that you just can't digitally. You know,
It's interesting. Two folks told me very similar stories as
they began retail. Ralph Lauren told me he was starting
his retail stores but way back when because he wanted
(24:05):
to show the department stores how to merchandise his product. Well,
Steve Jobs, when he was talking about the Apple stores
the retail stores, said, nobody makes my product look special.
I need to build my own to show people how
to do it. But it's interesting. They both said, basically
what you just said, that it is all about sort
(24:26):
of making it come to life and showing people what
it should look and feel like talk to me a
little bit about Some people call it work life balance,
some people call it work life integration. How do you
make it work well? You know, being a mother and
raising my children has been by far and away the
most important aspect of my life, so as any working
(24:49):
parent does, that balance is so important to find. And
then I think how you define boundaries around each thing
are so important to find. And I think it's an
active process. You know, at one point in their childhood's
trying to do everything at the same time was not great.
But then in COVID, you know, we would all be
(25:10):
around the kitchen table and I could be doing emails
and they could be doing homework, and it felt like
a sort of shared activity. But you know, I turned
fifty in September, and I did a big inventory of
my life and what I thought was working and what
I thought needed some improvement. And I think continuing to
(25:30):
set boundaries around free time, time to be present with family,
time to really unplug on the weekends, like that's become
very critical for me. I used to spend Saturdays and
half of Sundays working, thinking, catching up, making notes, and
I've really delineated between my work week and my weekends.
(25:54):
Now that has been very, very important to me. Also,
you know, meal times really guarding times. We don't let
any phones at the table at all at the house
and even with guests. You know, people sometimes are like,
you're gonna tell me I can't have my phone at
the table, and I say yes, because I want to
hear what you have to say. I want to watch
you think through something. I don't want anybody to be distracted.
(26:17):
And you know, these days, so precious little of our
time is just full of presents, and so I've realized, Okay,
I can't do two things at the same time, and
I want to be fully present in what I'm doing,
whether you know, I'm with my kid or whether I'm
at my desk or at a meeting. So let's talk
(26:37):
a little bit about the lessons you're passing on. You
talked about your dad and some of the things he
gave you, work ethic, appreciation for beautiful things, real sense
of design, taste, etc. What are one or two really
important lessons you've tried to impart to your kids. I
think kindness above all. Manners are really really important me.
(27:00):
Table manners and proper manners. I just think that, you know,
doors open for a young man or a young woman
that is polite and kind and empathetic. You know, my
parents were really great about letting me dream big and
supporting that, and so I really want my kids to
(27:21):
know that that is possible, like that dreaming big is
actually great, whether something manifests or it doesn't. You get
to know yourself and be really close to yourself when
you're dreaming about what you could be. And to me,
being friends with yourself and knowing yourself deeply is kind
(27:42):
of the great unlock in being a human being, you know.
And you can't say to a kid, hey, just be
yourself because it sounds like a platitude. So I try
to foster conversations around where the felt sense is a
visceral understanding of who they actually are and what is
important to them and who they want to be, even
(28:03):
if or especially if it doesn't align necessarily with what
I think is right for them. So, as a disruptor
and someone who has push boundaries, how do you cope
with criticism professionally and personally, mentally and physically, And by
the way, what do you tell your kids about how
to handle that? Yeah, you know, I've been through a
(28:26):
long road with this stuff, you know. I sort of
became famous when I was probably twenty two years old.
I learned very quickly to make a distinction between the
projections of people who do not know me and the
people who love me and want the best for me,
(28:48):
even if they have to say something that might be
hard to hear. And I learned I've understood very early
that strangers who criticize you for whatever their reason is right,
and maybe it's well now for clickbait or now, it's
just to momentarily feel better about themselves because they're releasing
(29:10):
some venom, whether that's you know, online or on Twitter
or anywhere else, that has nothing to do with me.
I'm merely a projection that they're sort of using for
some gain that they're looking for. And I was really
able to, i don't know, really make the mental shift
(29:32):
into understanding that it had nothing to do with me. Now,
some criticism is really helpful, So you want that filtered
out right, Like, sometimes it's super important to hear those things,
But if it's coming from someone that I don't know,
I always try to remember that there will be a
(29:54):
piece that's projection, and you know, we live in a
culture where we don't know how to process through our
feelings very well. Like we don't have rubrics for wow,
this happened to me. This feels terrible, and I'm going
to make sure I process it out. So when we
(30:16):
don't do that, those feelings get stuck in our bodies
and they have to come out. So they come out
in hating someone or something or being mean about it.
It offers a temporary relief to somebody's own pain. So
I think I also understand that very well as someone
who frankly has spent all of my adult life like,
(30:38):
I've always been on a pursuit of taking full accountability
for myself, and that's you know, sometimes it's uncomfortable to do.
This is related to that. How do you think about
corporate culture? It is undeniably your company, so the culture
is yours. How do you think about deliberately building that
and what does it stand for? How do you use it?
How do you evolve it? It's definitely evolved over time.
(31:01):
And as you know, I didn't grow up in a
corporate culture, right, so I didn't start as an associate
and work my way up. So I kind of started
as a founder and so you know, you miss a lot,
like I've been playing catchup for a lot of these
years and learning on the job, which has been amazing.
(31:24):
But sometimes I think you don't start to think about
these things until things are not working well. Right, So
when it was just me and a few girls, like
in the little barn behind my house, it just felt
great and we all communicated. And as the company grew
and as I had less direct interaction with people every day,
(31:47):
and in a couple of pockets like culture started to
go a bit sideways. I was like, wait a minute,
wait a minute, this is not what we're doing. And
you know, having to make hard decisions around, for example,
certain people at company who we're creating a bad culture
and having as CEO to take responsibility for that and
make hard and necessary changes, or also really taking the
(32:12):
time to step back and think about, okay, like what
do we want it to feel like to work at
Goop and what is important to us and you know,
understanding like the communication is the foundation of this stuff
and creating pillars like here we say our pillars culturally.
We speak straight, we listen generously, we are for each other,
(32:33):
we honor commitments, We acknowledge and appreciate, we include an align,
and we are accountable. So it's really living those values
every day. And I think you have to model it
from the top, you know, Like for me, for example,
I always had a hard time with the first one
speaking straight because I'm a pleaser. I don't want to
(32:53):
hurt anyone's feelings, and so I really had to overcome
that and sort of base through incredibly difficult, uncomfortable things
to just speak straight. And so I think it's always
an ongoing process. But I think culture has to be
at the forefront of any leader's mind because without a
(33:17):
work culture that especially that mirrors you know, what you're
trying to put out into the world. It's an issue.
So if you could, what advice would you give your
eighteen year old self, gosh, I mean, I think it
would be around what I alluded to be for with
my own children, around the importance about being radically yourself.
(33:43):
And you know, I think well Shakespeare said it best
when he said to thine own self be true and
that sort of radical come what may, loyalty to yourself,
and the come what may part is the hard part,
and I think that's something that we learn with age,
(34:05):
but I wish I could have had just a little
bit more of that, you know, before I turned forty.
Can you compare and contrast the life of an actor
with the life of a CEO. I think they're very different, Bob.
I mean, I am such a nine to five or
at this point. You know, when you're an actor, you're
(34:27):
all over the world. The hours are nuts. You know,
you're working at three in the morning on a night
shoot like you never know where your next job is
coming from, who you're going to work with. You never know,
as I said before, if your creativity is going to
be expressed in the way that you're hoping it will.
(34:47):
As a CEO, my mindset has shifted so much from
kind of the lone artist to being the head of
a culture and a culture of people who are aligned
towards EXE shooting on the same vision and hopefully doing
it happily. And so with that come structure and routine
and okayrs and all this stuff that my actress has
(35:11):
no idea about the actress that dwells within me. So
I think, apart from the kernel of hutzpah that both
jobs really need in order to be successful, I think
the lives are incredibly distinct, so we end each episode
(35:31):
of Math and Magic by giving a shout out to
those who influenced or inspired us through the analytical side
and from the creative side of marketing and business. There's
one person in the world that has both that I
have met, and that's Whitney Wolf heard from Bumble, who
(35:56):
is so analytically driven and so wildly creative. And it's
just she's like a fountain of ideas and problem solving.
That's fantastic where one person gets them both. Gwenneth, You've
had a remarkable journey, amazing experiences, some wonderful lessons. Thanks
(36:19):
for sharing them with us today. Oh thank you so
much for having me. I appreciate it. Here are a
few things I picked up in my conversation with Gwyneth. One,
provide meaningful service. Business should be more than just transaction.
From working with charities to providing wellness to her customers,
(36:42):
Gwenne's stays grounded by making sure the work she does
can make a meaningful difference in people's lives. To bottle
from the top. When you're the face of a company,
you need to live the values you preach. Healthy company
culture is an important part of any business. Setting an
example for your colleagues, give you a strong foundation to
build upon. Three prioritize your values. Everything comes down to this,
(37:07):
but it might be one of the hardest lessons to learn.
Goop is successful because it is a unique extension of
Gwyne's interest and beliefs. Building something that's so personal can
be challenging, but in the toughest times, knowing yourself in
both life and business will ensure you stay on the
right path. I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening. That's it
(37:37):
for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to Math
and Magic, a production of iHeartRadio. The show is hosted
by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sidney Rosenbloom for booking
and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no small feat.
Our editor Emily Marinoff, our engineer Jessica Kranchich, our executive
producers Nikki Etre and Ali Perry, and of course Gail Raoul,
(37:59):
Eric Angel, Noel and everyone will helped bring this show
to your ears. Until next time,
Host
Bob Pittman
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