and he was like listen we're you know we love your product we want to wish you the best of luck but it's a no okay can you tell me why he was about three feet from me face to face and he says do you want me to be honest with you and i said yes please
and he says i just don't think women will buy makeup from someone who looks like you and with your body and your weight wow [Music] hey everyone welcome back to on purpose the number one health podcast in the world thanks to each and every single one of you that come back
every week to listen learn and grow now one of my favorite things that i get to do on this podcast is introduce you to people that i think have amazing energy amazing insight and incredible ideas and not just that plans of action strategies techniques
and journeys that when they share them with you you'll be able to follow in their footsteps you'll be able to feel inspired and you'll be able to innovate and start living your passion today and today's guest is going to help us do all of those things i've known today's
guest for just around a year but i have to tell you that in this year i've been able to experience her energy through personally spending hours with her like literally hours i think when we first met i spent all of 14 hours with her back and forth on a journey we went on
and then across messages phone calls and she's extremely personal has phenomenal insights for your growth and journey and today she's here to talk about her incredible book believe it our guest today is jamie ken lima founder of it cosmetics and today we're
going to talk about how to go from being underestimated to being unstoppable now for those of you who don't know jamie's the co-founder of it cosmetics a company that she started with her husband in their living room that has become the largest cosmetic
companies in the united states listen to this worth over 1.2 billion dollars as the first female ceo under l'oreal she's an outspoken proponent of female leadership and professional empowerment and if you don't already know her incredible story
you're in for a treat jamie welcome to on purpose jay thank you so much i am so excited to be here it's such an honor and i can't wait thank you this is so fun because i feel like i remember the journey when we started talking about your book
and we started talking about what you'd accomplished and the incredible journey you've been on now first of all i think it's important to say and i i really mean this even though you're a friend and you know we live in a world where we're surrounded by people doing amazing things
it is important to say that what you've done is truly historic like it is historical it's we shouldn't underestimate it we shouldn't just pass it off we live in a world today where you hear numbers all the time and everyone's like oh yeah this company
did this and this what you've done is historic and and i just want to take a moment to recognize that as your friend uh as an interviewer today and and for our audience because you're about everyone who's listening right now and when you go out and get the book you'll
you'll read about it you're hearing about a journey of someone who was the underdog someone who didn't have all the possibilities and access in the beginning but someone today is having such a big impact on people's lives so jamie today we're going to go through
the journey in a different order i want to start with uh what i saw the other day because i really want to you know give testament to the book i saw a video on your instagram the other day where you were unboxing the book with your husband and your daughter
uh and it was it was a super emotional moment now you've achieved a lot of things in life tell us why the book was so deep and personal and meaningful after everything you've been through you know jay i am i watched my daughter open the book
and the thing that i felt my husband started crying and he never cries and he was crying uh you know i i think this is what it comes down to is you know when you google my story you see oh denny's waitress becomes billion dollar entrepreneur and it seems like such a fairy tale
and after years of having so many women dm me on instagram saying like oh did you get lucky or you know i wish i had connections like you i kind of realized that if we don't share the real stories behind the stories like all the real stuff then people feel
alone in their own rejections or setbacks or you know self-doubt or not enoughness and and watching my daughter open the book was kind of my proudest moment because this is the first time ever that i've ever just like pulled back the curtain and said
here's here's what really happened and here's you know here's how the first three years of of constant rejections happen and here's how i got through them and here's the things i did wrong the things i did right and um you know at the end of the day
it's it's it's really a story this book believe it is really a story about a girl who went from not believing in herself to believing in herself and and not not trusting herself to then learning like how to how to get still and hear my own intuition and make the decision
to trust it um and how to kind of go from doubting i'm enough to knowing i'm enough and i think that why i got super emotional watching my daughter open it is because i realize you know this this isn't just my story it's the story of so many
people out there right now on their own journey of like learning how to believe in themselves and and trust themselves and know no they're enough and um and so for me it's the most meaningful work i've ever done um in my life because it's you know it's not about me and it's just
i don't know i'm just i'm honored i think every one of us and you are testament to this oh my goodness every one of us has a story to share that if we're you know courageous enough to share it can really inspire um inspire everyone else on their own journey of like
stepping into the person they're born to be so yeah it was a really emotional moment and um and just proud for my daughter to see that i want her to grow up and not doubt herself the way i did for many many years and and to you know learn to believe in
herself too and i'm just honored to have learned a ton of lessons that i can hopefully share with her and so many other people yeah i'm glad you're doing that what i love about this conversation already is everything you're saying is exactly what 99 of our listeners our
community me a few years ago before i got started like this is the emotion that feeling we all had we doubted ourselves we were negative about ourselves we thought that someone else got lucky we thought someone else just had it handed to them
and so we judged them or we had a different perception but tell me about a time or their times when you felt you underestimated yourself because i think we've all been underestimated by people and you put up a quote the other day on twitter that i loved you said
you might be tempted to underestimate me but let me save you some time don't and and i loved that i was laughing when i read that but i i know you and i i've spent time with you and you you speak about in the book times where you underestimated and doubted yourself
tell us about what that really feels like because i think people forget when they see you today they'll be like oh she's probably been confident our whole life and and i know as your friend and someone that you've been vulnerable with that's not true and so i'd love i'd love
for you to share a bit about that yeah so many stories jay and and this is something i think too for anyone listening right now who's struggling with self-doubt and who like knows they're made for more but still doubts themselves anyway
i think it's a lifelong journey for all of us right it's something that even to this day there'll still be days where you know maybe a friend i was counting on like didn't show up for me the way i thought they would and i start in it it hurts my feelings and then b
i go right back and i'm like okay let me get let me get over that um but there's there's so many moments and i think us learning how to handle those moments and and uh is key to everything because i think self-doubt like kills more dreams than almost anything else
um you know one big moment that that stands out to me and there's so many that i share in the book because i i really want to share how i navigated things the right way and how i did it the wrong way and everything i've learned but you know i
remember um you know a few years uh well actually let me tell you a different one so so i knew ever since i was a little girl and sitting in my living room i always i would watch oprah every single day and i always thought oh you know one day i'm going to grow up and i'm
going to interview other people like i want to share their stories with the world i knew i was going to do that my whole life i just knew and i was finally working in my dream job uh uh in my 20s and uh and 30s as a news anchor telling other people's stories and i
thought like oh and i started i went through this big season the setback where i got a hereditary skin condition called rosacea and there's no cure for it and i would be live anchoring the news and i'd hear my earpiece from the producer
um there's something on your face there's something on your face you know can you wipe it off can you wipe it off and they had they were having my back like they were they were great but i knew there wasn't anything i could wipe off i knew it was that this bright
red because my skin would get bright red all bumpy and like sandpaper texture i knew i couldn't wipe it off i knew it was the makeup breaking up under the the hot lights and so i went through this season i'm just trying to find every product out there that you know
and nothing would work for me and uh and and i thought that i was in the season of setback in my life and what i'd later learn is our setbacks are often our setups for something that we're supposed to do next on our own calling and our own purpose in life and
but at the time i was in the season of self-doubt uh where my inner critic was really getting loud and taking over and there'd be so many times i would be you know live on television and i'd be thinking thoughts like are viewers changing the channel am i
am i going to get fired and i went through this big season of self-doubt and then i had this you know moment one day this really strong gut feeling where i was like wait a minute if i can create a product that actually solves my own problems i bet you there's
so many other people out there that like me their whole life they've seen these these beauty commercials on tv or magazines that show perfect skin they've never seen anyone that looks like them uh and i always aspire to look like those ads they always kind of made me
feel like i wasn't enough deep down inside but i realized wait i've never seen anyone that has a skin challenge if i can create a product that works for me i bet it's going to help so many other people and and then i had this wild crazy god-sized dream i was like
what if i just redefine beauty in the whole beauty industry what if i'm sitting there right as a broke news anchor because you don't get paid much to all in journalists so i'm sitting there i'm like if i launch a product that works what if i put real
women every age and shape and size and and and gender identity everything what if i you know and and i call them beautiful and authentically mean it and that's how i use those models and i had this whole big dream meanwhile i'm sitting there knowing
nothing about the beauty industry having no connections um and and but just had this gut feeling and when i look back on my journey now and you know that was 10 years ago when i look back at my journey over everything that's happened um i have done so many things wrong
but i think one of the biggest defining moments um and i share all the mistakes in the book too but one of the biggest defining moments of one of the things i did right was when i when i would get a strong gut feeling like i decided to trust myself
and and it changed everything doesn't mean it was easy yeah it was a hard a hard journey after that but you know it was a moment too jay where i because i really thought i was in my dream job um but i also had this big moment come over me where i realized like oh
the victory isn't in just not quitting right we're always told like don't quit don't give up i feel like the victory is in us knowing um when to let go of a dream right i think that's as important as knowing when to go after one and it was this moment where even though
i thought i was where i was supposed to be i all of a sudden felt like i wasn't and i was supposed to take this next leap and i decided to to trust it um and and become an entrepreneur and and that was crazy i love that story thank you for sharing
that because i think when you think about that like being on broadcast television talking to to so many people and then to have someone whisper in your ear there's something in your face like that is you know that's scary like that's that's really scary
tell me about how it how you even got there because i feel like there's even a layer before that that when you when you had the confidence to be on tv and that was a dream that you had watching oprah tell us about the period even before that maybe it was in your teenage years
as as a young girl what were the doubts and the underestimates underestimations you had in even to get to that stage of being on tv yeah i think that you know being a person who is kind and i think maybe you can relate to this i think whenever you're kind um people
underestimate you just right off the bat and uh and and so that's been something that you know is important to know i think your whole life but you know i am i was always underestimated for that but i i also always had this kind of internal knowing
i'm actually curious if you've had this um but you can tell i want to interview other people that's not happening today it's i'm not letting you i'm not letting you okay one one question because maybe maybe your listeners um can relate to this or maybe even
remember this moment but i was nine years old when this happened and i remember watching oprah on television and barbara walters said to her uh asked her a question and interview and oprah said i always knew i was destined for greatness uh her whole life so she always knew
this and i remember at the time this made the press everywhere and people started kind of like hating on her for saying this i think people weren't used to um in particular a woman being so bold to say something like that but i remember being a nine-year-old
little girl and even though you know and i think we all deal with underestimation i also remember having this feeling when oprah said that when oprah said i've always known i was destined for greatness i remember sitting there as a little girl going
me too me too and i would literally see what's possible through her sharing her own story and her sharing her own vulnerabilities um and that's a big reason i wrote this book too but that's this will be my i'll try to make this my only question for you like because look
at everything you are doing look at how you are helping to heal humanity through love and look at the millions of people you're impacting like have you always had that feeling as well um since you were little yeah it's a really good question actually
and this is why you were a great interviewer i i i don't think i've ever been asked that question before uh i so when you were watching oprah and i i grew up watching oprah 2 but i think the first person that had a big impact on me through their media
was eminem so i grew up as a teenager listening to eminem and i would not just listen to his music i would watch his interviews i would watch his early videos and i think i learned so much about resilience and opportunity from his story and you know he had so many famous songs
which would have so many lines about like you know taking your shot have taking your opportunity and so i don't think i ever believed any of what i am able and blessed to do today was possible i don't think i did because i didn't know anyone
who'd done it i wasn't exposed to the media industry i wasn't around people like that but i always knew that i had to try and so i was very much convinced that i could try and that i had to put myself out there and i had to take opportunities and i had to give things a go
but i never was aware of the result i never really believed that the result was mine i just knew that if i listened to what eminem said that it might happen because he had this he had this belief set and so when you ask me that question i i can see i
know exactly what you mean and and it's lovely hearing you say that i think we should celebrate that because why we would all want our children to say oh mom dad i i want to go and help people i want to go and serve people like we're not you're not celebrating you know even
your work like it's not just celebrating the success of a makeup company it's like you're celebrating the success of you wanting to help people with a real challenge with real confidence with there's so much depth to that so you your first chapter is called when
your intuition talks to you believe it how do you know you're hearing your intuition because i feel that for so many people today it's got so quiet and you're mainly hearing just noise and your parents and your family like how do you know when you know it's like oh that's
my intuition how do you know yeah and i'll ask you later if you bleached your hair like eminem and if you were slim shady and went through that whole phase we'll have a combo offline um but i love that like you know he was someone in your life that you like turned the
volume up on and we're inspired by it i think that's huge so um yeah you know intuition when your intuition talks you believe it like i have learned jay like time and time again uh and i believe by the way every one of us has an intuition and a knowing and i
believe that our knowing is always right and i think that to exactly to your point i think all of the noise of everything around us of self-doubt of our inner critic of you know our friends and family who love us but like don't get our dreams or our hopes
because they're seeing it through the lens of their own fear or their own experiences and and all of that can become so loud that it's like this huge barrier almost of self-doubt it reminds me of like when you're on a flight and you see all these clouds
below you it's like we're walking through life with all these clouds of self-doubt and sometimes it's so hard to like penetrate through them and hear our own our own gut and our own internal knowing and i think a lot of people have lost touch with it and haven't
heard it for a long time absolutely um yeah but i i think it's a lifelong journey and and i think it takes a lot of practice and i also think it takes a lot of grace um that we give ourselves right because a lot of times we'll think oh i trusted my gut but it was wrong and
all these things like what do i do and i think that um it takes literally a lot of practice and it takes building that muscle and getting still and learning to hear your own truth and i'm sure that you know through all of your teachings of meditation you
probably hear from people all the time like oh jay i try to meditate but all i do is go through my to-do list in my own head or all those things right it takes time and and you have to give yourself grace in it and you know an example of how i started
building this this intuition muscle also is looking back at experiences right like everyone listening right now can probably think of a time that they trusted their gut they trusted themselves and it was right or they can probably think of a time
when oh i i had this gut feeling that this person i was dating was super sketchy but like i didn't listen to that gut feeling and i was like i should have right we all kind of can look back and build this muscle and you know a big a big powerful story
uh that happened to me that i think is a universal story because so many of us go through different variations of someone else telling us we're not enough or someone else telling us we're not the right fit or someone else telling us we're not qualified right and
sometimes it's ourselves telling ourselves that too um but you know there is a moment where you know after i i decided to take this big leap as an entrepreneur and quit my job and and you know i wrote the business plan on my honeymoon flight to south africa with my husband
got back and went all in and i just thought jay i i thought oh uh if i can just create a product and it's amazing and it works like it's just gonna sell and and uh thank goodness i didn't know how hard it was gonna be to be an entrepreneur or i may have
uh second guessed myself but um you know we poured every penny we had into into creating a product and hiring an advisory board and and then what i wasn't anticipating was from the moment we launched the brand and from the moment we had a product that i was like oh this is life changing
and it works uh it would be three years before we could afford to pay ourselves and all of the beauty retailers that i had put on pedestals that i love like i would save my tip money as a denny's waitress to buy a mac lipstick or a lancome
island go into all the big department stores um all over the world you know like i loved i loved it and so i had always held these amazing retailers on this pedestal and now i'm sitting there with my own company thinking like oh the product works they're gonna love it
and every time i would send my product to all the department stores the beauty retailers qvc uh everywhere they all said no uh unanimously no you're not the right fit your packaging is not nice enough and this went on and on and on
and about two years into it and we were staying alive by the way selling about two to three orders a day on our website um and and that was it uh and about two a little over two years into uh the company i got a phone call from a potential investor and i was like
and i was so excited because i thought oh my gosh and this was a big private equity company that has uh invested in a bunch of the consumer product companies that we all buy in grocery stores and they've invested often in pre-revenue and made them big household
names and i thought oh gosh if they invest in it cosmetics like a i'm not going to go bankrupt and b um they're going to help like maybe they'll use their leverage to get me into these stores that keep telling me no so jay i was so excited i thought this was going to
be life-changing and i we started doing meetings with them and then entered the diligence phase and they loved our product uh and uh and and diligence phase meaning like we showed a product pipeline and future projections and all the stuff and it got down to the final meeting and
my husband and i flew up for the meeting and i'll never forget this moment um because it's literally a moment that's etched so deeply when i think about how i built my my muscle of intuition uh but we were we were there for the final meeting and
i just thought it was going to be life-changing and i was standing there about three feet uh from the head guy and he was super nice and he was like listen we're you know we love your product we want to wish you the best of luck but it's a no
uh we're gonna pass on investing in it cosmetics and i was like okay um and i'm so used to hearing no at this point right and i'm like okay can you tell me why um because feedback's usually a gift um can you tell me why and he he was about three feet from me
face to face and he says do you want me to be honest with you and i said yes please and he says i just don't think women will buy makeup from someone who looks like you um with your body and your weight and i remember in this moment wow two things
yeah two things happen so i remember feeling like physically feeling this like feeling through my body like a lifetime of body doubt just like flooding my body and i remember looking at him i literally felt no anger at all i mean it's obviously super hurt um but i was watching the
words come come out of his mouth and literally i had this feeling like this deep feeling that he's raw and i remember this feeling like it was yesterday it was like literally in the pit of my stomach like it was like this knowing he's wrong um but i also
knew i had no proof he's wrong uh and and you know his words hurt i went out to the car and cried my eyes out and i had to do a lot of work to like turn down the volume on those words not repeat him over and over for years um uh but i just felt like he was wrong and
the other thing i felt jay was uh you know i it's weird the one thing too that you know when i look at the things i've done right to how to build this billion dollar company i never took the rejection personally um even when it hurts and there's hundreds
of rejections but like in the case of this guy when you said those words i realized after i had a moment you know to process them um he was just as much impacted by a lifetime of the beauty industry as i was and to the point where he thought oh if you
don't look a certain way i can't make money off you so he's just so so his words and in a way were just confirmation of why i needed to keep going because things needed to change and you know and by the way just to share this in case i forget um uh i share so much more about this
but six years later six years later when l'oreal acquired the company that i started and my living room they acquired it for 1.2 billion dollars cash and it was all over the they released this right in a press release which i didn't know they were
going to do until the day before and that day it was all over it was the home page of the wall street journal everywhere and i got an email from that investor and i hadn't heard from mj in six years and i got an email from him uh and he said congratulations
on the l'oreal deal i'm so happy for you i was wrong and i learned it would have been the most successful investment in his firm's history and um the other thing that i that i just want to share um because i think this is powerful because i think so many people
especially listening to us watching us right now uh are coming out of a really hard year and the year of things not making sense and the year and sometimes you know people are just in a season or a moment of rejection or setback and um there's a really famous
quote that says rejection is god's protection um and i think this applies to every faith you can a lot of people replace it with the rejection of the universe's protection and it's wild because when i look back at so many rejections that i've gone through
and i just feel like someone might need to hear that today right because it's like i look back and even when they didn't make sense at the time and even i thought there's no way this is um meant to be or you know all those things like this just hurts or it feels unfair
or or personal or i look back and it's like wow i'm so grateful for the hardship or the setback because years later sometimes and sometimes it takes years till we see like oh i'm in the place i'm supposed to be i was per you know the rejections
god's protection but in this case jay at the time that he said those words to me i was so desperate i didn't know how we were going to stay alive as a company i would have probably given him the majority of the company for almost no money right and because he
didn't believe in me and because of that rejection and then and then a lot of others as well on the way um and other people that did believe in us for sure but because that guy didn't believe in me by the time we did sell our business to l'oreal we were still the largest
shareholders um so it's like wow it's like i i always thank god not just for the open doors but for the closed doors absolutely and just having that trust in it right absolutely what a i i loved every bit of what you just shared because i think that's the reality of it
and you know obviously you've only told us about one of the bigger rejections and the book goes into detail on all of the the smaller rejections the quick rejections i mean the idea of that you were patient that you didn't pay yourself for three years
there's so much patience involved there's so much resilience and adapting and going at it again and you're getting so much negative feedback from even people of influence and i think you know and i can relate to all of those in my own personal life and my journey
that there's so many parallels that i'm like oh i remember exactly the executive that that i had a similar uh run-in with and so what i what i'm fascinated by though is how much have you found that building something successful what percentage or what ratio is it
mindset versus the actual skill of business and product that you're doing like if you had to divide it where would someone like you divide it how much of this was you having to learn packaging learn sales learn spreadsheets learn growth versus how much of this was
you being adaptable being persistent being resilient and relentless in that pursuit tell us a bit about that journey of both of those yeah i mean gosh if i had to answer that just right off the fly i would say 80 or 90 percent mindset wow i i really believe and and
and now in this journey you know um now having a blessing and meeting thousands of entrepreneurs and just seeing the ones that make it and the ones that don't and the ones that build things or even just human beings and and the ones that go after their goals and
things like that and step into all of who they are um versus kind of like stay in their comfort zone and talk themselves out of their own truth i really believe i truly believe um where you come from doesn't determine where you're going i believe that
we all tell ourselves these lies like oh you know i don't have the right connections i don't come from the right family or i am not qualified and i'm not smart in all those things uh i don't believe that i think that people that change the world right are actually um
famous uh steve jobs commercial um and it's jack oh my gosh jack uh kirsten i'm telling you his last name that said these words but it's like the people that are in his words the people that are crazy enough to believe they can change the world are the ones
who do it's not the people who are smart enough change the world it's not the people who are right and it's like look at you having and you're brilliant but having a vision to take to make wisdom go viral it's like you have the guts to go for it
you know what i mean you have the guts to believe you can and it's like there's so many stories i share in this book where oh my gosh i was not by any stretch of the imagination the most qualified person in the room and i was not the most experienced in all those
things um but so many times i just made the decision uh to believe that i could and and and sometimes that's what it comes down to and i also feel like you know i've learned a lot of powerful lessons along the way as well um that should have become freeing and you
know i heard you share a quote and you'll know where where this is from you shared where it's from too but that you can't be anything you want but you can be everything you are will you share that really fast again yeah no that's it i i
i talk yeah i talk about in my book i talk about how we've been told two lies since we were young and the two lies are the first one is you can be anything you want and and i do think that's there's a lie in that because i think you have a unique
journey and you're not meant to be anything and the second lie that we've all been told is you'll be nothing you won't make it you're insignificant you're irrelevant it won't work and that's where i i say that the uh you can't be anything you want but you can be everything you
are because what you are is and that's your story what you just said now the idea that this person said to you like oh people are not going to buy makeup from someone who looks like you like that's i mean that's one of the worst things i've ever heard
anyone saying like that sounds terrible but the idea is that you became who you were meant to be and i think that stops you from the idea of envy and comparison and all of that but oh you're going good that's so huge that's so huge and just to add one thing
to that um so i'm gonna get so fired up right now because i just know i know someone needs to hear this right now who's going through this because we're in this world of social media where we're like oh it's so tempting to compare ourselves or
to get distracted or to feel less than or to see someone else's highlight reel and think we should change who we are and you know there's there's two big things that happened jay in this journey and and one of them was after three years of hearing no we finally got a yes
to get one shot on qvc right one shot and it came and qvc is a live tv shopping channel so in the us they're broadcast to 100 million homes live and there's no script and and every company from apple iphone to dyson vacuum vitamix they all sell their
product there and i had learned oh you can sell more product in an hour on qvc than in a whole year in department stores so i'm like oh my gosh and my whole thing was like well if i get this shot if i can ever get on qvc like let me you know let me take this
huge risk of instead of showing models of perfect skin let me actually prove that i made a product that works for everyone and like i had this vision of what if i just take my makeup off and show my bright red rosacea what if i put women of all ages and sizes and shapes and
skin tones and skin challenges like and as models and show live how the product works i had this whole vision yet for three years they said no every time every time and by the way that's another example my gut kept saying um you're supposed to be on qvc and for
three years they said no and i think when these things happen to us in our life when we have a gut feeling but then we're like oh it must have been wrong if you still feel in your gut it's right it's right and you're supposed to keep going
and and you know learning to look back on those moments i think is how how we build our muscle and and you know we so we finally get this yes and this one shot on qvc and it is it's a long story i go to detail in the book on how it happened and what happened and all that but
you know just to share one tiny piece of it uh we learned that in this one shot i was going to get in this 10-minute window on live tv uh i would need to sell over 6 000 units of our concealer in this 10 minute window to hit the sales goal or not come back
and we were only doing two to three orders a day on our website and so we didn't even have enough money to manufacture the product get it in there so we applied for 22 sba loans the 23rd bank tiny bank in california said yes just just to covering the money to get this
one order off to qvc and it was consignment so what that meant was in this 10 minute window right i get this one shot on national television after three years ago and if we didn't hit the sales goal whatever product didn't sell they would ship back
to us and we wouldn't be paid for it right as a consignment deal and so you really shouldn't take this risk as an entrepreneur but we were to the point where it was like it was this i didn't exactly and so i thought okay you know do we have a
10-minute window and i had this whole thought of what i was gonna do and we used some of the loan money to hire um third party consultants that helped so many people sell their product on tv and they really truly do help so many people uh and then i was faced with
this dilemma though because what they all told me was okay jamie like if you want a shot at succeeding which most people fail on qvc after one chance if you want a shot at succeeding here's what you need to do and they told me exactly what to do which was to cast
all models that were in their early 20s you know perfect skin and i'm like okay but that's not why i made this business and is that why i made this product and you can't fake authenticity so if i go out there live on tv and i'm like you know it's not it it'll create a
barrier or disconnection with me in the customer so i knew all those things today yet i was like oh my gosh i get one shot i don't like like what do i do and and and i couldn't try it both ways and i flew out to qvc a week early before this one shot on air
and they're in pennsylvania so they're about 30 minutes west of philly and i sat in this rental car all alone in the qvc parking lot uh which sounds creepy now because i've now been in the parking lot thousands of times but this was before i ever got a first shot and i sat
there in the parking lot uh staring at the front door no like watching people in and out all day for a week straight and i sat there in that car like praying crying feeling like you know because i think all of us go through these moments where we believe
in our values but then they get challenged and i just remember honestly at times being like well maybe if i try it their way and then i get success and then i build maybe then i'll try it my way that's authentic like this yes like enter my head challenge my values
and i'll never forget there was one moment in that car where i just imagined like okay if i'm if i have one shot like like what do i want to stand for at the end of the day and i imagine like who that person was turning on their television and i don't
know why but i kept imagining like a single mom folding laundry who had like forgotten like was too busy to remember that she mattered and that she's beautiful and i had this crystal clear moment of intuition where i just realized like i'd rather she's gonna
bless me of two seconds of her precious time i'd rather ever look up on her television and see me showing women who look like her calling them beautiful meaning it like i'd rather have her see that and be reminded of her own beauty and have her not buy anything
i'd rather that happen than me like sell a ton of product and stand for nothing and so i knew what i had to do and and i knew for me it was like how do i try and stand for something for every little kid out there who's about to see these images and start doubting themselves and
every grown person who still does and i just knew what i had to do but honestly it was really scary and i remember walking into the studio for this one shot this this 10-minute window and jay you'll totally understand the setup but there is cameras everywhere
a big um a big time clock on the floor at 10 minutes it was set for 10 minutes and i knew once the host came to my set uh because everything's so quick in real time like they'll go from dyson vacuum to you know to me so once she came to my set and that clock started
we would be live to 100 million homes that would get one shot and i learned which was really fun i learned oh if you're not selling hitting your goal a minute or two in they'll actually cut your time like you could be at eight minutes left and jump
to two minutes left and you know oh it's not going well and if you try to sell nothing sells so i was freaking out and you know you talk a lot about this and about vision and about mission about purpose and those words of wisdom that are so powerful that you share
are what help save me those ideas are what help save me in this moment and what i mean by that is in this like 10 minute you know segment as we're about to go live and i see the clock and it's like 9 59 9 58 and i'm live i would go into the space of
is my dress too tight is my i felt the sweat dripping and i'm like in my head okay if i make this about me in this moment i'm done like what like i had to in that moment with so much pressure remember why am i doing this and like oh it's way bigger than me it's literally
not about me i remember the moment my bare face bright red rosacea came up on national television and i was literally shaking like a leaf and and uh from the pressure of just the moment and and i remember going over to all the other models all the real
real women all ages and skin tones and sizes and skin challenges like i have and i'll never forget there's about a minute left and the host and i didn't know how it was going i was freaking out i knew that they hadn't cut my time yet
and there was about there was a minute left and the host says uh the tan shades almost sold out the deep shade is down to it and i'm like and shade started selling out and i just literally and then i remember the 10 minute mark uh it hit and the big sold out sign came up
across the screen and i started crying on national tv and my husband comes running through the double doors of the studio and i'm like real women have spoken and he's like we're not going bankrupt and you've met my husband you could probably imagine doing that so we're all
going bankrupt and and that one airing j this is after three years of no right and that one airing which was september of 2010 turned into five earrings and 101 earrings the next year and then i did 250 live shows a year uh for eight years and we built the
largest beauty brand in qvc's history and it is right now as you and i are talking it is right now to this day and the only reason i share that is because it was three years of no and like somebody in your audience needs to hear this today that like no one can tell you
you're not the right fit no one can and if you listen to your gut and you're knowing it's not about selling a company for a billion dollars it's not about selling out on qvc it's about oh like like like you said like am i stepping into all of who i am
and am i trusting that and those are the moments that change our life yeah no wow that i mean i was literally with you when you were sharing that and that's what i love about the storytelling in your book as well it's like i'm with you and and i can feel it with
you and when you're talking about like whether you're sweating or whether you look right like i'm with you and i can i i feel it all i you know what i love about what you've just shared is that it it convinces me and gives me more confidence in faith
in the idea that purpose is the only thing that can let someone win because what you're just sharing with us is you had to make it not about you it was about the people who are struggling with this skin condition it was about the people
that are not being welcomed onto ads and not welcomed into magazines and not welcomed because of of the judgment that society had at the time like and you were doing it before like i feel like a lot of these topics are being talked about today you know you're this is what we're
talking about is like 13 years ago right like 13 14 years ago and it was like a several year journey to try and try and shift this to happen in the beauty space and um and the thing that's so special to share is you know we built to millions and millions of customers over
a thousand employees all of that and like i think it's like 95 the last time i checked of our customers have no skin issues wow 95 right it's people that feel less alone and more enough and more seen and are tired of seeing images that
don't look like them and and don't just want to find great beauty makeup products because actually it's not even why i created the brand and even though i love our products it's like it's not like create a brand i created it for to try and shift culture
even for women to be more confident on the days they don't even want to wear makeup you know what i'm saying to feel just as beautiful so it's like this way bigger bigger thing and exactly what you said i think is so true and i you know one of the stories i talk about
in the book is this experience i had with mean girls and dealing with that and i actually never was bullied as a kid and the first time i ever was bullied was in my 30s in the qvc green room and it was like shocking because it was adult women and i've never shared i mean
95 of the book i've never shared before but i share these stories because i just want everyone going through them to connect and to see like oh you know here's one idea of how to get through it and here's another perspective on it and
you know in this this story i had friends i thought were my friends and by the way most of my close girlfriends have been my friends for like 20 years and they are amazing and they don't have they all have different faiths different they they don't vote the same they don't
love the same all the things and they are amazing so i'm blessed to have really great friends but one thing i learned is you know when you start a new dream uh uh not everyone's happy when you actually start to become successful and i had this
moment where i i thought uh there's a couple like just a handful of women who i really thought were my friends and when my brand started really taking off uh they didn't like that and i went through this this season of bullying which i go into in the book and
i would i would like go out and leave the leave a show after like selling you know all the sales pressure and i'd leave a show and go sit in the car and cry for hours and then come back in and have another show and just trying to get through it and figuring it all out
and i had this big moment that was the two big moments actually jay that happened in the qvc green room that were life-changing uh and i've now seen to be universal across thousands of entrepreneurs i've met and all the the women i mentor now um two big things happen in this in this
journey of mean girls i realized oh my gosh so many of us think it's easy to think that someone else's success uh takes away from our own uh and i don't believe that's true and uh right it's not true and and what i decided to do in this moment of
getting bullying was not let it be a distraction not actually even for a second think i'm competing with them and i had this big aha moment where i realized like and i believe this to my core uh none of us are here to compete with anyone else like we're here to i believe
we're here to compete with with with the person we know we're born capable of becoming and that person has nothing to do with anyone else like that's to your point our own unique purpose our own unique calling and that's what i focused on
and even to this day jay i know i'm nowhere near that person yet who i'm capable of becoming but i'm sure you know on my journey but the thing that when i kept that as my focus what ended up happening in these eight years i spent uh in the green room i saw
thousands of entrepreneurs come and go and uh and when i look back at like oh what's the commonality with the ones that actually made it and the ones that built something that lasted or built something that matters and to your question earlier it's not how smart are they how
qualified are they how right it's literally this simple this is what i've seen in thousands of entrepreneurs the ones that were the same on-air live selling to customers which is a form of connection right but as they are in the green room the people that had that
that alignment were the same for better or worse some are quirky and crazy and funny and some are not very but like the ones that were offensively themselves on camera same as in the green room those are the ones that last right and and the whole idea right
because you know all of the research out there that you can't like it's impossible to have a real human connection unless you fully show up authentically as yourself and so many people think oh i need to i'm distracted by social media i need to show up like somebody else or
this is working for someone else on their page or with their community so let me try to show up that way because then i'll get more followers or like or let me show up this way in the dating world whatever it is we're literally putting a barrier up of
disconnection when we show up as our representative and i watch this happen thousands of times where someone would be super you know whatever in the green room amazing funny happy sad introverted whatever it is and then they go on air
and they're their representative and you can't fake authenticity and it's the most freeing lesson in the world because it's so much pressure when you think you have to change who you are or be more like someone else or hide the parts of you that you feel like are past
mistakes or are embarrassing or anything else and it's like oh no the power is and the freedom and the freedom is in realizing oh my gosh when i fully like fully show up as who i am for better or worse uh that's your super power and that's when people
actually authentically connect with you whether it's customers or your community online and i feel like when people get that it's the most freeing thing in the world because it doesn't matter what someone else is doing on social media or this or that
it's like all that matters is you like like fully showing up as who you are and it's it's really i talk a lot about this in the book this idea that like like authenticity alone doesn't guarantee success but inauthenticity guarantees failure and i've just seen it now thousands of
times and i just think it's one of the most freeing things to learn and i think it helps us to use the words you shared earlier i think it helps us build our confidence around becoming all of who we are yeah but i love the way you define authenticity as
alignment like between the green room and and being on stage because i think authenticity today there's a lot of misconception about authenticity just means like being yourself and showing yourself but what you're saying is actually like you know internally your integrity
is aligned and what i love about the book and this is what i recommend to everyone when you grab a copy you'll see this is that jamie walks through all the struggles we have so you have chapters which you just mentioned believe in the power of authenticity but
then there's other beliefs that we all need like believe in being brave over being liked and i love the way the book structured on what we need to believe in versus what we need to stop believing so jamie i want to ask you this question and
and i think it's going to really help everyone who's listening and watching today because when i'm speaking to you i can i can feel your just belief in humanity and belief in people just like it just you know bounces off you like it's coming through you like you really
believe not just in what you're saying but you really believe in everyone who's listening but they're beating themselves up right now there's someone who's listening to this and they've just spent the whole day beating themselves up they've spent the whole week
beating themselves up and i almost think like the opposite of belief is not doubt it's beating yourself up because doubt is questioning yourself and that's a positive healthy habit but the negative unhealthy habit is you're just beating yourself up if someone's
listening right now and they've been beating themselves up what would you say to them yeah i would say you're not alone i would say the very friend i love that you're asking this question it's so important because i think when we do beat ourselves up it's so easy to
think um that we're alone in that that you know other people don't do that it's just us and and and and we're wrong and we're bad and we're damaged and all those things right and i think the first and most important thing is that i think
this is this is a universal thing that we all that every person every person um and i just think even the way our brains are wired that we're tempted to do that and i think that uh you know the words we say about ourselves to ourselves right are the most important and
powerful words so one of the things i i really go into in my book and i talk about this a lot is this idea of um almost an imaginary volume uh uh dial uh another thing i talk about a good friend of mine bob goff taught me this lesson and i said oh my gosh
it was just in a small group conversation i'm like this has changed my it changed my life and i'm like bob can i share this with everyone because this is going to serve a lot of people and i talk about this too where he talks about the power of your own microphone right
so uh here's the thing we all need to get really good at and this this takes practice and it takes time and it takes intentionality in terms of just being aware of it um but i imagine like a a a volume dial right and we need to get really good at knowing um
when to turn the volume down on stuff and when to turn the volume up on stuff right and for example with the guy that said to me no one will buy makeup from someone who looks like you or i could go into literally thousands of stories jay about about
about some of the rejections and some of the things that that people said to me along the journey and you know even to this day i mean every one of us hops on social media and it's so easy to see a great you know beautiful positive message and it's just
as easy to find someone saying something hurtful right so this is something that's a universal experience um and whether it's someone saying this on social media or it's us saying it to ourselves we have to get really good at and the way i do this
i imagine i i literally imagine this imaginary volume dial where i and still to this day you know i still have thoughts of self-doubt that pop up about the most random things and i'm now able to catch them i literally imagine myself turning the volume down on them
and i instantly replace it with something positive that somebody said that i believe i know it's true but we we are not built to remind ourselves of all the positive things about ourselves right we have to do it intentionally um and i share a story in the book of
well first i want to say too uh about the microphone thing a lot of us uh uh have friends and family around us that mean well and that we want to keep in our life because they've been in our life forever and all the things but when we share our hopes or our
dreams with them or when we share our struggles with them they say things often with a great intention that just aren't for us that just lower our vibration right and one of the things i talked about that my friend bob goff shared and i talked about this a lot in the book is
learning how who to hand your own microphone to in life to speak into and when you need to take that microphone back and a lot of people struggle because maybe they watch your show and they have big you know uh vision for the kind of life or the
kind of health or the kind of love that they want in their life but then they're sharing that and those thoughts and those ideas with people in their circle or in their family or in their home and then instantly they feel their vibration get lower
instantly they go back to that place of self-doubt and so one big thing um and i talk about this a lot and believe it is you know holding your own microphone i imagine for anyone listening and not watching this imagine a news reporter who's holding a
microphone and they hand it over to somebody to speak into right and give their story and then they're able to take their microphone back if you watch really seasoned tv news journalists they never let go of their microphone because they know if you give it to
someone who's giving you a firsthand account of a something or other that person will take that microphone and you have a hard time getting it back on live tv that's such a good analogy that's such a good analogy but imagine in real life every second jay we're giving our
microphone to someone else when we're letting them speak in into our life right and sometimes it's like a friend at the gym and sometimes it's you know a family member but we have to get really good at going oh when i'm struggling and when i you know need someone to talk
to and i talk to this person is this filling my soul is it helping me if it's not you have to take your microphone back from that person you can still keep them in your life but maybe you talk to them about like what happened on the bachelor last night
or whatever but you don't talk to them about your struggles and similarly you know so many people i know watch your show and are inspired for their own purpose and their own sense of health and their own sense of peace and you know if you share these ideas
maybe with a partner maybe it's your spouse or your boyfriend a girlfriend or a significant other whatever they may not be on that same path of enlightenment and personal growth and and you might be so frustrated that you keep sharing it with them and then you're just like
oh so listen like and then all you're doing is literally stealing your own joy and lowering your own vibration when you keep trying to do that and so i've learned this lesson and i think it's so powerful of taking your microphone back and and similarly you know why you and i
talked i think for 14 hours the first trip we're on and roddy and all the amazing people on that trip is like oh you can feel when you're speaking into each other's microphone and your vibrations going higher and and people get it and they're
dreaming and it's not that people tell you what they want to hear they'll still call you out in your crap but like everyone has this this this vibration right and and i think knowing and by the way your show can be something that someone puts their microphone up to right
it doesn't always have to be a person physically in their life your book is it perfect that's a perfect example absolutely yeah exactly and so that is huge um and and what i would say for people you know really just struggling with that inner critic
is that i think it is a practice um of identifying it and and for me of course i am the biggest proponent of therapy and i'm the biggest proponent of personal growth and and all of those things um and in my book i share a lot of the tools that worked for me
because i think that you know so many of us are in that spot and that self-doubt takes over um we start to you know hold on to past labels people put on us uh words they said about us past mistakes um past miscalculations or regrettable incidents or things we did wrong
but like i believe in life like we're not our past mistakes or any of those things i believe we're our intentions um going forward and and i think that you know starting some of these implementing some of these tools from the book and into real life is
is is really big because for me i battled self-doubt my whole life and you know there are so many stories the investor and the weight one is just one of many there are so many um that i share and talk about how did i get through and and you know i would create this
imaginary toolbox that i would just go back from and pull from and and one thing in my imaginary toolbox is just every time i every time i catch myself you know uh putting myself down telling myself things like you're not qualified either set i pull from another moment and i replace
that in my own mind and i try to turn the volume up on that right and sometimes it could be you know something kind that somebody said in the line at starbucks like sometimes it could be someone saying oh you just brighten my day and i'll remind
myself oh and i turned the volume up on that um there's a moment i share the first time when i met michelle obama and something she shared to to me in the book and and she just said the most beautiful words and i won't i won't i won't give up the story but
those words i replay them in my mind right so when i have moments like i'm tempted to replay my own self-doubt i literally turn it down and i replace it and i think that's a big thing um and i think it's important to know we're not alone and it's all a journey
you know the way we started this conversation i think is so relevant to this question which is all of us have these experiences of self-doubt and then we all of a sudden have the noise of other people's opinions or if you're launching a business or
building a community online like what i went through was years of no proof that my idea was going to work so when we have no proof around us that what we're doing might be successful and we have you know friends and family worried about us saying are you sure you could
should have quit your job or are you sure you're qualified all those things right and then we have rejection and we have our own self-doubt it can be so loud that we literally end up like like staying in our comfort zone decide talking ourselves out of our own truth
right staying in our comfort zones never starting the dream never you know writing the book never creating the blog in the podcast or right all those things we stay in our comfort zone which makes a lot of other people more comfy too but then it chips away at our own soul
and i think it's it it robs us from from becoming the person we're born to be um so it's a journey i think of intentionality and and we're all in this together right and what a beauty a beautiful thing that anybody going through this right now is
able to hear your show and is able to hear you and me and connect with us and because you know we're we're all the same i believe we're all connected absolutely and i believe we all have the same hopes and doubts and fears and dreams and um all that i love that everyone that is
jamie can lima believe it is the name of the book how to go from underestimated to unstoppable i want everyone to go and grab a copy of the book you heard you heard like a smidge of the stories there are incredible stories tools techniques
everything inside this book that's gonna actually help you break through the biggest issue in your life which is belief self-belief that's the biggest block there is no bigger block and all of it is laid out in this wonderful book that jamie's put together
and jamie i'm going to end with you with what we do with every guest is our final five so these answers have to be given in one word or one sentence maximum as th they're our final five uh and so jamie are you ready for your final five
let's go jake okay awesome so the first question i have is what is the best advice you've ever received god can dream a bigger dream for you than you can for yourself i love that that's that's an awesome piece of advice i i fully agree okay second question what's the worst
advice you've ever received you need to change this about yourself to fit in and then you'll do great brilliant great answer okay third question uh what's something that you know to be true but people may disagree with you on something that you're confident about
but people may not quite get it these famous words i'm so confident about him and i remind myself about them every time i start to doubt myself it's a famous saying i think it applies no matter what faith you are and god doesn't call the qualified he qualifies the call
oh i love that that gives vegeta not everyone agrees with it i live by that just gave me shivers that that's really pro i love that that's beautiful i love that um that is yeah that is so beautiful i love that thank you for sharing that with me okay
question number four we got two left uh question number four what's the biggest lesson you've learned in the last 12 months champions aren't made when the game is easy and this has been a tough year for so many people i believe if anyone's listening to your show right now i
believe they're a champion and i think we'll get through this uncertainty won't take us down i love that thank you for saying that and fifth and final question if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow what would it be be love
i love that live love be love that's beautiful we all are everyone believe it is the name of the book how to go from underestimated to unstoppable jamie kernley my jamie it has been um just amazing talking to you i felt every ounce of energy through the screen
i know that right now you've been busy with press and interviews you've got so many amazing people supporting your book i mean you know jamie's got everyone from like oprah and robin roberts and just incredible people that absolutely adore
you and what you do and i want to thank you for taking this time to be on on purpose to to stay up after everything busy day to do this interview with that much energy and that much conviction i mean i i'm just totally grateful to call you a friend and
i'm grateful for how you show up every single day and i'm grateful for just how you showed up today despite the amount of things you have going on so thank you so much jamie and uh i can't wait for this book to be in people's hands i'm so excited
jay i'm excited and thank you to you and it is always the greatest joy when you meet someone in real life who's literally fully exactly as they are when you when you see them you know online and that was you and wow what a gift and so super grateful uh for your friendship too
and and i hope i hope our conversation bless people because again we're all in this together and and so thank you so much thank you for having me absolutely everyone please go and follow jamie on instagram tag us both with the biggest lessons and takeaways
from this session when you're reading her book go and post that on instagram as well tag her and tag me to let us know that you found out about the book here so that we can see all the love and all the learnings that you're gaining uh go and find her across social media
facebook instagram uh all the other platforms and go and follow and go and learn about how you crew can start to believe in yourself believe into your dream and find that voice inside of you so thank you again jamie and thanks everyone for listening
if you want even more videos just like this one make sure you subscribe and click on the boxes over here i'm also excited to let you know that you can now get my book think like a monk from think like a monkbook.com check below in the description to make sure you order today