Welcome to the podcast on today's show with the sisters the people behind the Beverly Hills lingerie store. Thanks for joining. People don't know. What do you do? What's the company do? Thanks for having us. So happy to be here. So we started Beverly Hills lingerie in 2018 with the mission to fill the gap in streetwear lingerie. Streetwear lingerie. Exactly.  So we like to design our pieces to be dual use. So we like to style our pieces as ready to wear and then we also do carry like your standard classic bedroom sats as well. Okay so many questions here. So what did you see in the market? Why this company? What of all the things that you guys come from a fashion line? What did you guys study in school? Good questions. We have a lot of answers to this. Take it on. Backgrounds. I went to USC pre-med and at the time there were girls trying to style old pieces of lingerie out with the leather jacket with jeans. Right. And it wasn't quite working. There wasn't quite the market for it six or seven years ago and my sister just graduated. We both have our majors in communications and minors in entrepreneurship. We were trying to dream something up and she also saw the gap. Yeah so we just like basically landed in the women's field. We always wanted to be in an industry that we could feel close to and understand like our own target demographic. So it was perfect for us to go into something that was fun, feminine. We still keep it very classy I would say. Like you know we come from conservative background so we do have our own touch of elegance to the lingerie for sure and it made sense at the time and it still does because the market of streetwear lingerie and outerwear lingerie and ready to wear lingerie has grown so much. That's right. So it's been a really fun industry and a fun ride. Alright so you said a couple things. So you started pre-med. I did. There are some cultural norms here. Right and so you went from like making mom and dad super proud. Right. To making them proud. To making women proud. But what was it like? What was sort of taking that big risk at the beginning? Telling your parents, your sisters, you're both doing it in sort of a conservative culture. What was that? Very good question. We had the full support of our parents. It was my very conservative dad's idea really to go into business together and to have something of our own and to work on something of our own whether it was you know a passion or a hobby or whatever. It was the full support of him who drove us to where we are now. Wow. Yeah. And is your dad an entrepreneur? What is like is he used to risk taking? He just left corporate tax after 35 years. Corporate tax. Yeah. And he's an evolved man. Yeah. Alright. Wow.  What's your first step? Like what do you do? First step. So much. So much market research but really your brand voice. So there's so we are obviously. Your brand voice. Okay. Your brand voice. We're obviously bombarded by so many brands every day. How do you stand out? Exactly. How do you stand out? How do you find your niche? How do you find your driving point? You know what makes you so special in such an oversaturated world and especially the internet right now is even more oversaturated than it was. 100% yeah. Or even five years ago. We were searching for that that brand voice what spoke to us what we wanted to represent for women. What kind of feeling we wanted to sell. And I always say that as much as we're selling a product we're also kind of selling a service. I think lingerie is a feeling and we're selling the feeling of confidence and empowerment and it's when you put it on it's kind of like you're buying a feeling. So we were looking for that and we just sat on the computer for a year and a half doing so much market research not just the computer offline of course asking so many of our peers, family, friends, whoever started businesses for some advice. We went to a few trade shows some in Vegas. We traveled to other parts of the country just learning about the industry. We went through so many business models. One time we were like we're going to be subscription based lingerie. Everyone needs that once we get their door. And then we wanted to be retailer. Let's pick our favorite brands. Yeah. And then we're like let's pick our favorite brands and create the coolest little lingerie marketplace. And then we were like wait we are so picky with designs and what we're going to sell. We just have to just design and create our own collections. For people listening that are thinking like okay so you guys are basically became the experts in some extent in lingerie. What are some of the things that no one would know? Like what are like three or four things that you were like that you learned about the industry? I would say that it shocked you maybe. That shocked us. I would say it is not a season it's not like a season based wear. So people think it's like a Valentine's Day. Yes but it's not. It's an all year round. It's fun. It's for yourself. Women buy so much more lingerie than they realize and they're gifted so much more lingerie than they realize and they love lingerie so much more than they realize. 40 billion dollar annual industry. Interesting. So it's large. Okay. So you're saying the buyer is twofold. It's the person wearing it mostly female. Yes. And then I would say maybe it's all female. And then there's like the boyfriends, husbands. Totally. Exactly. Yeah. Girlfriends maybe. We've been featured in a lot of like we want to get your girlfriend for Valentine's Day gift guys.  So you say that and my brain goes can a man actually buy lingerie for women? Oh we have so many male names. All right. So a male walks in the store. In our shop. I walk in the store. Do I show you a picture? I'm like this is her. Like what details do I need to know? Again I feel like it's back to the feeling. Whatever you're drawn to you open our website and you're like wow I love that course set. You check the sizing. We have a lot of photos on the website and a lot of photos on Instagram so you can kind of see how to style it. You know you're not buying something like a shot in the dark. There's just like so much info around it. Like the writing, the seams, the size guide, like everything is just so clear. So whatever speaks to you, you check out and we have great customer service. So there's a live chat on the website. Is it you guys? Do all the time. And we have a team. And we have a team. It filters in and out. But if it's something that's like flagged to our attention of course will be responding and chatting right away. Because it really is so important for the founder to be tied as closely to the brand and the brand's story as possible. And every time I feel like I know who the founders are or I know the founder or the founder is just passionate about their brand it makes me want to shop from them so much more. Yeah it's also good for feedback. Like you're also collecting information in real time. And we do that speaking of collecting feedback. We have thrown so many events. Probably like 100 plus in our in our brand's lifetime. What's an event like? Tell me. So we've done so many. We've done event collaborations. We've done pop-up shops. We've done like holiday gift shops. We've popped up at retail boutiques. We've done launch parties. We've done like everything under the sun because. And most of them involve like our items on a rack. Speaking of feedback. So we get that real time. We get that real time. Does this come in white? What size is this? Can I try this on? You know like just so many different questions. So every day at an event is basically a focus group. Because you're just listening in on people. And you're there to give you're only as good as your customers. So you're there to give the people what they want. Yesterday we were talking about I just mentioned make beauty the founder. And so when I when it comes to her product she was telling me that she gives her product to makeup artists. And it hit me because I was like oh it's interesting because it's like the people using the most makeup or the people that are sort of the professionals in that world are the makeup artists. Yeah. And also it's like their reputation when they use makeup right. So it's like this person's hitting the runway or the red carpet. The Oscars whatever it is. It's the social proof. Yeah. And so that's her that's her like little feedback loop base. With you guys. Is there a certain group of people that are like the ones that sort of taste make in the lingerie world? Yeah. We I'd say we work heavily with stylists. We have polls and requests at least once a week. And then we also are sending out to stylists all the time. And we get feedback directly from them saying you know either their client it didn't for their client right or it didn't work with their their personal style. Or they're going to keep it for the next shoot.  It could be just like a gorgeous black corset and you just fold it up and throw it in your kit and so many stylists just surprise us with the coolest content and just message us and email us by the way just through this on so and so and we're just like our jaws drop with the content because it's just styled in a way. I mean my sister and I definitely do push the barriers with how we like to style our pieces. We like to do fun and different stuff especially because like what give people a window. Like we've even styled like an underbust corset over a blazer instead of under a blazer and I feel like not a lot of people would do that but we try this like ruffle top over there as like a waist belt or as like a neck tie. Our model here is joining us today. For people listening there's a modeling room. Several ways to clearly style that corset. She's wonderful. Whether it's on your as decoration. Yeah exactly. If we had a real model in here that was just like standing. Oh that'd be awkward. When did you guys realize you were on to something? Like at what point does it sort of evolve from the idea the risk to like okay I think we have a company. I'd say we're very lucky in this sense but the outpour of support and love from our community here in LA. As soon as we launched really I'd say after a month we had family friends offering us spaces to do pop-ups inviting us to events inviting us to pop-up at events and be involved in things and it was really like an outpour of support which we're so lucky to have around us. Lots of loyal friends and family. That's rare by the way. And we felt we were on to something because it was genuine and it felt real and it motivated us to keep going and it made us want to keep doing it and in under a year we were approached by you know Fred Siegel Planet Blue by big name stores that we grew up shopping from and they're like they were like they want our product of course and we're we're just a few months old and at that you know I think the first year too for a brand. So important. Yeah it's important but maybe you don't get that yet maybe you don't get that you're on to something quite yet in that just in that time and we're lucky to have felt that and to have just so much motivation to keep going and so much excitement and passion and we loved working together so there was always that aspect of of passion and excitement. I was going to say working together I mean it has like a million pros of course but we bring such different tastes and things to the table our brand vision and our morals and our values everything is aligned. We work with the same intentions we work with the same like love and care for our business but we bring so many different views and when you mix them all together and we have each other to bounce off of it really does create something really really cool yeah. Our brand is the perfect blend of each of us. Yeah it's adorable. Your parents must be so happy for you. They're like oh they still like each other. We're lucky we love the support. Yeah you guys are raised right I guess that's amazing. This is a good story. It's a good story of your own little dynamic. It's amazing. Alright so you felt like you were on to something and then what's the hard part of the business is it just reinventing products is it like what is the what is the thing that makes everything move obviously it's everything right you have to do like all the little things right it's a whole lot of elements but again there's no formula so I don't want to be like there are these elements and you know ingredients for a recipe but there's no way but there's also no recipe that anyone can follow there's no rulebook or guidebook. Because being in fashion can be tough in general right it's like it can be fickle. It's pretty saturated and it's saturated a lot of noise yeah. There's a lot of noise there are a lot of brands there's a lot of entrepreneurs especially in California I mean I think everybody goes into like sustainability for some you know point and then also a lot of brands that start with just carrying a few pieces just carry everything now so you're just bombarded by so many choices so you really do need to make your point as a brand you know what I mean and really gather your customers and keep them I think like customer loyalty is huge so every time we acquire a customer we want to make sure we can keep them for a lifetime. Yeah that's smart. Yeah that's really really important because you are we're just bombarded with so many different things and we're always just wanting to try different things and shop from different brands and there's just always a new retailer and everybody's running a sale and then there's always just so many trends like even for us shopping I feel confused all the time I'm like wait is that top still cool or was that like from two months ago I'm not sure what to buy so there's just so many different trends and styles and you really do have to stay at the forefront you do. But I but in terms of your question I think that it's it's with all of that with the confusion with the saturation and just the overwhelming busyness of the internet and finding brands the problem is and that's not just for us but every brand is really reach it's like discovery it's like I know so many customers are out there for us in America but how do we how do we reach them how does any brand reach everyone? Yeah do you guys do paid ads? Yeah we do a lot of digital ads. That works a lot. Definitely. It works if your creatives are amazing. It works if it's not Valentine's Day and Madda doesn't hate you. Give me the seasonality on the business and so obviously you definitely see a spike. Totally no of course. Valentine's Day and Valentine's Day because lingerie is popular during Halloween. Yes okay February October and then honestly November and December for sure too. That's all in the industry. Yeah yeah that makes sense and when it comes to funding did you guys self-fund it how did you raise capital? We did right we're bootstrapped.  At this point I mean it would be fun it would be cool I don't think that we're we're in the position to give away equity or to kind of like diffuse the brand that way if we can continue what we're doing and keep going if we had like a clear plan and you know everything we need the funds for quite possibly but right now we're just so happy with what we're doing and we know it's like our baby forever wherever it's going like we're gonna go with it so I don't know if we're gonna dilute it that way. Where do you want to take it like when you think about just global global TTC retailers just be like the first lingerie brand that comes up in people's minds just want to see it everywhere. And I was gonna say one of the reasons we named it Beverly Hills lingerie was was for that global reach so we really wanted to be special around the globe I think the name Beverly Hills and also just like any city is so appealing when you're in another city so it has like such it factor to it so our end goal is definitely to be across the globe be that like very you know special touch of luxury. Can you trademark it? Yeah we did. We did. It is tough with the city name but it's like just having having a city name attached to the brand name it's you know LVMH does that every designer you have to have like some sort of city name attached. I'm on the board of our tennis club but it's called the Los Angeles Tennis Club and so and they own the trademark to that. Nice. And so then I saw a shirt at Target like someone made a shirt and they're selling it at Target said Los Angeles Tennis Club and you're just like see that makes sense right and then so when our lawyer emailed them and then they like Target like totally apologized and discontinued the shirt and I was like this is crazy so then I was like let's partner with a Wilson or some Prince or you know something. Because they want to use that. Some tennis brand. They need that. License this out create a revenue share for the club and then while we do that we just have them like let's let's say the members of the club didn't want this thing to be like all around. Right. We could just do it in Asia like just launch in the Asian markets to your point who love the name. Who love the name. It's such a great name anyway and then you're bringing all this revenue to the club. Yeah it's great. So did you do that? I'm working on it. Awesome. These things take time. It takes time to like. It does take time of course. To like get the board. It's the it's just the members of this club. It's like these things are slow. They're like what do you mean we're going to sell our name. You know it's like don't worry about it. Let people. It's like being a developer. You'll lease the name. You can rent it. We could rent it. We could be a rev share. It could also be like you know you can make an agreement where you're not like you're not you wouldn't be allowed to use it on lingerie. Just an example. Totally. Because the members would be like what kind of clothing is it going to be you know. Yeah. With a good lawyer you can totally do all these. All these things. Beverly Hills lingerie. It's good for SEO. Would you see it on a jacket? It's great for SEO. And you guys want to do this for how long? Like when you think about. I think this is a forever thing. Definitely. I can. So in love with it. I mean of course that's not to say that we won't continue like adding on to our careers and doing other things in addition but I just think wherever it goes it's it's always like going to be our baby in passion and we love it so much and put so much into it. We really have so much heart in this brand because it speaks so closely to ourselves so it's it's yeah it really is. It's not like a company that we started hoping to just you know make money and change the world and just fill a gap in the in the market. We really do find a need for our brand so we are so happy to be doing what we're doing and I don't I don't really see a day that I'm like you know what I'll give that to someone else and we had our good ride. Like I really want to take it as far as we can. Let me ask you this and so you started the company you're both in college at the time or you're young right you're younger than you are. So as I get older I'm like oh like new products emerge or like your taste change guys are women maybe you might or be married maybe you want to have kids one day how do you see like do you see the evolution of of sort of lingerie. Totally. How do you see that as you guys are just experiencing it you know just by living your lives. Yeah and we're flexible we're multiple with the brand we want to evolve with the times and the customers. Definitely. I know my sister wants to go into gowns and really ready to wear and things so we're we're gorgeous. Of course at gowns we're ready to just roll with the times and we really do listen to our customers and we really do listen to women and we follow trends and we follow our gut. We randomly get these like wild thoughts some day of being like wait should we add a trim to this design because I think it'll be so cool and it's or candles. You won't even yeah. Yeah do you guys sell these candles? Yes we sell these candles. So for sure I mean that'll make you really well. Yeah they set the mood. It's an ancillary but that's the mood. Yeah exactly. It's part of it. Exactly yeah. When it comes to just you guys how many products are you guys making like on a maybe a quarterly basis? No it's more like annual. Annual basis. Yeah and we don't have like seasonal collections. It's just maybe like 10 or so every twice a year. And then price point how long did you guys figure like the price point discussion always a real thing. So the price point it has changed. The price point discussion. We didn't want to start too expensive without having good social proof we definitely wanted to get our brand out there as much as we could gift it. Get it out to editors. Get into the hands of people. So we needed to keep our coglow for sure. So we started off and we still do maintain pretty reasonable pricing. Our price does really match our quality and our product because our made in LA pieces are actually really expensive. They're made here. They're made here. Yes like these are the ones. Yes we have yeah we have a made in LA collection a lot of our stuff made in LA great quality amazing boning great turnaround very easy for us because you know we can make the product so quickly and get them in the hands of you know retailers and and everything and it's sustainable which is great and you know ethically made like how much of the top you how much it is yeah no this this ruffle top costs us upwards of like 45 dollars to create yeah to make it to create oh wow we sell it for 110. Yeah that's pretty reasonable. It's a reasonable thing but that's not that's like that's the worst margin anyone's probably ever yeah that's not a good margin especially so that's like that should be a wholesale margin yeah you know like the 45 to 110 should be like a wholesale price but right now here we are we've entered the discussion all right yeah for us right now it's just kind of like volume you know what i mean we rather make as many sales as possible and acquire as many customers as possible and then in turn i think as time goes on that's when you know you're happy to start making profit but the key i think well i mean every business is different but everybody's key really is volume like you want to hit sales you want to get customers you want to be able to know that you can't acquire customers keep your cat glow keep your aob high like stuff like that and then from there you can be like oh wow amazing let's you know stock our profits and you know go up from there yeah that's tough yeah it is but it feels natural maybe embarrassing to them i've never bought lingerie for anyone in that scenario when you say this pricing definitely yeah a lot of that but when you say this pricing how does it compare to what's on the market is like a victoria secret super cheap no i'd say i think lingerie like in general besides like we're not thinking like you know la perla or kate jim provocateur i think it's all pretty reasonable and i think lingerie is like attainable affordable luxury so because it is supposed to be like a luxurious thing so you know i think our price points are competitive why did you do the la like made in america thing well it was covered actually at the time so that's smart that's actually really smart when my force but now by choice yeah when we had launched things were we're all made in china from our brand and prices were lower we weren't trying to be anything that we're we are now or that we weren't at the time and when we got notice of of the chinese factory closing like december 2019 we had a couple months to finally figure it out yeah figure it out and find our LA manufacturer and you're like this is so temporary this is so temporary and here we are like four years into this still spending so much and you like it but it's good we just love these pieces now we're like this is such good quality how do you downgrade and i know everyone is doing that now during during this inflation time as a consumer i see everything like just having downgraded and like costs have gone up and we're like we don't want to we don't want to be part of that i had a bowtie company once and uh it was fun it was a lot of fun but when i started it we everyone was like oh you guys should do like made in america bowties because you're making them in china and so we did and we partnered so brooks brothers had this factory in sunny side new york and so like literally you go down there as seamstresses it was amazing it was like going back into time and so we partnered with them we had this like made in america line at the brooks brothers factory and uh they were significantly more expensive obviously and like no one bought them like no one really cared you know they cared via email but when it came to the purchase they didn't care wow one was this this was in tooth oh my goodness one was this 2010 to 2014 okay it wasn't that long ago because i was going to say consumers now are like what's your philanthropic you know background what is your what do you do yeah what what's the sustainability aspect of brand what's this and that before like gen z is like a snobby with like where is it made what's the background yes i think we can think tiktok are the are the um workers paid and are they in good condition and they're they hopefully they're not in the labor force and like Sri Lanka yeah like i feel like gen z is maybe a little yeah snobbier about as long as the sweatshop is in los angeles exactly everything's made somewhere i know let's talk about the marketing side of things yes that's our favorite part what are your what are your channels where do you see the most growth everything literally as much as we can everything everywhere we were like gorilla marketing in the beginning because we're we're thankfully we had like usc and tons of people around us every day so much social clubs a lot of yeah so much offline marketing that way events we would sponsor so many gift bags for so many different types of events we would like generate so many different discount codes and just kind of like you know watch we said yes to everything we did everything and we reached a lot that way there was there's so many people and customers and like i'd say even friends we've made through that it was the best thing we could have done for a brand and wear the faces of it and we were young and people were excited thankfully so the gorilla offline marketing did well for us and now it is it's just meta the paid ads we don't do paid ads on tick talk but we do we do have fun why not is there something about the tick talk paid ads that don't i think we just haven't we haven't found our our factor in it yeah maybe one day maybe we'll hire for that or something of course i do you know from kind of market research i've done and people that i've spoken to in the industry that do market on tick talks tick talk i think that tick talk shoppers are spending a little bit less than even like 138 or 110 right they're they're they're they're purchasing a little bit lower exactly so if we put our candles on there and you know we spent some money on ads we could probably see a little bit of a return sure do you guys do all the content yourself or do you have an agency you work with a little bit of everything yeah a little bit of agency though okay we've never worked with agencies for pr from our nothing our press is all organic we just yeah we get reached out to a lot we give to a lot we really did we did and we organically we did gq forbs everything we have was was super unpaid which we pride ourselves on and you know why we did that we wanted to we wanted to track our growth like genuinely we wanted to try to understand it yeah we wanted to see what the hype was about what editors really wanted our product like but they had to say about it to say about it yeah we wanted somebody to do it so if someone's listening they're like how did how did you get in a vogue without an agency well like how'd you do it honestly create amazing content create an amazing product put it everywhere like by put it everywhere I mean you say you just go to all events that are on brand for you you sponsor as many gifts but yeah wear your stuff you put promo codes all the gift bags it's not it's not you hustle you need help it's not simple but it's so rewarding you definitely like if you don't have a co-founder I would say you need an assistant you need an intern there's just only so many hours in the day and you're just constantly creating work from like the second you wake up to the second go to sleep at like you know even on weekends you're like where do I put my brand you walk into a store and you're like that would fit and you have to go find the buyer or ask you know the store manager to connect you to the buyer and you just keep following up so just keep following up it's not as annoying as you feel comfortable but like in a very natural way like hey I would love to send you some product I was you know looking at your page and I noticed that you love so and so and just be genuine about it because people love hearing from other people I think a lot of brands even that reach out to us from like a brand page and kind of want to partner with us versus a human being that says hi I'm part of so and so's brand we respond so much better to humans so just as humans we always want to make sure that it's my sister and I and anybody on our team that's directly reaching out to people to work with them and to promote the brand versus it saying like you know info at Beverly Hills laundry.com sent you an email it doesn't yeah it feels a little bit more robotic and people want to talk to people at the end of the day so that's really hopefully we're still after after the AI boom hopefully people still want to talk to people I think they do even more so now when I had the bow tie company we had a guy named Max it was a fake person it was a max at otai.com was the was the guy it was you though it was me or my co-founder love it okay it was actually three of us it was one of us it was three three of us and the first person to respond it was like we do it on behalf of max and so max would like upgrade your order to two day to overnight shipping max would throw in a free bow tie for you Max did like you name it he did it it was like the customer service legend and then after like three years we we decided to like say goodbye to max and so we did this thing that he got into the doctors without borders program so we're running a max like max going away sale and all the customers just bought so it was like a buy one get one it was a fun way of like not devaluing the brand of making it about max's getaway yeah that's funny that's really funny for people listening max is not real I don't think I've ever said that on the podcast I'm sorry if you were a buyer of that product this is how you find out but and so what's interesting is I took that concept this is before AI was a thing and I was like we should start a tech platform where max is like there's a bunch of maxes but it's all computerized like AI and that's what it is now and that's what it is now and so to your point around like the you know the name should not be info at like people want to talk to somebody people want to talk to somebody you knew that yeah but it just makes sense it's like hospitality it's feeling special the customer wants to feel special they want to be really spoken to yeah yeah 100 they want to feel seen and heard do you guys have like a dream event or you may be working on something this year that you're like we have so many dream events I think that's like the first thing that comes to my mind a slumber party yeah like Beverly Hills hotel like super like Beverly Hillsy and iconic just like like a launch of like a sleepwear collection or something yeah slumber party I think that's like I could see that right like the sunset tower right by your house yeah exactly something like that so nothing in the works for this year in terms of like oh we do we have a lot of things I mean it's women's month we have something at the end of the month it's called cosmic fem and it's really just like celebrating femininity and one is it so I think we're going to release this pretty soon March 28th and people can find the details on our instagram by then I'm sure and it should be a fun fun night it's like in the evening at the brightly the social club in must hollywood and there'll be bowling and like tarot card reading charm bracelet making we're selling some panel speakers dj and great networking where's the craziest place you've shipped your product oh um good question oh I they're not like crazy but like I love seeing like Greece and New Zealand so yeah that's yeah I mean I'm not crazy not crazy like Indiana like I'm always asking founders how do you get to Indiana you know it's like oh yeah it's like Beverly Hills we're selling exactly we're just selling the name yeah have you hit every state no I don't think that I don't think we have I'm doing this thing in my head where I can see like the social media post where it's like the most conservative state in America why because they haven't bought our product and you guys just call them out and it's like Connecticut North Dakota or something no I could see getting getting Beverly Hills lingerie before they would do it for some of these they would what would you tell like uh you know entrepreneurs today that are maybe going to pre-med that are like listening and they're in school they're starting their college journey oh wow I would really say take as many jobs internships shadow opportunities learning opportunities as possible we it's like we didn't start like with no experience we have both had jobs in PR marketing other other kinds of relationships I had like interior design internships like just learning how to work like it's not like it can be your first experience I mean for some people it works but that is my advice to learn as much as you can like we took these jobs while we were working on Beverly Hills Andre for that year and a half while we knew we were going to launch it soon and just getting all of our tools and resources and just the experience of of working under a belt so I'd really say that's smart yeah it really is going to get as much experience do everything you don't know everything don't act like you know everything and stay hungry for learning yeah for your information yes the world will humble you if you're not humble there's a weird thing about entrepreneurship where you have to be like so kind of stupidly confident to start it yeah you do but then you're gonna get and then you will be humbled the whole time like you will want to learn A to Z of your business and we really do tell because we speak we do so many podcasts and we speak to so many people who want our advice because we are genuinely like not gatekeepers we will we love to help people we love to tell people how we started and our thoughts and our mistakes and you know our favorite decisions and stuff like that and one of the biggest things we do tell entrepreneurs our advice from both of us honestly is to know A to Z of your business you will be hiring you will be building a team there's only so many hours in the day but being able to know the A to Z of your business is so important like you need to know like how to create content how to run ads like how to write web copy like you really cannot rely on like if on anyone at any point of time someone takes a sick day in your team like you need to be able like you're an entrepreneur you started this business yeah you need to have all the contacts saved like you need to just yeah you have to be ready to rock and roll at all points in and they're just hiring yeah you can't just delegate like you're not the you're not the entrepreneur there you're just delegating your company you're just delegating yeah you know definitely learn everything it's a real thing yeah and be ready to learn yeah and like shipping everything you know like that's that's stuff everyone needs to know how to do if they really want to if you want to it's good advice you should know something about everything about your company yeah exactly but don't stay humbled because you will be learning so much yeah there'll be so many defeating days where you thought you had to do something but you didn't and you relearned it all over again and it's totally fine because it works out better than what you thought I think like that's why I like real estate development because I can't be the architect like I can't I mean like I can't be the engineer and so there's this like it forces you to delegate and you really can't it's like the job is to get out of their way and just give them high-level direction yeah it's really interesting it's really a trust it's a trust it's a trust thing yeah it is a trust thing you're hiring someone for their value you're hiring them because you trust them and you're hiring them because you like their taste and you have to let go let them do their job that's why people go to your stores when people shop with you guys yeah you're trusting you to create an experience in a moment what are some of the mistakes you you can share mistakes um the silence is not because we haven't made they haven't made a single mistake I'm trying to think of something that's not like sappy to say I mean down to just trusting because we're we're pretty we're discerning but we're pretty trusting we really do see the best in situations and people we don't want to like go in and presume the worst but there's been some people who we work with we could give them like 10 products they would run a whole photo shoot for us like you know off site it's not even the worst like in the beginning of the business yeah just trusting you know yeah it's just like not getting the products back for example and we're like we're like there's like worse than that like right now how worse how dark do we want to go get a partner with yeah like are we gonna I can't say too many like I don't know what I'm thinking about but there's something I can't say yeah it was just there was like not getting paid out yeah okay there's also this brand that we didn't get I mean this reseller you know a buying company went bankrupt and 15 of their brands it was like a Barney's or like I just heard matches fashion hasn't paid their brands in years and that's why they're they're closing down for example yeah but we've we've gone into those things I wouldn't say they're mistakes at all I wouldn't say anything is mistake I think it's all meant to be and it's all learning it's a whole learning experience I personally don't live with regrets like I'm alive and healthy and happy and that's that's all I need so I don't think that like mistakes were negative in any sense like I'm doing this project right now as an example and there's this new like very wool culture in Los Angeles which is interesting all we're trying to do is open up a restaurant and that restaurant has like a liquor license it's not a club it's just a restaurant with a little market little bodega really cool cute you love that and the council people are telling me like this isn't for the community and I'm like who is the community just so we're clear like who when you speak about the community who are they and what she's referring to is basically like the poorest of the people like the homeless people right and I'm like I don't know if you know how development works but like this isn't how it works yeah you know it's like I don't know how development works that's why I'm saying and you can't take advice from anyone but they want to like shut down our project yeah it's just like these it's really interesting where it's like when I first got into development it went well then covid hit and then we had to deal with all that of course we figured that out and I was like that'll be the hardest thing I ever do in my life I really thought that and then the inflationary period happened or is happening I guess and then I was like no this is the hardest thing and now like now it's politics now it's like politically if all of your real estate and all of your work is in California yeah there's a whole political aspect to town state out here in California no it's big time and I thought I was good at it like the new things that they spend will always be surprising like you know we invest in some companies and some of them like there were so many emergency board meetings but I think covid simplified people's business in the sense of like a lot of people started experimenting unnecessary office space unnecessary team members I mean people are working from home getting more done a lot of well essence fired essence the multi-brand retailer website one of our favorite like 500 people and they were the same brand everyone was like what were those 500 people doing how were their 500 employees that when you fired your company was still running the same yeah so like why like why is there all this fat that needs to be trimmed everywhere so yes covered simplified yeah a lot of things and I was in San Francisco I went to google's offices one time I don't know if you guys been there but you go now and basically we park we walk and there's like all these people playing volleyball and like they're outside and everyone's like not working and then and then they're like and this is where we got a haircut and like this is the dry cleaning and then like it happened they were basically cooking duck there was duck that day which is why we were there we're like oh we're here to get duck and so then you have a chef everyone's getting duck and then we're sitting that with a friend of ours who works at google and I'm like so what do you do here like will you come in what when do you come in he's like 10 I was like all right you get here at 10 cool it's noon right now so what have you done what did you work a little bit he's like yeah I know I worked I'm gonna do this I go to the pod nap pod after this and then maybe I'll play like some campus event that they have every day and I'm like cool and then when do you go home he's like around like four and I'm like this is a retirement home for you and for dreams that's what that is yeah yeah it was wild to see yeah these people who are working there they're they're not going on you know to work somewhere else in their careers or do something from right I can't I think they have hopes with that culture I just can't imagine that you really inhibits your growth honestly oh for sure but then you also see the culture like I think the culture has been moving that way for a little while of course oh yeah because you've you've become complacent and it's totally and then covid hits and then you're like yeah then your drive goes to zero in a positive way we will say that everybody should really really hustle especially for what they believe in and for their job and for their career let's leave it at that whatever you're doing this is why you're good balance do it well you know exactly how she feels and then you're saying it's so nice when Kim K said get your effin ass up and work yeah and it caused like uproar of negative backlash but tell me why that is everyone was so mad at her I'm just yeah but why was it negative it's okay like just pick what you like to do and do it you know it was negative it's not negative it doesn't it doesn't but it wasn't it was it like working with your sister that yeah that's what it is this is great I'm like oh no she got so much controversy so much which one of you is who's older who's the older sister can you guess I just do one guess so I'm gonna guess based on personality okay and I think because you seem more you almost seem like the older one yes you are you got it yes okay only but the only because you seem nurturing to her oh that's so sweet that was what you were saying like when you were like it's very motherly yeah like it was like you've clearly she's mother daughter it's a little sister it's a little mother daughter sister sister and we it's like interchange yeah she's five years older okay you didn't have to say that see I didn't ask that little siblings love to out there she outed me but yeah well you are the nurturer that's clear here let's go to this and so when it comes to influencer marketing is there like a dream collab you guys have maybe have something in the works or I think that changes every day I was about to say it's like who is it in the moment that I'm that I'm drawn to or into and like I'll go through period of following and unfollowing influencers and and models and whatever but like maybe I think like Madison beer is cute and she like she likes this kind of stuff this kind of clothing yeah we were talking about her yesterday yeah we really like her have you guys had a really successful collaboration very successful or at least where you've seen like something that has been like a bump in either views or sales I mean there will be there will be a certain influencer or model that will sell out the product that they're wearing so those are kind of like bumps that we'll see but nothing so drastic like there wasn't like a capsule collection that we did that took us into like Harrod's you know what I mean like if an influencer posted and shared wear it yeah yeah yeah and then the sales go nuts yeah yeah no we see that sorry I would say like the Addison Ray era she we sent her a bunch of products she like filmed TikToks on it she's a sweetheart she loves it she tagged us in feed we didn't ask for anything we didn't ask for anything we just we liked her we wanted to send her a product and we we are very careful with how much product we send out now I think four or five years ago when we you know a year into the business two years into the business we were just like sending to every fashion blogger that we personally liked and that our team found to be a good fit and you really do need to be so careful because different fashion bloggers and different influencers have a different influence on people and you think just because somebody has such good engagement and such a good reach it doesn't mean people go to their page to shop their clothes they might go to their page to shop their like home wear or go to their page to shop their shoes or go to their page to shop their like you know anything candles like so you do have to be very nitpicky now because there's a lot of influencers out there love you all they're out there influencing there's a lot of noise yeah there's a lot of noise it's different it's funny when you mention the word blogger it's so different today you know it is so different today because back then blogger was like they literally had a had a tumbler and they would blog or they had a website or website we were yesterday we were talking to Kerry from make and she was saying like glossy glossier was a blog first yeah that was just like recommending products and look at it now and look at it now right it was so strong DTC the freaking mortar is amazing and yeah so crazy you can like once you have your following in a website and like loyal cuts or not customers but a loyal following you could sell them yeah community definitely that's like modern day like influencer turned entrepreneur who's selling something right right on instagram that's like the blogger turned like something else so let's do this let's wrap on this if someone's listening and they haven't bought in lingerie yet give them what are you afraid of why are you scared it's not scary there's something for everyone and it's not that serious and you'll find what works for you you don't have to like get a brown panty set there are other types of lingerie to play with whether it's like a robe you know you can call it that or just sexy you know what just start with lace PJs let's leave it at that sure lace PJs yeah keep it classic yeah yeah keep it comfy I want to thank our model for being so good to us today where can people find you where can they shop where can they buy where can I support we're just Beverly Hills lingerie dot com Beverly Hills lingerie on instagram shop phl on tiktok and twitter thank you guys for coming thank you thank you so much for having us thanks for having us it was a great time thank you for tuning in if you enjoyed this episode share with your friends your family or anyone you might think might benefit from the conversation we've had today and if you haven't already please take a moment to leave a review on your favorite podcast platform we'd greatly appreciate it your feedback helps us improve and reach more people who can benefit from our discussions the best way to stay connected with us and get the latest updates on future episodes is through our social media channels you can find us at start of the storefront we'll be back next tuesday with another great episode see you then


Our next caller is Hailey from London. Hailey, how can we help you? Hey guys, thanks for having me on. So basically, what I want to know is how can I effectively plan my own training programs? So, through lockdown, I've had like programs made for me by my own PT. But when the gyms finally reopen here, I want to be able to go in there. Just having made my own programs to follow. So I have just completed my personal training course, which I just did for my own benefit. So now I just want to put it to really good use. So I suppose how do I factor in workouts that help me reach my goals, which is like overall strength and building those glutes. But then I also don't want to overlook their least favorite training, which is upper body. No, no, really good question. Can't wait to see you try and answer this, consider how nuanced this is. I don't know so much. So here's something that's just an inconvenient truth, I think, around exercise and workout programming. Certifications definitely can help. Unfortunately, workout programming is mainly an experience thing. It really is. There's so many different moving parts into workouts. I'm sure you could put together a general routine that won't hurt you and that'll get you a lot of the way there. But to really take it to the next level, it's going to require a lot of experience. So here's the advice that I'm going to give you, Hailey. I would suggest looking at other well-written programs by coaches and trainers. So for example, the maps programs, great place to look. Maybe your favorite trainers. We created those. Mark Ripitow has got some good workout programs. I would look at strength coaches who train lots of athletes and work with lots of people and see how they're designing the workouts. Start following some of those pre-written workouts and then start listening to your body. Workout programming really is much more complicated, I think, than people can realize. How about this, though? I mean, we could talk about volume. Ideally, what the studies say as far as how much volume per week, so how many sets that you should be doing per exercise. We can talk about the prioritizing, the big movements, like compound lifts. So we could talk about frequency, what's ideal frequency. So there's some things that I feel like we can give her that will help her move in that direction, although it is very easy. Well, so studies will show that right around 12 sets total per body part per week is where people tend to do the best. But again, these are general, right? It's based off of studies. You can be one of those people that does more volume and get better results and you might be someone that needs a little bit less. But 12 is what the studies tend to point to. As far as frequency of training body parts is concerned, anywhere between two to four times a week seems to be ideal for most people. But again, there's that huge individual variance. Now, as far as training body parts and areas that you don't want to train, well, that's just going to be from discipline. That's going to be you making sure that you maintain balance with your workouts. But also be okay with yourself. This is a learning process. It takes a while. The keys really are listening to your body, gauging your progress, maybe even tracking your workouts. This is a good place to start tracking where you actually write down exercises, weight sets, reps, and then maybe give yourself some other scores like I felt really good or I felt like I was grinding through that workout. And then over time, you can start to learn your own body and start to really program best for yourself. And by the way, it's a whole other ballgame to program for other people. But you didn't say you were going to become a trainer. So I wouldn't worry so much about that. Just train yourself. Listen to your body. Look at your objective progress and then use that as a metric to decide or determine what are the best exercises for you. Well, also speaking to training the body parts and the types of exercises you don't typically want to do, I mean, that's where you're going to see the most growth and change in transformation typically. And also to addressing a lot of the imbalances, to make your program more specific to you and more individualized. This is where we kind of steer people a little bit more towards assessments and really understanding where you're at and what your status is currently in terms of your joint health and also which muscles are responding, which ones are not responding. So putting a little more work in that direction is highly beneficial, especially when you're starting to draw things up. Well, I'm going to give you a more specific answer, but it's still generic because of the points the guys are bringing up right now. I would train three days a week. I would do full body. I would train. I would do, like Sal said, 12 sets per muscle group. So every day that you're training every muscle group, I'm only going to do about three sets, three to four sets of each exercise for that muscle group. I'm going to start with all the big compound lifts. So most workouts are going to start with either a squat, a deadlift, a bench, an overhead press. So start with your big motor movements and then work your way to kind of like the auxiliary stuff, like your arms, shoulders, lateral raises, tricep push downs. That'll be later in your workout. And that would be like a three day week program. That's just a good generic place to start. And then you could start teasing out things as you go in. Like, oh, was that, you know, can my body handle more? Was that too much for my body? Should I back off? Is that too much compound lifts? My joints are hurting. Like, you know, there's a lot of variables that are going to come into play. I think that's a really good place to start for most people, which is very similar to the programming in Maps Anabolic. And then you can kind of build off of that. Yeah, Haley, what's your exercise experience? Are you working out a lot right now? Are you pretty experienced? Yeah, so I do. At the moment, strength training wise, I'm doing three times a week and I'm doing two lower body and one upper body. And then I also run quite a lot. So I run three times a week and then try and get my yoga in as well. Okay, Haley, do you have access to Maps Anabolic? No, I did try to buy it, but my car doesn't work on your site. I try to buy anabolic and the glue one. Oh, I see. Okay, well, we'll send you Maps Anabolic. So you're going to get access to that. Follow the program, modify it a little bit if you want, and then see how you feel. It's a very, obviously, we consider it to be a well-written program that'll get you started on, you know, strength training, programming for yourself. So start with that, see how you feel. You'll probably see really good results. Most people do. And then take it from there. Okay, and that's generally, like, focusing on full-body each session. It is, it is. And that's usually how most people will do best. It's some kind of a full-body-based, three-day-a-week-or-so routine. Perfect. All right. Thanks so much for your advice. Yeah, no problem. Thank you for your support. Well, thanks a lot. And have a good day. You too. You too. Yeah, it's one of those things, you know, creating workouts for yourself and other people. We wouldn't have jobs. We wouldn't be doing this if it was easy. Let's be honest. If it was that easy that we could just like, hey, here you go. I wonder if you can call in, you know, to a doctor's show and just, you know, ask, you know, if you could just diagnose yourself. Yeah, I know. I don't know. It's just, of course, that's silly, right? This is something that, like, a lot of people kind of know how to train. And it's, you know, there's a lot of simple programs out there you can kind of pull from. But yeah, I do feel passionate about what we do with programming. It's a lot more sophisticated. Well, that's the, so the idea of the, and we should have asked, we didn't think to ask her, obviously she doesn't own any maps in a blog. I'm guessing she hasn't been a part of the Mind Pump community that long because really the idea was you listen to the show and we give you all these nuance things that we're talking about in this short segment. Then you have the programs to compliment everything that we talk about. But we've since day one encouraged people to modify and change the workout based on all the information that we present on the show. Like, the idea is that you listen to all the episodes where we talk about programming, exercise design, things like that. So you can go, oh, okay, I can relate to that. Maybe I should back off of this or add more of that. Yeah, the big problem, and this has done a huge disservice to people who work out, is the view of workouts in the following way. Does it make me sweat? Does it make me sore? Is it hard? Okay, so if you want to sweat, get sore and have a hard workout, programming doesn't matter. It literally does not matter. You could pick one movement and do it over and over again, and you would hit that criteria. Now, if you're looking at workouts from this perspective, am I going to elicit the favorable adaptations, the responses in my body that I want, then programming gets quite complicated, and there's lots of moving parts, everything from, of course, reps, sets, exercises, tempo, and then that changes the order of the exercises. Of course, the days, how they follow each other, and do I continue this after three weeks or four weeks? Do I change the way I'm approaching my workouts? There's so many different moving parts. If you look at it from an adaptation standpoint, now it starts to look a lot more complete. You just want to get sore and sweat. Well, it doesn't matter. Go to Beachbody. They've got a lot of crappy programs. They'll do that for you. Now, I do think that there are some... Some shade there. Yeah, that was right. I do feel like there are some things, though, that were like major paradigm shattering moments for each of us when it came to writing programs, either for ourselves or for clients. And that's why I brought up the frequency and the volume, the exercise selection. Those were big things. Those are generally true. Exactly. I mean, there's always exceptions to the rule. Yes, we should assess somebody and address any sort of imbalances. Of course, again, that's why there's professionals in this field. But I do think there's some really good nuggets that you can give to somebody that's asking, hey, I'm trying to write my first program. What are some of the dos and don'ts?  That doesn't necessarily mean you had a good workout just because it was difficult. There are specific exercises that are better than most, which are most the compound lifts. You should prioritize those. There is an ideal amount of frequency. So two to three times a week is for what most studies support is the best amount of frequency on the body parts. There is too much volume, meaning you can do too much of those body parts. So going beyond 15, 18, 20 sets per body part per week is probably more or too much for most people unless you're a hyper-responder or you're on anabolic steroids. So there are some, I think, general rules that took me years of coaching to kind of... And there's specificity. There's, like, what's your true goal? Like, are you really just trying to work on strength? Then you've got to adjust your rest periods. You know, is it hypertrophy? Okay, now we've got to completely... Our reps need to change to look like this. So there's just things to consider that I don't think your average person knows. Right, and then to add to that, no matter what you decide, your adaptation is, after about four to six weeks of you following that and targeting that, it's time to move on and change things up or else almost anything is better than what you're currently doing.


Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Ah, lunch didn't put everyone to sleep just yet. My name is David Gallus. I am going to talk about mindfulness meditation in the workplace. And I'm going to put it in the context, hopefully, of how we can use mindfulness and meditation to create better present moments for ourselves, for our organizations, and how that can translate to a better future. But before I talk about mindfulness, I'm going to invite everyone in the room to practice a bit of mindfulness. So if you're comfortable with it, put down your cell phones, find a position that's comfortable but dignified, see if you can get your spine upright but your muscles relaxed. And if you're comfortable with it, close your eyes and just feel the sensations of your own breath. Notice what it feels like to breathe. Where do you sense it? The air passing in and out of your nostrils, your diaphragm rising and falling. And now your mind may have wandered already. And when it does, simply notice where it's gone, acknowledge that your mind has wandered, and bring your attention back to the breath. And we'll just stay here for a little bit longer. And when you're ready, you can open your eyes. At Goldman Sachs, they are training their investment bankers, their traders, to use mindfulness and meditation to become less stressed, just to slow down their busy workdays. At Facebook, the engineers at the social networking company are training in compassion meditation, trying to use mindfulness and compassion to make the algorithms that power this social network foster more humane interactions between their 1.3 billion daily users. At General Mills, the big food company in Minnesota, there is a meditation room in every single building on the corporate campus. And it's not just the business world at this point. In healthcare and medicine, for decades now, doctors and nurses have been employing mindfulness to good effect. Not just to help their patients, though that's part of the work too, but to make them more resilient caregivers. To get through those long 12-hour shifts with compassion and being there, present, in the present moment, with their patients. Even the military in the United States is training soldiers and Marines in mindfulness, not to make them more effective snipers or killers, but to make them more compassionate and resilient people, more compassionate and resilient husbands and wives when they come home from their tours of duty. It's showing up in sports with stars like Russell Wilson of the Seattle Seahawks practicing mindfulness meditation right along weight training. It's coming to the legal profession, to schools. And I was at the World Economic Forum last year in Davos, Switzerland and I was astonished. I went there to cover the business world for the New York Times. And what I found was that every morning started with an hour of mindfulness meditation right there in the Alps. I wrote a story about it for the Times amid the chattering of the global elite, a silent interlude. And I can assure you it was the only time in Davos people ever stopped talking. There's even a magazine, Mindful Magazine. And I don't know if you can get the magazine itself here, but the resources here are at Mindful.org. And it's a wonderful resource that you can access from anywhere in the world with practical tips about how to bring mindfulness and meditation into your own lives and into your organizations. So what is mindfulness? Well, again, I'm going to talk about mindfulness today as a way to come back to the present moment, to make these present moments more filled with compassion, less filled with stress, and using that as a way to make more effective, more resilient organizations going forward. But let's define mindfulness. What is it that we're actually talking about? A common definition is that mindfulness is paying attention in a particular way on purpose in the present moment and non-judgmentally. Now, that sounds like quite a mouthful, but it's actually quite simple. It's about being right here, right now, in the present moment, with equanimity, without using so many value judgments, without reacting constantly and saying, this is good and this is bad. I'm enjoying this, I'm not enjoying that, but actually just trying to be non-judgmental in the present moment. And the man who defined mindfulness in this very accessible context is a guy named John Cabot-Zinn. John Cabot-Zinn was a molecular biologist studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This is 30 years ago now. And on the side, he was a meditator. He was a spiritual seeker. He was going on meditation retreats, totally separate from his work studying it at MIT. One day on retreat, he had a critical insight. He realized that mindfulness and meditation were effective means of stress reduction. It was reducing his own suffering, his own anxiety. And he had this critical insight. If that's what mindfulness can do, if he can use mindfulness to reduce his own stress and his own suffering, why not bring it to the place where people are suffering the most, to a hospital? So he opened up the Center for Mindfulness in the basement of the University of Massachusetts Worcester Hospital. This is kind of a far out place, and this is the late 70s, but he opens a Center for Mindfulness and he goes to the doctors and he says, bring me the patients who you're giving the drugs to who are still in pain. Bring to me the people for whom the conventional treatments just aren't working, and we'll see what we can do. And so they start doing that. They start bringing people who are on a lot of medications because they're suffering from chronic illnesses, and he develops a course called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, an eight-week course in training the mind, giving these people back the power of controlling their own reactions, giving them back control of their own thoughts. And here's what happened. The pain didn't go away. People were still in pain if they were suffering from an illness or an injury, but they were no longer allowing that pain to control them. They were no longer letting that physical pain dominate their entire world view, and thus was really born the beginning of a secular mindfulness revolution that we're now many decades into. Mindfulness-based stress reduction has now been taught to hundreds of thousands of people around the world, and it forms the foundation for much of the research into mindfulness that continues to this day. So John talked about cultivating moment-to-moment awareness, paying attention to the physical sensations, and also known as meditation. These two words get used interchangeably, but I'd like to suggest to you that meditation is the actual practice that can help us cultivate this state of mindfulness. So once again, to do this, and this is what John was teaching people in Worcester, Massachusetts, 30-some odd years ago, and I'm going to ask you all to do it again just for a few minutes right now. Take a position again, upright, comfortable. Notice the sensations of your breath, and when your mind begins to wander, bring it back to those physical sensations. We'll practice just for a few brief moments here, 30 or so more seconds, and when you're ready, open your eyes. It's important to keep practicing. It's easy to talk about mindfulness. Actually, practicing is not always so easy. It goes against the velocity of our daily lives. We're so used to working frenetically, constantly moving, constantly getting on to the next thing. It's so rare that we actually stop and be present right here, right now, in the present moment. And yet mindfulness is an innate human quality. It is not culturally specific. It is not particular to one tradition, one religion. It's something everyone in this room just had a brief taste of and something that is compatible with all sorts of belief systems. Indeed, we've seen mindful leaders in the past, and I know these are people that you all have thought about. People like Dr. Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, all of these people may not have used the word mindfulness, but at their best, when they were sitting there with their congregants, with their disciples, they were being mindful. They were 100% in the present moment. And yet I don't want to hide the ball here. Mindfulness meditation, this mindfulness revolution that we're seeing, is indeed inspired by the practices of especially Southeast Asian Buddhism. As Buddhism spread from India throughout the region, the Southeast Asian tradition distilled it into vipassana meditation, or insight meditation. And the practices therein contained lay out this very straightforward roadmap, paying attention to the sensations of the body, noticing the emotions, noticing our thoughts, and coming back, training the mind to notice them, but then return to the present moment, and using that as the first step to greater enlightenment. But what's happening today is not about enlightenment. Mindfulness today is a purely secular pursuit. It's showing up in white collar companies around the U.S. and across the world. And that is a demonstration, really, of the power of the mind. The only reason people are doing it is because it works. And I'd like to tell you the story of one man who really made it work. This is Mark Bertolini. He is now the CEO of Etna, one of the biggest healthcare companies in the United States. And about a decade ago, Mark was an up-and-comer at Etna. He was a hard-charging executive, type A personality, never stopped working, burned the candle on both ends. And as he was rising through the ranks at Etna, he was on vacation, a rare vacation, but he was downhill skiing, and he suffered a really terrible accident. He flew off a cliff, banged into a tree. The nerve endings in his left arm were actually separated from his spinal cord. He had multiple internal injuries. They medivacked him in a helicopter to the nearest hospital, and a priest administered last rites. They didn't believe he was going to survive. He did. They did several surgeries over the next few days. And as he began to heal, he needed to lean on medications. He took Vicodin. He took fentanyl. He took oxycontin. He was doped up on some pretty serious drugs. And the pain was so severe that he stuck with those. He continued to take these for weeks and then months, and then a year had passed, and he was still kind of in this fog. He wasn't able to get a step back. People encouraged him to take early retirement. But he was determined. He wanted to get back to work. So he started practicing unconventional therapies. He started with craniosacral massage therapy. He then started practicing yoga. And his yoga eventually led him to mindfulness meditation. And then something remarkable happened, he told me. Mark said at that moment, he started realizing that he could experience his pain without letting it define him. He could notice the physical sensations that, yeah, his arm still hurts. As I sit there with him, even today when I see him, he grimaces. He's in constant pain. And yet he's not allowing that pain to take over his life. He's not allowing that pain to stop him from being a good chief executive, a good husband, a good father. Around the time of the financial crisis, he was back at work. He ascended to become CEO of Aetna. And he went to his chief medical officer, a very straight-nosed scientist named Lonnie Reisman, and he said, Lonnie, I've got an idea. Mindfulness meditation helped me get back from my injury. We're a healthcare company, after all. Why don't we offer it just to our employees? Maybe eventually to some of our customers. But let's just start with offering it to our employees. Might it work? And this guy, Lonnie Reisman, chief scientific officer, he said, no way, no how. Wasn't going to have it. But Mark appealed to the clinician in Lonnie.  You respect data. Why don't we measure it? So they partnered with Duke University Integrative Health and they ran a mindfulness intervention. They used mindfulness-based stress reduction, this program that John Kabat-Zinn had developed. And they gave it to several hundred employees in Connecticut and several hundred employees in California. After eight weeks, the results were in. And perhaps no surprise, people like getting to take an hour out of their work day to calm down and not listen to their boss. But more surprisingly, they took some biometric measurements. They measured things like heart rate variability, cortisol levels, common indicators of physical stress. And what they found was remarkable. In both cases, heart rate variability was much more stable. Cortisol levels had come way down. These people were verifiably less stressed. And so all their reports that they were having more harmonious interactions with their colleagues, that they were feeling more productive, that they were getting more done, suddenly it had some real credence to it. Mark then rolled it out now at this point. Nearly a third of Aetna's workforce of several tens of thousands of employees have taken one form of mindfulness or yoga training that they're offering. He then started working with providers to offer it as a health care benefit to the many organizations and companies that turned to Aetna for their health care plans. And after a full year of this, rolling the company program out, scaling it up, at the end of the fiscal year, Mark Bertolini was going over finances with his chief financial officer, and they noticed something surprising. Health care costs on a per-employee basis had come down 9% at Aetna. On a per-employee basis. So it's not that Mark had fired a bunch of people and lowered health care costs. Health care was costing less for each individual. And the only thing they had done differently was introduce these holistic wellness programs. At a company as big as Aetna, a 9% reduction in health care costs amounted to $7 million. Now I've asked Mark, I said, are you telling me that meditation saved you $7 million? And he's careful. He's a CEO of a public company. He says, I'm not going to go that far. I'm not going to draw a direct line from point A to point B. But think about it, David. If mindfulness and meditation and yoga can make my employees less stressed, if we know that stress and health are intertwined, that more stressed people have more health care problems. And if we know that when my employees are less stressed, they're more productive, they're at work more often, they're taking fewer sick days, they're going to the infirmary less, then yeah, absolutely. I do believe, he's told me, that mindfulness and meditation had a big role in this. Mark went one step further. After scaling it internally, offering it to his program, saving his company money, he had a personal realization. He said, I'm the CEO of this company. And there's one more thing I can really do. Aetna is a big, big company. Tens of thousands of employees, some of them very low wage workers. Income inequality is a big issue in the United States, roiling the political waters. And he said, as CEO, I can exhibit an act of compassion. I give my lowest paid workers a 30% raise. And he did it not because they were going to then become meditators. It wasn't some hidden agenda to further his mindfulness practice. Instead, it was the right thing to do, he said. And he came to this realization as a result of his own meditation practice. Aetna employees now practice mindfulness and meditation every day. They come up there to headquarters in Connecticut. And it's extraordinary, you walk in and every day at lunch, there's dozens, sometimes hundreds of people practicing. So again, Bertolini practiced himself, offered it to thousands of employees, saved millions in healthcare, gave employees a raise. A true mindful eater, if you will. Why am I the one up here talking about this, you might ask? If I may, I'd like to share with you my own story and my own challenges. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. I was a confused teenager. Then I was a confused college student. I'm still sort of a confused adult. And yet I was always asking life's big questions from an early age, but coming up very short on answers. I read mystical philosophy. I tried mind altering substances. And there were no answers. And then one day I was home. It was New Year's Eve. And I picked up a small volume from my mother's bookshelf on an introduction to Buddhism. I had never read Buddhism, but I knew I was going to in my studies at college the next year. And I started reading. Now it was New Year's Eve and I had invitations to go to parties. There were friends at a beach bonfire. There were friends at a bar or friends at a big house party. But I kept reading. I started reading these very clear, concise passages that meditation and mindfulness could help reduce our suffering. That desire and this constant wish to be stimulated could lead to suffering. And I didn't go out that night. I stayed up. I finished the book at about 2 or 3 a.m. I woke up the next morning, went for a walk on the beach. And I was still working with what I had read the night before. And so I opened the phone book. We still had phone books back then. This was before the web had really taken over. And I looked up meditation in the phone book. And lo and behold, there was a meditation center nearby. So I went and I started to sit. Later that day I connected with my friends at those parties. One of them had been punched in the face. Another still had his head in the toilet. And a third had watched his sister relapse and do cocaine again. I tell you that because at that moment, though I'm oversimplifying this basic equation that craving, that chasing stimulation can lead to real suffering. It was crystallized to me. It made some intuitive sense for me. And I resolved to continue and deepen my meditation practice. I started sitting in the Zen Buddhist tradition for about a year and a half. And then for my junior year of college I went here to Bodhgaya, India. I spent the better part of a year in India. Sitting with Zen masters. Sitting with this man, Anagurinka Munindraji. Not only did he look like Gandhi, but he was actually one of Gandhi's good friends. There's amazing pictures of them walking side by side around the Mahabodhi temple. And you can't tell who's who. There I am under the Bodhi tree as a young man. And here I am taking the Bodhisattva vows with Chokinima Rinpoche, a Tibetan teacher who I went on to study with. And it became a real part of my world view. Really a deep part of the way I learned to interact with people. Deep part of my intrinsic motivations. What I learned there. And so much so that I almost stayed. I thought, well this is pretty good.  Maybe I should stay and become a monk. I thought about it hard. And if I had stayed, I would probably look like Yogi Mike here. Yogi Mike stayed. He never came back. But I did. Of course I did come back. I went on to become a business journalist of all things. Writing for the Financial Times. Now at the New York Times. And in between my work as a business journalist, I would still go on silent meditation retreats. It was a private part of my life. It was something I didn't bring into the office. It informed my world view. It certainly helped me manage some of the inherent stresses of what can be a very tumultuous job. But for the most part, I was right here in the newsroom of the New York Times. Fast, tight deadlines. Sometimes screaming editors. And I was just kind of going through my work as a business journalist. And occasionally trying to keep up my meditation practice.  I had interviewed Mark Zuckerberg in profile. I had an exclusive JL House interview with Bernie Madoff, the mastermind of the $65 billion Ponzi scheme. And I needed my next story. I was desperate, really. As a journalist, there's nothing worse than not having a good story to work on. And I'm sitting there looking for what comes next. And I see a brief headline. Associated Press Story or something. And it said that in Minnetonka, Minnesota, there were people meditating on the job. And the hair on my neck stood up. I said, if there's anyone who's got to tell a story about business in the workplace and mindfulness and meditation, I'm the guy. And so I got on a plane. And what I found was the first beginnings of this real movement to make mindfulness mainstream several years ago. The company, of course, was General Mills, the maker of Cheerios and Yo Play Yogurt and Haagen Daz Ice Cream. And on my way out to Minnesota, I thought, what do these people have to tell me about meditation? What am I going to learn from these people? And what am I going to find? Do they actually know what they're doing is what I see there even going to be recognizable? I didn't know. But I show up about this time. It was about 3.30 on a Tuesday afternoon. And I walk in in this big conference room about the main lobby of the corporate headquarters building. And this is what I see. It didn't look all that different from the Bodhi Tree. People were sitting in silence. Later they did basic yoga. Coming back to the present moment. And then I heard the woman leading this group start talking. Her name was Janice Martirano. She was deputy general counsel of General Mills at the time. And her story is illuminating. She had been the deputy general counsel for many years. Had been pushing through the merger with Pillsbury, a $10 billion deal that got tied up in Washington. In the midst of this year-long fight of her life on the professional front, she lost both her parents. This personal loss coupled with the professional stresses left her absolutely depleted. And she got back to work after this very intense period. And she could barely go on. Didn't have anything left in the tank. Finally, someone suggested why didn't she try mindfulness and meditation. She was a little reluctant at first. She was from the Midwest. But finally, upon persuading, she went out there and she went to retreat with none other than John Kabat-Zinn himself. She got there and he said okay, we're gonna meditate for an hour. And she almost got up and left. But she stayed and after five days, she didn't want to leave. She was ready to stay and continue meditating. It was such a relief. Such a respite from her work and everything she had been through. But she came back, got back to work and people noticed a change in her step. People noticed that she had more energy that she was more present in the room. That when other people got upset in meetings, she was remaining calm. She was remaining equanimous. And they said, well, what's changed? And she said, well, I've been meditating. And little by little, people said, well, I'd love to learn. And eventually, she had a quorum. She began teaching meditation to her colleagues at General Mills. And it got to the point where, by the time there are hundreds of the executives at General Mills are practicing mindfulness and meditation now. I wrote a story about it. The Mind Business for the FT Weekend Magazine. And this story went viral. More so even than the stories about Zuckerberg or Madoff. People wanted to know where could they learn more? What other companies were doing this? And how could they bring mindfulness and meditation to their own workplace? And I had none of the answers. So I endeavored to find out. I wrote this book, Mind for Work, How Meditation is Changing Business from the Inside Out. But to do it, I had to do my research. So I went on this journey into the contemplative heart of corporate America. I visited companies from Vermont to Southern California, from Seattle to Florida, and everywhere in between, finding anyone who was practicing mindfulness and meditation in the workplace. And it was extraordinary because what I found is that no two companies are doing it at Patagonia, it's imbued into the very culture because the founder himself was a Zen practitioner. Whereas at Google, it's a highly academic course in emotional intelligence and mindfulness. And yet at every one of these companies it's having a real impact. Why? Why are companies turning to this? Well, stress. There's a reason John Kabat-Zinn called it mindfulness-based stress reduction. Because we all suffer from stress. No matter what your job as a secretary, a CEO or anywhere in between, stress is common. It's fundamental to the human experience for better or worse. And it's something we all experience on the job. If mindfulness can help reduce stress, well, that's a good thing. And as we saw, mindfulness can help reduce some of these costs that are associated with stress. The World Health Organization suggests that stress and the illnesses associated with it are responsible for some $300 billion a year in productivity losses. Imagine if we started moving the needle there, just a little bit. At Green Mountain Coffee they started to move the needle. This is Bob Stiller, founder of Green Mountain Coffee and there he is meditating on some bags of coffee beans. And when I tell you what Bob did before he founded Green Mountain Coffee, you won't be so surprised that he's a meditator. Before founding Green Mountain Coffee he founded Easy Wider Rolling Paper Company. Yeah? He was a bit of a hippie. So, he's there. He starts meditating in the office. He gives it to his C-level employees. They all like it. They're having better interactions at the workplace. They're a little less stressed. But then Bob has his critical insight. He says that all these white-collar workers are less stressed. But what about my guys in the factory? Green Mountain Coffee has facilities all around the country where it employs thousands of people roasting coffee beans, packing boxes, driving trucks. Don't they need mindfulness and meditation as well? Well, of course they do.  They had to find a culturally appropriate way to do this. So, they worked with a yoga teacher and they developed mindful stretching. And so now every time Green Mountain employees come to work they start their shift with 10 minutes of mindful stretching coming back to the present moment becoming more aware of their bodies, more aware of their surroundings. And as a result, a year on, a year after they launched this program workplace injuries at Green Mountain Coffee facilities were down dramatically. We heard about it with the employees at Aetna but it's happening around the country. Mindfulness doesn't change only our bodies, our minds. It changes our bodies too, excuse me. There are studies that show after interventions of mindfulness-based stress reduction immune systems are functioning more effectively. When sufferers of the skin disease psoriasis were given mindfulness in addition to their conventional therapies, they healed some 33% faster than those who were taking just the conventional remedies. And again, Mark Bertolini taught us if we can have healthier employees we're going to see gains across the board. At ProMega, a medical device company in Madison, Wisconsin, that was the site of one of these studies about the immune system. It was the winter. A lot of the employees had the flu. Everyone was trying to get through their general end-of-year malaise and then they introduced mindfulness programs, meditation programs. In addition with kind of everyday common cold remedies, people started meditating. They started stretching. They started coming back to the present moment. And what they noticed, they were able to see the antibodies start boosting. Over the course of those eight weeks the employees who were meditating they got healthier. They healed faster than their counterparts who weren't meditating. More focused too. Think about what we did to start this session. We brought our attention back to the present moment. We noticed our mind wander and we controlled our attention and brought it back to the area of focus. Rather than letting our minds run away. And if you think about it, that's like going to the gym for the mind. It's reps at the gym. Every time we bring our attention back to the present moment, that's like one little lift of the weight at the gym. And there are studies that show this. A group of office workers in Seattle were given mindfulness meditation training. They were able to attend the BSR the classic eight week course. And what they found was that after this course they didn't do everything faster. They weren't somehow superhuman. But they were able to stay on task for a longer time. So instead of checking their email and then answering the phone and then updating their calendar and then surfing the web in three second intervals which is literally about as long as they stayed with it. They finished whatever it was they were doing and they moved on to the next task. And that's why you see people like Russell Okung the defensive lineman of the Seattle Seahawks practicing meditation too. When he's on the field he doesn't want to be distracted. Meditation he says is important as lifting weights. It's about quieting your mind. And we're now seeing mindfulness and meditation be taught in sports teams all around the country. From basketball to football to baseball as well. Now there is real scientific literature behind this. There's even a new term for the people who study the science of mindfulness and meditation. Contemplative neuroscientists. They're looking at how meditation changes the brain. And the rise of mindfulness has coincided with a real transformation and understanding of how our brains work. For many of the last decades there was conventional understanding now disproven that our brains somehow matured as we entered into adulthood and that's kind of where they stayed and then they generally atrophied as we got older. We now know that's not the case. Our brains are malleable. They're plastic. Neuroplasticity is the term. Which is to say they respond to stimulus in the brains of an accomplished human player. The parts of the brain associated with fine motor skills unsurprisingly perhaps now are more developed. And in the minds of meditators that's the case true. In the prefrontal cortex, evolutionarily this is the most recent part of the brain. The part of us that makes us human. It's responsible for our higher order thinking our reasoning. There's more gray matter in the minds of long-term meditators. And in the amygdala, an almond shaped region in the center of our brain which is responsible for our stress reactions. When we get in a fight when we get angry at someone we have these fight-or-flight reactions. That's the part of our brain that's releasing hormones making us tense making our breathing tight. In the minds of meditators the amygdala is less reactive. Now we've studied the brains of meditators.  And I had my own brain studied as part of my research and this is what they found. Mindfulness is no panacea and after 20 years of meditating there's still a lot of nonsense going around up there. And yet I think we're starting to understand that it can make a real difference. Not just in that moment that you're meditating, not just in the present moment, but as CEOs and leaders use their insights from their practice to make beneficial changes in their own organizations and in the world. A couple final thoughts. This is Eileen Fischer. You may recognize the name she has a very successful clothing brand in the United States and around the world and for many years she ran a very conventional company. She was a good person but she ran her company like you ran an apparel company. She bought quality products, quality sourcing, but conventional sources. She didn't give much thought to where that cotton was coming from, what chemicals were being used to diet, where the garments were actually getting put together. Some years ago though she began practicing yoga just trying to stay fit as she was entering later part of her life and that led her to mindfulness and meditation. She began practicing and she started having these series of insights. Much like Mark Bertolini realized as CEO he had the power to affect all sorts of people even as lowest paid workers lives, even if they weren't going to be the ones meditating. Eileen too realized that she had real influence here. She could use her insights, this new compassion she was developing and use it for beneficial changes. So she started reforming her supply chain, started using fewer toxic chemicals less unhealthy dyes better manufacturing facilities. And then she had this critical insight. She said well what about the literally thousands of women, mostly women, in China who actually sew my garments? What can I offer them? Well it wasn't going to be meditation. She had brought mindfulness and meditation to her own office in upstate New York at this point. White collar workers were enjoying it fine, but what about those women in China who were at the factories? She said instead of giving them meditation because culturally that just might not fly why don't we develop entrepreneurship skills. And so Eileen now runs a robust program and her goal she says is to give enough education enough training, enough entrepreneurship skills to these employees that so one day they won't just be making the clothes, but they'll be running the factories that make the clothes. And that for Eileen is what mindful leadership looked like. Finally I want to introduce you to my friend Tim Ryan and it's appropriate we talk about Tim on this day as America is going to the polls. Tim's a politician. He's a member of the US House of Representatives. He represents Ohio's 13th district, battleground state of Ohio you've been hearing a lot about. And for several years Tim was right in the thick of it in Washington DC. He's a Catholic from Ohio. He was a high school quarterback. This is not your average meditator. He had been on the hill for several years been re-elected several times and after his third re-election he was burnt out. He said he was so caught up in the partisanship so bombarded by requests by special interests he was barely listening to his own constituents anymore the very people he was supposed to be representing. So he went on a retreat again as it happens with John Kabat-Zinn. John's not the only person who teaches meditation but he's touched some very important lives along the way and they've gone on to do remarkable things. So he goes on a meditation retreat with John Kabat-Zinn comes back, continues to practice mindfulness meditation and for Tim what it did was allow him to listen again instead of when he was in conversation with his constituents already thinking of his preprogrammed response already thinking right past whatever it was they were saying Tim actually just listened and hearing those stories re-invigorated him. It gave him the inspiration he needed to get back to his work of being an effective representative.  Meditation, mindfulness for Tim made him more sympathetic empathetic and compassionate and that's what mindful leadership looked like to Tim Ryan. Now since I began looking into this it has just exploded in popularity. Companies like Intel, Adobe and so many more are practicing mindfulness and meditation in the office. It's on the cover of Time Magazine big news programs in the United States and at the New York Times I'm now spearheading a big initiative to bring mindfulness training to our audience, to a global audience. So why are people bringing mindfulness to work? Well it's no panacea we know this but if individuals can be less stressed and more focused. If organizations can have healthier more productive employees and if leaders can be clearer, creative more compassionate I think we can all see the real value in bringing mindfulness to the workplace. Thank you very much.