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.
00:12Totally.
00:13Okay. 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 and also allow myself to receive the wins.
00:36I used to be, up until not too long ago, wildly uncomfortable with taking in anything that was good.
00:44I felt so undeserving.
00:46So I think that's another thing is maybe when there's so few of us at the table in those positions
00:54of power,
00:56especially, you know, we do make up 50% of the population,
01:00but we're so wildly underrepresented in business, in a lot of power rooms.
01:07And when you don't see yourself, you 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, that we grew up with, that we have to unwind.
01:18So it's been an amazing journey and very fulfilling.
01:26It's cool how it can take on so many different waves as you grow.
01:31So the company started with a more narrow selection of baby products, wipes, and its personal care and has expanded.
01:41How do you guide the strategy of a now publicly traded company?
01:47I started with 17 products in three pretty large sectors.
01:54I felt like I needed to test out whether there was going to be reception of clean in these pretty
02:04major categories.
02:05Home, detergent space, the personal care space, which is not necessarily beauty, but kind of.
02:14It's like what you put on your skin, what you put around the home, which is the detergents and cleaning.
02:20And then obviously on the thing that's going to touch probably the most vulnerable people, which are babies.
02:26So that's why I chose those three categories.
02:28And what I was really trying to solve for or tackle is the injustice that we face every day in
02:36being exposed to unnecessary and harmful chemicals that actually cause lots of illness.
02:45And these companies that are making these chemicals that put them in the products that are in on and around
02:52all of us every day.
02:54Okay. And I was like, maybe there can be a more human way to approach business.
03:01And so I really was trying to tackle these sort of like giant categories in my small little tiny way.
03:09And that's why I created a company that went into three different pretty big categories, 17 products.
03:15And I launched online because I felt like that was going to give me, I guess, the ability or the
03:24leverage to show that no matter where you lived, you 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 just more accessible also to everyone, I think a lot of people didn't know that,
03:45you know, if you go to the grocery or if you go to a department store, you think if you
03:50spend more money on it, it's going to be safer.
03:52Or if you go to that store that you grew up going to, it was going to be safer, but
03:59it's actually not.
04:00There's no real laws that protect human health or really protect you around your safety.
04:11Even for pregnant women, there's no real laws that say that companies can't market products to pregnant women and make
04:21sure that they're actually safe for pregnant women.
04:23There's no laws protecting babies that, you know, if something is marketed for you to use on or near your
04:29baby, that it's actually safe for that baby.
04:33And there's certainly no laws saying that anything that comes in contact with your skin or your environment will be
04:41safe for you.
04:42So they're testing on us.
04:45And I was like, what the heck?
04:48So that's why I went into all those different product categories.
04:52And then can you really differentiate?
04:56Can you really stand up against competition?
04:58Is there a real reason for you to be there?
05:00And can you do it at a price that's within reach?
05:06Because there's a lot of things we can do for like a million bucks.
05:10But if you're trying to make it accessible, can you scale the idea?
05:15Can you take us behind the scenes of what it looks like to take a company public and specifically your
05:21company public and really navigating the seas of a historically male dominated stock market?
05:29I would say that if you have a peaceful, relaxing life and you sleep well at night, don't take your
05:37company public.
05:40But 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, there were over 2,000 companies that went public and only 18 of them had female
05:57leadership.
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 as humanly possible.
06:10And I would say that there's probably no one better to navigate banana peels than a woman in business.
06:17We get these things thrown at us left, right and center.
06:23So you're the youngest Latina ever to take a company public, which I think deserves a big round of applause.
06:32So you just talked about how hard it was to get there.
06:36What was it like then ringing that bell?
06:39It was interesting because I think when I started the business,
06:45it was really around this social justice of like how can I make sure that more people have access to
06:53live their best life,
06:56access to the information, access to products.
06:59Hopefully, if I can get the consumers to feel more empowered,
07:04we can actually start to change other companies and other companies' values.
07:10And there will be a bit of a groundswell.
07:12So now, you know, before, everyone was like, what does clean mean?
07:16Is that a thing that only moms care about?
07:19Now you literally can't walk into a store without saying clean beauty,
07:25without saying 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,
07:41which is awesome.
07:43And certainly getting us to that finish line,
07:46that it wasn't until I was like writing the speech with Jen,
07:49who's here, who's head of Marcom,
07:52and she's one of my writer guys, that's been with me.
07:57And, you know, we were writing the,
08:00she was like, you have to do a speech.
08:03And this was like, you know, we were the first company during COVID to actually do it in the NASDAQ
08:08offices.
08:08So it was like a whole situation.
08:10We weren't sure.
08:10We're going to do it there.
08:11We're going to be remote.
08:12And I realized in that moment that sort of, it was like a call to action,
08:19but also a way to kind of show up for a community of people that for the most part have
08:26never been on that stage.
08:28And I was like, okay, so I felt that.
08:32And then that, I guess, I mean, I know it gave me the strength to really allow the moment to
08:40breathe
08:41and be what it needed to be,
08:44which is I got this far so that not only did I like open the door,
08:51but I blew the doors open and I mowed down a lot of those hills so that a lot more
08:58can come through.
09:00And so I just wanted to make sure that anybody who was watching or listening in that moment or any
09:08moment
09:08can see that that's what me being there meant.
09:12I felt like it was easier to control my destiny launching a D2C brand.
09:19And I would say I recommend that for anyone having 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 and no one can like take that away from you.
09:42And it's sort of like your nucleus, then anything else can happen from there.
09:47But ultimately, you have to be where the consumer wants you to be.
09:50And so if the consumer wants you to be in a brick and mortar, go to make sure you have
09:55that.
09:56If they want you to be in a retail channel, make 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.
10:12I 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, you just have so much more power.
10:29And you can test and learn a lot more.
10:33You don't have to rely so much on others for innovation.
10:39So my final question for you, and to say thank you also for joining us.
10:45This has been so fun.
10:46In the beginning, we introduced you as an actress, an entrepreneur, a founder.
10:52How would you introduce yourself?
10:55I'm a terrible speller.
10:59I'm an amateur chef.
11:03I think I dream big.
11:07I'm a dreamer.
11:09And I believe in people.
11:14I do.
11:15And I believe in goodness.
11:18And I have hope.
11:22My job, I think, is probably to unlock as much of that as possible.
11:28And whether that's through telling stories in entertainment or telling stories through products.
11:34Great.
11:37So maybe that's how I would describe myself.
11:39And a very imperfect mom.
11:42But my kids still tell me their secrets.
11:45So that's cool.
11:48Jessica, thank you so much for joining us.
11:50It's so lovely to have you.
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