It's not talked about enough. My name is Leah Wire and I am
the president of the beauty, style and entertainment brands
at dot Dash Meredith. So those are people,
Entertainment Weekly in style, birdie brides, people in
Espanol. That's how you can show up
unemotionally in a room and get it done.
But also, as a woman, we deal with biology that is in
competition with our career growth.
Sometimes if there's something else I have to prioritize other
than the money, I have to feel fulfilled.
Try. It's really hard to just be
completely unemotional and fix it, right?
So that's this side of it. The underbelly of it is that you
go to your work wives, you go to your husband, you go to your
friends. You're raging, right?
I'm so sorry. No, this is I wish I had a
tissue. Loads rounds and rounds and
rounds of IBS. My gosh, couldn't get pregnant.
Couldn't get pregnant. Those were like dark days.
I wanted something that I like couldn't make happen.
The advice to the younger self is like.
Hi everyone, welcome to the Tiger Sisters podcast where we
talk about money, power and love.
I'm your host Cherie, I'm your host Jean, and we're the Tiger
Sisters. My sister Jean is a Harvard MB,
AA former head of product at Snapchat with over 50 AI patents
and she never talks about them. So it's my job to brag about
her. She started her career out in
finance at Goldman Sachs, transitioned her career into the
tech world, and now we have this podcast together.
My sister Cherie is a Stanford MBA, a former senior product
manager at LinkedIn who has experienced navigating both the
worlds of tech and venture capital, and she's also a long
standing creator with hundreds of millions of views across
YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, etcetera.
We started this podcast together to help people reach their full
power in both their career and personal lives.
Guys, I am so excited to welcome our guest on her podcast, Leah
Wire. She's an absolute icon, my girl
crush and also my role model. Leah.
Wire is not just a media executive, she's an absolute
force. She's the president of People in
Style, Entertainment Weekly, Birdie Brides and so much more.
I mean, she basically runs half of the media empires that you
grew up with. So this episode we talk about
how to navigate the sticky politics at work, how to build
real allies, and how to lead even when the stakes are sky
high, especially when your emotions can be so mixed up into
both work and life. Altogether, obviously Leah is a
very high-powered media executive, but she also shares
some of the most vulnerable parts of her personal journey.
We go there. From finding partnership in love
and life to her very real fertility struggles, we felt so
seen during this episode and I just know you guys will too.
So let's get into it. Here's our amazing conversation
with Leah Wire. Hey guys, quick break to let you
know that we now have merch on Sisters matcha.com.
We have sweatshirts and T-shirts that we designed ourselves.
Go check it out and please rate US five stars on Spotify and
Apple Podcasts. These ratings are so important
for the distribution and survival of Tiger Sisters
Podcast. Thank you for your support.
Hi. Leah, hi, we're.
So excited that you're here, could you please introduce
yourself to the audience in your own words?
Sure. So my name is Leah Wire and I am
the president of the beauty, style and entertainment brands
at dot Dash Meredith. So those are people
Entertainment Weekly in style birdie brides people in Espanol
I. Love it.
Wow. An iconic list.
It keeps going it. Keeps going.
It can't go. No more editions, We're good.
Yeah, I feel like a a misconception that a lot of
people have is that beauty editors just spend their whole
day like playing with lip gloss or something like that.
But in reality, even when you were at Cosmo, you were in
charge of basically generating the majority of revenue for for
the business. So when was the moment where you
kind of realize like, oh shit, like I am a really powerful
businesswoman. It was never lost on me that
there was a business role to play as a the beauty editor.
Now, you had the creative side of being a beauty editor, which
was you had a blank slate of pages every month that you had
to fill. You had to creative direct
feature or something that you were doing on set.
So it's all this right brain stuff that happened, but it was
very clear from the start. And I had first been hired as
the beauty and style editor for Health magazine, which didn't
you don't think that did a lot of beauty, but we actually did
do a lot of sort of Wellness beauty before it was really a
trend. And it was a lot of skin, a lot
of science. And I loved that because the 1st
10 years of being a beauty editor, I was at all these
different Wellness magazines. So it's at Health magazine and
Self magazine, Fitness magazine. And so you had like, you learned
how to be like a real reporter, how to respect science, how to
read studies, all of this stuff that was that made the stories
really meaty and interesting. You had to balance the business
side of being a beauty editor, which meant being super aware of
who your advertisers were and really meant like paying
attention to what they were launching.
And you had to have this dance of like, OK, so Advertiser X was
launching something that that would be interesting to your
readers. That's what you had to focus on.
Like, what's the hook for my readers?
And you just started, like with every magazine, it was a
different way of doing that. Business was really like up the
ante when I got to Cosmo because beauty drove so much of Cosmos
revenue. And that I think was the moment
where I was like, wow, I almost equally report in to the editor
in chief as I do to the publisher.
Constantly on sales calls with your sales team, with your
publisher, you're in the room with these incredibly important
and brilliant CMO's who are asking you to suggest ideas to
them for their business that would work for your readership.
And so you start to develop this marketing skill.
It was just a different way of doing the business side of being
a beauty editor. And that I think really happened
when I got to Cosmo. So that was maybe like 10 years
into my career. Like I'm just imagining being in
that role and the amount of kind of like, I guess like finesse
and also strategy that you have to have is I can just imagine
it's like very high level because you have so many
stakeholders and like every decision that you make results
in like kind of more or less revenue for your business, for
their business, for your interest, for your readership.
Like yes. It's very high risk because the
advertisers at Cosmo was a mass brand.
I mean, it still is. So it's very much appealing to
not just the coasts, right, Like there were there are fashion and
style magazines that are really appealing to the coast.
Different type of reader, different type of advertiser.
When you have a brand like Cosmo, even a brand like people,
very middle of America, very just sort of everyday person,
those advertisers are like the money bags like PNG, Unilever,
L'Oreal, like all of these brands.
And so to be in the room with these type of people, learn how
to pitch an idea, learn how to craft it in your mind in the
moment, because usually those things are coming up in a
brainstorming session that's live.
You don't really have a ton of time to prepare for it.
And they want that like they want you in the room listening.
This is my objective. What how does it work for your
reader? And you have to just do it
quick. And so it became very obvious to
me that if I could get really good at this, I could have a
really long lasting career career.
Because it's not just the creative ideas which are
important, but the creative ideas really, you can create an
idea that works in print, that also works in digital, that also
works in social or that works in an app.
But they they're really just nuances of each other in some
way. The stakes are always changing
in the world of marketing. Everything is a new thing, a
different thing, a shiny thing like the next thing.
And that's the piece that you had to really pay attention to.
Like how's the world changing? Like what do they want now?
What? What's a new new thing these
these big companies want a first to market moment.
They don't want a recycled idea that you did with somebody last
month. They want something new and
fresh. And so you're just constantly
creating. I knew that if I could get good
at that, that it would have a long lasting career.
I love that. I love that because I can tell
that this role uses so many different parts of your brain.
It's like, obviously like very creative, but then you're also a
connector between your readership, the audience and
these massive brands and trying to like, bridge that connection.
Like what do they want and how can I best serve them in that
way? Yeah, you almost have to be as
much of an expert about your reader as you are about your
partner or potential partner sitting across the table from
you. You have to know what they want
for their their customer and how that can be as important to your
reader as it is for them to achieve for their customer.
That's like the magical moment that happens when you can do
that and you can hit that. Like, I mean, there's there's
like 3 or 4 moments of my career where I was like, I nailed it.
And I mean, yeah, where you were like, wow, that was like really
good. Yeah.
So, you know, when that happens, it gets like you sort of get
addicted to that feeling. And I, and I really did get
addicted to that. That was the thing that I just
wanted to do for as long as I could possibly do it.
I. Love that.
And you also met Holly at Cosmo. Is that where your guys's story
started? And then for context, that is
our mutual friend who introduced us to Leah.
Yes. And so Holly came into my life,
I think maybe it was 2000 and 12 or 13.
Joanna Coles was the editor in chief of Cosmo at the time.
She had tapped Holly, who I mean, Holly has an incredible
career. She was in movies.
She did so many things. And at the time, I think she was
in the corporate side of Hearst. And Joanna tapped her to be
really her chief of staff and also head up all of the comms
for the brand. And at the time, the brand was
changing so much because Joanna just had a totally different
point of view that she wanted just with a megaphone out to the
ad community, out to the media market.
And so Holly was tapped to do that.
And we just really hit it off in the very beginning.
And now, I mean, we're, we are, we call each other twin because
we're just like, we just feel like we're sisters in a lot of
ways. And that's the, I think a really
special thing that happens over time when you work with women,
especially as you become, you sort of transcend just as work
partners and you become like life partners in a lot of ways.
We kind of want to dig into that a little bit more.
Shout out to Holly. Thank you so much for
introducing us to Leah. But I mean, you've said
previously, like work wives can solve, like World Peace, great
World Peace. Say that all the time.
It's true, yeah. I mean, work wives and the power
of female friendship is like so important for our career.
If you can find a work wife and also just like as career blends
into life, like can you talk a little bit more about just like
the importance of having a work wife?
Yeah. I mean, I think first of all,
these are people that men or women, you're spending the bulk
of your day, the bulk of your life with your work family.
Some families are super dysfunctional and making those
relationships at work even more important because at that point
then they turn into like your survival mechanism, right?
Like when you're working at a place that is, I mean, every
place has tough times. And but when you're working at a
place that overtime becomes a little more tricky to manage,
where it's sort of infringing on your life in some way, where
it's harder to create a boundary.
Whatever your mental health, your mental health like that is
where you need, I think women in particular, to confide in, to be
able to cry with, to be able to just vent and be real with.
Because if you're not able to have that outlet, how do you
sort of get through those moments together?
It's harder. I mean, it's I think it was for
a long time, people just expected that you like stiff
upper lifted. You were like, you know, I can
that is not good for any of us. And I think having those people
that you can be real with who you can trust with.
I'm feeling this way right now. I'm so frustrated by, you know,
my boss or whatever. It can help you just like flow
into the next stage of less frustration instead of just
holding it in and being like resentful and then just being
like, oh, I can't work here anymore.
Right? Like it's never, it's usually
not ever resolved by like jumping the ship and going
somewhere else. Like you're going to find the
same frustrations and. Is that I relate to this hit a
nerve so strongly because OK, I've had the privilege of having
I think like 2 work wives in my life and the first one, one of
my best friends still to this day, Maya.
We worked together at Zynga and there were times when both of us
were like, I'm about to rage quit right this second yes.
And we would, the two of us would go on a walk together and
like the sole purpose of the walk was to vent to each other
and then give each other like a 3 minute long hug.
And it was. Like that?
That's so sweet. Yeah.
Like she and she gives the best hugs.
You know what I mean? Like, just that kind of like
connection and being able to, like, share with your work wife
what's going on. They understand you.
Like, they have the contest special.
Yeah. A level of empathy.
Yeah, it's just because only they know what you're feeling.
My husband knows a lot about my business, knows a lot about the
people I work with. But there are some weeks where
and I work in a very mentally sound company.
Like it's not toxic, it's not crazy.
I mean, I sort of found finally found a place that appeals to me
in that way and and is, is good for my mental health in a lot of
ways. But there are just weeks that
are really, really hard. And if I take that home to my
husband, he gets it, but he doesn't get it.
Like my girls at work get it. Like Holly with you, my friend
Meredith, my friend Melissa, my friend Joe.
Like we are in it together now. We've also every single one of
those people -1 we've worked, we've worked together since
Cosmo. So we've all like incredible
moved together and like now have this like long, decades long
relationship. It it's amazing because you
already know what the other person is thinking.
You can like you speak shorthand.
I'm a short pit for the people around us who don't have that.
They're like, you guys are crazy.
Can you fill us in on what's going on?
But you do there are advantages to to having those like very
long term friendships. And they really are like
therapists in your life that can get you through moments and get
you to the other side. So that, you know, I joke
sometimes with my therapist like, Oh my God, I'm having one
of these weeks where I'm like, I'm going to hit the eject
button and that's it, right? Like I just got to go.
And she's like, you have to like go take a walk with a friend, go
take a 3 minute hug. Like those moments are actually
really crucial. And then the other thing that I
think you can do with women that is a little harder to do with
men, maybe impossible to do with most men, is that you can be
grateful with your whole heart to those women.
Like, I can't tell you how many times a week I'm texting or
slacking or just in person being like, I love you so much.
Like, thank you so much for being in this with me.
Like, you can't do that to a guy for the most part.
And maybe some guys, but like, not really.
And so these are people who, like, you can be fully open with
and fully grateful to which it's a different way of leading.
It's a different way of walking together.
It's just a different way to trust each other.
And that isn't really important, I think.
Yeah. So well said.
In some ways that really transcends just the career or
like professional aspect to when you really trust someone that
you've been working with for like a decade.
It's just like we not only know each other in the professional
context, but you've been with me through a lot of personal
milestones too. Yes.
And you can be truthful with that person.
I mean, they're think we're going through a really big
project right now and like, I might disagree with the press
plan or I might disagree with the way the press release was
written or like whatever it is. And easier to just say, like, I
love you so much. But like there's just this one
thing that I really think we have to just sit on for a
minute. It comes from a it's a different
way of approaching it than someone being like, oh, that's
terrible. Like go change it.
And it doesn't make that person want to be on your team or like
get to a middle ground. And so there are huge
advantages, I think to having the work life relationship.
And then even the people who aren't your maybe your wife, but
like in it with you, they see that type of leadership, they
respect that type of leadership. You trickle that down in some
way and it just makes for a much more collaborative environment.
Yeah. That's a great piece of like
wisdom. It's just.
Different, I mean, it's, it's a different, it just feels like
it's a different vibe now than it was even 10 years ago.
Like where sometimes women, I think in that time period they
had, they felt like they had to almost like be like men in a
way. Like they had to feel like be
tough. They had to, you know, put out
like a, I don't know if the aggression is the word, but it's
like just some type of like like alphanus.
And you can have that, but you can also have it in a nice way.
And I think it makes for a much better environment for your team
and. More authentic environment.
Yeah, your own leadership style, there's a different.
Way of being there. It's there's a difference
between being direct with feedback or direct with a
request or something than it is to be like have an alphanus
undertone to it that feels like, I don't know, just it's a
there's a different energy now that I think people expect or
want. Yeah.
Another one of the things you said to us is that your life
motto is Just say yes. So.
What is like one of the things that you you kind of like took
that approach to and you were like, I'm just gonna say yes.
And and then you did something that like, kind of like changed
the course of your, your life or your career.
Yeah. So I guess for better or worse,
just say yes, because when you say a lot of things, a lot of
opportunities can come your way, but it's a lot maybe on the To
Do List sometimes. So I think two things.
One That advice came to me from an old boss who I decided to
take a break with my husband. We had been together for four
years. He was many years younger than
me. He still is.
It's not like he morphed into an older person, but we were five
years apart and I had turned 30 and I was like, where is this
going? Like I need?
And so sort of such a cliche moment to have a milestone like
that. And, and we broke up and my boss
at the time was like, this is your moment.
Like just say yes to everything. I think for her, it was more of
like a romantic thing, like say yes to every date, say yes to
every whatever. I just took it then to mean, you
know, like when you say yes to things.
You don't know where they're going to lead.
I mean, going back to the romantic piece of it, like, I
met my husband at a Halloween party where I wasn't even going
to go. And I said yes to my best friend
from college who took me to this party and semi knew my husband,
and that's How I Met him. So I look back on a moment like
that thinking, well, I may never have met him if I didn't say yes
to that moment. And I was not feeling
particularly happy to go to this party.
I was exhausted and tired, and I really just wanted to stay home
in pyjamas. But I said yeah, yes, right.
So there is something that happens sometimes where you like
meet somebody random that can potentially change your future
in some way. But you don't actually get to
experience that if you're not putting yourself out there in
some way. Now, sometimes you can't say yes
to everything and you have to be choosy.
But there is a habit that sometimes can happen where
you're saying no so much that you're not going anywhere and
you're not meeting new people. And you're that's where that
creativity comes into play. That's where the serendipitous
moments happen. And if you don't have them or
put yourself out there to say yes to, then you don't have the
ability to make that like magical moment happen.
And there have been multiple moments in my life that were
changed with that like serendipitous energy.
Just like saying yes from the first time that I put my resume
in for my first job where like I had no business getting that job
on paper, but I just like said yes and threw it put into a
folder that went to somebody who ended up hiring me meeting my
husband like 1. The probably the most impactful
Say Yes moment was when I got to my current company, I had gone
there to start the beauty and style vertical because they had
no beauty or style brands. They had bought birdie, they had
bought brides, and they needed somebody to run it.
I went there great. Like I was learning digital
media for the first time. I was bringing something to them
that they didn't actually have, which was magazine chops and
sort of media chops. Yeah.
And then I did that for three years.
And then one day my boss pulled me in his office and he said,
you know, we bought this. We, they, we acquired Meredith
Corp, which had all of these like, incredible brands, people
EW in style, Better Homes and Gardens, food and wine, Real
simple. And he was like, we want you to
run the Entertainment Group. And I was like, no.
And he's like, why? I'm like, because I love beauty.
I love style. Like, this is what I've done my
whole life. Like I, I don't want to leave
this. He's like just sleep on it.
And I did. And I woke up the next day.
Like what am I thinking? Like my whole mantra is like,
say yes, like what? Why would I not do this?
And I did do it. And it changed my whole life.
Learning a whole new business, learning how the two business
businesses can intersect. I eventually brought the two
groups together, but I would never have had this incredibly
rich experience of running people in EW and people in
Espanol without just saying I'm going to try it.
And you know what? If I don't succeed, I'll go back
to beauty or like, whatever will happen from it.
But if I could succeed, how amazing could it be to learn all
these new things? And so that is true trying
really hard to just really be brave trying.
It's so scary getting out of the comfort zone.
I mean, I had some beauty for 20 some years and I never I mean, I
obviously beauty intersects with the entertainment world in a lot
of ways and the celebrities, but that's a whole other animal on
its own until sort of learning that from the ground up and make
new relationships there understand that business.
It was really hard. It's the best decision I ever
made and obviously I credit that to my boss.
Even being able to see that I could possibly do that, I don't
know if I would have raised my hand.
I know I wouldn't have raised my hand for it.
So sometimes, you know, somebody sees something else for you.
And when that happens, I think you really have to trust it.
Like if somebody is seeing something in me that I'm not
seeing in myself, I've got to try it, right?
Like I have to at least deserves a moment of just to try.
Yeah. I mean, this is super inspiring
for for me, for us, because I feel like we are at the moment
now where you were when your boss was like, why don't you
take on entertainment? Because like for the two of us
doing this whole startup, the whole podcast journey, sisters
Matcha, like everything is to us because we come from the tech
world. Like we've never like ever built
something that you can hold in your hand that's not in an app
on a screen screen. Like we've never been in front
of cameras like this before. So I don't know.
That's really inspiring to see like where you are today versus
like where you started from being like a total newbie and
taking on an entirely new industry.
Totally. And I don't know, I mean,
there's there's something about creating something from the
ground up. I mean, look at this thing.
This came from your brain. Yeah, right.
Like and our hearts. And.
Now you can consume it, you know, and you can touch it and
see it and read it. And it's unbelievable what
happens when you have something in your brain.
I mean, sometimes, I mean, I know that the best ideas I've
ever had, the things I look back on and I remember like I'm so
proud of that came from, I always say it came from either
one or two places. One, I was in the shower washing
my hair, shower thongs. There's that.
If there's something so beautiful about showers, like I
don't know what she's. Passionate about showers.
I talk about this all the time. It's.
Like the water, it's the folk. Like, I don't even have to be a
scientist. Somebody needs to spend
something to do with. Study yes, because.
There is something it's either happened in the shower or it
happens either the moment like the 10 minutes before falling
asleep or the 10 minutes where I'm like kind of waking up and
just sort of thinking maybe it's because those are places where
or moments where you don't have this in becoming inputs all the
time. You're, you're separated.
You're sort of, you're kind of like.
In limbo or like your brain is, it's like things are working in
the background and you're not like using probably like, I
don't know, the creative aspect of your brain just yet.
You're like just waking up or falling asleep.
But don't you? Wonder how many people in the
world have a genius idea in that moment and they don't do
anything about it. And what did you guys do?
You had this idea. You went through all the steps
to like make this a thing and then now you have this thing.
So now you're like, oh, we did it once, Like what's next?
Like you, right? If you do it once, you at least
have a playbook of sorts that can will be tweaked a million
different ways, but you have almost, you have the confidence
that like you went through it start to finish.
And that's the secret to it all. It's like you got to just try it
and you have to figure out your own playbook and then you'll
have something to work off of in the future.
Your story. Before, like I feel like so many
elements resonate with me. I think firstly, like having
someone in your corner who like really deeply believes in you
and like sees the potential before you can even like see it
or feel it in yourself is really important.
And then also like that paired with kind of the mindset you
were talking about, like instead of saying like, what's the worst
that can happen? It's like what's the best that
can happen? Even if I fail or, you know, it
doesn't go my way, like something goodwill come out out
of it. Like, I think the mindset is
also super important, yeah. And there's also a little bit of
beauty in being naive. Like I don't think I had any
idea what it was going to take to go through those moments that
I went through that I had to learn from the ground up or
build from the ground up. And there was a couple of those
moments. I mean, my biggest one was when
I switched from print media to digital media.
I mean, I felt as though I went through some level of post graph
bad work on the job because there's moments where people are
like saying these words, you have no idea what they mean.
And I'm sending myself emails to be like, Google this later, like
research this later. I have no idea what this thing
is. And so you're sort of teaching
yourself in the moment and you're relying on people to not
think you're totally stupid and, you know, a hire that shouldn't
have been made, You trust them. You like learn from them.
And I did have that opportunity. I don't know if I would have had
that opportunity at any other company.
There was just something special about the leadership at the
time. I mean, it still is the same
leadership, but the size of the company, the kind of like
familialness that was there that really helped me succeed in that
area. And then other moments where
you're just a little naive and you have to rely on everybody
around you to get you through it.
We are building an app right now and we're about to launch it.
And I knew nothing about apps. A lot of us didn't at the
company, but we just figured it out.
And you, you can really figure it out if you have some really
smart people in the room and that you can sort of give up
control to spread that, spread that empowerment around.
And you're all kind of doing the thing that you're best at and
you work the kinks out in the in, in the moment.
Yeah, I mean it. Is such a blessing to like be in
a really healthy workplace where you not only trust the people on
a personal, like, deep personal level, but like, you can, like
you said, shorthand with them. And I feel really lucky to be
working with Gene now because there's like so many obviously
29 years of trust for me. Yeah.
With Gene, the place where I want to go next is kind of the
opposite of that in in terms of like workplace politics.
Could you talk a little bit more about like how to navigate
workplace politics, maybe if it's something that people are
not super familiar with, Like do you have any tips for that?
It's a tough one. More stories.
So many worse or. So many, I mean, which one to
talk? About actually, that's like.
Some of them, some of it is when you are just starting out,
you're developing a thick skin in the course of the first few
years. And that is hard like when
you're raw. I mean, sometimes I wish I could
go back to the 22 year old Leah who had like, you know, who
didn't have like this much more skin than she has now and, and
remember what that was like. Because the vulnerability and
sort of the, the rawness of being in something new without,
I mean, the publishing industry, particularly when I entered, it
was cutthroat. Like it was just something I had
never experienced before. And that level of just, OK, this
person looked at me weird. Now I'm going down a spiral like
my boss yelled at me like, and you're just, you just go through
that for so many years and you're like, OK, now, like on to
the next thing. Then as you start to become
middle management, start to become more moving upward, you
are in a position where you're policing a lot of what's coming
down to you from your team, and you're policing a lot of what's
coming up to you from the people above you.
And you are holding this load in a lot of ways that it's really
hard because you have to please both sides.
It's like the Jelly and the sandwich, and you have to try to
please both sides. That's workplace politics like
at that's the start of it, I think.
And when do you side with your team versus your boss and how do
you influence one or the other or both?
And though that is like. The.
Learning how to lead with influence versus force, that is
a massive thing that I had to learn in a lot of hard ways.
Sometimes it's not fair. Like there are things that
you're being asked to do as a middle manager from your boss
and you think they're going to protect you.
You think they're going to be there forever.
And one day you wake up and they're not, and you've just had
to do a lot of dirty work for a long period of time and now
they're gone and you're like, who's going to take care of me
now, right? It's very scary.
And, and there was a moment that I went through that in at my job
at Cosmo. And, you know, I was left in a
different world. It was left in it with new
leadership that I didn't know, I didn't really have a
relationship with 24 hours before that.
I had a Direct Line to the chief content officer, right?
Like, and that is like who that rocks your world?
Like that is like really, really scary.
It turned out that it was just not the place for me anymore
because I didn't necessarily believe in the in the direction
the company was moving in. And it was just time for me to
find something new. And, and I am so grateful that I
was given this, this opportunity at my current company in that
moment, if I had to tough it out for, you know, another like year
or two, I probably could have just because I have, I had the
thick skin and I could probably figure out how to make it work
in some way. But I, I definitely wouldn't
have been happy. And there, there is a moment
that happened for me and it probably was when I had kids
where I was just like, I do have to feel like there's something
else here for me aside from just the paycheck.
I have to feel like I'm being respected, that I'm continuing
to learn every day that I feel like there's a path, a future
path for me. I just, there's something else
that I have that I have to prioritize other than the money.
Because if I'm going to leave my kids for 9 hours a day, I have
to feel fulfilled. Doesn't mean that every day is
going to be perfect. It doesn't mean that there's not
going to be really, really hard, hard time so that you're going
to work your butt off and be exhausted and you know, feel
like, what am I can I keep going like this?
But you have to feel like you're respected and when you if that's
important to you and when that stops, you got to go some.
Advice that you've also given us in the past is like, don't let
anyone weaponize you and take the emotion out of it, yeah.
I I feel like. That's related to this, this
entire conversation. Could you describe a little bit
more about what you mean by that and how you you learn that in in
your career? That's really hard.
I I am a very emotion. I'm an emotional person.
I feel a lot of things I know. Especially when you care about
what you work on. Yes, Yeah.
It's so intertwined. I have.
Never been somebody who has I I'm not a stoic leader.
I am I feel energy really really strongly good or bad.
Like in a room, I am like, I'm almost sometimes paralyzed by
the energy that I pick up in the room, which allows you the
capability to read and respond very quickly.
You can't go in with a script. You have to go in with a loose
outline and read what's going on and then move to the next thing
or respond in some way so that you're keeping the thing going
versus like being so stiff that you can't.
So anyway, that's just I'm saying that the emotional
element and the energy reading that I have is a blessing and a
curse. And the curse is that it's
really hard to take the emotion out.
And I'm telling you, I've been working for since the year 2000,
So what, 25 years? I still to this day have to
practice that. I still to this day have to
remember that when my CEO doesn't like something that I
do, it's not that he doesn't like me.
It's that he doesn't like what's being presented to him on paper.
It's when my boss is giving me feedback and saying, you know,
if I were you, I might have done this a little differently.
It's not that he thinks that I suck at my job, it's that he's
trying to actually make me better.
And then of course, like you come up against really
challenging people that if it's sporadic and you have to just
deal with it every couple of weeks or every couple of months,
you got to like steal yourself to get through it and you push
through it and it's over. OK, I can handle that.
If I have to be in that energy all the time, I might not be OK
with it. And so you have to figure out
how to like, box up the energy sometimes for a moment and like,
put it on a shelf, departmentalize, departmentalize
it. And I have to constantly remind
myself that the the feedback that I'm getting, maybe it could
have been delivered in a better way.
Maybe it didn't necessarily need to be communicated in the way
that it was communicated. But what's the core of it?
OK, the core of it is something that I can fix and I'll fix it
and we'll move on. It's not as though it's a, it's
a crystal ball saying, Oh my God, I don't belong here
anymore, you know, So there's a little that it's just hard to
manage it if you're, if you are a sensitive person.
And I do think I'm, I don't, it's not that I'm sensitive to
the point where like someone gives me feedback and I'm crying
in their office. It's not that.
It's just a sensitivity that you have that you get in your head
for a minute and you have to figure out how to get out of it.
Now, I will say that prior to 2001, I didn't think I like
needed a therapist. I didn't think that like had to
have somebody to kind of vent to like once a week.
It's changed my life to have that.
I love therapy. We just did a.
Podcast episode talking about mental health and therapy and
our like. Their our journey with therapy.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, everyone has maybe a
core reason that brought them to therapy, but then what happens
in the first six months? You start to like like the onion
kind of like on D layers. What?
What's the word wines like? Everything, just the onion
comes. Apart and you're like, oh right,
that's why I feel that way like that's why when I maybe get
somebody speaks to me in a certain way I'm like like the
the cortisol rush comes and I'm freaking out right the three of
us are. Exactly.
The same. I'm like, what did they say?
That in like a weird tone. Am I over thinking it?
I was just like do they? Did I do something wrong?
Like I'm just like I've not. Talked about enough yeah, the
the the impact that tone energy has on on you no matter what
stage of your career you're in, no matter how long you've been
in the workplace. Day one day 100,000 and one you
there it just if that's who you are and there has been a you
know, you were raised in a certain household.
You had a terrible traumatic experience with a teacher or an
old boss or whatever. It was like this stuff sticks
with you. I mean, I have moments where I
have traced back to like a group of friends from the 8th grade
who like didn't want to be friends with me anymore, right.
Like and you're like, wow, this is not just me being a sensitive
girl at the age of 13 having to get over something.
This is something that roots in you that you have to deal with.
And it erupts in the workplace in weird ways.
It's not like it's just in the past.
It's in you like your first 18 years of your life are so
impressionable and these moments that you don't think are
important. Like they stay with you forever.
And so that's why I think therapy is so important because
you can pinpoint it and then you have control over it versus
getting this rush of discomfort and anxiety and all this stuff.
And you're like, why am I feeling this way?
Which makes you panic more. At least if you know you're
like, OK, I know this is like coming from like my like weird
trauma from like somewhere. And I know how I can get through
it. I know it's not going to last
forever. I know what I what I have to do.
It's a toolkit. You have a.
Toolkit, you can name it, you can place it.
And I think in addition just to just being like sensitive
people, like what we do for work is just so.
Creative. And so part of like who we are
that like it's. Really hard to.
Separate I mean. We're putting ourselves out
there like we're like revealing ourselves and being extremely
vulnerable with like every aspect of.
Our lives totally. I this is, this is the first
time at my current workplace where I've ever had a male boss
or male bosses because I feel like I have three of them.
And in a lot of ways, it's incredibly amazing to have a
different type of management, men and women, I'm sorry, they
just like managed differently. They, they show up differently.
And so I have actually thrived in the last five years with
that. Not because I didn't thrive, I
have, I've had incredible moments with incredible bosses
and leaders who were females, but it's, it just feels
different the way that a man delivers, particularly men who
have careers in finance versus careers in creative.
It's just different. And you learn really quickly
that you're going to have to separate that thing.
You know, you're not getting the flowery feedback, you're getting
the direct feedback. Now that comes.
That has come from women too in the past, like many of my ex
bosses have been maybe even harder delivery than the the
people that I work with now. But it is different.
And some of it's good and some of it's bad.
And I think sometimes there's a, there's a level of like, OK,
well, it's just a way than a man does things.
And I'm not going to take it personally.
I don't know. There's I've, I've, I've felt
that it was good for me in a lot of ways to have this experience
and. Also, I just want to say thank
you for sharing this part of yourself because it is very, I
guess it's like heartening for us because like I also view
myself as a very emotional person and to like see you and
at the level of success and all like your achievements and your
career and having done that and being like, I am an emotional
person, like this is how I walk through life and this is how I
show up in my career as well. And it's just really it's like,
great to see you where you are and be like, OK, it is possible
for us to do. So the other side of that goes
back to the work life. Thank you for saying that.
But like there are other sides of that.
So there's in the last few weeks, I've had a lot of
difficult moments in this launch.
We, we've talked about this app launch.
It's been really, really hard. Like there's been things that
I've never done before. There's that's it, that's
vulnerability at its core form where you're like a going
through something that you're just trying to learn and figure
out and you're now down to the crunch time.
You're like T -, 2 two weeks and now you're getting this feedback
that's coming because people are singing for the first time.
They have feelings about the way the marketing language is or the
press release or like whatever it is.
And there are things that are delivered in ways that are
really, really hard. And you have to in that moment,
absorb it, try really hard to just be completely unemotional,
figure out how you're going to fix it and fix it right.
So that's this side of it. The other, the underbelly of it
is that you go to your work wives, you go to your husband,
you go to your friends. Right now you're raging right?
And you're like, I got that lace and he talked to me that way or
whatever it is. And but you need both sides like
you need to, you need to know that if you have the underbelly
there that like you can be real with and raw with and you can
like get it all out. You have your therapist, you
have whoever it is that can see all the feelings.
That's how you can show up unemotionally in a room and get
it done. Yeah.
And. Just execute.
That's just. Good advice.
OK. I know if somebody is giving me
feedback that I don't love or giving it to me in a way that I
don't love, I know that I can talk to whoever I want about
that. But in this room, it stays out.
I am here to stone face, lock in, take it in, buckle up, walk
out that door, go for my rage walk, whatever it is.
I love a rage walk. And then, you know, there's like
muscle memory that shows me that I've been through this kind of
pattern a million times in my career.
I know I'll see through the other side.
I know I'll find the answer. I know I'll get to it.
It's just going to be like a pain in the butt because I
didn't really plan on having to redo it right?
Like whatever it is, you got to have like the both sides of it.
It's such good. Advice.
Well, I love it because. It's super tactical.
It's like this is how you show up in the room and this is how
you can show up outside of the room.
And both are very authentic to who you are based off of the
context and like what you need to do.
I love that you. Mentioned Lee, you mentioned
your husband a couple times. One of the mottos of our podcast
is that we talk about power, money and love because those are
all such important aspects of like a holistic life.
So in that vein, maybe you can just like tell us a little bit
more more about your husband and like your relationship and just
kind of like your journey with like love, I guess, because also
for context, we're both recently single.
So like, we're on that journey, yeah.
It's a beautiful journey. It's hard to be on the journey.
And sometimes it's hard to see it like, Oh, my God, yeah, of
course you'll look back and you'll be like, oh, I should
have enjoyed it more. But it is hard.
It's stressful and it's anxious. And before I met my husband, I
was super anxious, too. And we met when we were both
like totally poor and like, you know, living off of whatever
came our way, like, and we both kind of supported each other to
different levels of success in our, we've met in 2004.
And so now we've been together 21 years and that's a long time.
That's a long journey. There's dreams that you both
have that you have to figure out how to have in parallel.
You can do it in parallel. It's just it's a lot of
negotiating and but it's also incredible to watch the other
one. You know, you're like sometimes
you leapfrog each other and if you have the maturity to know
that that's like a great thing and you're not like competitive
with each other and you're really supportive.
It's just such a cool relationship.
I mean, we're as best friends as we are, you know, life partners
and parent, you know, parenting partners.
And he probably can't understand everyday what I do and I don't
always understand everyday what he does.
But like the crux of like what we're here to do together to to
allow each person to thrive is has always been like at the
center of our partnership. I dated a lot of people before
him that didn't want somebody to be more of a success than they
were or as equal of a success as they were didn't want it, you
know, and eventually that's why we didn't last.
I found my husband, Nick, and I think I mentioned this book to
you guys before, but he was five years younger than me.
Yeah. He was 22 when we met.
I was 27. I was like, there's no way this
is lasting. He was like, he's he was just 21
last week, right? Like, I was like, crazy.
But he was an old soul. And he just he, he was raised by
a single mom and she taught him to respect the crap out of
women. And he just did that my whole
our whole existence together. He respected me so much.
I was many levels of in my career above him when we first
met. He loved that.
He loved the idea that I was going after everything that I
had dreamed of going after. And he supported that every
step. That's the crux of who we are as
a couple, is that. How like you knew he was the one
like, is that like a realization over time or was it oh.
Maybe I I knew, honestly, I knew he was the one the day I met
him. Oh my gosh.
Which is weird. I think some people say that,
but I truly made a phone call to my aunt the next day I met him
and I said I found my husband. She was like, what?
The time I tell her about him, she's like, you're not marrying
a 22 year old. Like what are you talking about?
Like watching? Bet.
But I did know, I mean, there
was maybe it was just that universal like cosmic moment
where you're like, this is something that I have not
experienced before, but then, you know, you over time start to
understand like the depths of what that stuff is and why he's
so supportive of my success. And honestly, to this day, we
are he's a CEO. I'm, you know, a version of that
at like, you know, I'm running your a bunch of businesses,
right? I travel and he stays at home
with the kids. He travels and I stay at home
with the kids. And we just have the an
understanding that there are going to be moments that are
really hard and we're going to be alone in New York City with
our kids doing balancing at all. And we just have to do it do
like pull it together and be there for each other.
And it's, it's great. It's hard, but it's really,
really great. So, Leah, we have.
Time for one more question and I think as Jean and I are looking
back to our podcast like a theme is like giving advice to our
younger selves. And so if you were to give a
piece of advice in your to yourself in your early 30s, what
would you tell yourself being a? Mom is so important to me.
Oh, I'm going to get emotional, Yeah.
Really locked in. Hang on.
Yeah, sorry. Yeah.
Hmm. Sorry, guys.
No, all good. I'm so glad.
OK. I'm so sorry.
No. This is I'm I wish I had a
tissue. You don't have a tissue, right?
Dinesh. I'm so sorry.
No, this is. A good conversation.
Very. Good conversation.
No, don't apologize. Yeah.
Really do not apologize. That's how we know it's a good
convo we got there. All right, we're good.
OK, I think I like really came into my own when I became a mom
and I was working because all these like 3 things in my life
collided. It was like I was a wife.
I was on my way upward in the workforce and then I became a
mom and I became a mom like the first time I tried.
And so I, and that was maybe in like my mid 30s and I was like,
whoa, OK, like maybe I don't have to rush like the second
baby because I got pregnant right away.
And then I did have a really, really hard time getting
pregnant, my second one and went through like loads, rounds and
rounds and rounds of IVF. Couldn't get pregnant, couldn't
get pregnant. And it, those were like dark
days of my life because I wanted something that I like couldn't
make happen. And really to that point, I had
been able to make most things that I want happen.
Like, yes, I found an amazing person to spend my life with and
I really was moving up in my career and this thing just like
couldn't do and it was so hard. So I think like the advice to
the younger self is like, maybe like don't assume that something
is that comes to you easily. It's always going to be easy.
Like there are thing there are moments that you're going to
have to like climb a mountain and figure out how to get.
And it is a lot of hard in or outer work to do.
And it's not just maybe being a mom like this, this, it blends
itself to other areas of life too.
But like sometimes you start out in the workforce and you're
like, this is so easy. It's amazing.
And then you just hit a wall and you have a really horrible boss
or you, your company goes through a total restructure and
everything goes to crap. Or like, you know, this is just
life. Like it's like really hard
things happen that you have to figure out how to manage in your
life. Like that was one of the harder
things that I went through and I was so depressed for a couple of
years and then I just kind of gave it up.
I was like, all right, that's fine.
I have one. He's amazing.
I'm going to be fine with just one.
And I mean, out of the blue miracle like I had, I got
pregnant naturally with my daughter.
I joke that my, I, my, my gynecologist told me, Oh yeah,
this happens all the time. It's like an egg exfoliation.
She was like, you like go through, you go through IVF, you
get the bad eggs out and then like one pops up later and
becomes like a real human. So I had my egg exhalation, I
guess, and my good egg popped up, but it worked out.
It was just a really, really, really, really hard, dark road.
And I think as women, even if you have a life partner there to
support every ounce of it with you and cry every ounce of it
with with you, you, you take it so seriously and you say it's
your fault and it's really, really hard.
So that was a hard journey. And so there's levels of that.
It's like the easy and the heart of it all expect it.
But also as a woman like they're it really is we deal with
biology that is in competition with our career growth
sometimes. And there's like no formula for
like universal answer or formula.
Yeah, it's. It's our blessing and our burden
at the same time. It totally.
Is very special and it's super emotional to talk about and
everybody has a different version of the story and it's
like, I don't know, it's a bespoke moment that everybody
has to figure out on their own because they're approaching it
in different ways. It's a blessing and a curse, but
we have our best friends, we have our work wives.
We also have, you know, the resilience that we talked about
earlier. We have our therapy, we have the
toolkit to get through it. Even though, you know, rain
falls on our lives, rain falls on everyone's lives there.
There is a way to get through it so totally thank you SO.
Much. Thank you for sharing that with
us. Yeah.
Oh my God. That's the perfect wrap up.
Yeah, yeah. Oh my God.
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