Gwyneth Paltrow on Finding Her Way: “Figuring Out What Kind of Leader I Wanted to Be Was Challenging”
A candid conversation with the multi-hyphenate mogul.
Ahead of Marie Claire’s Power Trip, a two-day pop-up conference in New York and San Francisco with 200 influential women, speaker Gwyneth Paltrow and contributing editor Amanda de Cadenet have an honest chat about all things business.
Amanda de Cadenet: You started Goop in 2008 as a way to share what you knew and loved with friends. At what point did you realize that you wanted to turn it into a business?
Gwyneth Paltrow: I started to receive feedback from businesses we were featuring that were selling out of stock, and I began to understand that the brand had power. There was trust established. I didn’t know how to monetize that and wasn’t sure if I even wanted to. A turning point was when I was approached by a partner in a well-known venture capital firm who started to really push me. She introduced me to our first CEO, who helped me conceive of the business.
AdC: For someone who did not go to business school, how did you take Goop from a friends-and-family newsletter to the hugely successful business it is today?
GP: Learning on the fly, making huge mistakes, reading a few great books, and relying on people much smarter than I am.
“WHEN I STARTED, I HAD NO IDEA IT WOULD EVER BE A VIABLE BUSINESS.”
AdC: Can you share some of the obstacles you overcame in that process?
GP: I think that the process of figuring out what kind of leader I wanted to be was challenging, because as an actor, you work alone, really. I lead a company of more than 40 people. I have only recently asked myself the question.
AdC: Did you have moments of doubt?
GP: When I started, I had no idea it would ever be a viable business. I don’t think, consciously or unconsciously, I would have started it if I didn’t know on some level it was going somewhere. But we are always figuring out the process and strategy because it is an ideas business, not a software company or a specific service. I had doubts all the time. I have doubts all the time. I manage it by understanding that this is where I am, and I am going to move forward because there is no choice. Doubt, not self-reflection, comes from a destructive energy, and when it rears its head, I talk to it like a lunatic.
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