00:00You are, I would say, the OG celebrity founder.
00:05You have been 10 years of Honest Company.
00:09A little more than that.
00:11A little bit more than that?
00:13Totally.
00:14Okay. Tell us, how does it feel 10 years later?
00:18With me in the business, I was so hard on myself for so long.
00:23And then I got to a place where I gave myself some grace.
00:26I take in the lessons of the challenges or the hardships
00:31and also allow myself to receive the wins.
00:36I used to be, up until not too long ago, wildly uncomfortable
00:40with taking in anything that was good.
00:44I felt so undeserving.
00:46So I think that's another thing.
00:49Maybe when there's so few of us at the table
00:53in those positions of power, especially,
00:58we do make up 50% of the population,
01:00but we're so wildly underrepresented in business,
01:04in a lot of power rooms.
01:07And when you don't see yourself,
01:09you feel like maybe you don't deserve to be there.
01:11And that's fake news, right?
01:13It's the conditioning that we're used to,
01:16that we grew up with, that we have to unwind.
01:19It's been an amazing journey, and very fulfilling.
01:26It's cool how it can take on so many different waves
01:30as you grow.
01:32So the company started with a more narrow selection
01:36of baby products, wipes, and personal care,
01:40and has expanded.
01:42How do you guide the strategy of a now publicly traded company?
01:47I started with 17 products
01:50in three pretty large sectors.
01:55I felt like I needed to test out
01:58whether there was going to be reception of clean
02:03in these pretty major categories.
02:06Home, detergent space, the personal care space,
02:11which is not necessarily beauty, but kind of.
02:14It's like what you put on your skin,
02:16what you put around the home,
02:18which is the detergents and cleaning.
02:20And then obviously, the thing that's going to touch,
02:23probably the most vulnerable people, which are babies.
02:26So that's why I chose those three categories.
02:29And what I was really trying to solve for, or tackle,
02:32is the injustice that we face every day
02:36in being exposed to unnecessary and harmful chemicals
02:41that actually cause lots of illness.
02:45And these companies that are making these chemicals
02:49that put them in the products that are in,
02:51on, and around all of us every day.
02:54And I was like, maybe there can be
02:58a more human way to approach business.
03:01And so I really was trying to tackle
03:04these sort of like giant categories
03:07in my small, little, tiny way.
03:09And that's why I created a company
03:11that went into three different pretty big categories.
03:1417 products.
03:16And I launched online because I felt like
03:18that was going to give me, I guess,
03:21the ability or the leverage to show
03:26that no matter where you lived,
03:28you should have access to these types of products.
03:30You didn't need to just live next to said store to access it.
03:36And to make this information
03:39just more accessible also to everyone.
03:43I think a lot of people didn't know that,
03:45you know, if you go to the grocery
03:47or if you go to a department store,
03:49you think if you spend more money on it,
03:51it's going to be safer.
03:52Or if you go to that store that you grew up going to,
03:57it was going to be safer, but it's actually not.
04:00There's no real laws that protect human health
04:05or really protect you around your safety.
04:11Even for pregnant women,
04:13there's no real laws that say
04:16that companies can't market products to pregnant women
04:20and make sure that they're actually safe for pregnant women.
04:23There's no laws protecting babies that, you know,
04:26if something is marketed for you to use on or near your baby,
04:30that it's actually safe for that baby.
04:33And there's certainly no laws saying that
04:36anything that comes in contact with your skin
04:39or your environment will be safe for you.
04:43So they're testing on us.
04:46And I was like, what the heck?
04:49So that's why I went into all those different product categories.
04:53And then can you really differentiate?
04:56Can you really stand up against competition?
04:59Is there a real reason for you to be there?
05:01And can you do it at a price that's within reach?
05:07Because there's a lot of things we can do for like a million bucks.
05:11But if you're trying to make it accessible,
05:13can you scale the idea?
05:15Can you take us behind the scenes
05:17of what it looks like to take a company public
05:20and specifically your company public
05:22and really navigating the seas
05:25of a historically male-dominated stock market?
05:30I would say that if you have a peaceful, relaxing life
05:35and you sleep well at night,
05:36don't take your company public.
05:39But who has that?
05:41No, I'm kidding.
05:42No, it's actually important for us to take our companies public.
05:47It's actually necessary.
05:49Between 2013 and 2020,
05:52there were over 2,000 companies that went public
05:55and only 18 of them had female leadership.
05:59That's wild.
06:01It was a really brutal experience.
06:04They really do try to throw as many banana peels in front of you
06:08as humanly possible.
06:10And I would say that there's probably no one better
06:13to navigate banana peels than a woman in business.
06:17We get these things thrown at us left, right, and center.
06:22So you're the youngest Latina ever to take a company public,
06:27which I think deserves a big round of applause.
06:33So you just talked about how hard it was to get there.
06:36What was it like then ringing that bell?
06:40It was interesting because I think when I started the business,
06:46it was really around this social justice of how can I make sure
06:50that more people have access to live their best life,
06:56access to the information, access to products.
07:00Hopefully, if I can get the consumers to feel more empowered,
07:04we can actually start to change other companies
07:07and other companies' values,
07:10and there will be a bit of a groundswell.
07:13So now before, everyone was like,
07:15what does clean mean?
07:17Is that a thing that only moms care about?
07:19Now you literally can't walk into a store
07:22without seeing clean beauty,
07:25without seeing products that are clean and better for you,
07:28basically in every category.
07:31And I'm really proud that it only took 10 years for that to happen,
07:35to literally create that space.
07:38And a lot of the competitors are forced to step up,
07:42which is awesome.
07:44And certainly getting us to that finish line,
07:47that it wasn't until I was writing the speech with Jen,
07:50who's here, who's head of Marcom,
07:53and she's one of my ride or dies, that's been with me.
07:57And we were writing the,
08:00she was like, you have to do a speech.
08:03And this was like, we were the first company during COVID
08:06to actually do it in the NASDAQ offices.
08:09So it was like a whole situation, we weren't sure,
08:11are we going to do it there, are we going to be remote?
08:13And I realized in that moment
08:16that sort of it was like a call to action,
08:20but also a way to kind of show up for a community of people
08:24that for the most part have never been on that stage.
08:29And I was like, okay, so I felt that.
08:33And then that, I guess, I mean,
08:36I know it gave me the strength to really allow the moment to breathe
08:42and be what it needed to be, which is,
08:45I got this far so that not only did I like open the door,
08:51but I blew the doors open,
08:54and I mowed down a lot of those hills
08:57so that a lot more can come through.
09:00And so I just wanted to make sure that anybody who was watching
09:05or listening in that moment or any moment
09:09can see that that's what me being there meant.
09:13I felt like it was easier to control my destiny
09:17launching a D2C brand,
09:19and I would say I recommend that for anyone,
09:23having your foundational principles in D2C,
09:28because there's nothing like that ownership, right?
09:32It's sort of like the flagship store.
09:35Imagine your flagship being online,
09:38and so take care of that,
09:40and no one can take that away from you,
09:42and it's sort of like your nucleus,
09:44and anything else can happen from there.
09:47But ultimately, you have to be where the consumer wants you to be,
09:51and so if the consumer wants you to be in a brick-and-mortar,
09:54go to make sure you have that.
09:57If they want you to be in a retail channel,
10:00make sure you're there or partner with, you know,
10:03wherever there's more ease for them to find you, frankly.
10:09I don't think we should be too married to any model.
10:13I think social commerce is actually 10 years behind where it should be, frankly,
10:19and that's probably where it's all going anyway.
10:23When you control the relationship with the consumer,
10:27you just have so much more power,
10:29and you can test and learn a lot more.
10:34You don't have to rely so much on others for innovation.
10:40So my final question for you,
10:43and to say thank you also for joining us.
10:45This has been so fun.
10:47In the beginning, we introduced you as an actress, an entrepreneur, a founder.
10:53How would you introduce yourself?
10:56I'm a terrible speller.
11:00I'm an amateur chef.
11:04I think I dream big.
11:08I'm a dreamer, and I believe in people.
11:15I do, and I believe in goodness, and I have hope.
11:23My job, I think, is probably to unlock as much of that as possible,
11:29and whether that's through telling stories in entertainment
11:32or telling stories through products, great.
11:37So maybe that's how I would describe myself.
11:40And a very imperfect mom, but my kids still tell me their secrets,
11:45so that's cool.
11:48Jessica, thank you so much for joining us.
11:51So lovely to have you.
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