how do we make what we do worthwhile and purposeful and it's not it's a question i asked 30 years ago 30 plus years ago but it's a question i still ask today the answer is different um and the mechanism to realize it is different still but the questions aren't i believe the world needs a new set of real models people with deep intentions behind their actions and this is where you meet them today's
guest is kenneth cole and i'm so grateful because we all know he's a designer he's an activist he's a married father of three who believes that he thrives at work the home and his community because he merges the three worlds kenneth i'm so grateful honored and happy to have you here thank you so much for coming thank you jay thank you very much i don't know that i thrive in each of
those areas i aspire to thrive in all three of those areas absolutely and last time we were together you were so gracious and patiently sat and listened to me tell my story i'm glad that i get to reciprocate today and listen to your incredible journey your brand which is 35 years bold which i love but i want to start by asking you that question because i think my audience will love it
how do you merge those three worlds because i feel that today we live in a world that's so disconnected people see their work their family their friends as these three separate parts but you've somehow aspired to merge them how does that work let's unpack that well i think they are separate parts and i but i think that being successful in anything that we set out to do
is all-consuming and it requires making significant life compromises which is not in not easy for anybody in and of itself so and so one can be successful professionally invariably they're taking away from their personal needs and because they're working extra hours and they're giving of themselves physically as well as emotionally mentally they're not present to the degree they need to be and um and
then if they're successful personally and their personal lives are coming together and then very often they're struggling the professional quotient of component doesn't always fall in line and then if you layer on top of that you know the community outreach or engagement friends then it complicates it even further so i i came to realize absence of a good therapist that um
that if i could somehow marry them um and by my what i did from nine or whenever it was i that i showed up in the office was addressing multiple agendas simultaneously then i was more likely to find fulfillment in that process so i brought social engagement into my business model very early on in the process and i'm not sure it was intentional or it just happened and then by um by nature of it
of being able to bring all these incremental resources to it it became successful in that regard and um and then and also familial at the same time as well personal and professional and social engagement um at every intersection and um and and i encourage people to do it but it's it's hard it's hard to be successful in anything let's let's rewind a little because
you talk about how of course you were going to law school and then you switch into fashion because you have this rebellious nature and you thought that fashion didn't have any rules as opposed to law tell us tell us about that transition so i was going to go to law school because i didn't know what i wanted to do and i think i'm all about creating alternative paths and so if i with a
legal education i could now have one more set of of opportunities hopefully um to to look forward to um but in that process um my father has small shoe factory at the time in this very depressed area of new york williamsburg i love how it's changing and it's voice of chase so then um so i worked with him one summer and i haven't kept navigating to the pattern room to the design room and i
because i was fascinated because that's where it all happened it didn't happen and if the product was distinctive and specifically appropriate business would reflect it and if it wasn't it wasn't so that's where i kept finding myself and i learned how to make shoes i wanted to make patterns i wanted to taught myself how to draw technically which i had up until that point
and um and i realized quickly that law is about it's reading it's a book and he who learns it the best um goes the furthest and he who can interpret it the most successfully realizes the greatest rewards whereas in business um you pretty much write your own book every day you write your rules and the fashion business specifically the further those rules are from anything written before you
the more likely it is that you'll be successful so there's essentially there's no boundaries so you know we're taught as children to draw within the lines but you realize in in my business that they're more successful than success usually is outside those lines so um and i was fascinated with it and uh and success was relatively reasonably um short and coming um or rewards from that success is a tough is
a difficult word for me to but um why is it difficult to explain well because it's it's so subjective and success in what was successful yesterday only defines new boundaries for tomorrow so and uh and we can't kind of cite we can't harbor over what happened yesterday because then we fail in our ability to do what we need to do tomorrow so um but we can get that yeah so
um i realized that that the this business the shoe business at the time specifically was was fascinating to me and there was essentially no no boundaries and and you take this this shoe this um object and you can transform it in so many different subtle ways and and sometimes even the most subtle ways make the greatest um change and impact the greatest so and i stayed on that path and i kept
differing going to law school and i eventually never went what's your advice for people who are listening who feel like you did they chose to do something because they don't know what to do and i find so many people find that they end up in college degrees or jobs or positions and companies because they just didn't know what to do how did you kind of break away from that and start using that as a
launch pad to explore well i don't know that i i broke away from it i i still sometimes wonder if i know what to do but i i knew that that what i was doing felt good and i knew that i could do this in a way that could be um meaningful in some way and so and i knew i needed to explore it further and um and i and law school i could probably always do and i was only my interest in all it
really was just to create more opportunities for myself and i found that i was on a path that um that uh was was fulfilling just to as to a degree so it just stayed on that path right and you ended up posing as a filmmaker to be able to sell shoes at the beginning tell us about that introduce us that story because i love it so i left that working with my father
after a couple years and i wanted to do my own thing and it was a hard decision but i knew if i didn't do it then it would my life would only get more complicated as i got older and um and i was still single and i had no real obligations in the world and i so i had a little bit of money but not enough to start a business and um like very little bit of money so and i uh there wasn't these
mechanisms in place like tech world has today where you can raise you can do a raise and you can outsource and you can crowdsource and you can find all these resources i didn't have that so i go fund me yeah right so i uh wanted to start a business it was more personal when i um so i left what i was doing and i needed to a and i i named the company i set up a company i named it kenneth cole because
there weren't these search engines then where you could make up a name and find out if it was ownable because you would it the process invariably took 18 months before you knew there were objections and then you had to address those objections and then maybe you had to you'd win or you'd lose and you'd have to rename your your business so i you could almost always get your name your own name
um registered so i named the company kenneth cole and i ran to italy um knowing i had a better chance of getting credit from an italian shoe factory that needed business than from an american bank that didn't and so i found a couple factories and i found some people over there that were wanted to help me and i designed a line of cool ladies shoes and then i came back and had to sell
them and there was a trade show at the time the new york shoe show is what it was called and then at the time and in that process you had two choices you could take a room at the hilton hotel and there were about 1100 other shoe companies and there was 34 30 somewhat companies per four and the buyers would come and they'd walk all the floors not very um distinctive not
um very differentiated and um and not without cost so and then the other option was to take a big fancy showroom within a two buck radius of the hilton hotel with clearly i didn't have the money or the time for that either so on a whim i called the friend who was in the trucking business and i said if i could figure out how to park one of your 40-foot trailers across the street from the hilton hotel
would you lend it to me and he said sure jerk this is new york you can't park a bicycle for 10 minutes let alone a truck for four days i said if i could figure it out will you lend it to me he says you could figure out i'll help you decorate it so i called the mayor's office with mayor koch at the time so excuse me mr mayor how does one get permission to park a 40 patrol in the
corner six damage 56th street on december first week in samurai sorry son they don't this is new york we get permission only into two circumstances if you are a utility company servicing the streets a t or con-ed or if you're a production company shooting a full-length motion picture because we were going through an isle of new york campaign in the early 80s and we probably still
are today so i said thank you mayor hung up the phone that afternoon i went to a stationery store changed the letterhead from kenneth cole inc the kenneth cope productions inc filed for a permit the following morning um with the mayor's office for permission to shoot a falling motion picture called the birth of a shoe company i opened for business on december 2nd a week later 10 days later
um and i had two new york policemen as my doorman compliments of our fine man and i had a creepy extensions and i had a director and sometimes it was filming this camera sometimes it wasn't and um we saw every important buyer in new york the more important they were the longer we made them wait and we sold 40 000 pair of shoes in two and a half days there was a phone booth on the corner that was my line
of connection to the to the source the factories and i was changing the orders from high heels low heels to red to blue and these shoes in six weeks and and um and i tell that story still because it speaks to the importance of resourcefulness and problem solving the best solution is rarely the most creative it's so rarely the most expensive it's almost always the most creative
and the company um by the way went public 10 years later traded in the new york stock exchange the same was kcp chemical production and we stayed public for 20 years we just recently went private i love that story it's i mean what you just said there the amount of people that only see the blocks i mean the fact that you call the mayor up in the first place and the mayor actually picked up no
no there's somebody in his office but yeah and but the nuance there by the way is not can i park the truck there because your answer would have been no the question is how can i park the truck yes and then what scenario and that in that in that question was the answer i needed so um and i figured out what i needed to be in order to be able to do what i needed what i hoped to accomplish yeah
so and if he had said no if that wasn't we were probably found another path no definitely and that's what i love that today i feel there's especially for everyone watching and i hear this so often that there's just oh this doesn't work or i tried this but that path had a block or we went down this road and then it got cut off and i feel like a lot of us are constantly finding excuses or finding
blocks more often than what you just said it was just about asking the right question right that's another question to the right person in the right way and um go a restaurant do you have availability no but under what scenario could you have so do you still practice that today do you have to still practice that has that energy today do that in the ordinary course because there are inherent obstacles in
everything we do so the question is how do we get from here to where we need to in the most efficient and productive way in an an appropriate way by the way i don't i don't seek to do anything that's inappropriate nor was what i did that day inappropriate but although i do know that today if the mayor's office is much more careful um because issue permits because i've
told this story so many times but but based upon the rules they existed i wasn't inappropriate in fact we that story never got that movie never got i'm told unfortunately but in this world of content creation but um do you have any of the footage well some of that footage actually is on our company uh website yes also i think on our uh company's instagram um some of the original trailer footage
that's brilliant if anyone listening right now watching does not get inspired by that to figure out a way to their goal you know i don't know what will that's it's there's so many elements in there where you had to just make it work call a different person and the fact that you're ordering you know like you said now we have technology now we have social media you
were standing next to a pay phone to make your orders right like that a lot of quarters yeah yeah exactly yeah stacked on top exactly just keep going there and i just feel like that resourcefulness is something that's so useful today as a skill and we have more resources to be resourceful with right but it's the mindset it's such a it's a totally different world today
and the obstacles the objectives the challenges are just different one of the challenges today you know i mean you just speak to people in my business today and they say you know everybody everywhere is competitor it's too hard and because everybody who offers product product is available to everybody everywhere there's literally an infinite amount of alternatives because by the time you get halfway
through that list there's twice as many that have since been created so yes and so but i argue make the case that there's also twice as many infinite amount of opportunities as a result so you can look at the obstacles you could you can look at uh look at it from another context and um everybody who makes shoes or fashion everywhere is is a competitor but everybody who consumes fashion
a product everywhere is a customer absolutely so you know it's a different time but we just changed and it kind of refocused the lens through which we see it and and it's something that that we do every day how do we make an impact in the world how do we make a meaningful impact in people's lives and how do we make what we do worthwhile and purposeful and it's not it's a question i asked 30 years ago 30 plus
years ago but it's a question i still ask today the answer is different um and the mechanism to realize it is different still but the questions aren't definitely and and that leads us on nicely because in 1985 when you launched the aids campaign you say that shifted the brand forever it was such a huge moment for the brand what were your answers to that question 30 years ago yeah because um well
just you you need to create the context what was happening in 1985 so um so i've been in business now a couple years and i was um and my goal was always to figure out how to speak to people about what was not just on the body but was on their mind and knowing that i'd have a much more meaningful connection relationship and much more sustainable than any heel height or any hemline thor
so and so i would periodically reflect on what what we were all um consumed with and at that point there was this pervasive consciousness that we hadn't seen since the 60s and it was about hunger and it was to a large degree in ethiopia and there were these initiatives that were happening um constantly there was um uh it was we are the world um with michael jackson and quincy jones
and and it was live aid and it was world aid it was hands across america and everybody wanted to be part of something bigger than they were something i hadn't really experienced in my um somewhat uh adult life and so but it was odd because nobody was talking about what was really this glooming dark cloud called hiv aids because actually wasn't even called aids yet it was just hiv
because if you did you would um because well a the stigma attached to people who had hiv was so severe um and so significant and if you addressed it publicly you were perceived to be at risk and that meant you were either intravenous drug user you were maybe haitian or you were gay and the stigma against each of those groups was was overwhelming um so i saw this rare opportunity to talk
about something that was really important that nobody was talking about and and i only had a little bit of money at the time we were a very small company so we did a i did a campaign i reached out to annie leibowitz who um was and then she still is an important social photographer and um and annie agreed to help me i don't think she knew who i was at the time and she loved the message and showed up
the idea and we reached out to all these models the biggest models in the industry and they all wanted to do it so we did a campaign that speak spoke about the fact that nobody was speaking about this ominous um ominous dark cloud called aids hiv aids and um it changed me changed the man changed the brand and the company in in a very profound way and you know i had it what i was doing
was fulfilling but it wasn't meaningful and and i had a hard time asking my associates to put in the hours and do what they do what i needed them to do and do to be successful um because i don't believe anybody can really be successful doing anything today nine to five um and between your physical engagement your emotional involvement your resources you need to bring to bear at
anything you want to do requires you know making a commitment so um i needed to make what i was doing more important than it was um in the ordinary course and and this did it it just made it important and we and we stayed on this path and i was asked to do um we did this campaign and i did it in conjunction with amphar who was the one of the only aids research organizations at the time
so we did it bringing shining light on their work and uh and i believe that cure phrase would only come from research and that's what anthra did and then a year or so later year later they asked me to join the board and and i did and then they asked me to become chairman in 2004 and i did and in the 14 years from that point forward and and in the many years throughout i um
and far had a very profound impact on millions of people's lives and um millions of people were alive i believe not because of that for a little bit because of a lot of air force important work uh and i continued to do personal efforts to engage a global hiv community and uh and in 2004 the simultaneously i did a campaign that a global campaign that we all have aids if we don't have it
meant physically we have it socially or spiritually and will infect if we're not affected regardless we're infected if we're not infected we're affected and um and i i got a different photographer at the time mark seliger and he and i flew to south africa and we photographed nelson mandela and desmond tutu and sakia committed and we photographed dr solomon in india and and elizabeth
and elton john in los angeles and so um and the bringing together the community had not been done before and that was you know a level of engagement fulfillment that i had never experienced in but again still it was then set a new standard from which i now had to go further and and um you know i've continued to do that um and it continues to be um make everything more meaningful it's
it's beautiful hearing about it for someone like me in my generation looking back because often we think that all of these challenges are new because we're experiencing them for the first time and so when you're hearing it back from someone who's a change maker who's actually been working on meaningful things for such a long period of time two questions come to mind the first one is i feel like from a
personal level everyone has to get to that point in life where they may be doing something that's fulfilling like you said but it's not deeply meaningful i feel like everyone has to or will get to that stage in their life where they have to ask that question what are you i also don't know at the end if those two expressions are mutually exclusive i don't know if anything could be
fulfilling but it isn't at some level meaningful sure just to you or to people you that are in your life people that that um that inspire you or are inspired by what you do so um so i think we're always searching for that and and that's a moving target i don't think it doesn't change and i think every day we come to work and we you know we look at it and people you know people at the time
i'll go back a little bit to when i started the business and they said to me were you nervous because you put a lot at stake you know you left where you were and you you really made it hard to ever go back and you made a commitment to do this without really knowing what you know where this was going to take you and you know was it hard was were you nervous and i said you know what
i never really thought about that scenario i never thought about it in that regard about failing and um and i i then i want to say but i knew somehow i'd make it work but what i didn't explain to people because i didn't know how to was i never that the it was very undefined and continues to be yeah so because the factors and influences continue to change every day so and i knew i'd figure out how to stay
relevant and how to have a reason to exist and i and and that the need to do that you know is still exists today 35 years later and that was my second question that seeing as you were asking these questions 30 years ago you were thinking about this stuff 30 years ago do you think that we've gotten closer to a more evolved world where people are asking these questions more often
or are we going backwards are we still in the same place or is it always the same cycle there's a beautiful quote by mark twain where he says history doesn't repeat itself but it always rhymes and so i wonder where how does that fit into this where does that thought process fit into this so you know i i think that we need to learn you know we need to know what the past so that we know
how to contextualize the present in the future so and in fashion i was always obsessed with the universal alternatives and not so that i knew what to make but often so i knew what not to make and nobody needs what's there so but absent of knowing what what the current existing alternatives are you don't know how to how to um create a creative innovative alternative so um so you need to know
the history you need to know the present and um and and i love mark twain yeah so uh me too uh right so um you know and i think it's you know we reflect on her often i at the time when i started doing my work with amfar it was there wasn't there wasn't this collective um uh i forget what they called at the time um corporate um social responsibility uh i mean this wasn't it just was something
that seemed right to do there wasn't a name for it and there wasn't a classification a characterization of it per se maybe it was philanthropy at some level but and then you know interestingly um i learned over the years and partially from my daughter um my middle amanda who was obsessed with not that we're doing philanthropy because plan three or something that or community engagement was something
that you should do and everybody did but it became about not just what you did but how you did it and the impact that you made and the transparency within which you communicated that and um so you know so the process of you know of our community outreach has changed profoundly over the years and and how we engage with communities and and how we do it in a way that
ensures results uh with absolute transparency and accountability is um is is really important today which in the past wasn't so so i don't know if that yeah it does yeah i know absolutely it does answer my question yeah one of the things i love about you ken from our from a couple of weeks that we've had is that you're extremely humble uh and in in a positive way you're confident that
you're humble in the sense that you you always consider yourself a learner you always consider you're growing and you feel that there's this beautiful quote that i picked out of yours actually so now i get to quote you as well it's quite mark twain in the same podcast so we have i wanted here we go it's uh if you stand on what you've accomplished it gets in the way of what you still need to do
and when i read that it reminded me of steve jobs and i was sharing with you earlier that steve jobs when he came back to apple he saw that in the entrance they had this apple museum and he asked for it to be destroyed because he didn't want to live and work for a company that was still living and operating in the past how do you practically apply that mindset every day at work
and how do you get the people that you work with to apply that mindset as well because actually majority of us are quite happy to just celebrate the past and live on the glories and the success of the past and nostalgia we always think about the good old days it's part of our human psychology how have you shifted that how do you get other people to shift as well so i didn't know that story about steve
jobs but but i one of my biggest regrets but maybe it's a conscious process so it shouldn't be is that i don't have any an archive of my past products over the 30 years and people have always said asked me that wow and i never saved it because i always felt maybe because we need to stay focused on going forward and at these various milestones in my career people have encouraged me to write books
and tell these stories and and i resisted it and i've still never really told the whole story i've told it anecdotally in a book called footnotes 15 years ago and then in a um recently in a book um called a kenneth called production or something but it was episodic and it wasn't really about it it wasn't the story because i'm i'm i believe that if we allow ourselves
to it's like driving a car if you're going to look in the rearview mirror you're going to you're going to miss that next bump in the road so you if you don't stay focused on where we have to be you need to go you significantly encumber your likelihood of getting there and and i do believe that what we've done over these years is we've built a great foundation from which to do what we
first now need to do and um and you can't stay idle in in the business which is why it's a great business the fashion business but um but it's also why it's so difficult so um and i think it's an indulgence that i've avoided um you know reflecting too much on on on the past and but it's it is true i do think we need to stay focused on the future and and and i and i don't want to
celebrate the past anymore except to the degree that now this is what defines our platform and i say to people that um there is a literally an infinite as i said amount of alternatives today to what we bring to market nobody needs what we sell which is very humbling there's not an american that needs another pair of shoes um even most people you know without means have shoes today and maybe not the
shoes they want and maybe not but in the condition that they should have but um uh and if as i've said if we closed our stores tomorrow at noon it's hardly in america would go barefoot for for 14 years so um we uh we need to give we need to make them think they want it glad they thought it and think it again um but at the end of the day we can't delude ourselves and we need to be
realistic and understand that we create something that people need to want they don't need but if we attach it to something that that connects with them in a meaningful way then what we do becomes more meaningful but i i didn't answer your question i think that's true that's okay i loved it i loved the tangent you went on it was it was a great tangent and that's that
comes back to your whole principle of it's not just what people stand in it's what they stand for and and that reminds me everything you do just echoes in timelessness for me and that's what i love like it literally echoes because there's a beautiful statement by martin luther king around you know someone who stands for nothing will fall for anything and then there's another beautiful statement that says
someone who has nothing to die for has nothing to live for and then when i hear your statement around people who have it's not just about what they stand in it's what they stand for and i truly agree with you i i believe with you that that fashion without meaning or clothes without meaning don't make us happy they don't stand for anything beyond and actually that's
where we get become consumers right as opposed to conscious creators or expressives right i i knew where i was going oh you're going tell me i just do i just you just prompted me remember so people have infinite choices today i believe after all these years i've earned the right only to be considered and every day i have to earn the right to be chosen and i can't become complacent and relax
in and rest on what we've done in the past because i need to be relevant um and a relevant a competitive and relevant alternative today and then even more so tomorrow yeah absolutely i feel like that that old cliche of curiosity killed the cat needs to change the complacency killed the cat because curiosity should be encouraged curiosity should be the future that's that's how we explore
it's complacency that actually makes you fall back and fall behind and lose right right yeah i agree but it's not i mean you yeah i just think you you need to every day contextualize what you're doing and um because it's moving so fast and today in my world everything is global everything is interconnected you know the notion of building a physical wall separating two countries um is so so silly
to me because the end of the day we are so connected um everywhere today um and virtually and and electronically and we have the ability to just to speak to and inspire and move um people wherever they are all the time um and and i think today everybody is in the media business yes we're only talking about that briefly before and we don't need the media to help amplify and tell our stories because we
can all find audiences and there are social platforms today we can connect with audiences and effortlessly and um and we all have the ability to amplify ours and each other's stories and we can and uh we can um align and build an even bigger platform and people can get together and we can retweet and repost and and uh and there's no end to how far you know we we can effectively
um uh proceed in that regard yeah and i love that about you and anyone who's listening or watching right now you should definitely follow kenneth on instagram because i i find that you're extremely witty it's extremely relevant it's it's it's beautiful to watch because i find so many executive ceos founders don't necessarily manage their own accounts and there's like a million layers
between the individual and then what actually gets posted whereas with you it's it's it's very close it's very authentic it's stuff you're thinking about it's things that are fresh off your mind and i found that refreshing when we met because i know that as someone who's extremely busy involved in so many different things for you to even find time to post on instagram but you do and it's
meaningful and it's witty it's not just putting out a corporate stamp and that's what i love you've been able to differentiate the man and the brand as you said yeah and that's partially how i was able to do it because we've gone back and forth and so the brand tells the business story and i tell my story and i i don't take what i do seriously um i take um the world seriously but i
don't take what i do seriously and what do you mean by that well i think that nobody needs what i sell right so and i i don't uh i don't present it in a way that's any that's any bigger than that um i have to make you want it and want it again and i know that and i do think it makes us feel great about ourselves and i do think that wardrobing one is an extraordinary
privilege and i don't want this to be misinterpreted because i think when we wake up in the morning we have a queen sweat as queen slate we have a the ability to represent ourselves to the world every day on our own terms unedited because most of the people you encounter in a given day don't get to know any more about you than how you present yourself and so you can send a very powerful message
to the world um independently individually every day and to be part of that is an extraordinary privilege if i can be part of that expression that self-expression that you choose to make and and i don't take that seriously but at the end of the day is like you know you wake up in the morning um it's not usually the first thing on your mind um especially if someone in your world isn't well
or if you're hungry and um so i need to somehow keep it in context so and you know and as i've often said i can't change the world alone but i can be an accessory i love that so um and hopefully i'm enabled enough to do that and empowered to do that yeah in your in your spirit of always being a learner you told me a beautiful story about how you've been learning even from your daughter
and and i wanted to just share that with context of just how you've recognized this ability to learn from everything and everyone around you when we met you not only mentor but you're willing to learn from those that you mentor like there's this beautiful reciprocal exchange in your life that exists and the spirit the energy you've built around yourself of always learning from everything around you
yeah i think i i love the access we're all provided um through social media and just and the likes to to be enlightened and inspired by so much from so many um i the story that i was telling you before was when the one i was trying to write this book i guess i think it was the first one it was footnotes um my daughter katie was it was eight at the time so if i figure out
when this was but um i would come home from work and i'd have to edit or these work because i was i was on a deadline and she's asked if i could help her with her homework and i'd say katie i need just a few more i need half an hour i have to work on this project and then i'll be there i promise and then she'd ask me this question i remember vividly and it was who gives you the work which i found
interesting because she's at school and at school you don't have work unless somebody gives you the work and then she says to me and i said well i give it to myself because i need to do it and then she says why aren't you the boss and it says i am and that's why i give it to myself because even if i don't no one's going to do it. so i'm thinking to myself i just you know this opportunity to share an
important lesson with my daughter and then the next day the same time right after dinner katie says to me so can you help me with this other project and i said well i can't but just like yesterday i need a little bit of time and then i will be there i promise and then so she this time she changed the question she says aren't you the boss and i'm saying to myself i just answered
this question then she said and i said yes but i have to do it and then she says well who gives you the work and and this went on for three or four days and then um i was uh and it was the same questions each time and and i saw this spiritual advisor of mine shortly after that and he says to me how is katie and i said you know it's funny because you know we went through this process
and she asked me to help her and i was working and something i had to get done and she says aren't you the boss and who gives you the work and and then and then after several days she kept asking the same questions and i said to him it's amazing she just doesn't get it and he said to me or you don't she spent a week trying to teach you a lesson and you clearly still didn't didn't
learn it and and the lesson is that we're inc we make these choices and i was choosing to prioritize them over her and it wasn't uh and it was i had the ability to change that and i was choosing not to so but we are empowered to to to do most of what we do is we are empowered to change it we're empowered to affect it and we're very comfortable sometimes attributing
that to other forces absolutely always removing our own accountability somehow and thank you for sharing that i know it's a it's definitely an open and vulnerable share but it's it's so important for us to recognize that that we are accountable we are responsible especially those of us who have created lives where you are working for yourself and i find myself in that trap all the time
that i love what i do i'm blessed to do what i do i feel very fortunate to do it that means i do it all the time because it's you feel so fortunate and blessed to be able to have that privilege yeah and then you do it in a way you know when your your beautiful wife works with you and it's part of what you do at home it's part of what you do is your career it's you're emotionally
vested in it and that you're professionally committed to it and which is why you're so inspiring to so many of us because um um you offer us so much um in that process you're very kind no that's beautiful and i i wanted to ask you what have you done as a is there has there been a kenneth call daily ritual a daily aspect of your life that has been there throughout or is there a new one does it
change every few months a year has there been something that you've done asked yourself practiced on a regular basis even if it's not daily weekly that that you feel has been a cornerstone for your success both internally externally when i sit with you i feel i'm with someone who's both internally and externally successful however you define that word but someone who's
accomplished on both levels so what has been is has there been a cornerstone practice that's always been there you know i i don't know how to answer that question i i what i've often said to people is that the best part of what i do is that over all those many years there's been no two days i've done the same thing because you know i'm touching so many aspects of the business and i'm touching the
customers so many different ways um you know i've often said that i um i need to put myself in the customer's shoes and hope that they'll put themselves in mine but um but i'm not and i'm i don't have a ritual um i don't and uh and probably i should the most successful people i know too and um but i do have a sense of i do i do have visualize where i want to be and what is the best way to get there
and i am and a an example that i i've often been using these days is if we all agree that we want to be in california by sunday then let's also know we have to be in st it was by wednesday yes and denver by thursday yes um not chicago not not florida and not texas so and i always kind of check myself and am i on a path it kind of takes me somewhat in the direction i want to go
i love that and i think you do i think you have them whether they're conscious or subconscious your ability to question your comfort with change like to even say that you don't do the same thing every day most people think that they aspire for that but most people don't really want that because that's not easy to be able to deal with new situations new scenarios on a daily basis
at work i i say to my associates often are we going to do what we're going to do on monday just because that's what we did last monday yeah because next monday is a different world than it was last monday so there you go and and just make sure your ass we're taking you know we're taking our pulse and we're taking that to consideration and if it is the same then so be it but yeah i love it is there anything we
haven't covered anything in your mind that you wanted to share maybe i i don't know if you wanted to talk about you n and sundance so on your involvement more specifically so um i accepted a u.n appointment uh about a year ago um because they had just put forth a declaration to end aids by 2030. and but i did it conditionally and that is that they agree that to aid to accept
cure as a component because if we don't have a cure by 2020 we're close to that you're not going to end days by 2030. and that was the kind of the amp agenda so i was trying to marry my agendas so i could then accept um you know that generous gesture that was put forth um and so um so then and then how do we bring other resources and how do we all how do we get the community aligned
on and with a clear sense of deliverables and focused on on very real um precise outcomes and how do we articulate what st louis looks like and um and how do we know when we're in l.a so but so i accepted that and that's and so and i try to marry that to what i to my professional agenda and uh uh i'm on my way to mexico soon and for business because we're launching the
brand and i'm gonna wear my un hat for two days and and then there's also um i'm also on the board of sundance which is a extraordinary um initiative that i accepted and then i i totally totally enjoy um about 10 15 years ago so and that's all about effective story independent storytelling and that's what that's what sundance does started by robert redford so and i've you know it has motivated and
inspired me in many ways because you know that today the world is about effective storytelling um independent storytelling and how do we do it with the means we have the resources we have to work with and um so i i marry that as well um to what i do and um there was one initiative actually i wanted to tell you yeah please yeah of course there was another so we launched
amphar we launched the aids campaign in 85 i joined board in 87 about a year or two later um i had a business dilemma that there was we needed to be able to sell shoes in our stores without selling them off price and we came up with this great strategy which this great plan and and that was to do a campaign to encourage people to give people a discount off of the shoes based upon them doing something
socially important and meaningful and i looked around and there was a a an unsettling amount of homelessness that was overwhelming new york city at about that time and first of all people think homelessness is embedded in our in our economy and in our infrastructure it's not and homelessness to a very large degree didn't exist in this country until the um reagan bush years when the social
safety net was withdrawn and but now you had this population that was growing and it was overwhelming many of us in these urban um cities centers um so uh politicians didn't want to address them because they didn't vote usually and businesses didn't address them because they didn't consume so we did a campaign which said bring in a pair of shoes you don't wear for someone that
will with a picture of a homeless person and we'll give you a 20 discount on a new pair so we've said now to people um we motivated them to do what was in their heart they would feel good about doing at a time when they would not ordinarily do it and it was the month of february when our stores now were had all summer product and it was still 10 degrees outside because the weather hadn't changed even
though we had changed our inventories so um and we started what became known as the shoe drive and later on there were coat drives and there were clothing drives none of that had existed at the time wow and over the years we collected several million parachutes and then we'd find populations my wife was running a homeless organization in new york and she kind of always kind of
encouraged and inspired me and still does called help usa which was originally founded by new york's governor and my brother-in-law andrew cuomo so we would collect these shoes we'd give them to home and help um residents and and then we find out other residents other individuals that could benefit from um from the product from these shoes and then it became over time
it was from a couple days in february to the entire to a week or then two weeks and it wasn't just new york it was all of our stores around the country and it wasn't just shoes and it was clothes and accessories so we collected several million pair of shoes over a period of time then all of a sudden haiti earthquake comes and everybody is emotionally overcome and destroyed and agonized how can people
so close to us um be so devastated and how in fact we come to realize had they been so devastated even before the earthquake living in such um such uh poverty and um and be so undeserved and uh in such need so um we changed the initiative immediately to a campaign to to correct shoes and also funds for people affected by the earthquake in haiti we ended up raising a little bit maybe a hundred and
something thousand dollars which is a lot but not in that world and i mean you're talking about you know a couple million people and we then i took a bunch of associates and we went to haiti we figured out how can we somehow make as meaningful a commit a meaningful impact as we can with the limited resources that were available to us to do it and then we ended up needing to take a
couple of trips because we couldn't figure it out and eventually we invested in a health care center with organizational st luke's in um cd soleil which is the most overwhelmed and underserved uh and poorest population arguably in the northern hemisphere and um and to this day it exists and to this day we every year we we raise funds to um bring medical equipment or other things
to that facility and it's this other dimension to what we do it's we solved the business problem but in a way we created a um a uh an opportunity to engage in a community in such a meaningful way and associates come with us we didn't go this past year but we have to we've gone every other year and um and it's uh i find that maybe the greatest gift i've had after 35 years
is i've been able to use i've been able to do what i love um as a platform for which to do something that is adds so much more meaning to what i love and uh and we the those opportunities continue to grow not and get bigger and more meaningful now less so that's why i love you your commitment to service and your commitment to impact is absolutely incredible i've got my five quickfire questions with you
to to finish off with the so here we go these are these are quick answers so you can give me one word one line one sentence if you could walk a mile in anyone's shoes who would it be oh man there's so many people who've inspired me along the way but i will say nelson mandela okay amazing uh your favorite guest that you could have over for dinner i know there's a lot of people that you
probably already had over assuming that assuming that that nelson is busy yes yes assuming nelson is busy um i may be mined with the king okay amazing biggest lesson you've learned in the last 35 years that what i do is not who i am what that's a little more yeah answer than the first two i was thinking that is something i often try to share with people because i think we often are blindsided by
by what we do as in the bigger context it's not favorite city in the world in new york and your best piece of advice you've ever been given um [Music] is organic or what is the impact you want to make and apply it to everything you can um as often as you can i love it thank you so much kenneth i'm so grateful that you made the time to be here jay thank you thank you for what you do
i'm so happy that you now have this new platform for which to do it and uh and and i love your story and i it inspires me and i hope you can continue to inspire so many more people thank you so much and i hope that we continue to be friends and i hope that i can continue to learn from you and be mentored by you i feel your messages just i can relate to so much of it
and i hope that i can follow in your in your footsteps in my own small way that'll be special for me yeah thank you so much amazing 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