WEALTH WEDNESDAY: Julia Haart Speaks On The First Step To Entrepreneurship, How She Made Millions + More!

Julia Haart Speaks On The First Step To Entrepreneurship, How She Made Millions + More!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
What's up. It's way up with Angela Yee and it
is a Wealth Wednesday and I'm here with my Wealth
Wednesday partner, Stacy Tisdale. Happy, way up. We're going to
take you super high today. Yeah, I mean this is
way yup. And Drand is here. This is the definition
of way up. And we have Julia Heart with us. Hi. Everyone,
I'm so glad to be here. We're excited to have you.
Thank you. We're excited to have you. Julie and I

(00:26):
have been friends and I'm just watching what she's been
going through and just always come out of it creating
a new, something new from somebody else. I know, well,
thank you re building things. But we're really excited to
have you here. Thank you. And I you know, I'm
so grateful for our friendship. Honestly, like I knew we
would be friends, like that's secondly met you know. Well,

(00:47):
I love it, you know. And we've been watching you
on My Unorthodox Life two seasons so far their season
confirmed I'm not alone too, legally saying so yes, okay, no, no,
my god, I'm gonna break break. No comments, zero comments.
I actually started watching My Unorthodox Life before I met you,

(01:08):
and I had no idea how you showed how restrictive.
Oh yeah, that is, and so many people I know
living in New York don't understand that that lifestyle, particularly
what it is for women. Yeah. So how did you
get from there to all of the career amazing things
that you've done and to ultimately being an advocate for

(01:30):
women entrepreneurs. How did that what happened to you affect that? Well?
I think, you know, I think the reality is that
we really don't know what we're capable of, especially as women.
I think we've been told so frequently every day of
our lives that we're not capable, that we shouldn't push,
that we shouldn't demand, that we shouldn't want equality. That

(01:53):
when I left my community, you know, I left at
forty two, I don't know a single person in the
outside world. And it was the outside world. There was
my world and the outside world. And I still think
about them that way, because my world was in the
eighteen hundreds, the outside world was in the twenty first century.
I'd never been on a date, I'd never been to
a bar. I didn't know what a I didn't know that,
you know, I didn't know that there was such a

(02:14):
thing as getting roofy, Like I knew literally zero you
could wear pants, right, I wasn't allowed to wear pants.
I wasn't allowed to educate myself. I lived in a
very ultra religious Jewish community, and I know that. You know,
recently there's been a lot of talk about laws in Iran.
You know that women can't be educated, and that they

(02:35):
can't sing in public, they can't dance in public, they
need permission to get married, they don't live alone. That
was my world. When I see these laws there, I'm like,
that's months in New York. The only difference is nobody
beats us or kills us, or poisons us or throws
us in jail. But those are the only people, you know.

(02:55):
The conformity, I mean, they punish you through your children,
because if you don't conform, your children won't get proper
matches or marriages, and therefore their lives will be miserable,
and so you're forced to conform. If you love your children,
what was the turning point for you? Because we watch
on the show, right, and we see even your oldest

(03:16):
daughter and your youngest son, they're still very much like connected.
I think more than you, you know, to that upbringing.
So interestingly enough, but Cheva today is a bacon eating
krevel about her daughter. Really, my daughter is full on
twenty first century. Okay. She does not allow anyone to

(03:39):
limit her or to make her feel that they have
control over what she puts on her body or what
she puts in her mouth, or who she loves or
how she loves or when she loves. And that's an
interesting transformation to see, because it is hard when you've
been raised a certain way to feel like this is
not the right thing. Oh, it's it's you don't have
to understand. Most people who leave my community commit suicide

(04:02):
or go on drugs because we were not equipped to
handle the twenty first century. The reality is I lived
in the eighteen hundreds. Whenever people say explain your world
to me, I say, think Bridgerton, minus the fancy balls
and the gorgeous stresses. But where women were married off,
they were uneducated, they were told that their minds were
inferior to men. They were not allowed to live alone,

(04:24):
and if they were impure or misbehaved in any way,
end of story, everything dependent on the match. That was
the only thing a woman could, you know, hope to
achieve is a really good match. And that's the world
I grew up in. And I actually want to show
you something really funny. You know. When I first started

(04:44):
talking about it and saying like, hey, this is what's
going on in my world, I was told I'm exaggerating
and that the education in my community is amazing and
all of the above. Someone sent me a letter from
twenty twenty. So this is God. I'm going to age
myself now by I graduated in nineteen eighty nine. We're
talking over thirty years ago. And can I read an

(05:07):
excerpt from it? Because it tells you everything you need
to know. So as follows, dear parents, in the last year,
it's becoming increasingly prevalent for high school girls to be
preparing themselves and working towards a college degree. This is
not the reason Klausol has established base act of schools
from No Sister all meaning the Jewish people established these

(05:29):
base act of the school that I went to, not
in order to actually educate their daughters. The reason was
a direct connection to Torah. It was to become the
sole source of their learning and connection connection to life,
to have them connected to any college in any form
which is an independent source or should we say, an

(05:49):
outside source during those years that were set aside for
them to draw life from Torah from the Bible is
not to their benefit, is detrimental and love this next
word antithetical to base Yakov schooling. And it goes on
and it says the fact that the college courses, maybe Homa,

(06:10):
these are not colleges like you're thinking. These are not
Stanford and Columbia as they're talking about. These are colleges
and universities that are still fully religious, still completely separate.
Men and women don't learn together. They're still learning the
same subjects, but since they're technically colleges, they're forbidden. So
and then it says, for all purposes, once your daughter

(06:31):
has connected herself to college, she has disconnected herself from
her total learning, which is her only source in life.
If your daughter is presently preparing for or taking any
college courses, please make an appointment to discuss this with us.
And then at the very end, I don't know if
you can see it. Here, you have two little things
where you check. Check one is my daughter is not
taking any college courses? Check two, is my daughter is

(06:54):
taking college courses or preparatory tests. I would like to
set up unappointments. Oh my goodness, great, looka good carriage
to leave that life my daughter Miriam. That's that's the
reason I'm alive today is because of my daughter, Mirriam.
So what does she what happened? My daughter Miriam was
a tiny, tiny little rebel, literally from the day she

(07:17):
was born. You have to understand, I grew up in
a world where women are covered head to toe from
about by the time they're three years old, and my
daughter was a born nudist. I could not keep clothing
on this girl's lobby for love or money. My son's
friends would come over and she'd be walking around in
a little four year old body without any clothes. There
was something I could do. I would clothes on, she

(07:37):
would take some off. That was it, and that was
she just always walked by her own path. And then, um,
she was in second grade and you know, you go
into PTA's right, and they had on the wall like
all these little they had. The assignment was if you
could walk in someone's shoes, whose shoes would you walk in?

(07:57):
And then you know, as parents would come in and
we look at the little wall all with everybody, and
everyone basically wrote the same thing. My saint and grandmother
who had seventeen children and never cried, my sainted mother
who had twenty four children. And you know, I mean,
I have friends who had sixteen children, and friends who
have twelve children. We counted recently, unless there's a new
one that I don't know about. I have forty nine

(08:17):
nieces and nephews, my goodness, and you have four children.
I was pregnant ten times. I was pregnant ten times.
I could actually have had ten children. I just miscarried
six times. I'd go to the hospital and I'd miscarry,
And you know, usually miscarriage is a very painful, traumatic difficulty.
For me, it was relief because I didn't want to
have ten children, right, I didn't want to be pregnan

(08:39):
every five minute. But you went from that life to leaving,
largely inspired by your daughter. So, Miriam, So anyway on
this wall, I'm gonna go real fast, Miriam. So everyone
else was like my saint and grandmother and my saint.
My little daughter says, why would I want to walk
in anyone else's shoes? My fathers are too big, my
mothers are too high. I think I'll go through life

(09:00):
walking in my own And then when she got a
little older, when I was in my mid thirties, she
wanted to play soccer. She's very sporty. She's won Spartan
race twice for women, not just her age group, but
all women in San Francisco. She plays basketball and just
you know, she swims and rides and all this stuff.
She wanted to play soccer, and my husband told her,

(09:21):
you can't. Now we're talking about a I don't remember
if she was five or seven, a child, and he said,
you can't because you're wearing a skirt, and because you
can't wear pants. Right, you're wearing a skirt, and if
your knees show while you're playing, a man walking by
the field may see your knees and get turned on,
and then you're gonna it's gonna be your fault because
of men. You're responsible for men's actions. And so that's

(09:46):
why you can't play soccer. Now, let's not talk about
the fact what kind of man gets turned on by
a five year old knees or an eight year old's
knees or an eleven year olds knees. Yea is yeah,
And my little daughter and she was under hen she
looks at my father, her husband, my husband, her father
and says, oh, well, is he responsible for my sense? Now?

(10:09):
I was like, yeah, what she said, I'm gonna do
that because she gave me permission to question, because until then,
my whole life, I felt this dichotomy between who I
was and who I was told I had to be.
But everyone around me was happy, everyone around me follow
those rules. So to me, it was like, what's wrong
with me? That I'm not okay with being silent and
subservient and being told that I can't. Not only wasn't

(10:32):
I allowed to read secular literature, I wasn't even allowed
to read religious literature because my mind was too light.
Women were not capable of understanding and comprehending deep esoteric subjects.
In the Talmud, which is where most of the laws
that govern our lives exists, says that a man who
educates his daughter is teaching her prostitution. Oh my goodness,
how do you get from that too? Yea, and all

(10:55):
the self esteem and all this stuff that came with
it till you left that you started your own shoe line.
Because I figured if I can time travel, I can
pretty much do anything. That's what it was. It was
when I left, it was such an insane thing. Nobody leaves.
People don't leave, especially women because generally when you leave,

(11:15):
your children's day and you have no relationship with them.
And I wasn't leaving without my kids. I just wasn't
going to happen. So people just don't leave. And so
if it was like going from this world to Mars, right, like,
imagine if someone said to you it you're at this
age whatever you guys all look like you're twenty, but

(11:37):
whatever age it is. Imagine if someone said, okay, pack
your ship. Excuse my language from Les, say that on
this pack your ship. You're going on a spaceship to
Mars and you're going to have to figure it out
by yourself. By yourself. You're the only person on this spaceship.
That's what it feels like. This is a unique situation
because your ex husband, he does still like you, still

(11:58):
are able to go back and see your youngest son.
And my husband left the community. He's no longer a
black hatter, he's still religious, he still keeps, you know,
coach from jobs. But he married a woman who does
not cover her hair, who has a college degree tsion
and I love her. I think she's amazing. So I
managed to even get my husband, my ex husband, out

(12:19):
of that world. And you know, when we first got engaged,
he proposed to me in a parking lot and his
proposal after I think we've been we'd known each other
for like nine hours, ten hours, and he said, um,
will you be my acious Kyle, which means will you
be my women of valor? And a woman of valor
someone who plows and cleans and does all the things
so her husband can be great. Right, we're the stepping

(12:40):
stone for us someone else's greatness. His second proposal was
in Puerto Rico with his girlfriend wog Difference, and they
called me from Puerto Rico and said, Julia, thank you. Julia.
Let me ask you this when that happened when you
first got proposed to were you horrified, like what was it?
Or were you like, this is what I'm supposed to do?

(13:00):
So thank goodness has happened for me. I went on
a hunger strike. Didn't work, but I tried because I'd
already said no to two guys, which is like, you know,
it's not a good thing. And so my mother literally
said if he's not an axe murderer, you're marrying. Why
did you say no to the first two guys? Well,
the first guy said no to um, Well because I

(13:22):
found him terribly unattractive, to be honest, and he was
like an absent minded professor. He drove it exactly thirty
miles and I've never seen anything like it. You just
you just annoyed me. After the one day and the
second one. This is really embarrassing. Um. The second one
was because I didn't think he was religious enough. I
wanted to you can you imagine that ridiculous? I was

(13:46):
what nixed it is that he told me he went
to baseball games, and I was like, what, you're horrid?
Fight what he's up? I mean, what kind of person
wastes time on baseball when he should be learning Torah?
I need to sacrifice my life for Torah. That's literally
how I was taught. Okay, So that wasn't Oh yeah,
I was telling your daughter changed everything? Oh yeah, I

(14:07):
mean this is I was. She was my inner voice
because I wanted so bad. You have to understand most
people want to be good. We don't wake up in
the morning and think, here, how can I do evil? Today, right,
we want to be good. We want God to love us.
I wanted to be loved by God. I wanted to
do what I thought he told me to do. I

(14:27):
just couldn't keep it up because it was so antithetical
to who I am as a human being. That took
so much. I'm trying to get that is how did
you educate yourself to become a businesswoman? I read. I
became a voracious reader. I read everything from Euripides to Voltaire,
to Spinoza to Descartes, you name it, I've read it.
I have two kids, one who graduated just graduated Columbia.

(14:49):
I'm Miriam graduated at Stanford University. And I would have
them send me their reading lists every quarter. They have
still not sent me a book I hadn't ready. Way,
that's a way. That's how I have for you about business,
business history, marketing, fashion, everything I could get my hands on.
The two were always into fashion, and the first thing
you did was start the Julian bar shoes. I mean,

(15:10):
I've been drawing my first love of fashion when I
was three years old. Because you knew I was sold.
I was traded for grain. My family and I were
traded for gray. When came out of Russia. America got
my parents and me Russia got grain because there was
a grain embargo at the time, and I was They
took us to several internment camps before we got here.
So I spent a bunch of months in Vienna, Austrian

(15:31):
then a bunch of months in the Vatican. And there
this little boy he was like five to my three,
um and he used to do all these all chores,
and he took all that money and he bought me
my first Italian handbag. Oh my goodness, and that was it.
I fell in love with fashion, no turning back. And
then I started drawing and designing. I couldn't help myself,

(15:52):
like I just I thought, fashion is the personal expression
of who we are today. To me, it's it's freedom.
I watch your show really to see what you have
on too, and that's just you, but like your whole family,
to see to see the bags, to see you know
that everybody on the show is has got that sense

(16:14):
of fashion. We love it because it's self expression. You
have to understand. I grew up in the world where
I wasn't supposed to wear colors. I got called into
the Rabbi's office all the time because I was too
noticeable because I was wearing pink and yellow and red.
And he would say to me, Julia, you're too noticeable.
Stop with the colors. And I would say, the day
that God's world is all gray and black, you can

(16:35):
convince me that the load doesn't like colors. I look
out my windows and that's why God made color. I'm
putting it on my body. Do you feel like people
and I noticed this right, you've you're an entrepreneur and
you've really built yourself up. Like you said, you moved
out when you're in your forties and you had a
lot to learn. But I feel like people try to
downplay it, like there's no way she was able to
do that. It's not possible to build this hundreds of

(16:57):
millions of dollars empire without something else happening. Yes, And
they also try to act like it's not you that
did it with your own grid. How does that make
you fail? And do you think that's because you're a woman.
I think one thousand percent is because I'm a woman.
When Season one came out, I was accused of marrying
my husband for his money, and even though when I

(17:18):
married him, he had lost all his money. All he
had left was Eugene a few million dollars. I kept
my mouth shut because I loved him, and I allowed
myself to be accused of marrying someone for their money
to get a leg up because out of pure love.
But you know, my first brand, which was Julia Hart Shoes,
I have texts from there because I did get propositioned

(17:41):
by people who invested in my company, and I told them,
this company is about freedom and if I have to
sleep with someone or fake an emotion to have it,
then there's no point in it. I have never once
ever done anything that wasn't authentic and true to who

(18:02):
I am. And I think the reason I constantly get
accused of this is because what I did is unusual
and it is very fast and it is hard to believe.
And I think that there are many people in the
world who they hear my story and one of two
things happen. Most people hear my story and start their
own careers, or leave difficult spouses, or leave communities that

(18:25):
have held them down. I've had women from all over
the world, from Ethiopia and Rwanda and New Zealand. I mean,
you name it. Women who have told me that they
chose not to commit suicide after they watched my show.
We've started their businesses. I was at a fashion event
once and this woman came over to me and she
bursts out crying, bursts out crying, and she's like, you
don't know what you did for me. And she pulls

(18:46):
down her dress and there are cigarette butts, cigarette burns
over her entire back. And she said, the day I
finished watching your show, I picked up my stuff and
I walked out the door. So I've had women from
all over the world send me messages of what I've
done helped them. Then there are people who look at
what I've done and they feel like, well, I should
have done more, and they feel guilty and they feel like, well,

(19:08):
if she did this, what excuse do I have? And
so they don't want me to succeed because my success
kind of says you can, and that's difficult for people
to hear. But your record speaks for itself. When you
got to a lead world group, it was one thing.
I mean, when I changed it into something completely completely

(19:30):
that's completely about empowering women, tell us that journey. So
you know, when I took over EWG. It was. It
was a modeling agency, the number one modeling agency. It
was an amazing modeling agency. But you know, my husband
had tried and to sell it because again he had
lost his money and he couldn't even get seventy million

(19:51):
dollars for it. When I took it over, I realized
that it shouldn't be a modeling agency at all. To me,
think about it, who what is media? I heart media?
What's media? Media is whoever has the audience? That's media.
So it's not the Vogue magazines anymore or the television
shows or the billboards. Who is the media? Now? People

(20:14):
like you and talent. Talent is the media nowadays. When
someone wants to see what Kendall Jenner is wearing, they
don't go on Vogue. They go on her Instagram page.
And when you think about that, then they're the new media.
Now what does that do? It does three things. It
completely shifts the power dynamic because it used to be
that they would stand in line and they could only

(20:36):
be famous if a creative director like them, if a
casting agent or a you know, a magazine editor. They
had to beg and stand and say please choose me.
There's just that's it. You're too fag, you're tall, you're
too thin, you're too this year too that. Nowadays, it's
the creative directors and the magazine editors chasing them because

(20:57):
they're the ones with the audience. So once I reckon,
I'm like, we can actually put the power in the
hands of our talent if we treat them like brands
and networks. And so I brought in house everything that
you could possibly need for that, so that we started
to create and curate their content. And then we realized,
oh wow, we're sitting on billions of people's data. We

(21:18):
can actually choose the person. I wanted to make advertising honest.
So the people who advertise things in my company are
people who actually use the product believe in the product.
Because we were able to see from who they were
and what they did, what product would be commensurate with
what person. And that created a massive longevity in their
career because when they were finished the runway or the

(21:41):
tennis court or the football stadium or whatever it was,
they were brands. They could create product so they could
still be making money in their fifties and seventies. And
then the next thing that I did. First thing was longevity.
Then the next thing I did was eternity because in
twenty nineteen I also started at a Verse and Avatars.
People thought I was crazy. We went we were going

(22:04):
through a public process. This is way, this is two
and a half years, two years before Meta and I
started building the most hyper realistic avatars in the world.
Ours are unbelievable. You could literally see the pores on
their face. Anything to do with this too, not yet,
not yet, not yet, but you know, we hired people

(22:26):
from all over the world, from as far as Thailand
to Egypt. I had a group of Egyptians who were brilliant,
brilliant avatars creators, and we developed this system to create
avatars that walk, talk, move, jump, laugh, sound like the
person they represent, And I mean so hyper realistic. If
you look at like decentral Land or any of those things,
they look like lego characters. Mine look like humans. The

(22:48):
products look like the products. You could almost feel the
leather or the soft silk. And so we started. We
started creating avatars of our talent because think about this,
they could be sleeping in and their avatars could be
walking seventeen runways simultaneously in seventy different countries when they're seventy.
I need one for the Seriously, everyone's gonna get no joke.

(23:10):
I'm working on a plan right now with heart Sphere,
but you know, I need to wait until the divorce
is finalized. But I'm working on this plant. We're basically,
we've brought down the cost of making avatars so low
that it'll be something that every person owns because you
can talk to your avatar and your avatar starts talking

(23:30):
like you and thinking like you, avatar goes out and cheats.
Does that you control it? Honey? This is all is wild,
But imagine if you could leave like you know, how
people write books for their children. Imagine if instead of
reading a book about I don't know, think Audrey Heppern

(23:53):
or um, you know, Mother Teresa or one of these people.
Mother Teresa's avatar could talk to you and tell you
about her entire life and you would hear it from her.
That's amazing. That's eternity, and that's what we're creating. We
we built a system where you could literally these avatars
will live forever. And you know, let's just pick a singer.

(24:14):
I'm not saying that we made it of this singer
I don't would pick one CSCR or anyone any singer.
Imagine her avatar could be making music two hundred years
from now. Imagine if she's not only leaving her put
the songs that she wrote in her lifetime, but her
avatar will have her ability, her voice, her creativity. Think
about financially though, of course they do. Yeah, the Avadar family,

(24:38):
that's generational, generational. And that's like a documentary too, because
I think about like Teddy Pendergrass. They did a documentary
about him, but they were able to do a lack
because he had recorded himself talking. Also, Yeah, and so
things like that are important to be able to tell
your own story. That's beyond while you're on this planet. Yea.
And think about if you spend around six seven months

(24:59):
with your avatar and you constantly feed it more and
more and more and more information, the avatar will know
all your stories. They'll being able to answer questions, Your
great great great grandchildren will be able to speak to you.
That's what we're working on now is a great horror movie.
I'm thinking to something now. I think it's the most
We're not there yet. Just to be clear, we're not

(25:21):
there yet, where we are today is that the avatar
can talk like you, walk like you, move like you.
But we're going is that they're going to start thinking
like you. That's where we're going. This is brand new steroid.
This is yeah, I mean that's my point. My point
is that whatever work you do, and you know you
used to like think about it. A model or a
sports person, how many years do they played football? How

(25:43):
many years can they walk a runway? What happens after Well,
I'll tell you what happens after They're could be making
money for the next one hundred years, and their families
will be making money for the next hundred years. When
they're seventy, they're twenty five year old, avatars could still
be walking runways. That's amazing. Talk about something that you
touched on because a lot of our audience is on entrepreneurs,
and you really were touching on something amazing about the

(26:04):
power of social media and the power of understanding the
new audience. Yes, So here's the thing that I think
people are not cognizant of completely, and that is social
media has a lot of problems. Right, I get attacked
all the time because it's easy attacks someone when you
don't know them right. There's this anonymity that allows you
to say the most vicious, horrible things that you would

(26:25):
never say to a person face to pay. Yeah, I've
been there, you know. Yeah, you can't imagine that. But
but it has something of insanely tremendous value, and that
is it's democratized creativity. Also, Okay, think about it. If

(26:46):
you wanted to be a singer, you'd have to get
a record label. Now you go on TikTok. You don't
need to be anyone. You don't need to have anything.
You could be from I don't know the mountains in Kentucky.
You have talent. You now have a budget. You don't
need a budget. You don't need an agent, you don't
need a team, you don't need connections. You need passion, desire, hunger, ambition,

(27:13):
and hard work. It is. It has democratized all creativity,
whether it comes from fashion. So many of the fat,
new up and coming fashion designers were discovered on social
media right and for the talent, they're not begging a
magazine or some dude with a camera to make them famous.

(27:34):
The power is now in their hands. They talk directly
to the audience and especially during the pandemic. I think
we really saw a lot of people being able to
monetize thanks to that. What was that like for you
during that time period? So it's really I mean, obviously
COVID was terrible. I actually had a really really bad
case of COVID. I didn't do so well. I was

(27:55):
like an og COVID I got in April twenty twenty.
Not so fun. But what it enabled us to do
because I built these divisions Prior to that, most people
in the industry lost over seventy percent of their business
during everything was closed, nobody was advertising, and many companies
basically fired over one hundred people. A lot of talent

(28:18):
management companies fired one hundred two hundred people. We fired
maybe three four and we only lost thirty three percent,
And that was because of all of our digital advancements.
We did this thing. We did all sorts of really
fun creative things where talent would pose at home or
show products at home and do all these things because

(28:39):
they'd been trained, they knew how to do it. And
so we were doing a lot of digital advertising during COVID,
and then of course with the avatars. Everything about that.
If I if I'd gotten to it, faster. Your virtual
avatar doesn't need to travel on an airplane, it doesn't
get sick, it doesn't need to be in a hotel room.

(28:59):
And so I mean, God forbid, I hope we never
ever have another global pandemic. But if we do, I
think if we all at that point own avatars, our
avatars will be able to communicate with one another, we
won't feel so alone, you know, there'll be that virtual connectivity.
And I want to talk about self care for a second,
because for you putting yourself out there having a show,
but then also having your book and exposing so much

(29:22):
of your life and not being raised in a way
where you're on front street like you are, now, how
do you deal with that? Not? Well, you know, because
you're public divorce, people are saying things, people are watching
the show, and people are talking about your whole family.
So what are some things that you do because I
know it's not easy for a lot of people. Now,

(29:42):
some people will tell you, well, when you're a celebrity,
you sign up for that, but that's not necessarily too.
You're trying to do your job, do things and you're
not really wanting to be, you know, out there in
that way. Right. And you know, I think the part
that was the most difficult is that, you know, when
I got to act incused of stealing and lying and
being a seductress and all this stuff, there was zero proof,

(30:05):
no documents. It was just one man saying da da
da da dada. I had hundreds of documents, stacks of proof,
didn't matter. People as a woman, nobody cared. Yeah, people
just didn't care. And it almost destroyed me. I'm going
to be honest, It almost destroyed me because it felt
like I was back where I started, where men control
me and their word matters more than mine, and I

(30:25):
could have all the proof and all the truth and
it just doesn't matter, and I there's only And it
was hard. The first six months were really rough, really
really hard. And I'll tell you the truth, the things
that got me through were Number one, my family. I
mean they sat by me. I'm gonna get all emotional, sorry,

(30:46):
they sat by me, They stood next to me, they
held me. They literally defended me. I mean I certainly,
I certainly would not have survived with our thumb. And
then the second thing I did. The second thing was
thanks to a Broadway show and a woman named Ellen Gavin.

(31:07):
You know, Ellen, when Roe versus Way it got repealed,
is the first time my life I ever became politically active.
I never did anything with politics. I was like, I'm
going to make millions of women wealthy. I'm going to
build my army of financially independent women, and I'll leave
the politics to the politicians. Except then the politicians took
away rights of women. And I've been in a world

(31:27):
where your body isn't your own. I'm not going back there.
America cannot become muncy. That just cannot happen. So I
became extremely politically active. And I met this incredible woman,
Ellen Gavin, who herself as a playwright and a storyteller
and a massive, massive feminist. And the day that the
ruling came down from Delaware that I wasn't fifty fifty,

(31:51):
even though I had literally eighty two documents, forty two documents,
fifty fifty tax returns, PPP, loan applications, a statements, bank statements, low,
everything said fifty fifty. But I was the liar. Go
forget that one out. When that happened, I want to
I really wanted to die. I want to die, I

(32:11):
just like I've been through so much. I fought so hard,
and here again a man is taking everything away from me.
And Ellen calls me that day, maybe because it hadn't
become public yet, and says, hey, I have these two
tickets to a show called Suft's and I just got COVID.
I can't go? Do you want to go? And I
think it was up? Are you crazy? My whole life

(32:33):
just fell a farm. What do you mean seeing a
Boadway show? And I sat there and I said, Julia Hart,
you fucking pick yourself up from the floor, and you
go to this Boadway show because if you if you despair,
he wins. Right, if women despair, men win. I'm not
going to let that happen. So I go to this
show and it was about the Suffraget movement, and that
show literally changed my life, which is why I know

(32:56):
that a story can move mountains and change universes. Because
it was about the Suffragette movement, and there was this
scene that they enact where the women were arrested, imprisoned,
put it literally like a dungeon and force fed through
tubes because they went on a hunger strike. And I'm
watching this and thinking to myself, you effing coward. What's

(33:18):
happened to you? Okay, there's a few newspaper articles Boo
boo boo. These women went to jail for demanding freedom.
These women were tortured for demanding freedom if they didn't
give up the fight. I'm not giving up the fight.
And since that day have there been hard days, sure,

(33:39):
But since that day my faith has been so immutable,
so unshakable. I'm going to win. The truth will come out,
and I will never give up, and I will never
stop fighting until every woman's voice has equal validity and
power to a man. And this has made you fierce.
Oh honey, I am really furious about making women financially independent. Yes, important,

(34:06):
because to me, freedom is not having to ask permission,
and there is no freedom without financial independence. You know,
when I was in Laparla, when I was creative director
of Laperla, I would always go into the stores just
to see how things are selling. And I will tell you,
and I started collecting this. How many times I would
go into a store and I would hear a woman saying,
let me ask my husband if I can buy this?

(34:26):
Oh yeah, all the time, and it I wanted to
go over and hug her and hold her and tell
her you don't need his permission, go make your own money.
You can do it. You the minute you have to
ask permission, you're not free. So to me, the essence,
the quint essence of freedom is financial freedom, because without

(34:49):
financial freedom, you have no say, no voice. He who
holds the wallet makes the rules. What kind of advice
can you give to women that are in situation is
where they're not not financially independent right now? What kind
of baby steps, small steps can they take to sort
of get rid in the right direction and love that.
Here's the beauty about work. You don't realize what you're

(35:13):
capable of until you just get started. So you know
what I always tell people, I was I I hate zoos.
I really will not go into a zoo because I
don't like the idea of animals and caged from my
viewing pleasure. I just think that's that's not freedom. But
my kids kept nudging and nudging and nudging when they
were younger, let's go to a zoo. So finally I

(35:34):
found the San Diego Zoo. Because they're, you know, not
in enclosed spaces, they kind of recreate their habitat, so
we go to this animal, this one animal that can
jump higher than any animal in the animal kingdom. It's
some African elk. And the tour guide says, Okay, where's
the gate, where's the fence? How are we keeping these
animals in? We look around. There's literally nothing, no gate,

(35:56):
no fence, no wires, nothing. We give up and he
points to four telephone poles on the corners of the enclosure.
And on the very top of these very very very
tall telephone poles is like a half pipe sea. So
imagine a pipe cut in half, like a long curved sea,
connecting these four telephone poles. The way that this animal

(36:19):
jumps is it goes to the edge of something, It
looks up to calculate the distance, and then it jumps.
This African elk would go up to the edge of
the enclosure, look up, see that half pipe and think
there was a ceiling, and never jumped. They could have
walked right through. There was no fence, no gate. It

(36:44):
was here. And that's what I feel about women. The fence,
the ceiling, so much of it is in our minds.
We think we can't and so we never try. So
my advice is, I don't care what you do. Look
what did I do when I first started. I'd have
a college degree, and I know anyone from the outside.
I sold life insurance, so I think I could think

(37:04):
of selling that you didn't need a degree for. If
you need to want it so badly that you can't
breathe without it, you need to want to be free
so badly that you are willing to work as many
hours as a take you are willing to take. You know,
when I first started, people would pat me on the head,
people literally diminished me every day, and I just didn't

(37:26):
care because in my eyes, I saw that I could accomplish.
And that's to me, I don't care if you start
working at a seven and eleven. It doesn't matter what
you do. Just get up and do something, and then
figure out, Okay, now that I have X amount, what
can I do with this amount. Don't spend it on clothing,
don't spend it on anything invested. Figure out, okay, I'm
going to invest this to the next step. When you

(37:47):
get to the next step, figure out, Okay, what do
I want the next step to be? But I would
say that the first step in that journey, you've got
to want it, and you also have always told me
that one thing that you really advise women and people
in general about business, spend some time with yourself. Oh yes,
a lot of us don't do enough of that. When
we're like when we were even talking about social media

(38:08):
and digital I can just hear people Okay, oh so
I should do this, so I should do this chasing
that's really stop exactly. I mean it's basically what we
were talking about, which is you have to know what
you want. That's the first step. If you don't know
what you want, you're not gonna get it. Yeah, you've
got to pick something. You have to pick a passion
and often with talent, especially because I was dealing with

(38:29):
younger women, the first step was Okay, if I want
to create your social media into a brand, you've got
to give me what you love, what matters to you. Right.
So there's so many people that want to do any
and everything. Yeah, I can do that. I'll do that,
I'll try this. I saw this work for this person.
I'll do that. And you have to know what you're

(38:49):
passionate about and then go really hard at it. Exactly.
Social media almost ruin that and journalism because everybody's a
journalist everybody, everybody. You've got to listen to your own voice.
Like you know, There's this one young woman that I
was working with and she wanted to build a brand.
She wanted to eventually sell product, and she said, well,
what product do I pick? How do I know? And

(39:11):
I started talking to her and we came out with
the fact that she's a massive lover of the ocean.
She's worked with, you know, over a dozen charities to help,
you know, save whales and dolphins and help clean up water.
And I was like, this is your love. Forget about
the bikini shots, forget about how sexy you look when

(39:32):
you're bending down. Show people what you love when you
go to these charity events. Take your audience with you,
because one day, when you're in your thirties and you're
no longer walking or runway, you will make a product
like a sunscreen that doesn't pollute the water and everyone
will understand why because they know you for that. So

(39:55):
choose one thing. I always call it your angel. Choose
your angel. What do you see when you wake up
in the morning, what do you see when you go
to sleep at night. Choose your angel and then focus
on that, and that's your thing. You have to know
what you want or you're never going to get it.
What are your thoughts on marriage now? Because business arrangement,

(40:17):
but you know you went through it, and we did
see you going through it. But what are your thoughts now,
like moving forward? Would you want to get married again?
And if you did, what would be the boundaries and
the parameters of that and what type of agreements should
we have, you know, and getting married? I love that.
So here's my current philosophy. I'm not saying that I'll

(40:38):
feel this way I always. I'm just telling you what
I feel right now. What I feel right now is
I totally understand marriage when people are younger and they
want to have a family. I think your kids need
to know that you're legally supposed to show up, and
I think the spouses need to know that when the
baby's vomiting and pooping and crying, that they're not gonna
be like why right? I think at my age, I

(41:00):
would much rather someone be with me because they want
to be and they choose to be every day, rather
than because they think, oh my God, to break this
contract is going to be a giant, you know, pain
in the ass. I might as well just stay married.
So for me personally, will I do a ceremony? Sure,
commitment ceremony. It's generation came up with it. It's like

(41:24):
you go through the whole marriage and everything, but without
that lest yeah, document think about it. There are no
other legal contracts that are eternal. Everything has an expiration
when you reaccess their marriage. It comes down to, like
I realized when my father passed away and I went
through all of the wills and he had everything in place,
I'm like, if he would have remarried, this would have

(41:46):
been a disaster. Think about that. So it's like irresponsible
part when you're young, when you're younger, whatever, But it's
like the half of this goes to somebody just totals
and that people don't understand. They don't understand it. Understand.
Could you want to hear my crazy idea? Yes, okay,
this is my crazy idea. I can't wait. All right.
I think marriage licenses should be like driver's license. We

(42:06):
just talked about this. You did not, Yeah, we didn't.
I think it's a great idea. Every seven years, you
know you've got the seven year itch. Okay, hey, let's reassess.
Let's reassess, and if you don't want to continue nothing.
There's no courts, there's no this. The contracts expires, yes, period, right,
and that way people aren't you know. I mean also

(42:28):
think about this. Historically people lived into their mid thirties,
got married at like fifteen, they were dead by thirty five.
They had twenty years. Nowadays, you could get married at
twenty five, you could live till one hundred. That's seventy
five years the same person. Now let's think about that.
Do you think you're the same person at twenty that

(42:49):
you are at forty that you are at seventy. No,
system wasn't designed for that's right. The system was not
designed for people to live a hundred years because you know,
twenty years could get along with many people, right, seventy years,
Like people who get divorced in their sixties. Beforehand, it
was like why why bother? You're going to die in
five years, right. What's the point now is people get

(43:11):
divorced in their sixties, they have another forty years. Think
about that. Marriage was not created to be this hundred
year events. It just wasn't. And so we got to
change the system. Because we're living longer, You're get to
change some systems. I know one. I go, we're definitely
going to do a show about this, the divorce, marriage commitments, ceremony.

(43:34):
And I did just read Sweden has the highest divorce rate,
but the happiest people rate because when you get a divorce,
there is no financial obligation here you go, I mean partners,
that's just the law. So they can happily move it
now to marriage. That's it. Next show, this show. I
think it's absolutely amazing that you are also moving into

(43:55):
venture capital for female entrepreneurs. And we really talked about
this all the time. Do not get well, I have
something to talk about. I can't talk about it. Yet
they do have some exciting news. Um yeah, this is
something that you know. When I couldn't work for Ableugen,

(44:17):
so I couldn't help make women financially independent that way,
I had to think of what am I going to
do this year. I'm not going to just sit around
and not help people. That's my purpose in life, right.
So we started making these female founder formed meetings in
my house where um, I would bring young female entrepreneurs
and then VC financers and the entrepreneurs would be able

(44:38):
to present, and we got a lot of investment for
these women. So it's been working really, really well, and
now I have an idea to time to take it nationwide.
Um because as you said, two percent of VC funding
goes to women led businesses, which by the way, earned
four times the investment then male ledgesis but we want

(44:59):
to help anyway we can. Once you're able to talk
about it, it's it's it's something I'm really really excited
about and I think will allow a lot of every
woman who wants to in America to have an opportunity
to start something that's INCREDI So I'm really really excited
about that. And then you know, I'm also I've got
a few other projects that I'm really talk about. The body, Yes,

(45:20):
my bust body. So it's something that I invented. You've
seen it in season one. Shape says, amazing looking, it's
really m beautiful. Like you know that it doesn't and
it doesn't seems that it's really nice. Okay, that's here's
the thing about it. Like, Okay, now you know that
my pop culture knowledge is a little fudgy, right because
I only left it nine years ago. I missed a

(45:41):
few I missed a few things. So I watched Bridget
Jones's Diary. I think it was twenty seventeen. I know,
I don't know when it actually played, but that's when
I got to see it. I like that movie. It's
a great movie, right. And then there's that scene where
she's trying to decide to she wear the Shape where
Granny panties she's going better in her dress, but then
she doesn't want to bring the guy home because no
one wants to be caught in Shape, and she decides

(46:02):
to put it on and it works, and the guy
comes back and she completely forgets that she has it all.
And there's that scene where she's on the floor and
you're indresting her and he's like, look at these naughty
little shoes. Look, oh my god, what is it? And
then he starts playing with it. I'm like, and I
thought to myself, what do women do? And then it's
a eight billion dollar markets So millions of women all

(46:22):
over the world are wearing Shape. But Shape is incredibly
ugly beige, white, and black. And the reason for that
is because the minute you put color a pattern, because
it's a compression garment, you know, when you stretch something,
you get the lines, So the lines distort the pattern
distorts and it looks really ugly, which is why it's
always bege, white and black. Dying is the historically the

(46:44):
only way that we've ever colored clothing. Yours has dyed,
Yours has dyed. Mine is died. Every person in this
room the color in their clothes has been dyed. We
have a new way of putting color into clothing. We
do not die our clothes. We heat fuse color into
our material. And what this enabled us to do. Number one,
it is so much better for the planet. Fashion alone

(47:05):
accounts for twenty percent of wastewater in the world twenty percent.
Dying is a second largest cause of wastewater in the world,
second second largest cause. We do not die. We heat fuse,
no CO two emissions, no wastewater. It is so good
for the planet, So much better for the planet than dying.

(47:28):
You cannot imagine. And because we heat fuse it, it
doesn't act like die. It's like elastic, girl, You could
stretch it from here to eternity. It doesn't budge, the
color doesn't move, the pattern doesn't moves. For the first time,
you can wear shapewear that's pretty sucks you in, but
it looks like laundering. Now it's going to be available
starting April. Okay, we're relaunching. I mean, I am. I

(47:52):
have a website, but we close it because of all
this divorce craziness. I couldn't focus on it. I'm relaunching
it in April, and you're going to see. I mean,
it's incredible. It looks like lingerie, and we fix a
lot of other things. You know, the problem with shaper
also is that it's thick. You're trying to make yourself thinner,
but you're adding a very thick compression. Or I know
women who can't button their pants when they wear it

(48:14):
because that's as extra half a Niche makes a big difference. Yeah. Well,
we realized if we could fuse color into fabric, maybe
we could chuse pieces of fabric together. And so it's
as thin. It's thinner than this piece of paper. It's
as thin as a pie. It's unbelievable. And the other thing,
excuse me, I don't know if I'm allowed to use
this word. You'll tell me if i'm not. The other
problem with shape where is when it covers up, you know,
above your chest, it gives you what's called pancake boots, Right,

(48:37):
the whole point it is to squish you in. It
also squishs in, parshes you that you don't want to
squish it. So my shape where actually is not only
sold by clothing size, it's sold by cup size. Okay,
that's great, I like that. So it actually gives women
more of a bus less It's unbelievable, and it fits
you better and you're not sucked in because you could
buy a large thirty eight double D or a large

(49:01):
thirty eight E. It doesn't matter. And we have the
widest size range of it. I mean, I think we
go up to this second season will go up to
x x x L. I want every woman to know
that she's beautiful and fabulous and that we're not leaving
her out of the equation. And then the last part
of its time, say one more thing, because it's very,
very exciting season. The second season of this collection, we'll

(49:22):
have swimwear for the first time. That's swimwear. Because you'd
never know the difference. It's as thinnest swimwear. It dries
like swimwear. It doesn't run some of that swear like
that so ugly. Yeah, it has to be. It has
to be because they don't know. They can't make those
colored patterns. This is genuine compression garment wear except what

(49:44):
it looks like a bathing suit. So imagine a little
boy short and a little tinkini. You look as sexy
as f except it's sucking you in in every direction,
and no one will ever know the difference because it
looks exactly like any other swimmer. And then the third
season we're going to do at leisure. You know, compression.
A lot of athletes wear compression when they work out.
It releases toxins. You you sweat more and you lose

(50:07):
more calories. But no one's walking into an Equinox wearing spinx.
Yeah they're just so ugly, right, but you're going to
walk into an Equinox wearing plus body because it's gonna
look as nicer than lou Lemon. And then competition. Yeah,
at Leisure is my favorite type love. So that's the

(50:28):
passion and everything that she does. I'm excited because it's
all about helping women, right like Shape were to me.
I want to eradicate the discomfort embarrassment of land Shapewar. Ever,
I had Menny Shapeward too, and they're getting into that also, yeah,
well I'll work on them West. I'm gonna I'll be honest,
there's enough men men, enough help that goes to men.
I'll focus on women. Of course, eventually we can get

(50:49):
to men, but right now and then and then the
other project that I'm working on that I'm really excited
about is this brand called Amian. This woman, um Elina Merle,
she is uh a cancer survivor. She lost both breasts
and it did terrible things to her skin, and so
her doctor recommended cryotherapy and it's a quick, quick, like

(51:11):
a deep yeah, and it did wonders for her skin.
And she's an inventor. We're actually partnering on several projects together,
but this is the one that's furthest along. Basically, she said,
I wonder how women who can't go to a cryotherapy
you can't afford cryotherapy, what can they do at home
that will mimic it. So she developed this skincare routine

(51:33):
and it's an ice cube. You keep it in your
freezer and in the morning you go like this all
over your face and it just melts into your skin.
And what it does, because it acts almost like cryotherapy,
it enlarges your pores. So that the skincare that you
put on afterwards goes in deep and then the minute

(51:54):
it dries, it shrinks your poores back in, which enables
it to stay in your skin right and not dissipate.
It's unbelievable. It's an extraordinary thing. Yeah, look at myself.
I've been using it since I've met her, so I mean,
I'm like totally obsessed with without. Yeah, I'm going to
share you know what, I'll actually send you Guys, if
you give me all of your I'll send I'll bring

(52:15):
three boxes because you're gonna see. It's unlike, I can't wait.
I would try that every day. It's amazing, and it
feels kind of like a mini spot treatment. Like I'll
do it in the morning and I'll close my eyes
and I'll do this and I feel like relax and
it's almost like a meditative thing. It's really really it
feels amazing. Yeah, that's really cool. And one final question

(52:36):
from me for you that will help the men and
women in our audience. If you had one money lesson
that you've learned from all that you've been through that
do you think our audience would learn from? What is it?
Don't trust anyone, even if they're your spouse or your
best friend. Put it in a contract. We don't. I

(53:00):
didn't take enough care about contracts. I trusted instead of
putting it and write it. And I think, and you know,
we're made to feel bad if we don't trust our
loved ones. I'm sorry. Trust is great. Put it on
a piece of paper. Put it on a piece of paper.
That is my biggest device. Because imagine, if you work

(53:20):
and you build something, and you create something of tremendous value,
and you didn't, you weren't careful with your paperwork, someone
will come and take it from you. And the more
you succeed, when you start building a billion dollar business,
someone's going to come for you. So put everything in writing.
Make sure you have the best lawyer you can possibly afford.

(53:42):
Get it in a legal document. That is the best
piece of advice I can give anybody there. You have it, well,
thank you so much for that and for being it's
to open it transparent all the time. Thank you. I
don't know how else. That's freedom too. Think yourself is
freedom too. Yes, and you'll make any seasonal announcements to
my unorthodox life right here again, cannot say anything about

(54:06):
with my Unorthodox Life. You can't say anything, but you
know we feel good about it. But honestly, thank you
so much for joining us. Julie your heart. Make sure
you get the book Brazen. Make sure you watch My
Unorthodox Life seasons one and two, maybe three coming soon,
we don't know nothing confirmed. Thank you for the pearls
on this very special wealth wins. You guys are so amazing.

(54:27):
Thank you so much. And I'm gonna make sure and
I'll send you guys um a shapewear piece and the cryotherapy.
They're gonna look at a nice skin. We got venture
capital money. Get your tracks right, you know capital money right.
And we're gonna make sure you guys can look at
your marriage vows every seven years. I'm good ceremony ceremony

(54:49):
to me, that's the most you know. Anyway, Thank you
guys so much. This was so much fun. Thank you,
thank you. WHEREA two