#1 Way to Find Confidence Within When You Have Low Self- Esteem with Victoria Jackson

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
My life changed when Ali was diagnosed at fourteen. She's
saying she has an eyeball headache, and I'm thinking, oh,
you know, okay, you know, and she says her vision's
getting a little fuzzy, and I'm just thinking, well, I'm
you know, I'm sure it's nothing. We'll go see the
eye doctor, will get you some drops. And ultimately the
neurologist is doing a series of tests, wanted to do

(00:22):
a spinal tap, a lumbar puncture, and I'm like, why, Like,
she's just got something going on with her eyes. What
are you all doing? You know? And so when they
called with the results, they basically told myself and my
husband that she had four years to live.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Before we jump into this episode, I'd like to invite
you to join this community to hear more interviews that
will help you become happier, healthier, and more healed. All
I want you to do is click on the subscribe button.
I love your support. It's incredible to see all your
comments and we're just getting started. I can't wait to
go on this journey with you. Thank you so much

(00:56):
for subscribing. It means the world to me.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
The number one health and well in the Five.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Jay Sheeddi, Jay, Shenny j J. Hey everyone, welcome back
to On Purpose, the number one health and wellness podcast
in the world. Thanks to each and every one of
you that come back every week to become happier, healthier,
and more healed. And that's our mission here to introduce
you to thought leaders, teachers, academics, experts, celebrities, athletes who

(01:26):
are all trying to make the world happier, healthier, and
more healed. Today's guest has been dedicated to that in
a personal way and in their own mission. I'm excited
to introduce you to a dear friend of mine who
I've been wanting to have on the show for a
very long time. We've had some beautiful conversations offline. I've
really got to know her heart and her soul more

(01:47):
than anything, and I'm honored today to get to introduce
you to her. Her name is Victoria Jackson, who has
known previously as a cosmetics entrepreneur but transformed into a
medical research trailblazer and Women's Hall of Fame inductee. Victoria
founded the global powerhouse brand Victoria Jackson Cosmetics. She and
her husband Bill Guthy, founder of the marketing behemoth, Guthy

(02:10):
Renker established the Gutthy Jackson Charitable Foundation to fund research
on NMO treatments and a potential cure. Victoria's unrelenting determination
proved effective. In twenty sixteen, the foundation developed the first
ever NMO therapeutic and soon after three therapies received FDA approval.

(02:32):
The unprecedented pace of the accomplishments that her and her
affiliations have had are absolutely phenomenal. And I welcome you
to the show. Victoria Jackson and the author of two
incredible books that I highly recommend, Saving each Other, which
of course will be diving in today, and this book,
The Power of Rare a Blueprint for a medical revolution.

(02:54):
Please go and grab both of these books. You're going
to be hearing about the insights from both of them
in this conversation. And Victoria, welcome to on Purpose.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
Thank you. It is so nice to be here. I've
been just waiting for the opportunity to talk to you.
I'm I'M a big manifesto, and so when I started
listening to you, Jay, I was so inspired honestly that
I just was like, I've got it. There's going to
be a time I'm sitting across from him. We're having
this conversation. So thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
I love that. And our parts have just crossed so organically.
We have a lot of mutual friends and we bumped
into each other ages ago at this great fundraiser that
Ellen did called Gorilla Paluzza, which was to raise money
for the Diane Fosse and Ellen Degenero's fund.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
Yeah, that's great, incredible what she's doing.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yeah, I've not it's amazing. I got to go out
with them last year and it was unbelievable. But we
met there, yes, and you were one of these people,
and I just want the audience to know like you
were one of these people that instantly was talking to
me from your heart and I felt it. Then you
were arranging for me to go and meet the Pope

(04:05):
the next thing I knew, and it didn't happen because
of the pandemic, but I was so grateful to you
for even helping that invite come along my way, and
I hope I get to do that in the future
one and honor thanks to you. And I had that
very special invite to go to the Vatican, which, of course,
through to the pandemic, didn't happen, and then we've had
these wonderful connections, even with your daughter and your home

(04:26):
and anyway, so many different things. But I feel like
your journey is truly unique and incredible in so many ways.
And I want to start off with a question of
what is your earliest memory from childhood of your own
childhood that stays with you or that is the immediate

(04:47):
flashback when you think to being a child.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
You know, I always think about how I felt like
I was always different. I say that I was born early.
I was born in the six and a half and
so I lived in the hospital for three months before
I even came home. So I think, because I've always
struggled so much with anxiety and worry and you know,
all of that, I think I was sort of born

(05:12):
early to get a head start on all of it.
So when I think of my early years, I really
think of, you know, a young person that was really
struggling and just trying to really find her place in
the world. And seem like since I did come in
early and was struggling just to sort of make it
through in those very very early times. Because this is

(05:32):
going back a while, and you know, now, I know
for you know, premies. They have a lot more technology
than they did then. But I've always been in survival mode,
I think, my whole life. So I think that's what
I think about, is this little person that came into
the world and has been in that mode ever since
pretty much.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Do you think that the struggles that you had have
changed towards the struggles that young people have today or
do you think that they're the same thing that just
differently experienced.

Speaker 1 (06:04):
I think they're definitely. I think they're the same thing.
But yeah, I mean, obviously I wasn't dealing with social
media and things, but you know, school was social media.
You know, your friends, I mean, so they were all
You're still trying to figure out your way in the world.
So I think it may look different now, But I
think that's probably why even in raising kids, I understand

(06:26):
my kids can talk to them on a level of
understanding whatever anxiety they're going through, but it's just it's
just put out on a different stage now and much
bigger stage, and so that makes it a little more difficult.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
What was the thing you were most anxious about growing up?
What was the thing that kept you up at night
that made you uncomfortable that made you nervous? What was that?

Speaker 1 (06:47):
You know? For me, it was I think because I
had parents that were young and trying to figure it
out and ultimately got divorced. There there wasn't I didn't
feel a lot of love. And I think, you know,
even my mom would be the first to say she,
you know, having a child that was in the hospital
right away and she's so young, she didn't really know
how to you know, bond with me. And I think
that was tough. So I was somebody that was always

(07:09):
seeking approval and looking for that love and just trying
to figure out who I was. And I always had
this really haunting feeling that something was going to happen
to me, that there was just somebody was going to
get me, something was going to happen. It was just
something that I remember early on just feeling in a

(07:31):
unique way.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
And how did you process that? Like what was your antidote?

Speaker 1 (07:37):
Or I mean, I think there's times you're thinking, you know,
am I special? Is there a reason I'm here? But
it just manifested in a lot of anxiety, and so
you know, you're always just feeling like there's some shoe
that's going to drop or something that's going to happen.
And I lived a lot of my early years like that,

(07:58):
as I kind of keep going back to finding my way.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
It's interesting how every teenager goes through this phase of
finding our way, and then often we either get stuck
in a way that our parents expected or society expected,
or we fall into something, or we continue to find
our way. And sometimes you're in your thirties or your
forties and you're still trying to find your way and

(08:22):
you kind of feel out of place because everyone else
has stability. But I could definitely attest to that. I
felt in my teens, I was trying to fit in
and I was trying to find my way, and I
was anxious about did people think I was in with
the crowd? And you know, and I think we all
go through this. What was really interesting for me was

(08:45):
I think I've kept trying to find my way, which
is why I've lived so many different lives, because I've
never wanted to not take a step forward. What did
you imagine would be your first career path or what
did you imagine would be your first venture and what
did it end up being?

Speaker 1 (09:03):
Well, you know, as I'm even just in here talking
to you, and I'm looking at a microphone that says
on purpose. Purpose was always a big thing. Even when
I was young, I was thinking like whether it was
why am I here? Or what is the way? It
was sort of like what is my purpose? And I
didn't really have a skill set that I could sort
of point to other than I'd probably say early on,

(09:26):
I recognized that I was more of a creative.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
You know.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
I definitely wasn't going to be the academic. I ended
up sort of, you know, ditching school a lot due
to a lot of kind of unsettling things at home.
And so I was, you know, trying to figure out
what was the way that I was going to really
express myself and knowing that I didn't come from a
family that had money, so I was going to have
to figure that out for myself. But I knew that

(09:50):
I was creative, and it probably I started doing makeup,
And I think when I started doing my own makeup,
doing friends makeup, I thought I genuinely because I struggle
with such low self esteem. I mean, it's gotten a
lot better over the years. And I've written, you know,
two prior books before these, Redefining Beauty and make up

(10:12):
your life all about self esteem and looking and feeling better.
And I really thought once I started to make up
people and give them this sense of like they looked
better and felt better, I had some passion around that.
It was something that I thought, Oh, this is a
skill set that I can really perfect. And you know,

(10:33):
I love the idea and I'm the kind of person
if I can do it, then I want to show
everybody how to do it. It's like, oh, if I
can do this, you can do this, and here's how.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
So if social media existed, you would have been one
of the first beauty influences. That's what would have happened,
because makeup was one of the big things that took
off on social media in the early days.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
Absolutely, that's how my infomercials were so successful because I
was actually teaching you on my DVDs how you could
actually do your makeup, you know, from start to finish.
So that's what I was doing. I was putting all
the cosmetics together, here's how to use them. Long before
I was I had my own radio show before there

(11:12):
were podcasts where I was doing makeovers on the radio,
and they said, if you can actually get people to
call in and do a makeover on the radio. You
can have the airtime. So yeah, this was the early days,
and I love that. I love the teaching aspect of it.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
What gave you the confidence? I think what's really fascinating
about that is you're a young person with low self esteem.
You're confused about who you are, you have anxiety, but
then all of a sudden, you feel I'm passionate about
makeup and actually I feel confident to teach others or
share that. How does that switch happen? Because I think
so many of our listeners are in that position right

(11:51):
now where they feel anxious. Maybe some of them have
imposter syndrome. Maybe some of them are listening and they're going, Jay,
I just don't know where to see star. Or maybe
I know what my passion is, but I'm not good enough.
And you know, we have this lack of belief in ourselves. Yeah,
how did you switch from an anxious to I actually

(12:12):
like teaching and sharing. Yeah?

Speaker 1 (12:14):
Well, by the way, while I was teaching and sharing,
I was also anxious, So I managed to pull double
duty at the same time. I just went for it,
you know. So for me, for example, I wanted to
get in the world of makeup. If you were to
look at my portfolio and go through my very early early,
you know, photographs of makeup. Not the best makeup in
the world, you know, so like I had to learn

(12:35):
it and perfect it, and you know, I had the
eye for it, but I had to now really hone
my skill set to match what my eyes were seeing,
and ultimately came up which was my concept of the
no makeup makeup as the original person sort of doing
that in the in the late eighties when everybody had
on tons of makeup.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
Explain that to us, break that down for people who
who may not have either been around or not know
fully what that was in the beginning. Yeah, because I
think yet.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
In the eighties, you think about like shoulder pads and
the music videos that were out there, and there was
a lot of makeup. And my whole thing was and
there really wasn't even a makeup that existed at the time.
Let's talk about just even a foundation, a base color
that you use on your skin now to even out
your skin tone that was more natural. Everything was these
kind of crazy tones or pinks or oranges, and I

(13:26):
wanted to just help women look beautiful, look great, but
without feeling like they had makeup on, so that they
could really look like themselves and not use it as
war paint or a way to necessarily be someone else,
but just feel confident in themselves. And so I had
no idea how to actually create makeup, So I just

(13:48):
started as a makeup artist. I started mixing in my
garage pots and pants and making up concoctions that I
would use on my makeup jobs. And that's really how
I started.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
That. What I love about that, you know, one everyone
who's listening and watching to know this is that the
first time you do anything, it won't be that great
and it's okay, And it's good to know that. I
think a lot of us think, well, before I do something,
I've got to have the perfect name, have the perfect branding,
have the perfect product, have the perfect service. And the

(14:18):
truth is, ninety veen percent of the time, the first
thing you put out there is never going to be
that great. If you look at the first version of
Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat or anything we use today,
the first version of Amazon, the first version of makeup.
If you look at all of the first versions, they
weren't that great. And I think a lot of us.
We're kind of knocking up against that, going, I want

(14:40):
to put something perfect out before we've even made any progress.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
Yeah, and you have to just you have to just
have patience with yourself and patience with the project, but
you have the process, but you have to just be
willing to even put yourself out there and try. For me,
I was like, I want to do make up. I
want to you know, do for magines and things like that. Okay,
how do I start contacting photographers and building a portfolio

(15:06):
and just be willing to you know, even women And
they'd be so afraid to do their makeup. And I'm like,
what's the worst that's going to happen. You're not going
to like it, you wash it off, you know. So
I did twenty years of going to the jails, twenty
years of going into the jails and doing makeup for
women there where. Think about it where I would say

(15:26):
women would be I'd go, what do you want your
makeup to say? And I'd have women go I want
my makeup to say pull over. You know, like a
lot of women that were you know, working the streets
or whatever. And I'd be like, Okay, let's change the
message on that let's talk about you know, self respect,
and I would see the energy of hundreds of gals

(15:49):
in there that were, you know, really ready to hear something,
and how it just evened out, leveled out the room
with people that when they saw themselves kind of a
before and after or it really changed the whole energy.
So I got really passionate about this whole thing I
ultimately called the power of mascara and looking better and
feeling better about yourself. But it was all, you know,

(16:11):
as I'm teaching it, I'm learning as well, and I've
been I think, you know, due to an incident that
happened when I was really young, sort of going back
to that thinking something really bad was going to happen
to me. I was one of the early victims in
nineteen seventy three of the Pillowcase rapist, and that left

(16:32):
me with, you know, obviously a lot of emotional scars
and things that I've spent a lifetime working on, but
very claustrophobic. So then going to the jails for twenty
years was very claustrophobic to put yourself in a very
uncomfortable situation to you know, have to. But I was

(16:53):
there because I really believed in what I was doing
in the message, and it really was very instrumental and
helpful and in the other parts of my life. As
I say, as you talked about mascara to medicine that
were really important.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
Hey guys, it's Jay Sheddy here and I couldn't be
more excited to share this exciting news you asked. We
delivered Juny sparkling tea with adaptogens made by my wife
and I are now available in all Sprout locations across
the country. Juni is the perfect midday pick me up.
With only one third of the caffeine found in brood

(17:30):
Green tea, it provides a gentle energy boost without the crash.
It only has five calories and zero grams of sugar,
making it the perfect drink. Plus, it's made with the
delicious blend of adaptogens and neotropics that may help boost
your metabolism, combat stress, pack your body with antioxidants, and
stimulate brain function. Head over to your local Sprouts of

(17:52):
visit sprouts dot com to find the closest location near you.
I'm glad you brought that up because we've spoken about
that offline before. Could you walk us through and explain
a bit more about the Pillowcuse rapist, just to get
a sense of who that was, what that was, etc.
To get a sense of and exactly the experience you had,

(18:16):
Because I just I want people to have that context
when we're looking at the rest of your life and
the rest of your story as we dive in today,
because if someone's unaware, it can be easy to look
at your journey. And I think we do this a
lot today where we look at a snapshot of someone's
life and we think, well, they've done it all, they've
made it, they've achieved it, they shouldn't have anything to

(18:38):
worry about. And then when you kind of look at
someone's life in full perspective, you recognize there's so much
more to it. I often give the analogy to people
if if you walk into a movie halfway and you
see someone's life, you might think they have the best
life in the world. If you didn't see the start
of the movie and then the end of the movie,
you don't really know their full picture. So for that reason,

(19:00):
I'd love for you to shed some light in context
on that.

Speaker 1 (19:03):
Yeah, I think you're exactly right. I mean, there's this
snapshot and then there's the film, and I think in
my early mind, in the reel of the film, that
was probably playing in my head, and as I said,
feeling like there was a reason that I was here
and that purpose. And if somebody would have told me
that ultimately I'd be getting drugs make and working to

(19:24):
cure a disease and finding a cure for a disease,
I would have never believed it. But I did always
have that feeling of somebody, as I said, that was
going to get me. And to put a little context
to California has had, there was the pillowcase rapists in
the seventies, and then as if we all needed another
pillowcase rapist, there's been another one since. But the pillowcase

(19:47):
rapist that unfortunately was involved in my early days in life,
came into the house when my whole family was home.
We lived in a duplex, was actually in West Hollywood.
As again I used to because I felt I was
always a target of potentially something. I would get teased

(20:07):
a little bit, and I had an older brother that
would sometimes tease me, and so he's a very nice guy,
but sometimes you know, people just I think nobody ever
thought that anything was going to happen to me. And
one night when I came home, it's that sort of
really scary scene you see in a movie where you're
in your room, and I had the room off the
back of the house and I look up in the

(20:29):
mirror and I see somebody right behind me, you know,
and it's that awful thing, and you're like in a
ski mask holding something with it looked like a dish
rag hanging over it. And I thought it was my brother,
maybe playing a joke. And I turn around and I'm like,
you know, what are you doing? And I heard in

(20:52):
a voice that I knew was completely unrecognizable to me
when somebody says, don't move that it was not a
good thing. At that point, I thought, since my whole
family was home and it was really late at night,
I thought I was really the last victim and that
he had, you know, killed my entire family and I
was the last one. And without going into all the

(21:14):
horrible details of it, it was definitely a situation where
for the first time I really experienced that disassociation going
out of body where I made a really conscious which
then kind of goes unconscious decision to be above what
was happening. To my body and to the situation at

(21:35):
the time, and obviously thinking about my family, and it
was like really looking down and I just thought, wow,
I'm seventeen. I was just about I thought to graduate
high school. And I thought, I can't believe it ends here,
you know, like this doesn't feel like the end of
the story. There's a reason I'm here, and I knew.
I had a moment where when I saw a part

(21:56):
of his calling card and trademark is when he had
me in a position where I could see he was
pulling the pillowcase off of my pillow. What he did
was he would then put them over your head and
he suffocated, and that would be you know, obviously lights
out for you. And when I saw that as he

(22:17):
was starting to put it over my head, I really
made this very decision like I am going to on
three and you know where you have that where you're
thinking is that you're so freaked out, like is a
sound going to come out? Am I going to just
be screaming in my head? But I was like, on three,
I'm going to scream, and I'm going to scream really loud,

(22:38):
and this is either going to be the end of
me because he did have a knife, and he did
had stabbed my leg and my stomach and part of
my face that I thought, well, this could be the end.
But I just in my head counted to three, and
on three, I screamed and he dropped the knife. Surprisingly,

(22:59):
he pulled off his ski mask. I couldn't really identify him,
but I guess again that another sort of calling card
that they knew it was him. And he ran out,
and my door in my bedroom I remember, you know,
sometimes would get stuck and he's like trying to pull
the get out, and I'm like, oh my gosh. So
it was just and then obviously I ran upstairs to
find out that my parents they were asleep. I was

(23:21):
the only victim in the house because he had come
in through the put his hand up through the dog
door that we had. It's you know, we didn't really
have security in the house per se. Then it was
really just locked the door, and he had unlocked I
never have a dog door again, the door, and that's
how he had gotten in.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
I literally got chows listening to that story because it's
so you know, it's such a horrific, horrendous thing to
have to live through and I'm grateful you shared it
with us. Thank you so much for being vulnerable and
open and sharing that. How do you not let that

(24:05):
let you live in fear for the rest of your life.
What's the next thing you do from something like that?
Because that would be if you didn't do anything, ever,
it would be completely valid because it's such a painful
experience to go through. Yeah, how do you respond? How
do you react? What's the first thing you do after
something like.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
I mean, obviously, you know I was hysterical, and I
was you know, there was the relief of my parents
and you know, being okay, but you know, there was
just I knew that I could never go back in
my house. I left, I didn't graduate high school, and
you know, I got married, like as soon as I
turned eighteen. I didn't want to be alone. So for me,

(24:47):
it really manifested it in fear of being by myself,
of somebody getting me again. But I also knew that
there just was a reason that I was here. And
it was shortly after that actually that that's when I
started going to the jails and started to do the
work there because I thought, how does this happen? Like,
how do people go down these roads. You know, what

(25:10):
is it that you know makes somebody make the choices
in their life? And I just knew that for me,
I wanted to find what it is ultimately that I
was supposed to be doing. And the closest thing at
that time, because I wasn't going to be going to
college because I didn't graduate high school was going to
beauty school. I thought, I can get a I can

(25:31):
get my own little scholarship there and go and you know,
start doing it through the one way that I knew.
The only skill that I thought I had was in
this kind of being this creative and wanting to help
women look and feel better about themselves. So I just
I started there really with no money and that vision
and decided that that's that's what I was going to do.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
It's a tough question, but did you get an answer
when you started visiting the prisons of why people did
certain things? Did you did you find or discover anything
or hear anything? And on top of that, did the
pillar gase rapists go to prison as well?

Speaker 1 (26:07):
Yes, the pillowcase rapist was finally caught in prison and
he's no longer with us, he's gone, thank goodness. No
sadness around that for me. So, uh yeah, going to
the jails, you really see. I mean there were times
that I would go because after going twenty years and going,

(26:27):
you know, every other month, that's a lot of visits
and you hear a lot of different people's stories. And
I remember going at times where there was a mom,
a daughter, and a grandmother. They were all there and
it was just like, Wow, how does this happen? And
so there was a lot of stories of you know,
in my mind too, because I didn't want to judge.

(26:48):
I had to make everybody but like everyone's here as
a drunk driver, you know, you're sort of like I
wanted to equalize the room so that even though you're
maybe seeing the teardrops at the end of somebody eyes
of you know, maybe what they've done in life. I
didn't want to judge. I wanted to just stay to
my to my message, which I could see that doing

(27:11):
these makeovers and people seeing themselves differently, especially women who
had maybe had to like crazy eyebrows or whatever it was,
that it had really sort of changed them into just
somebody that they looked different, but who they were inside
was very different. I wanted to get to that, and

(27:32):
I wanted them to feel that, you know, you may
be in jail today, but you know, when you get
out tomorrow or when you get out, you know there's
a whole new world out there, and there can be
a whole new you out there. And that was that
really took on the life of the power of mascara.
And obviously it was never about selling them my cosmetics

(27:53):
or anything like that, because I'm very much for women
and whatever makeup they like it.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
Yeah, it works absolutely, and I think it's incredible how
much our appearance does affect our confidence. And I've seen it.
There are so many of these great videos on social
media of a lot of hairdressers and barbers going onto
the streets and doing free cuts for the homeless, and
you hear their reaction. I've seen some of these videos

(28:19):
where you hear their reaction before and after and how
they feel about looking at themselves in the mirror and
how it can be such a boost for confidence as well. Yes,
and so that definitely resonates. How did it go from
being your passion and something that you are so connected
to as a way of helping people build self esteem

(28:41):
to then becoming a very successful business. There's lots of
steps in between. What were some of the key things
you'd think transformed it from a great small business to
something quite successful.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
Well, I think basically it's really in the world of
the no makeup makeup, nothing existed, you know, and especially
so you think about in you know, when you're in
the jails again, I was trying to strip down people
to the essence of who they were, and to me,
at the core of that is this no makeup makeup
that's really and so there was nothing in the world

(29:17):
of say foundations at the time that would be kind
of the starting point for that. That to me was
going to be what I built my business around and became.
You know, I created over six hundred products over the
course of thirteen years. But my Foundation, which I sold
millions millions of units of, was just based on more
natural looking skin tone shades that look like you didn't

(29:41):
have layers of makeup on. So that really came from
not only the jobs that I was doing, but from
all those years of going to the jails and really
wanting to help women look like themselves and not you know,
pile on all the makeup. So when I said, as
I was making these shades and pots and pants in

(30:01):
my garage. I had to find a cosmetic chemist. You know,
like at the time you're looking in the Yellow Pages,
nobody out there knows what the Yellow Pages are, that
that's a directory that, yeah, exactly, and you're going in.
I found a cosmetic chemist and said, hey, you know,
I want to this is what I want to do.
I want to create these shades, these textures, these fields.

(30:23):
And I started. And then while I again wanting to
teach what I do and never having graduated or gone
to college, I thought, you know what, I want to
teach this. I'm going to call UCLA. They have an
extension program. Maybe I could teach some of what I'm
doing as a Hollywood makeup artist and teach that. I

(30:45):
did that for ten years as an extension course that
was again sold out every quarter. People wanted to learn
how to do it. Whether it was I had so
many men taking it, you know, guys that maybe just
wanted to meet gals, you know, and do their makeup,
but it was another way that I could just see
people wanted to connect in this way. So I thought,

(31:09):
this is great. And then through doing that at UCLA,
one of my students actually said, you know, I know
this group of guys that are selling products through television,
and I said, wow, I think I have a great
idea of how to sell products through TV color cosmetics,
which no one was doing at the time because this

(31:29):
is the late eighties and I hadn't really perfected my kit,
but you know, we do that little bit of that
fake it till you make it, and act as if
so when she put me together with the guys, I
basically said, I have this idea for these color kits,
you know, peach, pink, and red, and I'll put all
of the colors and products and things you need together
and then I'm going to teach you how to do it.

(31:50):
And basically, that long story short, they decided to roll
the dice on that and shoot an infomercial, and the
very infomercial I did with two celebrities at the time,
Ali McGrath and Lisa Hartman, we started doing a million
dollars a week in sales. I mean, clearly there was

(32:11):
an appetite for women wanting to know how to do
their makeup and feeling that confidence and reassurance that I
tried to give in my three hour tutorials that you
never see.

Speaker 2 (32:24):
Now, that's incredible, that's amazing. And did you find that
building this business and helping these people and helping your
customers but also women that you met in the prisons,
did that help how you felt about yourself and what
you'd been through or was there not a correlation? Was
healing a part of that, or was healing having to

(32:45):
happen separate that.

Speaker 1 (32:46):
Yeah, healing is a part of everything. I think we
all just you know, healing happens, whether sometimes we even
know it or not. It's on like a cellular level,
so you know, it's whatever piece of what you're doing
at the time. I've gone through so many different stages
of healing because I've gone through so many different experiences,
as I said, you know, as my life has gone

(33:08):
from like what I look at in the two parts,
you know, the mess Scarra to medicine, so it's all
all of that journey has informed me and my healing
in so many different ways.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
Did you find that you were saying that your experience
made you rush into not wanting to be alone and
obviously got married very young. Did you find that led
to some codependency which caused challenges in relationships or did
you actually was that something that you feel your partner
was good at navigating and dealing with, because I can

(33:42):
imagine that when you don't want to be alone, and
of course, based on the traumatic experience that you had,
it's very valid, but I wonder how that affects the
other person as well, and how you navigated that, especially
in the early years.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
Well, I think it started even earlier because I had
you know, as I said, my parents had a lot
of problems together, and my biological dad put me up
for adoption when I was nine years old, so my
stepdad had adopted me, and so I really very early on,
i'd say, really never felt, you know, how to have
a relationship, especially with a father, with a man, and

(34:18):
the fact that I'm now married, this is my third time,
So yeah, i'd say, did I have codependent problems? And
being frightened and you know, being afraid to be alone
definitely created issues because I was afraid and I was
still trying to figure out me. And so i'd definitely

(34:40):
say that's been a theme. And even now I've worked
really hard, you know, and especially in raising three kids.
You know, when you have your first child, you really
have to think about all of your own stuff. And
there were times where I always say, you know, I
didn't just hang my hat on my son, I hung
my wardrobe, you know. I mean, you bring a lot

(35:01):
of your stuff. So it's been really a conscious thing,
and I think for all of us thinking about how
the past informs us of what we bring to the table,
and how we have to navigate our relationships, our love relationships,
and all of our family relationships. And it can be
really challenging, and you can become the quote unquote identified

(35:24):
patient and how you sort of navigate that in your
world in your life.

Speaker 2 (35:29):
I've often spoken to doctors, to their experts, and they
talk about how much we need to look at our
genetic past and our history and our family of health.
And it's so interesting how on the physical level that's true,
and it's true on the emotional level as well. But
sometimes it can be so hard to look at the

(35:50):
emotional background of our family and how it's affected us,
because a lot of us go through life believing that
our parents are super human. In the beginning, some of
us feel that way for a long, long long time,
and it's almost like the earlier we've recognized that our

(36:11):
parents are humans just like we are, and we all
have challenges and flaws that sometimes the healthier conversations and
connection we can have with them as well. Your journey
with your children has been a labor of love in
so many ways. And I want to talk about Ali,
who I had the pleasure of meeting, who you know

(36:31):
is your co author on this book, yes, and has
been at the core of your journey and connection to
the medical world, from mascara to medicine and looking into
that world for you. As you said earlier, you were like,
I didn't really feel like I was loved in that way.

(36:52):
Walk me through what it feels like when your daughter,
who you love so deeply gets diagnosed with an illness
that is very rare, and on top of that, you
here she doesn't have very long to live. Oh, I
just can't imagine. I'm not a parent, but I can't imagine. Therefore,
I can't imagine what that feels like. Can you walk

(37:14):
us through what that moment feels like when you've raised
someone for what fourteen years?

Speaker 1 (37:20):
And you know, yeah, I mean my life changed, you know,
my life changed when Ali was you know, I have
three children, and when Ali was diagnosed at fourteen, you
know where, you know, completely healthy, fine, and you know,
we're going to a premier, a premiere of a movie.
We're going to go see something. And she's saying she

(37:42):
has an eyeball headache, and I'm thinking, oh, you know, okay,
you know, and she says her vision's getting a little fuzzy,
and I'm just thinking, well, I'm you know, I'm sure
it's nothing. We'll go see the eye doctor, will get
you some drops, and you know, you don't think anything
of it. And then all of a sudden, I find
out you're going through to the eye doctor that he

(38:03):
doesn't she doesn't examine and says, like, she's got this
optic neritis and we need to find out optic neurritis
is the swelling of the optic nerve and we need
to find out what's going on and go to an
op the neural ologist and find out that, you know,
And now I'm going he's saying, you've got to go
to a neurologist, and ultimately the neurologist is taking a

(38:26):
series of doing a series of tests, wanted to do
a spinal tap, a lumbar puncture, and I'm like why,
Like she's just got something going on with her eyes.
What are y'all doing? You know? And it was it
was really scary. And he's decided he's going to do
some blood work the neurologists and he starts checking boxes
and one of the boxes they check is for something
called neuromiolitis optica. And I said, oh, what is that?

(38:49):
And he goes, oh, don't worry about it. That would
be a nightmare. She's not going to have that. I
don't even know why I've ever checked that box. And
of course, you know how that goes check that box.
And it turned out that that's what Ali had. And
so when they called with the results, they basically told
myself and my husband that she had four years to live.
And it was just life changed. Life changed I in

(39:13):
my mind. Right then, I said, okay, well I'm closing it.
At that point, I had a billion dollar empire of
you know, my cosmetic world. I'm closing that book and
I'm going to open the book on medicine and here
I am I make lipglass like in cure disease. Yeah. Right,
But I was going to do it. I was going
to find the way and save my daughter because it

(39:36):
was just I mean it takes you to your knees,
it takes you to the floor. It just the air
goes out of the room. You know, you're just like
you don't even know where to begin, and you literally
just have to start somewhere. And that's where I just thought,

(39:56):
in that moment, that was my purpose. Everything came back
to me, the disassociating wall, you know, the rape was happening.
I was like, oh, oh, this is it. This is
why I'm here. I'm supposed to cure this. And it
was just like that just became the mission from that moment.

Speaker 2 (40:17):
For you. In that moment, it sounds like all of
your pains really became your purpose. And that can sometimes
be the hardest path to purpose because there are several
different paths. There's passion, there's a profession, there's people you love.
But then when it's your pain, your pain of seeing

(40:39):
your child suffer and getting news like that, what was
useful from your cosmetic background that did transfer over into
healthcare and medicine or was it just like none of
this is useful and I need to build a different
skill set because I can imagine and that that transition

(41:01):
is not easy mentally, emotionally and of course logistically.

Speaker 1 (41:07):
Yeah, it's not easy on any level. Spiritually, I mean,
you name it. What I drew upon more than anything
was everyone my whole career, my whole life, has always said, oh,
you know, even when I was starting my cosmetic company,
oh you can't do that. You know, there's a million
cosmetic companies out there. So it was the everyone up
to that point always telling me I couldn't do it that.

(41:28):
I was like, no, I can do this, I can
do this. I didn't know how I was going to
do this, but I thought no because, as I said,
and I really it's all about for me, it's what
the power of love and intention, anything's possible. And I
loved my daughter and I was going to set this
intention and I'd been able to manifest you know, whether

(41:52):
it's been through my creative visualization. I see it in
my head. I make the picture, and then I'm like,
I'm going to work to create this and I need
to find this cure and I'm going to be able
to I'm going to sit and ask all the questions
I put together. The first thing I said to myself

(42:13):
is I have to learn about this condition. I've got
to educate myself and there I cut to you know,
put a group together, and I went to Stanford and
I started studying molecular medicine with a group of advisors
to understand the process of this particular condition and really
start learning. And just sat there with a group of

(42:34):
doctors and advisors that I would just pick from. They're
in the world of MS or in loopus or rheumatoid
arthritis and these other autoimmune diseases, and I just started
saying telling them my personal story and of you know,
how can you help me? And you know, basically, I
was fortunate that I could say, I'm I have a checkbook,

(42:56):
and if you're willing to work the way I need
you to all work, which was everyone was going to
have to collaborate and work together and share information because
everybody said they don't do that in the medical world.
I said, We're going to find a cure, and this
is going to be a model for how we look
at curing disease in the world. And I mean I

(43:16):
said it on a very big stage for myself. But
the biggest thing was always to find a cure and
at least find some therapeutics to help me. As Allie
was suffering at the time.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
What were some of the biggest roadblocks you mentioned one
of them their collaboration. What were some of the biggest
roadblocks you saw in healthcare in curing these seemingly incurable
diseases because you went in there. Of course, as you said,
you'd worked hard, first of all to build this incredible company, right,

(43:49):
Therefore you had resources. It's not like you just had
resources because you inherited them or you had them from
somewhere else. But even with that, you had to learn
bring people together, figure it out, like what was some
of the blocks that you ran up against or that
you saw that existed before you were able to create
and curate your own teams.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
I mean the biggest thing is for me, I needed
to get to people's brain trust, and I really need
to do the way I thought was in was through
their shared humanity and sense of their own purpose, like
always bringing it back to well, why did you get
into this, Why did you decide to be a doctor

(44:28):
in the world of MS research or things? So that
was the positive side. The reason I had to do
that is because it was very clear to me very
early on that people don't share or work together. They
all wanted sort of their own spotlight for their findings
or their published work. But in the world of rare disease,
which I found out at the time, they were saying

(44:49):
there was maybe ten thousand people worldwide that have this.
Since my work, there's over a million people in counting
that have this because it's so misdiagnosed, whether it's MS
or other things. So I had to get people to
work together and share. That was going to be the
biggest obstacle. But because I had the power of at

(45:09):
least having a checkbook and always feeling very blessed and
fortunate for that that I could say, I will pay you,
tell me who you need to get in the room
and at the table, but you're all going to work
together and share together. So I'd say that that was
the biggest obstacle. And then finding people, and then honestly
what became more and more as I went down this

(45:31):
through this journey to cure anything, even in a rare disease,
I had to I found out that I had to
build a blood bank. Now can you imagine, here's all
of a sudden you're working to, you know, find your
way with just getting researchers and scientists to the table.
But it became quickly apparent to me that they said, Victoria,

(45:54):
for us to do the research, we need to have
we need to have blood CECTS specimens. We need the
material to do this research. So I thought, wow, now
I have to create a repository, a blood bank, and
start collecting blood from patients. When I'm hearing it so

(46:15):
rare and when Ali was first diagnosed, I was trying
to just find one person that had this. Now I
have to amass an entire blood bank of specimens around
the world, and that was seemingly I thought, how do
you start? How do you do that? How I did that?

Speaker 2 (46:34):
How do you do that?

Speaker 1 (46:35):
How do you do that? I hired a nurse that
I said, I'm going to find where these patients are.
I'm going to send this nurse with a little cooler.
She would show up with a little cooler and she'd
go to Alaska or she'd go anywhere, literally taking samples
and bringing them back. That's how I started. I now

(46:56):
have over one hundred thousand specimens in my own blood
bank and viral repository that is used for drug companies.
I mean, it's it's changed the whole landscape. But if
somebody would have told me, honestly, Jay, that I would
be like having to build a blood bank, that I'd
be doing that. I mean even early on when I
was trying to get patients to just give their samples,

(47:20):
I'd be like, how about if we do like blush
for blood? You get a blush if you give me
your blood because a lot you know our women, but
you get creative and you think about that. And I
knew that the biggest way that I could make the
difference was getting all these people together in a room
working in the same direction.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
Well, I mean that you know, it's so inspiring because
it's so You've just had so many moments in your
life that I think it would be natural and it
would be completely okay to give up and slow down
and just accept. But you and you also, I'm intrigued

(48:05):
because when I've spent time with you and even today,
it's not like you're fighting. It's almost like you're creating.
And I don't know, I'd love to hear your thoughts
on those two sentiments, because often we think we have
to fight to stay alive. You started by saying you've
always been a survivor. Yeah, what do you think is

(48:27):
core to surviving difficult situations? Is it fighting or is
it creating opportunity or what is it?

Speaker 1 (48:36):
You know, I've never looked at it as for example,
put in the in the mix there the thought of
like being a victim, Like so if you think of
being a victim, you think more of fighting. So I
don't think of myself as a victim or you know,
it was never like, oh, why is this happening to me?

Speaker 2 (48:53):
Was? How did you not have that?

Speaker 1 (48:55):
I mean, I wish there's a lot of times, clearly
I wish that I had not gone through through a
rape and gone through what I went through. And there's
times that I was like, what would it have been
like if I graduated high school and I went to
college and all that? But you know, that wasn't in
the cards. That wasn't my journey or but I've always
tried to I always try to zoom out and look

(49:18):
at you know, why is this? You know, what's the
way in where can I I always want to do
something good and make the good come out of it.
That's just how I've always been and I want to
find that way, and I genuinely always want to help
and whatever it was whether it was teaching women makeup,

(49:40):
which is now, which is you know, when I'm sitting
there at the pharmaceutical company and showing them the path
why they need to help all these people and how
they can and again going through their brain trust to
get them. I mean, think about having to get pharmaceutical companies.
The fact that I got three drugs made people say

(50:03):
that never ever happens, let alone in a rare disease world.
How passionate you have to be about what you're talking
about and wanting to So it's not really fighting for it,
it's just helping people find it within themselves. That's what
I do. I find that one piece, like what you

(50:24):
do so beautifully, you find that thread, that thing that
binds all of us, that sense of shared sense of
humanity and that purpose. I had to find that purpose
in the room for all those people.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
Yeah, well, what did you end up so far? What
have you accomplished and how Obviously I named some of
it there but in the intro, but could you explain
what has been accomplished and what you're still pursuing so
that we can just understand from a you know, success
point of view, Like when you've invented these three drugs,

(50:58):
but what is yeah, what have what has that achieved?
What has that stopped? And then what are you still
trying to figure out?

Speaker 1 (51:03):
So and I never I was hipful to get people
that invented them because you know, going to obviously genetech
and where they really you know, that's what they do.
But now what I learned, so I started to people
are always going, how are you doing this? Like like
this this sounds crazy. You're like making lip gloss and

(51:25):
all of a sudden you're getting these drugs made. Like
there's a there's a lot in between those that little
journey there. And that's why I wrote The Power of Rare,
a Blueprint for Medical Revolution, which is really this is
because there's other moms, dads, families that are you know,
going through stories like mine, and I said, I'm going
to write down at least this is what I did,
because people always want to know how you did it.

(51:47):
I found the biggest magic was always bringing early on,
I brought people together. I had I brought together over gosh,
forty countries together, and hundreds of researchers and scientists and
page together. So that's always been so critical in what
I do. But what I'm doing now is so people
have said, wow, how have you done it? Look at

(52:11):
what you've done, Look at autoimmune disease in general, autoimmune
disease right now, which is what you know Ali has,
and yes she's on a drug now that is more
controlling things. But I decided as I listened to you know,
our president, which is great, he talks about cancer and moonshots,

(52:32):
I thought, I want to do a cure shot. A
cure shot. We don't need to go to the moon
to start curing disease here, and autoimmune disease and cancer
are opposite sides, are the same coin. And I thought,
people start going, have you looked at what you're doing
in the world of autoimmune disease, this particular one, using

(52:53):
this as a blueprint for curing a lot of other
autommune diseases. So that's really what I'm passionate about now.
And I have to say I have an amazing team
that supports me. I couldn't have gone through this journey
without a doctor Michael Yaman, who's head of molecular Medicine
at UCLA. I mean, he's the scientist that you know.

(53:13):
We've gone everywhere from you know, the Harvard's to the
Mayo to we were doing work with Verily at Google
looking at biomarkers. I mean, he's always by my side
and probably one of the smartest people. So I'm very
fortunate that I've put together a great team of people
and they see how far we've come. So I'm actually

(53:34):
looking at how this story ends. Is I'm gonna like
bringing be a big part in working and curing autoimmune
disease around the world, because you know, Ali said early
on in her journey, and her journey is really for
her to talk about. But she said, Mom, this isn't
just about you and you and me anymore. And that

(53:55):
was a turning point. I was like, you're right, it's not.
And when I see now all the patients and the
parents and you know, and I just feel if my
voice can help give voice to to other people, this
is this is what I'm doing.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
And for our views and for our listeners, how is Ellie.

Speaker 1 (54:15):
Alie's doing really well. She passed the bar, she went
to law school. She she was her own champion. I mean,
I think early on, you know, she was like, Mom,
I don't want to know what I have. Don't tell me,
which was really can you imagine in the early days
of walking around thinking, oh my gosh, my daughter has
four years doesn't even want to know, but she goes,
I know, whatever it is, mom, you'll you'll figure it out.

(54:37):
And but Alie's really the one who has uh has
figured it out, and and she's doing really well and
she's a champion, and you know, you see how the
toll it takes even on you know, I have two
other children, and one at the time was a musician,
you know, on the road opening for One Direction for years,
and he's out on the road, and I'm you know,

(54:59):
going and going to these different institutions. And I should
say because as people are going through this and whatever
your journey is. Even while I was going through this
and this was Alley's, there was at one point that
I myself became diagnosed with cancer and I had to

(55:20):
really sort of go, this can't be again that visualization.
I was like, this isn't going to be the movie
where like the mom's trying to save the daughter but
then she gets cancer and she dies or Lorenzo's Oil
which people told me about where you know he dies.
It was like, no, I'm going to whatever the odds are,

(55:41):
whatever things happen, there's another way to look at it
and another way to persevere and get through it.

Speaker 2 (55:50):
What have you learned about? So, Like, let's say there
are people in the audience who are listening or watching
today they know someone who's struggling with an autoimmune disease
or someone in their life or maybe even and even
if they are, I have people to my family and life.
Where did they start? What do they do? Where do
they get help? Like? What what are the best places
that you've seen or places of support, especially if people

(56:13):
on in a you know, financial don't have financial capacity
to help solve some of those things.

Speaker 1 (56:19):
Well, first and foremost they have to start within. They
have to find their voice and not be a victim
of it, but go what what can I do in
my situation? When I created I created an app Enimo
Resources and I started to put together building an actual
community for patients to have support groups. So look for

(56:42):
other people that are going through what you're going through
and start going through that. You know, having people that
you surround yourself in life. Try to put together a team,
even at whatever level. And I know people will look
at and I've heard people like betray it. We don't
have the money you have and all of that. No,
but you have a voice, and you know if something

(57:02):
you're hearing doesn't feel right, getting those second opinions. Advocate
for yourself. That's a really, really big part of it
and a big part of what I do when I'm
doing my patient days where i bring together hundreds of
patients together, I'm advocating for them, but I'm getting them
ultimately to advocate for themselves because that's what they need

(57:25):
to do and seek out. Just do the research, go online,
look at the different things that you know, and sort
of vet them for yourself and see what feels right.
It's all about taking action. I'm working on another book
right now that'll come out next year, but it's called

(57:46):
Worrier to Warrior and Worry. I always say, worry ways
more when you carry it alone. So you got to
take that worry and kind of redirect it and channel
it and do the things become that warrior for yourself
that will ultimately lead you to a better place.

Speaker 2 (58:08):
Victoria, You've been so vulnerable and generous and kind today
with sharing your journey, sharing challenging moments, and today I
just want everyone who's listening watching to know we have
only skimmed the iceberg of the amount of work, the
depth the story, and so I highly recommend that both
of these books, saving each other and the power of
Rare if you're truly fascinated by the depths of this

(58:31):
story and journey, that you dive into those two books,
because like I said, we've only we've only touched the
tip of the iceberg. But Victoria, we end every on
purpose interview with a final five or a fast five,
which have to be answered in one word to one
sentence maximum, and I always ruin it by asking for
more details. So that's up to me. But Victoria, I'd

(58:52):
like to ask you your final five. The first question
is what is the best advice you've ever heard or received.

Speaker 1 (59:01):
I'd say my mom early on said wash your face,
put on some makeup, and just go out there and
do it.

Speaker 2 (59:11):
I like that, that makes sense, that's the makeup allnes.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
And then I started a cosmetic company.

Speaker 2 (59:18):
What you tell your kids every day? Just yeah, that's great.
Second question, what is the worst advice you've ever heard
or received?

Speaker 1 (59:25):
You'll never be able to do that. You know you're
you're aiming too high.

Speaker 2 (59:32):
So true. Question number three, how would you define your
current purpose?

Speaker 1 (59:38):
Oh, gosh, I mean that's my purpose is to cure
autoimmune disease around the world. But really is my purpose
is to just be a good a good person, a
kind person, to help people and truly just share all
the blessings of the good fortune in my life. That's
really my purpose.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Question numb before you use this phrase a few times
in the interview, like finding your voice, you have to
have a voice finding What is the best way for
someone to find their voice when they feel they've had
to be quiet, silence, or they never had one in

(01:00:21):
the first place.

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
Well, I don't believe nobody's had not had a voice
in the first place. We all have that. It's for me.
I always encourage people to just to get quiet with yourself,
which is different than becoming quiet, but getting quiet with
yourself kind of a lot of times I use that

(01:00:43):
visualization of just zooming out and hearing myself say it
in my mind and then letting the words come out,
just like they did when I made my scream and
I was afraid so and those words came out. Is
be willing to do it? Just just do it, you know,

(01:01:06):
I'm just that's so important to me. Just get quiet,
center yourself, think about it, and then just say it,
move it, move through it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
Just do it, beautiful. And fifth and final question, if
you could create one law that everyone in the world
had to follow, what would it be.

Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
If we could all just get back to our shared
sense of humanity? You know that, really more than not
people are good people. I have seen and that is
one thing, Jay, I'll tell you working with forty different
countries and all the different researchers and scientists from around

(01:01:47):
the world, when they walk in the doors of my conferences,
everybody there is there to really help people. All the politics,
all the other stuff were there to help people, and
just that if we could just get back to that
shared sense of humanity and loving one another, it would

(01:02:08):
be nothing better than that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
Thank you, Victoria. Is there anything that I haven't asked
you today that you deeply want to share, or something
on your heart or your mind or your soul that
you feel pull to share?

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
I don't know what do you think people hearing this
will they will they benefit from it? I mean you're
hearing it from the first time.

Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
It's so I mean, I meant everything I said, it's
so honestly moving to hear a journey of someone just
a just a real human story of someone who achieved
material success after so much personal tribulation and trauma, to

(01:02:51):
then switch to a service based life and now dedicated
even further of course through helping ALI, but now to
helping autoimmune diseases as a whole. Yeah, I mean, I
don't know if there's a better story up for a movie.
You know, it's like that, you know, I don't know

(01:03:13):
if it's almost like you couldn't write it. Yeah, because
it's so powerful that someone would be able to rise
from those situations, even you know, third marriage you said lately.

Speaker 1 (01:03:28):
Yeah, yeah, of course, yeahah yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:31):
But I mean, like to go through that, after what
you've been through, to have that ability to find love
again and create love and then to have a child
and kind of have everything picture perfect externally, it may
seem to then have the worst news you could potentially
ask for, And you know, I think it's going to

(01:03:52):
move and help a lot of people I wouldn't have.
I mean, I don't know many people who've lived that life.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
So yeah, well, you know what I mean, honestly, just
the fact that You've given me the opportunity because you know,
there are probably a lot of people that are going
through what they go through, and it's hard to get
people to pay attention. Getting press early on was like
forget it. I mean it's like it's not sexy, it's
not you know, people are talking about whatever. It's always

(01:04:19):
something that and to me, it's like, this is a
great story for how things can actually happen when you
really do see how these doctors and patients and people
work together and what's been built. It really is extraordinary.
I mean it's been fifteen years now and just even
you know, just going through the Hall of Fame, you know,

(01:04:41):
which was amazing. Just to have that experience of having
Gloria Steinem induct me into the Hall of Fame or
the Pope which will get you there was all extraordinary.
You know, who would think that somebody who didn't graduate
high school and you know, as all of a sudden
those kinds of things.

Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
How much have you invested now in this gen How
much have you personally invested into this I've put.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
In eighty million dollars of my own money.

Speaker 2 (01:05:10):
Yeah, yeah, that's incredible. Yeah, And that's that's that's important too.

Speaker 1 (01:05:14):
And that eighty million dollars is really you know, you
look at that, it's hundreds of millions that a pharmaceutical
company had to put in. And I had to show
them and build a model to show them how they
can make money, you know. And I could have just
you know, become angry or like why do I have
to do that? They can just do that, but you
have to you have to kind of I sit in

(01:05:36):
everybody's seat always in my mind in the room and go,
how do I get everyone aligned so that we can
all keep moving forward? And that was really really important
is to look at what everybody's needs were in that room,
what different countries, different institutions. But then saying to the
Mayo Clinic, like, unless you know you work with or

(01:06:01):
whoever that is, you know, I'm not writing this check.
So everybody had to work with another institution in all
the research.

Speaker 2 (01:06:09):
I think that's the most beautiful thing that it's you're
just using the success you had in service. I mean,
what better use of success is there than in service
to others. Yeah, and now that you're dedicated to helping
hopefully prevent and solve autoimmune diseases, I mean yeah, I

(01:06:30):
feel like, so you're so right that so many people
are misdiagnosed or undiagnosed, diagnosed too late, Like I'm hearing
about it all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:06:38):
That's what this will really help JA too, is that
because so many people are misdiagnosed with different things. Most
of the patients that now have what Ali has, they've
been misdiagnosed before the doctors even knew what it was.
They were misdiagnosed with MS or so that's why there's
so many more patients than originally they thought. And I

(01:06:59):
created there's an essay that it's literally a blood test
that tells you if you have it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:04):
So how accessible is that for everyone?

Speaker 1 (01:07:08):
Anybody can get it? Anybody can get it. I mean
in this case, the doctor mark checked that box, you know,
for that test. But yeah, but that's why I created
the app and things, because when you go to an
emergency room, a lot of people they won't even know
about this condition. So and then when you're not getting treated,
you're just having more and more.

Speaker 2 (01:07:28):
How does the appo? Anyone can use it from home?

Speaker 1 (01:07:30):
The app? Yeah, it's on your phone. It's just on
your phone.

Speaker 2 (01:07:33):
I can you tell us what exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:07:35):
The app is called NM Resources and you literally download
it and it's got everything. I mean, it's it's extraordinary
to see there isn't something like this that exists. And
then it's totally free. It's got everything from the clinical
trials that are going on, to support groups. Anywhere in
the world where you are, you can find a physician.

(01:07:56):
It talks about what a relapse looks like. I mean,
if you have an attack, you go into an emergency room,
you show them the app, everything is right there. I mean,
it's really extraordinary. I want, it's something that people would
have in real time if you had this for all conditions.
I mean, people creating something like this, it's amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:08:17):
Are you trying to do that for other or timmune
diseases as well?

Speaker 1 (01:08:20):
Now what I'm doing now, especially in the one with
Alli's case, is a lot of times in different conditions,
you don't know if you're having a relapse. So I'm
working with Verile, which is part of Google, in helping
find all the biomarkers. And also I've created something called
a relapse Navigator which doctors will be using that you know,

(01:08:42):
is really kind of a shell for you can put
in the different symptoms and things that you'll be able
to patience and doctors can know if they're having attacks. So,
you know, thinking about technology now, with where we're going
to be with AI and all of these things. I mean,
when I started it, just I think there was maybe
three papers that were published on what it used to

(01:09:04):
be called before Anamodevik's disease, and now there's thousands that
have been published. Ands I've been doing this work literally
a thousands.

Speaker 2 (01:09:12):
It's been fifteen years that you've been fifteen.

Speaker 1 (01:09:14):
Years, Yeah, fifteen years. I've been doing this fifteen years.
I've waited to talk to you, or to talk in general,
just to get to get the message out there, you know,
because really it's really really tough, and I know there's
a lot of people in the world that are suffering
with these kind of conditions and diseases, and there's probably
a lot of parents that are trying to figure it

(01:09:36):
out and figure out how to make enough noise or
get the attention because autoimmune disease is not you know,
going away anytime soon until we all really put our
focus on it and know that if we can cure
autoimmune disease and cancer, I mean, think of and they
are different sides of the same coin. When you treat one,

(01:09:59):
you get the other. So it's you're much more vulnerable
to that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:03):
And what's that gap? Like what is because you always
feel I guess we assume that so much money is
going towards solving cancer and solving this. If is money,
the issue is time, the issues, collaboration, the issue, like
what's the I.

Speaker 1 (01:10:16):
Think what makes me the craziest is when people give
a lot of money, say they're very well intentioned, they're
giving money to something, but it's going to maybe to
pay for a chair for a professor, or you know,
it's not going where it needs to go one hundred percent.
You know, we're pretty much I've put in eighty million
dollars with my own money, of our family money. Every

(01:10:39):
penny goes to research and science a lot of places.
It just doesn't or it's not put to Like everything
I do is trunched. I have to see results. Everything
has to be translational, meaning bench to bedside. If you
don't see that, it's going to be really on the

(01:10:59):
critical PA have to make a difference. I don't fund it.
So a lot of money is spent on things that
you know, scientists and God bless them, but they'll research,
you know, the head of a pin forever, you know.
I mean you have to sort of be very strategic
and you have to go, Okay, where is the gold
in this that I'm going to fund it because it's

(01:11:20):
really going to make a difference.

Speaker 2 (01:11:22):
And why is it important for the people to make
a noise because like you said, like they can't help
solve it. They can't. They necessarily the solutions don't exist
right now. If someone's struggling, what's your take for the prevention,
but also like the living with for someone who you know,
what is that? Obviously some of that for NMO is

(01:11:43):
in the app. Yeah, but if it's all two immune
diseases in general, Oh.

Speaker 1 (01:11:47):
Yeah, I mean I think that basically, well, I would
tell anybody that has an autoimmune disease, look at this
and look at the things that we recommend. I mean,
obviously you've got to be speaking to your own doctors
and following your own medical advice because you know, I'm
not a doctor. I'm like doctor mom, you know, but
I would say that, you know, there's a lot more

(01:12:09):
research out there and people that are making huge advances
that a lot of people don't even know about so
you have to really advocate and do the research and
do the deep dive. Don't just go with what the
one doctor may say to you. There's a lot of
people working in these areas that you may know nothing about.
And look at it on the broad spectrum of like

(01:12:30):
set it on the world stage, look at it globally,
see what they're doing in different countries. You know, really
educate yourself. That's what I had to do. I mean
I had to really learn it and study it and
understand it so you just can't be a victim of it.
And I know that's a lot easier said than done,
especially when you're in pain and you're struggling and you

(01:12:53):
don't have money. But you got to find a way.
You just got to find a way. I always find
a way.

Speaker 2 (01:13:01):
Yeah, thank you, Victoria, Thank you so much. Thank you
the whole time. Yeah, exactly. I think it's one of
the you know, it's personal story to me, is is
the best way to help inspire and life and others.
And I think everything you shared to do will touch
people's hearts and move them into action.

Speaker 1 (01:13:20):
So thank you, well, thank you. Listen, you gave me
this opportunity.

Speaker 2 (01:13:27):
I'm grateful to call you a friend and you've told me,
you know, we've talked about so many of those things before,
but even for me to sit and hear you in
this way and knowing how it's going to impact my
community is going to be really beautiful.

Speaker 1 (01:13:39):
So yeah, thank you. Yeah. When we do a lot
of you know, I do a lot of research and
work in India as well, like worldwide, so you know
that it's just so many people that they just don't
have the access, that they don't know or they are
too afraid to you know, So anything that you can do,
I mean the best.

Speaker 2 (01:14:00):
I'm here to help. I believe in it. I agree
with you. I don't. I don't know if there's any
bigger thing to solve than healthcare. Like I don't. I
don't think there's anything more important in the world, yeah
than solving incurable diseases. Yeah, because everyone should be able
to live a healthy and yeah, and I.

Speaker 1 (01:14:18):
Think that's why if people go, well, gosh, if she
did it and like no experience other you know, like
the way I started and found my way into it.
But when you actually that's when I honestly, when people
started saying to me, you know this is actually going
to change MS or this is actually going to change
lupis and rheumatroit arthritis, and that I was like, really,

(01:14:40):
Like then, I just thought, this is this is this
is the this is the work. This is my life's work,
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:14:47):
Thank you, Victoria. Thank you to everyone who's been listening
and watching back at home. Please make sure that you
share this with friends you know would be inspired by it,
moved by it, and please let me know what really
resonated with you and stood out for you. A big
thang out to Victoria again, thank you, and thank you
so much for your friendship and your service. Victoria means

(01:15:08):
the world. Thank you so much, thank.

Speaker 1 (01:15:09):
You, thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:15:10):
If this year you're trying to live longer, live happier,
live healthier, go and check out my conversation with the
world's biggest longevity doctor, Peter Attia on how to slow
down aging and why your emotional health is directly impacting
your physical health.

Speaker 3 (01:15:27):
Acknowledge that there is surprisingly little known about the relationship
between nutrition and health, and people are going to be
shocked to hear that, because I think most people think
the exact opposite.

Speaker 2 (01:15:39):
Let's be honest, life is stressful. It's work, it's relationships
and the state of the world. But there's a way
to bring that stress level down. Calm. It's the number
one app for mental wellness, with tons of content to
manage anxiety, promote concentration, and help you unwind. There's music, meditation,
and more. Calm makes it easy to de stress. You

(01:16:01):
can literally do a one minute breathing exercise. Personally, I
love the soundscapes. Nothing like a little rain on leaves
to help soothe my nervous system. I've actually been working
with Calm for a couple of years now, and I'd
love for you to check out my series on reducing
overwhelm eight short practices Quick Relief. Right now, listeners of

(01:16:22):
On Purpose get forty percent off a subscription to Calm
Premium at Calm dot com. Forward slash j dot c
l M dot com Forward slash Jay for forty percent off.
Calm your Mind, Change your Life,

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Host

Jay Shetty

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC

The Breakfast Club

Crime Junkie

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#1 Way to Find Confidence Within When You Have Low Self- Esteem with Victoria Jackson