Lessons from a 4x CEO and startup founder

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