Helena Fogarty is a force to be reckoned with. Her experience as a 3x startup founder and 4x CEO provides valuable insights into the trials and tribulations of making it work. In this episode of The Common Scents Podcast, we learn about her journey, which was a bit of a rollercoaster, with upswings and super fast downswings that came out of left field.
TAMAR: Hi, everybody, I am so delighted and excited to introduce Helena Fogarty from New York. We are almost neighbors or we were almost neighbors at one point. And we connected last week, I got to learn a little bit about her. I do have a little bit of background but not enough because I have the pleasure to do that right now. So, thank you so much for joining.
00:41
HELENA FOGARTY: Yeah, absolutely. That’s wonderful.
00:43
TAMAR: Yeah, yeah. So, tell us where are you located on the planet? What are you doing these days?
00:49
HELENA FOGARTY: I love that question, on the planet. I’m located in the Rockaway in Queens, New York. And we’re surfers. My husband, I and my daughter are surfers, which is why we relocated here after we moved back from abroad, and we love it here. I live about 50 yards away from the Bay and about half a mile away from the ocean. And you walk out of my house and it’s sand.
01:17
TAMAR: That’s awesome. That is so cool. I need views. I need pictures.
01:21
HELENA FOGARTY: It requires a lot of sweeping.
TAMAR: I can only imagine.
01:25
HELENA FOGARTY: And it’s great.
01:26
TAMAR: Yeah. Is there ever a time when it’s not too much sweeping? Or is it like an annual, is it literally seasonal? I guess every single season?
01:35
HELENA FOGARTY: Yeah, it’s literally year-round, I guess the snow on the ground. We don’t have so much sand in our house. But it’s not like we live on a grassy knoll by the sand. We live on sand. So, it just comes in.
TAMAR: That’s so cool. Very, very cool. Yeah, I definitely want a picture of this.
HELENA FOGARTY: Awesome.
TAMAR: Yeah. All right. Cool. So, I know you have a really interesting career. I mean, we met in the founders’ group. And I want to hear a little bit about that. Tell me a little bit about your story.
02:07
HELENA FOGARTY: Yeah. 100%. So, I am a four-time startup CEO, three-time founder. And I have started and run a variety of businesses for a variety of reasons. And then prior to that, I worked in fashion in New York for 20 years for Chanel and Ferragamo and Zac Posen, and among others, Harper’s Bazaar. I went to University of Pennsylvania undergrad. And I worked in the early ages of e-commerce. So, the fiber that wound through my career has always been like, internet, e-commerce and fashion. And so, we were going to talk about the ups and downs there. I actually left New York, and I left Chanel at the time, in 2000, early 2009. And I thought I was going to run Chanel. And I had other people telling me, I was going to get a promotion and possibly eventually run the company. And instead, I got fired. I got laid off right at the beginning of the Great Recession. And as I mentioned, I’m a surfer. I had been studying Spanish for a long time, but hadn’t become fluent. And I like to go down to Costa Rica to surf. So, I noticed that there was nothing really happening in the world in terms of jobs that time. So, I went down to Costa Rica. And I had recently gotten out of a very long-term relationship, 11 years, and I’ve gotten fired from a job I thought I was going to be in for the rest of my life. I was like, maybe New York in January isn’t such a great place to be. So, I had been going down to Costa Rica surf and I went down there for a month to check it out and see if I could live there. And move from a city of nine million people to a town of 3000. And I went there and I absolutely loved it. That month, I served probably four hours a day and I studied Spanish four hours a day and lived in a little cabin by the beach, and then I came home and it was still miserable here. It was at that point, the time during spring when you think it should be nice and it’s not that yet nice. And we were still in the great recession and nothing was happening. So, I rented out my apartment, had my dog. I had my dog when I went down for the short time, I had my dog taken care of by my ex. But I got all the paperwork for her and she and I moved down there, and we moved down there with an open-ended ticket not knowing whether I’d be there for a month or for a long time, and I ended up staying for nine
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Burden
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.