Values and Vulnerability
Rebecca Minkoff on brand building, entrepreneurship, personal resilience, and the importance of embracing vulnerability to achieve personal growth.
Episode Notes
From apparel to handbags, Rebecca Minkoff’s designs are described as personifying ‘downtown romantic sensibility and Bohemian rocker style.’ It’s the kind of clarity you don’t achieve, especially in the highly competitive fashion industry, unless you’ve built and evolved your brand with the same care you’ve put into designing and launching your products.
In her talk with Jesse, Rebecca discusses her journey as a brand founder— from being the brand to needing to expand and articulate the brand’s product signatures and core values. She describes the inequities that led her to launch the Female Founder Collective and launch the Superwomen podcast. She talks about her efforts to normalize kindness and inclusion in the fashion industry, and she identifies her own secret sauce as a leader and mother for balancing vulnerability with indomitable spirit.
(3:27) Taking her brand from organic growth to purposeful expressions
(6:30) What was different about launching a fashion brand in 2005? And where is the industry headed now?
(9:37) Launching the Female Founder Collective
(14:12) Highlighting the importance of diversity and addressing the impact of the pandemic on women in the workplace
(19:57) Hosting the Superwomen podcast: opening up the conversation for vulnerability
(22:55) Lightning round: Get to know Rebecca and her secret sauce
Guest Bio
After developing an affinity for design while in the costume department in high school, Rebecca Minkoff moved to New York City at only 18 years old to pursue her dream of becoming a fashion designer. In 2001, Rebecca designed a version of the “I Love New York” t-shirt as part of a five-piece capsule collection. Today, Rebecca Minkoff is a global brand with a wide range of apparel, handbags, footwear, jewelry and accessories—playful and subtly edgy designs that integrate the elements of bohemian femininity with a little bit of rock ‘n’ roll.
In September of 2018, she established the Female Founder Collective, a network of businesses led by women that invests in women’s financial power across the socio-economic spectrum by enabling and empowering female-owned businesses.
Helpful Links
CNBC: How Rebecca Minkoff Started Her Business with $10,000 and an Appetite for Risk
Rebecca’s podcast: Superwomen
+ Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Rebecca Minkoff: The minute you decide you're a victim, you've now given power to whoever did that to you. And the more you talk about it and relish in the victimness, the weaker you become, and the more power they have. And the stories that I've learned from so many of these women is yes, bad shit has happened. Bad shit has happened to everybody. And it's how you choose to reframe that conversation, come back from it, become a fighter, are the conversations where I'm like, "Yes, we all need that." Because we've all had horrible things happen to us, and how we choose to change that situation determines our future.
[00:00:47] Jesse Purewal: From Qualtrics Studios, this is Breakthrough Builders, a series of conversations with people whose passions, perspectives, instincts, and ideas, fuel some of the world's most amazing products, brands, and experiences.
I'm Jesse Purewal, head of brand at Qualtrics, and your host. Proud and excited today to share with you my conversation with Rebecca Minkoff. Rebecca is an entrepreneur, a business leader, a wife, mother, and daughter, an advisor, a fashion icon and an all around great human being whose journey as a builder is as instructive as it is inspiring. She and I had a far reaching conversation on growing and evolving a fashion business and brand, the areas of technology and experience innovation that she's most excited about, how to overcome gender bias and open up more opportunities for women and girls. The importance of empathy and vulnerability as routes to personal growth and happiness and a whole bunch of other topics. We got started talking about how Rebecca sees herself, and frames herself today.
[00:01:51] Rebecca Minkoff: I think most days I still feel like that little girl who moved here at 18 with two suitcases and nowhere to live. Still trying to make it, trying to forge my way, and still trying to get people's buy-in that they should believe in me. Which is weird, because I've been doing this, if you count when I moved here and started working in fashion at 18, for 23 years. And you're just like, "You still feel that way? When does that stop?"
[00:02:17] Jesse Purewal: I had a similar conversation with Kim Mallek, who founded Salt and Straw. And she talked about all these people who were saying, "Well Kim, now that you've made it ..." And she's like, "What do you mean? When did I make it? How did you know, and how come I didn't know?" So I feel like that's pretty pervasive among people who take the kinds of risks and make the kinds of moves that you've made.
[00:02:38] Rebecca Minkoff: Yeah. And I think that making it has so many different connotations to it that's hard to put into words, because people's idea of making it is ... Mine used to be, oh, your feet are up on the yacht, and you're on vacation 365 days a year. So if that doesn't happen, then I haven't made it yet. And then you're like, "Well, do I want that? Is that what I thought I wanted?" I don't know, maybe for a couple years. But not forever.
[00:03:03] Jesse Purewal: You've written, Rebecca, that the Rebecca Minkoff brand personifies a combination of downtown romantic sensibility and Bohemian rocker style, which as a brand guy, I just love the clarity and precision and the dualism that's reflected in that. Can you talk about what the sources or inputs to that wonderful alchemy are, and how you've cultivated them either individually or in tandem?
[00:03:27] Rebecca Minkoff: I would say this to most people who are trying to build a company. The brand was me, and there wasn't someone sitting down saying, "What should it look like? What should it feel like?" It all was organically emanating, but when you get to be a certain size, you have to go, "Okay wait, what is that?" So that we can relay that to other partners, other licensees, customers. And it becomes crystal clear, because one thing that happens, I can only say to women, is our priorities and our ideas might shift as we go through different periods of our life. The simple fact of pre-children I was wearing heels into the office every day, to post children I'm wearing sneakers, cool sneakers, but still comfortable, changes how I might think about aesthetics or design. So I think we said, "Okay, let's sit down and clarify what our brand guides." And it was this mixture of the rock and roll, but that can be too hard sometimes. You can think of some brands that might come to mind that's too harsh and it's too edgy. We're not always that edgy. And so there's a softer Bohemian side. And so really ensuring that when we look at what the brand should look like, what does the clothing look like, that it always is reflective of what launched it, but then very clear for others to see.
[00:04:47] Jesse Purewal: And when you think about the journey you had to go on from organically emanating, as you put it, to articulating it and making it clear for broader customers, for partners, for retailers and so on, were there trade offs involved in that? Did you have to make compromises relative to you as the brand, or did it in some ways actually help magically magnify some of the things that actually are at your core and have always been at your core?
[00:05:13] Rebecca Minkoff: Definitely both. When you become a commercial enterprise and people's wages, they're depending on you, and you have to appeal to a broader subset. It's not just people on the coasts who might have more disposable income to buy fashion. It's okay, how do you service different people who are saving up an entire year to buy your bag? And then what does that bag need to look like if that's what they're caring with them? So I think we got deeper than just the bohemian rock. We said, "Okay, what are our brand codes? How will you know it's a Rebecca Minkoff?" And so we began to identify the things that for our brand, it's the dog hook. It's the tassels, it's the studding, it's the zippers. And so she begins to see an architecture around those two words that are meaningful to her, that she can close her eyes and go, "This is Rebecca Minkoff."
[00:06:06] Jesse Purewal: You launched the Rebecca Minkoff brand in 2005, well before any of us had an iPhone in our pocket or legit wifi or cheap computing and the ability to stand up a direct to consumer brand. I'm curious, if you had stood up Rebecca Minkoff let's say in 2015, as opposed to 2005, what do you think would've been different?
[00:06:30] Rebecca Minkoff: I think what would've been different is everything that people take for granted today was very new for us. So when we talk about direct to consumer, or talking to your customer, using influencers, when we did it, we were called crazy. We had interventions by heads of the best department stores in the world saying, what are you doing? You're dirtying yourself. How dare you have influencers at your show or work with them or beyond social media, or talk to your customer. So all those things were crazy ideas that are now table stakes for brands today.
And so I think for us, starting a brand in 2015 looks a lot different. The marketplace is far more crowded. What I would say is we would've definitely needed to know what's our Instagram look and feel, what's a filter, what's our tone of voice? What's all these things that didn't necessarily exist in the same way they do now? And the pressure it is that when someone goes to your grid, that's the moment where they go, "Do I want to follow you or not? Or do I want to buy you or not?" I think things in a way have gotten far more tribal. Who you put on really shows what tribe you're part of, not just how much money you spent on something. And so I think we'd be looking at it through that lens.
[00:07:44] Jesse Purewal: And then tell me about 2022 and this version of that. When you think about either your own business, or you reflect on conversations you've had as an investor or a mentor or an advisor, what's crazy in 2022 that you think will just be dirigir, and the way we've got to all do it as we think about building a business, particularly in fashion, but any kind of consumer business in say three to five years?
[00:08:09] Rebecca Minkoff: I think that we've seen tremendous adoption and growth within web three and FTs, crypto, and how each person approach is this is going to be very different. I think obviously new platforms, websites, eCommerce will be powered by Web3, you'll have the option to pay in crypto, you'll be able to buy the digital garment online as a pre-order while you wait for the physical to arrive, or get the first look at the collection. I think there's so much opportunity with what NFTs are able to unlock.
Us releasing our first collection sold out in nine minutes. And I think, again, we've just begun to explore what else could it be? Obviously you're going to take it into your social media and it's going to be what you're wearing in Zoom, but then people will have their digital closets, and what does that mean for their physical closets? So I think the world is just opening up to this, and it'll be table stakes in a couple years in the way that social media is now.
[00:09:09] Jesse Purewal: Let me ask you about the role of women founders. The most recent data I've seen on US consumers suggest that women are accounting for up to 80% of purchase decisions, but we're still at a place where only two or 3% of venture dollars are funding businesses that are founded by women. As an entrepreneur, what are the things that you think need to be done to close that gap so the world is benefiting more from ideas that might just be otherwise sitting on the sidelines?
[00:09:37] Rebecca Minkoff: While I'm happy you bring that up. I felt like I was part of this echo chamber culture of women talking about the same thing. It's why I launched the Female Founder Collective, which is my nonprofit that basically brings female founders together. It's a community of over 15,000 women to really share with each other, their tips, tricks, and resources, and more importantly, educate each other. Because if you have a woman who's doing a million dollars a year in revenue, and she can teach someone who's doing 100,000 dollars, everything she learned to get to that jump, that is far more valuable than what people might go, "Oh, do I have to go back to school? I just started this business. What do I do?"
So we've been able to really bridge that gap with the connections we make for other women and the education we give them. And I think that the consumer, while it might be a little bit going out of their way, part of the female founder collective is the seal. So you can recognize and go, "Oh, woman owned." Rather than going to your Starbucks, go one block further, does a woman own a coffee shop? Or I'm going to buy gifts from my office, let me go to the collective and see the directory of all these amazing, incredible creators. So while we have our habits and we want to just order it, get it done quickly, as a consumer do you take those extra steps in the way that you might recycle to say, "Okay, let me do something women-owned."
[00:10:54] Jesse Purewal: And how do you then intersect that maybe back with the idea of tribe? We talked a few minutes ago about how it isn't just about demonstrating where you might be in an income bracket, or how much money you spent, but actually who are my people? If you're counseling someone who's standing up a consumer business today and they're a woman, or they want to attract people to the franchise that are going think in a more balanced way about the businesses, the causes, the things they're supporting in a gender specific way. How can they do that, and find their tribe?
[00:11:29] Rebecca Minkoff: So I think that it's going deeper than what your brand looks and feels like. It's what do you stand for as a brand builder and founder? What makes sense with your brand? Well, I think it's for each company to say, "What is the brand most aligned with that they can give back to?" Where they stand on political issues, which can be good and bad sometimes, but people really want to know when they're giving you their money, who's the person behind that and what do they stand for? Or what does the brand, if there isn't a person, really mean? And how does that translate within? You can't be, "We stand for all these things," and then you look inside the company and it's like, "No, it's actually not like that, guys." So how do you make sure that the culture you're building and the values are reflected internally and externally? And if you can't get there, then don't do it. It's better to say silent than do any sort of pretending.
I would say that just as important as it is to make sure that you have the right tone of voice, the right look and feel, what music your customer listens to, you know where she shops, you know where she goes on the weekends, you know how she would decorate your home. Go on the journey and then go, "Okay, now that I know that she likes ma lattes, she goes to Soul Cycle and she has a Hamptons house, would someone like that believe in my mission?" Because I think we have to ask ourselves. Sometimes you can get too much in your own whatever, believe in your own shit, if you will. Would she believe in women? Would she want women to do well, or whatever your cause is? And make sure that customer that you've built up as the ideal customer could actually like the things that you're talking about, if that makes sense.
[00:13:14] Jesse Purewal: Yeah, it does make sense. You're describing trying to discover a shared interest, and where there is a high level of overlap between your brand purpose and the passions that your customer has. You've got this wonderful playground of a shared interest to go excavate and put amazing things into the world, but where you don't have that overlap, it's just like strangers passing in the night.
I want to turn the empathy based dialogue you just started to lay out from a customer driven perspective, and turn it internally to employees for a moment. In this moment, women are reporting higher rates of burnout, of stress, of exhaustion, than their male counterparts at every level of organizations across industries. What request would you have of, let's say, non women, or really of everyone, to acknowledge these facts and begin to close the experience gaps that so many women are having in this moment in a professional context?
[00:14:12] Rebecca Minkoff: I'm going to give you a really long answer. I think that studies have shown it, data has backed this up, but when you have diversity at the table, women and people of color, the results are better and the thinking is better. If you are a company of men selling to women, you will not be nearly as successful as if you have women at the table. We are a different user, we have different things that happen to us, down to monthly, that inform our decisions and how we think.
And so what I would say to you is if you're looking around the table and you see everyone that looks like you, pull in someone that doesn't. And then if you can't find anyone at that level, what are you doing within the organization to ensure that there's a pipeline of women that are able to rise? As a mother, I'm going to speak on this topic, but we've seen women suffer the most with regards to the pandemic and dropping out of the workforce because he came the homeschool teachers, the cooks, the cleaners, trying to keep a home life together. And so rather than penalize them for this, saying, "Great. How do we make this a great place for you to work, where you can do those things? Or how do we support you outside the office in ways that alleviate the stresses you might be encountering?"
If you just look at what a company maybe had to spend to provide daycare, right? Or let's say you had a big company and they said, "Great, all your kids are at home. We're going to band together in big cities where we have lots of employees. We've set up this daycare pod for your kids." Do you know how many women would've been so much more loyal and dedicated, rather than being left to just be on their own at home and try and keep some semblance of a house together? Or rather than, "We're preparing for your maternity leave." What does it look like when you come back? You're tired, you're exhausted. If you're nursing, should you have to go hide in the closet? What about the, "Hey we've made it possible so that you can be in a meeting while you're pumping, and you only see your face." I think there needs to be a lot of creativity, and that'll come when more women are at the table, and when they have a voice and how to affect that.
So those are just a couple of ideas. I think that you will benefit from having diversity at the table, even though it might be more fun to be the bro culture and to have your buddies, which I love. I think you'll see the return by having just different.
[00:16:39] Jesse Purewal: I want to ask you about growing women leaders and being intentional about it early in a girl's life. If you're talking, as both a mother and as a business leader, to parents or family members of girls, what would you say to them about the kinds of experiences that those girls should be exposed to, or the learning journey they should go on to help them dream fearlessly early in life and feel like they can make a dent in the world?
[00:17:05] Rebecca Minkoff: I think there's a couple things that play here. So it was two boys, and then I came out as the girl, and then my mom was like, "Oh my gosh, she's a girl. I got to teach her to be tough and be a fighter." So my whole life was nothing was extra special because I was a girl. If I wanted something, I had to fight it, I'd earn for it. And so I've never been in a situation with men where I felt uncomfortable or, "Oh my God, I'm the only woman." Even though I talk and foster and want to promote women to have that confidence and to feel that, I never have experienced it because I was just brought up in a way that was like, "Don't fucking mess with me, I got older brothers, and I know how to fight."
So I had my daughter and I was like, "Okay, I got a teacher to be tough." And I notice with this next generation, they're already tough. They're already resilient. And I think the things that maybe are subtle are the things that we have to notice. When you say to your son with a sports team, "You can do that," making sure that you also use that language with your daughter. I think when she says, "I can't do that," I'm like, "Yeah, you can. You can do anything. As long as you work hard, you can do anything." It's not the fantasy, if you can dream it, you can be it. No, there's a lot of work that goes into being something. The dream is the beginning. And so I think it's making sure she knows that hard work will get her somewhere faster than anything else, and being tough and resilient and not afraid to speak out.
[00:18:31] Jesse Purewal: Yeah. And it does seem that there's been, in the last couple of years, an ascendance of some real mentor figures that are female. Whether you go to a Supreme Court justice like Elena Kagan, or you go to a poet laureate like Amanda Gorman. These examples are out there waiting for us as parents to spotlight for our children. And it's a matter of making sure that we're doing it for the right reasons, and that attention is focused on potential destinations and people who can inspire.
[00:19:00] Rebecca Minkoff: For sure, and I think that the more we can just make sure that girls don't think that because they're not a boy that they can't be tough and strong. When it happens on the playground, my daughter, "Well, he did this to me." I'm like, "All right, you go tell him he can't do that to you." And she'll be like, "But I can't." I'm like, "Then I'll go with you and we'll show him together." And it's just that constant reinforcement that I think then will make a strong girl that's like, "Oh, don't mess with me. I got this. I'm just as good as you."
[00:19:28] Jesse Purewal: Yeah. Let me close by asking you a couple of questions about your podcast Superwoman, I'm always so impressed with your ability to guide guests on a comprehensive and concise and compelling story, 27 or 28 minutes long. How do you do that? How do you distill someone's story or a particular part of their journey, and to what are you a big preparer versus jumping in into the moment and following where the conversation goes?
[00:19:57] Rebecca Minkoff: Well first of all, I'm flattered you say that? Because I was doing a lot of criticism of myself yesterday. I was like, "I don't go deep enough. I don't get philosophical enough. I haven't made anyone cry yet. What's wrong with my interviews?"
But I will say that I used to really prepare, and my interviews weren't as good. Because I was no longer curious about this person's story and journey, because I'd read it all. So it was almost like me pretend asking them questions for my audience. And when I stopped preparing, and obviously I do a little preparation, I know who they are and what they've accomplished to some degree, but I don't go too deep because then I'm just as curious to learn and I feel like that comes through in the interviews.
And then I think for the women, I really aim to get each one of them to share a vulnerable moment, or a moment of failure, whether they overcame it or didn't. Because so many of these people are held up on these pedestals by others, of perfection, and they've made it and they must have it all, and all these things. And then you're like, "Well that's impossible." I forget sometimes. I'm like, "Wow, she's done it all, and she's so perfect." And then I'm like, "Oh, you've had bad stuff happened to you too? Great. I'm not alone."
So I try and get that out of women, and the better interviewees are the ones that share it, and I've had people that gloss right over it. And I'm like, "I'm going to try this again. Let me ask it a different way," and then the interview's not great because they won't share that stuff.
[00:21:25] Jesse Purewal: And what has maybe been the most valuable lesson or reminder that you've experienced around those vulnerabilities as a dialogue partner?
[00:21:33] Rebecca Minkoff: Yeah. I think that you see trends in culture. And I think that women have bought in, whether we created it to this victim culture. "This happened to me and because it happened to me, now I can't do the this." And the minute you decide you're a victim, you've now given power to whoever did that to you. And the more you talk about it and relish in the victimness, the weaker you become, and the more power they have. And the stories that I've learned from so many of these women is, yes, bad shit has happened. Bad shit's happened to everybody. And it's how you choose to reframe that conversation, come back from it, become a fighter, are the conversations where I'm like, "Yes, we all need that." Because we've all had horrible things happen to us, and how we choose to change that situation determines our future.
And there was one story in particular of this woman who's a very successful author, TV host, bestselling, has many books. Basically an orphan daughter of a drug addict who was taking care of herself at the age of eight. Now one could sit there and say, "Look what happened to me, and because of this situation and how bad it was, life's going to be shitty and I'm never going to make it, and woe is me." And she turned her life entirely around. And I keep getting those stories. And so it just shows me it's how you get back up and how you change the story that determines your outcome.
[00:22:55] Jesse Purewal: I love it. Thank you for framing it that way. All right, I'd like to move us to close with the lightning round. Just your first quick reaction. You ready?
[00:23:04] Rebecca Minkoff: I'm ready.
[00:23:04] Jesse Purewal: All right. What's a book you love to recommend to people?
[00:23:08] Rebecca Minkoff: Oh. I love Shoe Dog. I love that story. I love that. It was just as hard then as it is now to make it. And sometimes you think technology makes life easier, but it can also make things incredibly complicated, so I just appreciate his story a lot.
[00:23:24] Jesse Purewal: Shoe Dog, the Phil Knight story. That's a great one. A brand you admire, and it can't be the Rebecca Minkoff brand, but one brand you can't imagine living without.
[00:23:33] Rebecca Minkoff: Oh. How about Netflix? Does that count?
[00:23:37] Jesse Purewal: Netflix absolutely counts.
[00:23:38] Rebecca Minkoff: Okay.
[00:23:38] Jesse Purewal: You got any favorite shows on Netflix, or is it just the experience of Netflix and everything it's about?
[00:23:45] Rebecca Minkoff: I'm loving Ozark. I don't know. For me whenever I'm stressed, I like to watch something that is far more stressful in my life. It makes what I'm going through seem paled in comparison. So whether it's the Walking Dead or Ozark, I'm like, "At least I don't work for a drug dealer who's going to kill me." It makes me feel so much better about myself.
[00:24:04] Jesse Purewal: Interesting. The relativity goes the other direction.
[00:24:06] Rebecca Minkoff: It does.
[00:24:07] Jesse Purewal: I like knowing that. Rebecca, give me an up and coming designer or label that you think is outstanding.
[00:24:13] Rebecca Minkoff: Oh my gosh, this is really tough because I really only shop myself. There's a brand, he is a black designer. His name is Brandon Blackwood. He's a handbag designer, and he's fresh. I admire what he's doing, and I admire that finally there's a person of color in the handbag space. If you look at, it's Michael Coors and Tori Burch and me and Mark Jacobs. Now it's time for other talent to rise.
[00:24:44] Jesse Purewal: Love that. And finally, how do you describe your secret sauce? What's the special blend of stuff that makes you do you?
[00:24:52] Rebecca Minkoff: I don't have an ego, and I think it's really important the higher on the totem pole you get, or the more successful you get that you remain down to earth and grounded. And it's the one thing I get over and over again, but it's sad to me. It's, "Wow, you're so normal. Wow, you're so down to earth. Wow, you're so honest." And I'm like, "That's so sad that is abnormal." Shouldn't leaders be kind and generous and just another human, versus the people that get to this point of where I'm better than you, or you're not good enough for me, or you're not worthy of being spoken to. And I think that because I entered the fashion as an outsider and was always fighting to be part of the cool club and part of the click, and whatever all that meant, it never was lost on me to not ever make someone feel gross after an encounter with me.
[00:25:39] Jesse Purewal: Well, I think my reflection on that is getting to a place of leadership implies that a lot has been done. And sometimes when a lot has been done, you can lean into fear, or you can lean into love. There's a whole lot of things that could happen. You've had these conversations around vulnerability, and some leaders will lean excessively into the fear part of it, and not want to be accessible, and not want to take risks, and not want to do things that might be that move that gets people questioning, "Oh, should they be in this spot? Or should they not?" Some will lean more into love, and go at it and say, "It's all about celebrating how I got here, the people that got me here, the people I'm here with now, the stuff we're doing, and just leaning into that." And the reality is we're all on a spectrum of that sometimes. But when you lean so hard into the fear, it creates this negativity, and people don't seem normal because it's like, "Wait a minute. That's that's not how it should be."
[00:26:39] Rebecca Minkoff: Yeah, and I think that you can't forget that you don't get here by yourself. It does require a team, and how you treat them is not only going to determine how fast you grow, but also then they look to then how they're going to now treat others. And I think it all trickles down. You can even just look at women within the fashion industry that are 10 plus years older. And even maybe I saw this a little bit, but it was cutthroat. It was throw each other under the bus. There's only one editor in chief. There can only be one big designer. And these women were awful. The shoe being thrown at people's faces. The mental abuse that women in the fashion industry did to each other, just to get to the top because there was so little air, and how then women below them modeled that behavior. And it took, I'd say, the last couple of years with cancel culture to make people go, "Whoa, we can't act like that anymore." And it takes a while to undo that behavior. But if you look at how pervasive it could be, what if you just modeled kindness, and how that goes down I think has much more lasting impact on people.
[00:27:47] Jesse Purewal: Yeah. It's interesting. You launched Rebecca Minkoff, a year later or maybe two years later, Devil Wear's Prada comes out, and Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep are living this all too real scenario out on the big screen. And some people are going, "Oh my God, that's my truth. Holy smokes, it's been exposed. That's good. Maybe now some things will change." And others are going, "Oh my God, that's really what it is? This is not a meme. This is not a joke. This is for real." And I don't know, there's probably another 100 kinds of things like that have helped expose some of those unfortunate truths, but I can't help but think of that as a seminal moment where people like me, who had no interest in the industry and no involvement in it are going, "Man, is that really what that's like?" Because I kind of had an idea that maybe it wasn't perfect, but I didn't realize it was that.
[00:28:39] Rebecca Minkoff: Totally. And I would say that that exact movie does exist in that behavior is real. I'm sure there are other industries too. I was just with a woman this morning who's in the entertainment industry. Big, huge global entertainment agency, and it's just as crazy there. It's just a different flavor.
[00:29:01] Jesse Purewal: Well Rebecca, it's been my honor to have the conversation with you and to have some time together today. So thank you for everything that you shared and the stories that you told. So grateful for it, and looking forward to connecting again soon.
[00:29:14] Rebecca Minkoff: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:29:16] Jesse Purewal: Thanks for listening to Breakthrough Builders. If you're enjoying the show, please subscribe and leave a rating and a review, and tell a friend. Breakthrough Builders is a Qualtrics Studios original, hosted and executive produced by me, Jesse Purewal. An awesome team of people puts this show together, including our show writer, Todd Bagnull, and our head of social media, Chelsea Hunersen. From Studio Pod Media in San Francisco, our show coordinator is Nicole Genova. Editing and music are by producer Sterling Shore, and executive producer Katie Sunku Wood, with sound engineering by Ryan Crowther. At Vayner Talent in New York, Samantha Heapps, Hannah Park, and Yvonna Lynn provide publicity in promotional support. The shows designers are Baron Santiago and Vansuka Chindavijak. Our website is by Gregory Hedon. Photography by Christy Hemm Klok. Special thanks to the entire Breakthrough Builders crew at Qualtrics, including Ali Rohani, Ben Hawken, John Johnson, and Kylan Lundeen.