Does your brain keep you up at bedtime? I'm Katherine Nicolai, and my podcast, Nothing Much Happens: Bedtime Stories to help you sleep, has helped millions of people to get consistent deep sleep. My stories are family-friendly. They celebrate everyday pleasures and train you over time to fall asleep faster with less waking in the night. Start sleeping better tonight. Listen to Nothing Much Happens: Bedtime Stories to help you sleep with Katherine Nicolai on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Craig Ferguson goes in search of joy in talks with actors, doctors, standups, and scientists. Everyone, is it love, religion, drugs, money? Where do you find it? Craig Ferguson, in search of joy. The celebrations, the dances, science, poetry, laughter, and music of joy. Don't miss it. Joy with Craig Ferguson. Hear it now on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm here to help.

I think delusion is maybe ignoring red flags. It's like, No, no, it's going to be fine. What are you doing? Why are you not listening? Those mistakes and those red flags actually are really great gifts. Afterwards, you're like, Oh, I needed to learn this. Entrepreneur, Ali Webb, the co-founder of Dry Bar. A $100 million empire. I've had this shame. I didn't want to be divorced once, and now I'm heading into divorce twice. Can I be in love with a person and myself and what I'm doing? I haven't been able to figure that out yet.

Before we jump into this episode, I'd like to invite you to join this community to hear more interviews that will help you become happier, healthier, and more healed. All I want you to do is click on the subscribe button. I love your support. It's incredible to see all your comments and we're just getting started. I can't wait to go on this journey with you. Thank you so much for subscribing. It means the world to me. The best-selling author and host.

The number one.

Health and.

Wellness.

Podcast. On Purpose with Jay Shetty. Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to listen, learn and grow. Now you know that our community is all about becoming happier, healthier and more healed. And whether it's your career, whether it's your relationships, whether it's your personal life, we try and focus on all aspects on On Purpose. Today's guest is someone who's excited to share with us what I believe is the truth, and it's called The Messy Truth. Ali Webb, who I'm going to tell you about in a second. This book is all about how she sold her business for millions, but almost lost herself. The Messy Truth is available right now. We're going to put the link in the caption so you can order it while you're listening to this conversation. And for those of you that don't know, Ali Webb is the founder of Drybar, New York Times bestselling author, canopy president, co-founder of Squeeze, Brightside and Beckett and Quill. In 2010, Drybar exploded into a nationally recognized and highly sought after brand, growing to over 150 locations and highly successful product line, which sold for $255 million in 2020.

Staying true to Ali's signature approach to beauty and self-care, squeeze, follow suit as an innovative massage concept. Ali joined forces with L. A. Based jewelry designer Meredith Quill to build yet another new company now known as Beckett and Quill. Most recently, Ali joined the Canopy team as President. I'm excited to talk to Ali because we bumped into each other recently at a soccer game, football game for Angel City FC. Please welcome to the show, Ali Webb. Allie, thank you for being here.

Thank you. Thanks for that introduction.

Of course. You had to live it all, as I always tell my guests. I love this. The title of your book just immediately captured my attention because I couldn't agree more that every success story is underpinned by the messy truth. And we often don't hear about the messy truth. We often don't see the messy truth. Sometimes we don't even want to know about the messy truth. We'd rather believe in the facade or the beauty or the perfection or the perfect image that we see. And I'm really glad that you're sharing this. So I have lots of things I want to ask you from the book today. I highly recommend everyone goes and buys the book, especially if you're on your entrepreneurial journey, maybe you want to be an entrepreneur, you're thinking about it and you're thinking about, How do I figure out all of this stuff? Let's start with this idea, Ali, that a lot of our audience, a lot of our community wants to be entrepreneurs. They may already be entrepreneurs. Some of them are struggling. Some of them are winning. Some of them are still figuring out what they're even going to do.

What is the messy truth about starting that no one tells you about starting specifically?

Well, I think that we live in a generation now where we are finally at the point, which wasn't the case when I was starting out, where it is accessible to get to hear what's really going on. There's so many panels and so many conferences where entrepreneurs are talking about more of the real stuff, which I'm super grateful for. Like I said, 13 years ago, we started Drybar, that didn't exist. Nobody was talking about anything. You didn't have access to founders or CEOs the way you do now. It's such a beautiful thing that there's podcasts like this and there's places where people who are thinking about starting a business can go. I have a mastermind that's launching next week where it's for entrepreneurs. There's so much access out there now. But I think there is still, understandably so, it's like, I mean, everybody wants to look good and everybody wants to show their best side. For me, it's like I've always just been drawn to the realness. And maybe it's because I've always been a bit of an underdog. I mean, starting from the time I was a kid, my older brother, Michael, who's my business partner and dry bar, he was the overachiever in our family, very more book-smart and just was either always in trouble or always doing something really amazing.

There wasn't really a lot of in-between. I was a bit of a wallflower, which if you know me now, that is not my personality at all. But back then, I was just observing my brother in trouble or doing something great. I grew up with this... I was just in the background. I think that as I've gotten older, I have felt like more wanting to talk about my story and how I was like a bit of a... I think I have a chapter in the book called The Unlikely Entrepreneur, something like that. I should probably know all the chapters in my book. But I've always considered myself this underdog and not who you'd expect to succeed. I guess I have felt called to shine light on that because there are a lot of us out there, and I don't have a traditional path. I think that at one point it was like, there was this societal like, you have to go to college, you have to have a business degree if you want to start a business. Now, I've spoken at so many colleges that have entrepreneurial programs, which I always get a chuckle out of because I'm like, I didn't even go to college.

Do you want me to not mention that? But I think it's just good to show that you can find success and have success no matter who you are, whether you went to college, didn't go to college, just graduated high school, didn't graduate whatever. I've just felt really drawn to that underdog, the person that you just wouldn't expect to be successful. And so I try to highlight that. And there's good there, too, and there's a lot of things that I am really good at. But showing a peek behind the curtain to people that it's not... I think any entrepreneur who's listening to this knows it's not easy. Of course, it's not easy. I feel like I just want to talk about and highlight more of the hard stuff than just the good stuff because it's completely a mixed bag. It's not one or the other. It's usually like one minute to one minute. You're like, Oh, this is amazing. And then you're like, The whole thing is falling apart. I mean, it's literally like that crazy. So my mission with the book was to highlight both. It's really amazing, and it's the greatest journey. And it's also incredibly hard and taxing, and you don't realize how much it's going to change your life.

I think it's good that you don't know that. I'm a little bit of the ignorance is bliss mentality because I feel like the less you know about what you're getting yourself into. And It think just that whole mindset of if you can accept you don't know what you don't know, you go into things a little not as freaked out.

Well, in the book you go into in detail, give us a snapshot for everyone who's listening of what your life looked like when you even thought about starting this, because that will give us a picture of this underdog, unlikely entrepreneur.

Yeah. I got married to my first husband when I was 26. I moved to New York City when I was 18 because I didn't want to go to college. And I was like, I'm going to move to New York City. I feel like that will be good college. And that's what I did. I jumped around from job to job, and I would eventually go to beauty school in South Florida. Then I moved back to New York. Then I got married and moved to L. A. And had two babies and thought I had hit the jackpot. I loved being able to be a stay-at-home mom, I really felt so blessed and lucky that I got to be home with my boys. I was home for about five years before I started a dry bar, and that was such an amazing time. But I did get that itch to get back out there and start doing something for myself, which was really just like a feeling that I had. I really wanted to have kids, and I really wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. Part of me thought I'd get really involved in the school and stuff like that.

As I approached that, I was like, No, I don't think I want to do that. There's no right or wrong. It just wasn't for me. I've always really trusted my gut and my feeling, and I stay very close into what feels right. After staying home with my kids, they were about two and four when I started Dry Bar. About a year before we started Dry Bar, I got that itch to do something, and I started a mobile blow-out business, which was, again, just a way to get out of the house for a few hours, get away from my kids who I loved, loved, loved the whole thing, but just wanted to do something for myself. And I knew having done hair for so many years that I could do that pretty easily. I also had this intuition on that that if I were to only charge $40, which was like, Oh, 2:20, super easy. I'll come over while your baby's sleeping. That was it. That would be fulfilling for me to get out of the house, talk to adults. I mean, that's the other thing is when you have two little kids and you go to the park all day and you're in kidville all day, I wanted a little bit of a break from that and not just from my husband.

So I started this, and it was so perfect at the time. And I remember telling people that. I mean, it was 15 years ago, but it feels like yesterday because I was like, Oh, it's great. I love this. I'm getting out into the world. It was a great way for me to meet other women. And it also informed a lot of the things that we would eventually instill in Dry Bar, like not doing someone's hair in front of a mirror because I was doing their hair in their living room. And so it was just perfect at the time. I wasn't really making any money, but I've never been driven by money. So I was like, I'm just happy to do this and make a little extra cash. I go and do this thing that I really love doing. I get to talk to these amazing women. It was like wildfire. Women would tell their friends and then their friend groups and so it would just grow and grow, which is eventually why Drybar came to be because I was getting so busy operating this mobile business by myself that I was like, I think I need to start having them come to me instead of me coming to them.

That's really how Drybar was born. But I was just this one-woman show, driving my Nissan Xierra around LA with a duffle bag full of tools and Hairspray. It's funny because I remember it so well. You could have never guessed it would turn into the life that I have now. I mean, not in a million years. I was just happy to be out of the house for a couple of hours.

Thank you for sharing that. I know you probably had to share that so many times. No, but I love it. I wanted you to because I just... I mean, to me, I'm hoping that so many people are listening and watching going, That's me, Halle. I'm someone who I love my family, but I want to do something. I have this instinct that I have something inside of me. I don't know what it quite is yet. Or by the way, I'm doing something on the side, and my friends all tell each other that I'm good at it. Yeah, exactly. I think I could build something, but I'm not sure. What was it that made you feel this is real and it could be bigger versus, Actually, this is great, and it fulfills my needs of getting out the house and giving me a little bit of extra cash? Because you could argue that already felt like success, and it can be success for a lot of people. What was it for you that said, No, this should be bigger. I can be bigger, and I want it to be bigger.

Yeah. Well, it's funny how, and I'm sure you've experienced this too, when you're doing something and it feels really right, and then there's these rumblings and this inner knowing of you're like, Wait a second, I might be onto something here. And that's really how I started to feel because I realized I was saying no more than I was saying yes. I was scratching my head going like, I'm getting so many calls, and I was pretty good at what I was doing. I was like, There's got to be something else here. At the time, my kids were really little. My mom, who passed away eight years ago now, but we used to move her everywhere we moved, like in an apartment down the street, and she loved being near my kids. That was really helpful, and she was in our lives. I remember being like, I wonder what would happen if we had a location, one location. I'm like, My mom could help. I could get my kids after preschool, around three or four. I think I could still make this work. Again, still thinking pretty small that, Let me just go from the next step from going to people's to opening a store.

It was so exciting. I tell people this all the time that if you're chasing the money, maybe that works sometimes. In my experience, most businesses that I know of, you're chasing something that you love. I never thought about selling the business. I never thought about making a ton of money. I never even thought about money. I mean, for years, I didn't take much money as a salary from Dry Bar. I just loved it. And you know this, when you love your passion and you get to do it every day, I just felt like this is the coolest thing ever. I couldn't believe we first opened Dry Bar and so many people were coming. Again, it just felt so meant to be because this mobile business that I had built and these women that I had come to know in LA, and some of them were like, I mean, it's LA. It's like producers and actors and celebrities. I was a little thrust into that world. And beyond the celebrity, there were just so many women who were really connected. And when I started talking to my clients, which by the way, were the first people I talked to about Dry Bar, I was like, What do you think of this idea?

And they're like, Oh, my God, it's the best idea ever. But how do you make it work? There was certainly naysayers. But it was such a cool, exciting opportunity to have women being like, You should totally do this. Then we opened that first door and it was so busy and crazy, and I loved every second of it. I couldn't get enough of it.

I love that, and I want to pull from it for our listeners. So something Ali said that stands out to me is this idea of she was taking baby steps. It was just about the next step. It wasn't like, I've come across a million dollar idea. It wasn't like this crazy thought process. It was like, I do something, it makes me happy, clients are happy, let's get a store. And I think sometimes we go from, Well, I have a really good idea. It should be a million dollar business, a billion dollar business, or whatever it may and we don't get that next step right. So that's one thing I want to share. The second thing that really stood out in what you said is you asked the people you are serving your clients for what they thought of the idea. A lot of us ask our friends. We ask our family. We ask people around us who don't actually know how skilled we are at this thing. Right. And we're not asking the people who are actually going to be our potential clients. And so the fact that you were asking them and they were saying, Oh, I'd turn up there.

Oh, I'd recommend all my friends. We're in. That's a much better person to talk to when you're sharing a new idea. What's the difference, Ali? Because you've talked about now and in the book, you talk about this idea that you've always been pretty decisive, but more deeply when you go into it. I know you have a deeper side to you. When you're thinking about things like intention and intuition and instinct, and you said, I always knew I was always listening for that inner voice. What is the difference between intuition and delusion? If you had to think about how you noticed the difference, what would that be for you?

I think intuition is like versus delusion, because I feel like I'm well-equited with both of them. That's good. Because delusion is like something to me, at least how it lands for me, is like something that's like... A delusional view back then of Dry Bar would have been like, we're going to grow this thing to 150 locations, and we're going to sell it for $255,000,000. Although I did say early on that I thought we would have... But not early, like in a year in, I was like, I think we're going to sell the business for 250 million. Isn't that crazy? I feel like I manifested that. I think it goes back to what you're saying about baby steps. We're doing ourselves a disservice of moving in a delusional path, I think I would say, versus saying close in. I have gotten very into spirituality in the last few years. And one of my very best friends, and I talk about her in the book, her name is Paige. And I always say I'm writing her spiritual coattails because she's always in Tallis in some retreat. I'm just trying to pick it up of what she's doing.

And she always says to me, Stay close in. And you have to really think about that and what that means. And it's like, Oh, so for me, anyways, it means pay really close attention. I've really started to think about that more and more, especially having had a rough couple of months recently. It's like, How does this make me feel in the moment? I don't think I ever could have articulated that the way I can now. I think we get older, we're wiser, we go through more things, we read more books, we do all the things. I meditate a lot more now. I do all that stuff now, and I pay really close attention. I don't think I did the way I do now back then, but I think I had it instinctually in me. I just didn't know how to pick up on it. Whereas now I can read something or have a thought and immediately get a ping in my body of like, no, this does not feel good, or get a like, oh, yeah, this feels really good. It's fascinating. And the thing is, and I'm sure you, being who you are, would agree with this.

It's like if you get really quiet and you pay attention to that stuff, it's pretty clear. I have definitely been known to purposely ignore red flags in situations, which have gotten me into some bad situations. And it's really funny, the awareness that we get as we get older and wiser and we make some mistakes, and we learn from them. And so I guess delusion is like... I think delusion is maybe ignoring red flags. It's like, no, it's going to be fine, besides the fact that you know it's not. But you're going to... It's like, what are you doing? Why are you not listening? I heard something Brené Brown said. I'm sure she's been on the show. She has not. She has it? Oh, you have to have her on. She's amazing. She was really there for me in my first divorce, which is crazy. But I just saw something recently where she was like, every once in a while, the universe taps you... Not every once in a while. When you get to mid-age, the universe taps you on the shoulder and is like, You can't run anymore. I was like, Is she talking to me?

But it's a fascinating thing because I think at some point in our lives, and it seems to me like it's more mid-life, you get that tap and you're like, Yeah, I got to pay attention to what's happening. You just can't get away with it anymore. I think when we're younger, we can. I don't know why that is. I think maybe we're just ignoring the red flags and thinking it can just all work out. I'm such an all works out gal anyways, which I think is true. Now I've come to realize that those mistakes and those red flags and the things that we don't pay attention to when we should actually are really great gifts not in the moment. In the moment you're like, Why is this happening to me? But then afterwards you're like, Oh, I needed to learn this. Again, my friend Paige always says it's the medicine. She's like, This is the medicine that you need. I'm like, It's always about the medicine, but it's really true.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for doing that thought experiment with me. Intuit and deletion. I really loved your take on it. It's good. I loved your take on it. I want to pick out some moments from your book because I love some of the quotes in your book and things that stuck with me. I'm going to start with this because it really enhances the conversation we're having right now about your work. And you said this is page eight. Though entrepreneurs today face different challenges, more noise, more competition, etc, it still always starts with you, your idea, your skill set, your purpose, and your gut instinct. And you say, what is the thing that you just can't stop thinking about? Which I love that. I love that language to it. But you talk a lot about this finding your skill set as an entrepreneur. And I think there could be nothing more true about than that. I'm so aligned with you. And I think often we're doing things we're passionate about that we're not skilled at. Or if we are passionate, we haven't thought that we need to be skilled at it. And obviously you could be doing the opposite.

What are you doing something you're not passionate about? Sure. And that's what a job is pretty much. But how do people discover what they're skilled at? Because what I've found is that most of us, when we're skilled at something, we devalue it as a skill because it's so easy to us and we see someone else with another skill. And you talk about this a lot in the book about don't become someone else's story. Don't chase another entrepreneur. Don't try and imitate. But we look at someone. So, for example, people would look at me and be like, Oh, Jay, you're really good at X, Y, Z. But then if I'm not aware of that skill set, I'll be like, No, no, no, but you're really good at ABC. And then we play this tag of like, No, I don't have your skills, but we rarely say and go, No, I'm actually really good at that, because we devalue what we find easy.

Yeah, that's.

So true.

I think it was really highlighted in my business with my brother and my first husband, Cam, who Cam was the creative genius behind Dry Bar. My brother was more the behind the scenes business side of it. I was the hairstylist and the experience. Everybody always asks us, Is it really hard to work with your brother and now ex-husband? And that's not why we got divorced and whatever. But I was like, No, it was great because we were all very clear on what we did and what we did well and what our highest and best use was. I had that conversation so many times. I still go back to that, What's my highest and best use always in life, because I think it's like, really think about it. We had really almost no conflict. We all talked about all things together, but if there was ever a questionable thing, whoever would decide was like, whose lane that was. We were all very okay with that. I think when you do run into problems with business partners, it's often because you guys think you have the same skill set, and then it's like five-year-olds playing soccer. Everybody's kicking the ball.

It doesn't work. So I feel like it's like the old cliché. It doesn't feel like work if you're doing something you love, which I know has been said eight million times, but it is so true. I think it almost feels too easy to your point. So people are like, Well, I've got to challenge myself. And of course, you do, and you want to keep challenging yourself. But what a gift in life to be able to do what you love to do. I think there's this misconception that you shouldn't do that. For me, when I told my parents I wanted to go to beauty school, they were like, Really? Are you sure? And very looked their nose down on it like, You want to be a hairstylist? I grew up in South Florida, and my parents were entrepreneurs, which definitely informed a lot of who I became. But they had this old lady clothing store, and it was right next to this old lady hair salon. I think in their mind, they were like, You want to work there? I was like, No, I'm going to move to New York City. I'm going to do editorial and fashion shows.

I have these grand ideas. I didn't have Dry Bar at the time, but it was like, That's what I've loved. I grew up in South Florida. I have naturally curly hair. My hair was just massive and frizzy all the time. I was just fascinated by hair. I loved hair. It's just what I loved. And so it took me a lot. It would take me many years to finally get the courage to say, like when my friends were going to college and they were studying, whatever. I was always like, How do you guys know what you want to do? Very confused by that whole notion of college and majors and all that. I just loved hair, and that was the thing that I really loved. I talk about it in the book that it took me a while to figure out. Again, comes back to being close in. I always loved hair. I would spend hours in the bathroom in high school, and I worked at a hair salon as a receptionist when I was in high school because I wanted to get free blowouts and because I loved being around hairstyles. I was like, this is the thing that I love, and I ignored it for so many years.

It's like to be able to tap into that thing. You can't find a person. There's nobody you can meet and say, What do you really love to do? They may not tell you because they're embarrassed or they don't do it as a job because my parents won't approve, my husband won't approve, whoever won't think it's a good idea. My parents did not think it was a good idea to go to beauty school, but I had enough hootspah to be like, I hear you, but it's what I want to do. I had no idea it was going to turn into this beautiful life that it did for me, but I was just like, Stay really focused. I talk about that a lot to entrepreneurs that I'm mentoring. It's like, don't shut all that out. Listen to what really feels like is good for you, not what everybody else around you wants.

It's almost like that question that's come from what you're saying is, what's that voice you're ignoring on the inside? Or what's that idea that you keep putting away because you're like, That's ridiculous, or That's stupid, or, And you've heard that voice before where someone looked at you weird because you actually shared your intention, your excitement, and everyone looked to you like, That's not real.

Get over it. And by the way, people did that at Drybar because, like I said, it was in the middle of a recession, and people were like, How do you make this concept work? It'slike, we were starting at $35 a blowout, and it was like, you have to do a lot of blowouts to make that business work. I was like, Yeah, but I think we can do it. I literally not great at math, but I was like, I think if we can do 10 blowouts an hour and we're open 10 hours, I think it'll work. I remember my brother started putting an actual spreadsheet together and running the numbers. It was like, Yeah, if we do 30 or 40 blowouts a day, we'll have a nice business. Of course, we never did that little. We always did 70, 80, 100 blowouts a day, which was just bananas. But it was like people were the ones who put it in my head that maybe this idea doesn't work. I mean, so many people. Then we started raising money, and that's a whole other conversation of raising money with walking into these rooms with men in suits who did not understand the concept of dry bar and were like, What?

How does this work? And just didn't believe in it. So many people didn't believe in it. It did seem like a tough... How do you make this work on a large scale? Is there enough women who want to do this? Is the price point is really low? The margins are really thin? How does it work? I'm like, I'm just telling you, from a gut level, know that this is going to work. Then you're like, Oh, shit, this better work. But it did. I always felt like there was money on the line for sure, and that's not a small thing. But I remember when I started cutting hair, and you're starting to cut hair and you have really sharp scissors in your hand, it is very scary. You know, it's so funny. It's like the very first.

Haircut-i would never.

Trust myself with scissors if.

I'm having my own hair or anyone else's hair.

No, it's the worst.

They're sharp. Even if my wife says, Will you? I'm like, Nope. I'm not going anywhere near that.

Well, the first haircut I ever did in beauty school, I cut someone's ear, and I felt like I was going to die. The ears bleed so much, and I.

Thought I was-When you say cut someone's ear, how much?

Just a little nip on the... I mean, it was so traumatized, I'm not sure for them, but for me. Also in beauty school, you're doing two-dollar haircuts, and it's where you're learning. I still have nightmares about that because it was the worst thing that can happen. Besides that weird story, which I don't think I've ever talked to anybody about, it was very traumatizing for me. But I always felt like at the end of the day, when I was on the floor cutting and when I was doing all that, and then we were starting Dry Bar, I was like, No one's going to die if this business doesn't work, which is the worst possible outcome. It's like, We're not doing surgery. We're not. I always found comfort in that because I was like, There's always a chance that we're going to lose money. In my case, it was going to really be my brother's money. My husband at the time and I put in our life savings, which wasn't really that much, but a lot to us at the time. I was like, It's going to really suck and we're going to lose money, but we're really smart, capable people.

And if this idea doesn't work, we'll figure something else out. I think that that mindset of you got to just put it on the line is really why I think I've been successful. It's not holding anything too tightly of like, Yeah, I really hope this works, and I really think this is going to work. But if it doesn't, we're all going to be okay. I think that's like, I think a lot of entrepreneurs I talk to are like, I have to have this much money saved, and I have to do this, and I have to do this, and I have to do this. I was like, Yeah, prepare for sure. But at some point, you're going to have to just jump and hope for the best.

Yeah, there is a moment for that lead. I want to dive into a couple of things here that you've mentioned that I think really stood out. You talked about this, and we were talking about this a bit offline. It was this idea of page 13 you say, if you feel like an imposter, embrace it. I feel like imposter syndrome has been something that a lot of people are talking about. I think it's something that there are even more people that are feeling than are talking about it. It seems to be a recurring feeling whenever you're in a new room or a new league or a new zone. When you say embrace it, what does that mean?

Do you lay awake, scrolling at bedtime, or wake in the middle of the night and struggle to fall back to sleep? Start sleeping better tonight. I'm Catherine Nicolai, and my podcast, Nothing Much Happens Bedtime Stories to get you to sleep has helped you to sleep has helped millions of people to get consistent deep sleep. I tell family-friendly bedtime stories that train you to drift off and return to sleep quickly. I use a few sleep-inducing techniques along the way that have many users asleep within the first three minutes. I hear from listeners every day who have suffered for years with insomnia, anxiety at nighttime, and just plain old, busy brain who are now getting a full night's sleep every night. I call on my 20 years of experience as a yoga and meditation teacher to create a soft landing place where you can feel safe and relaxed and get excellent sleep. Listen to Nothing Much Happens bedtime stories to help you sleep with Catherine Nicolai. On the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

My name is Laverne Cox.

I'm an actress, producer, fashionista, and host of The Laverne.

Cox Show.

You may.

Remember my.

Award-winning first season.

I've been pretty busy, but there's.

Always time to.

Talk to incredible guests about important things. People like me have been screaming for years. We're going to watch the Supreme Court. What they're doing is wrong. What they're doing is evil. They will take things away. I can only hope that Dobbs is that like Pearl.

Harbor moment. Girl, you and I both know what it took to just get through the day in New.

York City and.

Get home in one piece. And so.

The fact that we're here and what you've achieved and what I've.

Achieved, that's momentous. It's not just.

Us sitting around complaining about some bills.

The only reason that you might think, as Chase said, that.

We're always miserable is.

Because people are constantly attacking us and we're.

Constantly.

Noticing it. Listen to the Laverne Cox Show on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Be sure to subscribe and share.

Well, I think to your point of people talking about it a lot, they talk about it like it's a bad thing, and I think of it as a good thing. If you're embarking on a position in a new job, or you're starting a company, or whatever you're doing that's new to you, that's amazing. You're starting something new. You're taking that leap of faith. You're putting yourself in a situation that you've not been in, and that's really scary for sure. But it's also really exciting and exhilarating, and it means you're growing, and you're in this next new phase in your life. This negative association with imposter syndrome, as if it's a bad thing, it has definitely happened to me. I think maybe because I never had any real formal training in anything other than hair, where I would start a job, and I was like, I know I'm underqualified for this job, but I'm going to figure it out. I would. I guess that was part of it. Yes, I am an imposter. Technically, I don't know how to do this job, but you better believe I'm going to figure it out and do it well.

It's no different with entrepreneurship. When we started Dry Bar, I had never been in charge of that many people. I'd never managed a salon. My parents did, and I watched them, and I worked for owners of hair salons, and I've been a stylist for years. I had a lot of the things that I think I needed to have, but I had never actually done it. I was learning it as I went, which was scary, but also amazing. I also think when you come in, again, nothing I could have articulated them, but a term I think we're hearing more and more now is this beginner's mindset. I had that when we were starting Dry Bar because I was quite literally a beginner and running a business. I made a lot of mistakes, and I had to figure out a lot of things. That's also the beauty of this book is that I feel like I got an education in this. I got a business degree while I was running a business because I was having to figure all these things out, and I made tons of wrong decisions and bad choices. I also think I felt, it's not necessarily imposter syndrome, but I think I felt this immense pressure because I was the boss.

I had to know all the answers. And if you came to me and asked me a question about the business, I'd be like, Well, here's what I think. Even though it wasn't always right, it was just like me having... And I used to think that that was like, Oh, you're just the boss, and the buck stops with you, and you have to. Now I feel like, and how I approach that question now is like, Well, what do you think? Which is not something I would have said, and I think that was all ego because I was like, Oh, I feel this pressure. I'm supposed to know the answer because I'm sitting where I'm sitting in this company. Now I'm like, Well, what do you think about that? Then people are like, What? I'm like, Well, I actually don't know the answer, but I'd love to hear what you think. But I didn't have enough... I was too focused on feeling like I had to be, and maybe that does go back to imposter syndrome. I felt like I needed to know all the answers because I was the boss and this was my company and blah, blah, blah.

Where now I'm like, There's so much freedom, and saying, I don't know. Let's talk about it. Then the culture that you create in a company when you're the boss that's not a know-it-all and people aren't afraid to be like, Hey, Jay, I actually think that if we tried this, this, and that, I'm sure people do that in your company. When someone comes up to you and they're like, I actually think if we try blah, blah, blah, and your response is like, no, they're never coming to you with something again. But if your response is like, Oh, that's interesting, and you may not always take it, but that feels to me like a beginner's mindset of like, I'm open to other ways. I know there's a part of me that gets a little like... It's also like, I feel like I know best, and we go into our ego of like, No, but I know what I'm doing. But embracing what somebody else is bringing to you, I think is really powerful, and that's something that took me a long time to get comfortable with.

Yeah, there's something that you've reminded me on you talk about this on page 52. You're saying, being open to feedback, personal or professional, is a practice, a learned intention to stop taking the information, maybe go on a walk, take some deep breaths, and come back open to hearing what someone else is feeling. I wanted to ask you, what's been the best or most memorable piece of feedback that you gained on your professional journey that's stuck with you, where maybe even in the moment it was so painful to hear, but you now look back and go, I believe that.

Well, I think thinking of feedback as a gift, which I learned pretty early on, and I remember somebody in our company who said it. I heard her say it once, and I was like, Wow, that's so profound, because if you can be open to what someone is telling you, which is so hard and it is painful. I remember my brother saying to me once, People are scared of you. I was like, What? Just no awareness on my part. I was like, What are you talking about? What are you talking about? What do you mean people are scared of me? And he was like, Well, because... Yeah, it was a joke. But in the moment, I really was taken aback by it. I was like, I'm so nice. What do you mean? He was like, Well, you walk in the stores and you lose your mind. I was like, I do that because I'm so passionate. I was covering it up with like, I'm so passionate and I want things to be perfect. I did, but I would learn over time that walking in and you could see it all over my face because I was like, Why are the floorboards dirty?

Why is the music not up? Why did this person not get greedy that way? For me, it was like sensory overload of everything that was wrong, which I think is a blessing and a curse because you're like, Well, I am the person, this is my baby. I am the person who has to be the one that's like, This is not working and we need to fix this. But I also would learn that people were excited when I would come in the store and they wanted to tell me the good things. I did start to perpetuate this reputation of, Ali is coming, watch out. Part of me was like, I think maybe that's a good thing. But then I was like, No, it's not. I would learn eventually to... I would take notes and then not ruin everybody's day when I would come in the store. I had to learn that the hard way. But it really did take my brother, probably one of the only few people in our company who felt comfortable enough to say to me because he wasn't scared of me, so he'd be like, People are scared of you. Again, at first, I was very defensive, and I told him he was wrong, and he was also my big brother.

But it really sunk in, and I was like, Man, I don't want that. I don't want people to be scared of me. I want people to be able to talk to me. I don't want people to feel like they have to protect me either, which is also another thing that drove me crazy and still does to this day. I'm sure you agree with this. You don't want to be surrounded by yes people. Please, no. Tell me the truth. Tell me what people are saying. I want to know what people are thinking if I can't ascertain that on my own. So if you have people around you who are willing to give you the feedback, it's like you're only going to be better for it. It stinks in the moment, and it still does. Sometimes someone will tell me something and I'll be like, Oh, gosh, I can't believe that. Then if you're open to it, then now you have the awareness about it. I'll tell you, I don't think you have children, right? No. For me, I have a 16 and 18-year-old two boys and talk about honesty. I'm really, really close to my kids, but they will tell me things that are very hard here.

It is a real practice, a mental exercise for me to not... My kids used to say to me, because during the dry bar era, when I was, I guess, a little scary, my kids would even say to me, We don't know what version of you we're going to get. Which is like, Oh. Yeah. I was like, But I know that now. Now the power is in my control. I can be like, Okay. It literally just happened. I was with my son, he's at Denison University in Ohio. He's playing football. We went out to see him. He came off the field and he didn't really want to talk about some of the stuff that we want to talk about. My younger son said to me, Just give him a minute, Mom. I was like, What? He's like, Just give him a minute. I was like, Oh, right. Because as a mom and anybody listening to this who's a mom, you're like, When your kid isn't perfect and happy, you're like, What's wrong? What's wrong? What's wrong? How can I fix it? What can I do? We go into that mama bear protective mode. My younger son looked at me and he's like, Mom, give him a minute.

I did get defensive with him for a second, and I was like, What are you talking about? He's like, You know. I was like, You're right. I was like, Okay. I thanked him. I backed up. I was like, When he's ready to talk to me about it, he'll talk to me about it. And sure enough, he did. A couple of hours later, he opened up. It was such a great lesson and reminder of sometimes you need to give people space and you can't just have what you want when you want it. That's been a really hard lesson for me. I think it's also like being at the helm of a company and having this mentality of like, I can do and say whatever I want because I'm the boss, and blah, blah, blah, you can just do whatever, that bleeds over into your real life, which my kids are a living example of that. I used to say things to my kids like, I've been around longer than you guys, and I just know. They're like, You don't always know, mom. Your kids are like, talk about mirrors. All of that awareness, I think, has been such a gift to me.

You can get that anywhere in your life from your best friend, from your spouse, from someone who works for you or with you. It's like if you ask genuinely, they're going to tell you. What a gift to get that awareness. It does sting for a second, and then you're like, Oh, okay, I'm going to take that and be better. My best friend tells me stuff too. It's like, Oh, thank you.

Yeah, and it requires that beginner's mindset, that humility to accept and receive it. I know my wife does it with me all the time, and it's so much easier to defend yourself, to mask yourself, to shield yourself in a false sense. What you don't realize is every time you pretend to shield yourself from good feedback, you're just setting yourself up for more downfall. It happens again and again. The ego is so well equipped to keep drawing the sword and - Gosh, it's crazy, isn't it? -cutting down everything in its way, and it's perfect at it because that's its job, but it's not protection. It's actually your resilience is getting thinner and thinner and thinner, and you're getting weaker and weaker and weaker. I wanted to ask you because you're shifting into that. I love how honest you were about the feedback you get from kids. I think people often talk about, Oh, my kid said, I'm not cool anymore, whatever that stuff. That doesn't sting. But hearing this stuff, do you think it's, because you definitely have a take on this in your book. Do you think it's possible to be really materially successful and have a happy marriage?

Are those two things possible?

My first marriage, which was like 16 years, didn't work, not because of the business. I think that it's like, I joke a lot that people are like, It must have been hard to work with your husband. I was like, Yeah, we got divorced. But that's not really a joke, which, of course, is like a deflection. But more true was that we probably never should have gotten married in the first place. We met when we were 26, and I'm pretty sure I put this in the book that he tried to call the wedding off a month before the wedding. I was like, Oh, no, we are not doing that. He had some real good reasons for that. The relationship was really hot and heavy in the beginning. It had faded quite a bit. The intimacy wasn't really there, but we were best friends. I would later learn that my parents had that marriage, which they ended up getting divorced too. I think I definitely emulated my parents' marriage, which is just wild when you read all that about how we do that because I didn't see it at all. But we had kids very quickly, which I really wanted.

I'm very driven and I was like, I want children. We had kids a year after we got married. Then, like I said, we started the business, Drybar, when my kids were three and five. It was like, boom, boom, boom. Drybar felt like a third baby. Then Cam was doing all the creative, and I was doing all the other stuff. We're on this path. I knew all along, and so did he, even though we didn't want to admit it that this can't be it. This can't be what it's supposed to be. But we didn't want to disrupt our lives. It's a lot to get divorced, and I didn't want to be a divorced person. I liked the that I had. These two really cute boys with great hair and this amazing husband. He was the brainchild of the creative of Dry Bar, which is amazing. I loved the way the package looked, but I knew it wasn't right. The material success, I didn't want to shatter the whole image. Obviously, I've come to realize that you have to, and that's the message truth of it all. Then I made the really hard decision to end the marriage.

Then my son, who's now 18 and doing really well at Dennison, he went into rehab because he started doing drugs and there's a whole chapter about that. Just my life completely unraveled. To your question, it was like, On this hand, I had all this success, and I was doing all this cool stuff. Anybody who didn't know me, I was a guest on Shark Tank, the coolest thing ever. I was on Inc. Magazine, the cover. It's just like all these really cool things were happening. You look at my life like, Wow, what a cool life she's got, and then all this success, and I was being praised, and it was great. But then my life was falling apart. So no, I wasn't able to hold both. Then I come out of Grant after about two years. It really worked all the treatment. We put Grant through, and he really came out on top, and he really did the work. He ended up in a couple of different programs. One of them was an outdoor wilderness program in Utah, which I actually think every human should probably have to go through. We went to visit him once, and he was like, making fire out of two sticks, and he learned how to...

The thing, it was amazing. I was like, This is really profound. He really came out such a better person on the other side. It also brought me and my ex together because we had to do group therapy and family therapy and all the things. And it was also one of those things that I actually thought might kill me because it was so painful. But it actually was a blessing in disguise. The insight and the person that Grant turned into and the other side of that is just remarkable. And it brought me and my ex back together as friends. We learned how to co-parent because of all that. And even my younger son really... I mean, it was all such an amazing blessing. At the time, I wouldn't have ever asked for that. So it was like the both and, and the odds and the duality of what I was living. Then I came out of that situation and rushed back into another relationship that was like, Now I'm looking for real love because I didn't feel like I had it the way I wanted it in my first marriage. Then I jump into that. At that time, we were like...

It was right before that I met him five months before the pandemic, and I was already transitioning out of Dry Bar in a lot of ways because the company was so big, we had so many people running it now, and what I was doing on a day-to-day basis wasn't really there anymore. Now I was just looking for love, and then I found it. I was like, Oh, I think this is what it's supposed to be. I was madly in love with this man, and I wasn't paying attention to anything else and to any of the red flags that were there that I now really see were there. Again, to your question, which is such a good one, I couldn't hold both. It was like, now I was like, stepping away from Dry Bar, and now I was stepping into just love. I completely lost myself on that side. It was like I lost myself in the Dry Bar world and put my love life and even my kids a little bit on hold. Now I was in the other side of it, where I'm madly in love, and I lost the other side of my own personal purpose.

I enmeshed into his world, and I was like, Oh, my God. Now, as you know, we're going through a divorce, and I would never have imagined that would happen. But on the other side of it, I'm like, Oh, yeah. What I haven't learned yet, which I'm hoping I get now, is that I have to keep myself intact. What do I love and what do I want to be doing? And can I love somebody else while I'm in that place? Because I would throw everything else out the window. When I was building Dry Bar, it was only Dry Bar. When I was falling in love with this new man, it was only him. And I lost myself. And he was building a business, and he was really busy, and he had little kids and whatever. So I threw myself into his world and forgot about myself. Even now, and it hasn't been that long, but I'm coming back into my own, and I'm like, this book, and I have all these projects. I'm like, oh, I'm getting back to myself. I would like to have love, too, but also. It's such a good question. I love that you asked it because I haven't been able to find it yet, and I get it now.

Now I'm anxious to try it out and be like, can I be in love? Madly in love. I have the right love with a person and myself, and what I'm doing. I haven't been able to figure that out yet. It. I think a lot of us, one of those things inevitably fall by the way, I guess. I don't know. I don't know how other people's lives are like. It's funny. We were talking to a couple recently, and the wife said to me like, Our marriage is good enough. I was like, Oof. She said it in front of her husband, and the husband was like... I was like, They're definitely some stuff to unpack over there. But it is interesting, and it's like, How do you do that? I don't know if you guys have.

Figured out. No, I don't. The first thing is the challenging thing about any relationship, whether it's business or marriage, is that there's two minds. And as we know, our mind is always changing and growing, and evolving. Now imagine that times two. Are they changing at the same time in the same way? No. Are they having the same thought at the same time every day? No. Do they have the same dreams and aspirations every day? No. And so we should be more surprised when people get together and stay together than when people separate and move apart. It's actually remarkable that anyone could spend their life with another person for a long amount of time than it is that people find it hard.

To stay with people. I mean, that statement in and of itself makes me feel so good because it's like I've had this shame. I didn't want to be divorced once, and now I'm heading into divorce twice. I think a lot of my sadness and grief when this first happened was because I was embarrassed, and I was like, Of course, I get married. What? The second marriage? I'm getting divorced again? Like, holy shit. And just all the shame. What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me? But it's such, which is why I really love, and I hope people who are listening to that feel that too, because, and I was telling you before, I get a lot of people who now reach out to me and are like, I'm really unhappy in my marriage. Should I leave my husband? I'm like, I don't know. Don't ask me. But it's a good thing to ask yourself. I do think you're right. It's like we grow and change. In my case, I don't think we were having the right conversations enough, and we ignored a lot of things. Granted, it was a really weird time, and our relationship got very fast tracked because of COVID, and we moved in together after five months.

I don't know that we would have done that had COVID not thrust this very crazy change into all of our lives. I think it all happened the way it was supposed to, but it is like, we're always growing and changing, and how do you do that together?

There's two thought experiments that I think can help people with what we're talking about, not as solutions, but as... And it's what you just said. If you're not having the right conversations with yourself, and if you're not having the right conversations with that person, everything's going to feel like a surprise, and everything's going to be a random event. And all you can do, you can't make someone stay with you and you can't make something work. All you can actually do is track whether you're getting closer or moving further apart. That's actually all you can do is track and monitor, because like I said, so much is changing all the time, and so all you can do is track change. You can't force a result or a direction. You can only track change and try and move closer together and move apart. And it's what you said, like I think when we think about the word balance, if you think about it, we all have a finite number of hours, we have a finite number of resources, and we have a finite number of amount of energy. So if you had a hundred % and you said you've got yourself, you've got your partner, you've got your work, you've got your kids, and then you've got your family, and you put 20 % into each of those, now you're going to get a 20 % result on each of those.

That's a balanced life if we look at it in that way. So if you - That doesn't work. It doesn't work, or it may work for someone, but the idea then being, okay, well, now you got like 80 % return on your career, which means 80 % of your energy was going into the work part, which means then five % was going to all the others. So you've got a.

Huge 80 % - That was me in the dry bar era.

Right. And so when we look at that, we just go, Well, how can any human ever achieve perfection? Any human, including me, including everyone, everyone is so limited that our ability to make everything and everyone happy and successful is mathematically impossible. Yeah, it's true. So if it's mathematically impossible, let's stop pretending that we're able to nail every part of every life. And let's be honest and say, I'm focusing on this in this era or this phase or this month or this year. That naturally means I can't focus on these three areas. And I think people who stay together or adapt or whatever in a healthy way are people who found a way of saying, I understand what you're focusing on, and I get that and I respect it. But guess what? When you're back and you have time, I may be focusing on something else. And so I think anyone who's navigating their relationship in a healthier way, there's no better or worse, but in a way that we would consider healthier is only because two people are communicating, as you said, enough, where they're just having conversations. It doesn't mean there's a perfect standard or there's complete intimacy at all times, or they're having the best sex or relationships at all times while everything else is going on.

It's just not possible. It's just.

Mathematically impossible. Yeah, it's so interesting, too, because I think you're avoiding dealing with something that you know is there. It's like you said, you're not always going to be on the same page. You're going to grow differently and whatever. In our case, it was like we weren't... Again, I don't mean to be a broken record, but going back to your inner voice of like, for me, I knew there were things that weren't right. I think now, and I work with therapists and coach and I have lots of people because I love getting as much. I mean, now I love the feedback. Give me all the feedback. I really want to hear as many perspectives as I can from people that I really trust and admire. One of the things that I was talking to my coach about recently was like, because I've been trying to put a bow on this to make myself feel better about it not working. I've come to realize, well, I'm like, if we had had the conversation that we weren't having, right? I mean, you're shaking your head because you know what I'm going to say. What if we had talked about the thing?

Maybe it would have worked. Maybe it wouldn't have worked. Obviously, nobody knows. He and I had that conversation in the aftermath of all of this. Had we called out one of the big things that wasn't working for us early on that we both did not want to call out because it would have potentially probably meant the end of the relationship, and we didn't want that. We were very wrapped up in the excitement and the newness, and the lust, and the chemistry, and the passion, and all the things that happen when you're brain... I'm sure there's some science on what happens to your brain.

Yeah, it's all.

In my book. Yeah, those are. Yeah. We didn't have those conversations, and perhaps had we had it, maybe it would have shifted and we could have figured something out that would have changed the trajectory of our relationship. And maybe it had worked and maybe it wouldn't have. But we didn't even have the conversation. That's the thing. You have to have those honest conversations in work, in business, in your personal life. If you're avoiding them, it's going to come back around. You can be sure of that.

Yeah, I always say there are four check-ins that I do with my wife regularly. Every day I try and ask a simple one. What was your highlight of the day? Or, What was exciting today? I love that. Any easy one. Anyone can ask that. Very simple. Every week or month, I'll ask, Is there something coming up that I can help you with? Is there something you're struggling with or something that's on your mind that I need to be aware of or conscious of? Every quarter, I'll ask, Is this relationship going in the direction you want? Or is it going in the direction I want? If it isn't, what are we both willing to do to put it in the right direction? Are you willing to do something? And am I? And then every year, a simple one of like, Well, what's your goal this year? What are you pursuing this year? Those four questions or check-ins don't save a relationship. They do what I was saying earlier. They help you track whether you're on the same page or you're completely on another page, and if you're even aware and conscious. The reason you have to do that is those should be four check-ins you do with yourself, coming back to your point.

Like checking with every day and going myself, What's my highlight today? Checking with myself every week or every month and going -So good. Hey, what do I need help with this month? Have I asked for that? Every quarter. Is my life going in the direction that I want it to go in? And every year, what am I pursuing? If I'm not checking in that with myself and I'm not checking in that with my wife, then how can I know myself and how can I know this human? I think the assumption that I know someone, me and my wife have only been together for 10 years, but all I know is that she's a constantly evolving, growing human. Just because she's over 30 doesn't mean that she's fully formed and done. Oh, God, no. And neither am I. And just like your children are growing up, your sons are changing and growing, I think we assume that kids grow and adults stay the same. And it's like, Well, wait a minute. That's so untrue. And I think that's what I'm always trying to stop my mind from normalizing that, Oh, I know her now. Oh, I know how she's.

Going to react. It's such a fixed mindset, and I'm so guilty of that because I'm such a like -Me too. -i want everything wrapped up in a pretty bow. I like things really neat and clean and tidy physically that I'm like, I just want to know what's happening and accepting uncertainty and life is completely uncertain. If you can surrender to that, it's hard. It is really hard to be like, Okay, I'm going to go with the flow. I read that... Who is it? Bruce Lee's daughter wrote a book called Be Like Water. Oh, yes. I love when I remember it because I feel like I need posters all over my house of the thing that you just said and all these things. You're like, Oh, yeah, you can't fight the current. You can't fight it. It's like if you can surrender to it and the fact that we are always changing and growing. I love that you said about tracking it. I think there was a phase in our relationship when we were doing more of check-ins, and we probably had listened to something like this and we're like, Oh, we should be checking in more.

Then eventually we stopped doing that. It stops, yeah. You're like, Oh, man, we lost our way. It's just so easy to do that. It really does straddle the fence on business and personal because I did it all the time in the dry bar era when I would stop paying attention to what was going on people around me and stopped having those conversations like I really needed to be having and just would get all, like, sulky and like, Why wasn't I having this conversation? I was causing my own suffering. We just, as humans, do that, which I think is like the self-awareness piece. It's like the things that we use to nurture ourselves, like what we're listening to, what we're watching, what we're reading. Sometimes I'm like, especially in the last few months, having gone through going through my divorce and being so sad, and I'm ingesting so many books and so many things, and I'm like, Okay, I've read enough. I'm done. I'm good. But then I'm like, No, I'm not. I got to keep reading. I got to do at least a couple of things a day that keep me on that spiritual path.

It's like, what's the word I'm looking for? I don't want to say it's like a job or responsibility. How-a daily habit. -daily practice, daily habit. -daily practice, yeah. It's so important. It's so easy to lose track of that, especially when something you get really excited or you meet somebody new, which is exactly what I do. I'm like, Oh, I'm so happy now. I'm like, I got it. I don't need to do any of that stuff anymore. I can't remember.

We're all there. I want to thank you for being so honest about it and so real and being so messy about it because I think that's all of us. That's what we're all looking for. We're all looking to have a perfect start and a perfect end, and we're all looking to have the perfect person and the perfect relationship with ourselves, and none of that exists. Talk me through this, because I have so many friends who, like you, would feel shame and guilt for getting divorced, and so they never will. Or I have a couple of friends that have had the courage to get to the other side, but they now experience the judgment, or they feel the shame that comes from other people's projection of it. What is the hardest thing about getting divorced? What's the toughest part about it?

I've been on both sides of it now. The first divorce after 16 years, feeling like the love that I wanted and intimacy that I wanted wasn't there, so I was like... It was funny because when I first left the marriage, I was rearing to go, and I was dating really quickly and all of that. Then very quickly, the thing happened with my son, and then I realized that dating wasn't so easy. Now I'm a single mom, and at the time, my ex didn't really want to be talking to me. My world spun out of control, and I fell into a bit of a depression. I remember people telling me that even though you're not in love with your ex-husband anymore, he still held a space and energy that is no longer there, and it's like a death. For months and months and months, I refused to believe that. I was like, It's not a death. Nobody died. I took it very literally, and I was like, He's alive. I would not allow my brain to understand that until I finally did. It's like, When the student's ready, the teacher appears mentality. I'm sure a lot of people said it to me, but it was like...

I was on some show with this guy who wrote a book called Energy Speaks. I don't know if you've ever heard of it. He was talking about energy and whatever. After the show, I pulled him aside, and I very quickly told him what was going on and how I was coping with my divorce. I was in this depression. He was like, Listen, your husband, even though you don't love him like that and want to be with him, he still held an energy that's gone. That is a very big hole, black hole for you to fill in your life. It's just going to take some time, which isn't rocket science, and I'm sure other people said it to me, but at that moment, I was like, Oh.

My God.

When it hits, it hits. It hits, right. That change of life of your whole life being one way and then it becoming another way. In my case, my son going through rehab and that very hard time, so it was all rolled into just being hard, and I was really sad, and I was really struggling. Then the identity stuff started to creep in, too. That was hard, I think, from more of an identity, like a personal identity standpoint was hard and rebuilding my life after so long. This divorce was quite different. It felt just much more like heartbreak. I was heartbroken, just heartbroken. I'd never experienced that heartbreak. I recognize now truly that it's for the best. I think for both of us, for all of us, it's for the best. But it just hurts so bad that to experience heartbreak like that where you're like, Oh, someone just put it really well that trauma is the intersection of unexpected and overwhelm. I think that's such a simple way to understand trauma. It's like this thing you didn't see coming, really, and then the overwhelm of it, like the boom. That's what it was for me.

I was like, I may never recover from this. That's how devastating it was. I think you know because I think I talked to you right around the time it was happening, and I was so sad. I was like, I'm never going to be okay, and I'm okay. When the fog starts to clear, because it's real muddy when you're in it, quite literally, when you're in fog, you can't see. It's the perfect analogy to me is I was in so much fog around it, and my ego was all bent out of shape, and I was worried my kids were going to be mad at me, and I was worried what the world was going to think and all this stuff. Then I was like, now as the clouds and the fog started to clear, I'm like, Oh, no, this was not ultimately the right thing. Maybe in some universe, had we had these conversations, we've done this thing, maybe it would have been right. But it just wasn't, and this was the way it all went down. I realized that like, Oh, there's a lot of lessons here, and there's a lot of medicine, and I've learned so much, and I'm so grateful for it now.

I'm still coming out of the anger of it a little bit, but I am ultimately just really grateful for all the lessons that I've learned. I think I said this earlier, I like who I am on almost every level now more than I did then. It was a lot of tough lessons I had to learn. I was looking at myself in this lens that I had not looked at myself through of why he made that decision and why he didn't want the marriage anymore, which is just... I mean, you put yourself in that for a second. If your wife was like, I want a divorce right now, you would just be like, It's devastating if you're in love with somebody. But then I've tried to now put myself in a very painful place of like, why? Why didn't he want to be with me? And sure, not to go down the rabbit hole of like, I'm a terrible person, and I'm not worthy. It's not that. It's more of like, Let me see what the things were that I didn't like about myself that I can now see through his eyes. And this is not a conversation with him.

This is a conversation with me and how I perceived a lot of things and the way I acted and the way I showed up a lot that I don't like. That I'm like, Oh, I don't ever want to show up like that again. And what a gift and what a lesson to be this better version of myself now. So to answer your question, those were the hardest things of it, but it is... I'm literally living proof that you will get through it. And everybody kept saying that to me. I would grasp onto that. When people would say, You're going to be okay, I promise you're going to be okay, and I would hold on to that like, Thank you. I needed other people to say it to me because I couldn't find it in myself. I didn't believe it. But if enough people said it to me like, I promise you, and so many people said that to me, I promise you you're going to be okay. It's a beautiful thing to have a community of people around you that will tell you that, and that you... I'm like, Are you sure? Do you know?

They're like, It's true. I know. It's lofty, but it's true.

You know what I find so hopegiving about your choices is that you turn towards people, things, ideas that would help and support you. I think that that's the hard part. It's so easy and it's natural and should not be judged at all, but it's so easy for you to go off the rails and go in a different direction. The fact that you had the inner wisdom and the intuition to say, Actually, I'm going to turn towards advice and therapy and coaching and insight and learning and reading and hearing this message from a supportive community. That's what I want people to take away, was I want you to hear that. That that's the choice we have to try and make. Something you said, this concept you were talking about the intersection, something sparked for me as you said that, and I was going to complete your sentence, but I didn't want to because- You knew what I- No, I didn't know what you were going to say, and that's why I waited, because I didn't know what you'd read or heard. But I was thinking about it that when I heard the word, when you think about trauma or even like a trigger that eventually leads to trauma, it's actually the intersection between an unexpected event, but a familiar feeling.

There's what you were talking about earlier as well, like how you repeat your parents' marriage, like the idea that it's an unexpected because you didn't think you would ever do that, but then it's a really familiar feeling, and you're like, Oh, I feel that. Or like, I'm going through a divorce. Someone's asking me for a divorce. It's an unexpected event, but it's a feeling of I don't like myself already, and this is a reminder of something I know deep down. It's that familiarity with the unexpectedness that completely converges to create such disharmony and misalignment in turn.

Yeah, it really does. It's so painful. It's amazing when you have a great support system around you telling you that, No, you're a good person. It's like, My best friend, she would tell me, Yes, you have culpability here. She knew it, my relationship very well because she's my best friend. But no, you're not a bad person. There are things that you had to learn about yourself, and there are things that you want to change, but it doesn't mean you're a bad person. It's hard to live in that duality of beating yourself up and the shame that we can put on ourselves because this marriage failed. Because in the beginning, I was like, This marriage failed. I'm a terrible person. No one's ever going to love me again. Any man I'm going to date is going to be like, Oh, you were married twice. Sorry. See you. Which isn't true, but it is the things that we do, which I have spent a lot of time, a lot of the stuff that I read is on mindset and the brain and how powerful the brain is and how we can change our thoughts. That stuff is also fascinating to me that we have control.

I didn't believe that until now, until very recently. I was like, It is what it is. But now I'm like, Oh, we can change our thoughts and we can decide. To me, there's like, Well, you still got to grieve the thing. But I can also... Because I was like, I started listening to Joe Dispenza. Do you know him?

Yeah, of course. Yeah, he's been on the show four times.

Oh, right. I think I might have discovered him through your show, actually. I love that guy, and I love what he says. But I had the people be like, Yeah, his stuff is great, but you still have to grieve this stuff. Because I was like, I'm just going to believe this. And it's like, but there's still the grief over there. And I think that's another challenging part of anything like dying is that the grief your body physically needs to go through. If you change your mindset too fast, and it's an interesting, I think it's a little of both. I'm really fascinated by the whole thing the brain.

Can do. Yeah, absolutely. When you look at grief and loss, it's like there's the grief and loss of that person, and then there's the grief and loss of the person you were with that person.

Yes.

And they're two different things because you were a particular type of yourself. There was a part of yourself that was connected to that individual. And now not only has that person gone, that part that you'd created with them has also gone, and is no longer existing. And so there's some identity-It's so layered. -is such a fascinating subject in and of itself, and it's like you weren't complete in the first place either. And so there's just so many layers to it that are so challenging. And all of these things that you're talking about, whether it's your work, your marriage, your kids, they put a spotlight onto all of this and all the gaps. What would you say was the most important lesson you took away from your first relationship and then your second relationship? Because you were talking so much about it was all about lessons, I'd tell them. What would you say was the first one that you took away from the first and then from the second? What have you taken away? What's been the big lesson.

That stayed with you? I think for me, and this is pretty vulnerable to say, but it was like, Oh, I think I rushed into both of my marriages because I didn't want to be alone and I wanted to be in a relationship and I just wanted to be in a relationship. They were right enough. I don't think anything's ever perfect, of course, but I realized there were things in both of my marriages that weren't exactly what I wanted them to be. Again, it's a hard thing to say because nothing's ever exactly what you want it to be. With some of the things that were happening with us, I think I actually was pretty open and honest about them. But what we weren't open and honest about was what I actually needed it to be. If it wasn't going to be that, then it probably wasn't going to work. We both needed to come to terms with that. I think the lesson is really level setting what you need and what that other person needs, not just what you need. Sometimes you have to be the one that's willing to say, I don't think this is going to work because blah, blah.

But to me, I don't think I've ever been strong enough to be like, I'm completely in love with you, but I don't think this relationship is going to work. Who can do that? That's so hard. I'm sure people do. I think about it so silly. I think just because I've watched so many movies in my life, like Legends of the Fall. Did you ever see Legends of the Fall? It came to me recently. I was like, you watch one of those movies and you want the love story to work, and then it doesn't. You walk out of that movie, it's so sad. You're like, I just wanted them to be together. That's how I feel in this second marriage. I really wanted it to work. As the viewer watching the movie, you're like, I know I wasn't right and I wasn't supposed to be. That's how I felt like Legends of the Fall.

I felt like I hadand La La Land.

Oh, yeah. Oh, my God, that's even better. Why were they together at the end? You watch that movie, and I've watched it a couple of times. It's such a great movie, and you're like, She marries another guy, and you're like, Sorry for anybody who hasn't watched La La Land. It's been a while, though. Yeah, and that is really how it's landed for me in this sometimes what we want to work just doesn't, and you have to just learn to accept it. I think that's been the big lesson for me is a lot of people, people and people to me know and have said to me in the aftermath of this like, You've had things work out for you pretty well most of your life, and I have, and I'm really blessed and lucky in that way. This has been one of the first things that didn't work out the way I wanted to, and I couldn't control it. No matter what I did, I couldn't change the outcome. That's rough. I know a lot of people have dealt with that on a much bigger and harder scale than me. That was a real lesson of surrender, of like, you just don't get control.

I look at my first marriage and think that we were married for so long, and for so long, I didn't have that electric chemistry love that I wanted. But yet I had these two amazing kids, and I built this great business. That was enough for me. In this stage of my life, I feel like I actually want more of it all now, where I was always like, Well, I have this. I don't have that, but I have this. Now I'm like, I want to do something that I really love and feel passionate about for myself, and I want to have a great love too. Now I'm trying to.

Find both. Yeah, absolutely. You know, Ellie, what I really appreciate about you, honestly, this conversation, the book, is like, you're the real deal. A lot of people will say they want to share their messy truth, and they want to tell what's really going on. I think it's almost like we're still trying to do it because it sounds and looks vulnerable, but it isn't. I think that hearing from you today, all I've heard is the messy truth, and it's not been... I can't think of anyone who's listening to this that isn't going to feel comforted, supported, held, and feel connected to your journey in some way. I don't think it's mathematically, spiritually, emotionally possible for someone to master every area of their life perfectly at all times. I just want to throw that out there because we still keep putting it up. When we say things like power couple, when we say things like, Oh, my God, the perfect match. When we say things like, We don't realize how many ideas we've put into the world that, Oh, my God, did you know they're both billionaires now? They're both... And it's like, You have no idea just how many ideas we plant seeds in people's minds that these headlines exist in reality.

And if you're someone who knows anyone, you know that the headline is so untrue about everyone. That doesn't mean people can't have healthy relationships. It doesn't mean people can't have happy relationships. But do people have perfect relationships? No. Do people have perfect businesses? No. Do people have perfect anything? No. It's a mindset that we've all been so conditioned to believe. It's why we feel sad when Ryan Gossling doesn't end up with Emma Stone. It's because we've been taught that that is the perfect ending. Yeah, the Disney. That is the perfect ending. There's so much wiring that we have to uncross, and that's the work you're doing. I think that that's what I'm so appreciative of watching and observing you on this journey, is you're so courageously and bravely doing the hard unlearning.

Yeah, there's a... It reminds me of, I'm sure you're familiar with Michael Singer and -Of course. Until this time, yeah. There's been a few books that I've listened to on repeat. You're just like, I just got to keep listening to this to get through the day. It didn't sink into me until I started thinking about the whole movie thing, which was like, he was like, If you're in heartbreak or you're in sadness, he's like, he equated it to, again, it only connected for me recently, not when he said it, but this like, Iidea of when you watch a movie and you get sad about something, but then you tell all your friends about it, you talk about it, you almost like the sadness and the emotion that it brings in. But it's just like when it happens to you, you don't like it quite as much. But if you can put yourself in that, it's just your movie, and you're just watching it, and you're not going to feel sad forever. It's such a good perspective of it. It's funny how it's come full circle for me of like, Oh, this is my sad movie, and it's sad, but it's also okay.

Yeah, and it's almost just like a movie. When you walk in and watch one part of a movie, you don't get the full picture. You walked in on a sad scene, or you walked in on a scene where one guy is chasing another guy and you think the guy being chased is the bad guy, but actually it's the good guy. There's just so much. We look at people's lives in snapshots.

Yeah, it's fascinating.

You can't tell who's what, and who's who, and who's the villain, and who's the hero. Becoming an observer in our own life is so hard to do. But, Ali, we end every episode of On Purpose with a final five. These are your final five. They have to be answered in one word to one sentence maximum. Oh, I love stuff like this. I will ask you to go off if I feel like it. So question number one, what is the best entrepreneurship advice you've ever heard or received?

Progress over perfection. I think that as entrepreneurs, we get stuck in this, and I see it all the time of like, Oh, I can't start this because I don't have this, and I don't know this, and I don't have enough money to have this. But just start. And it's never going to... I mean, we were just talking about this, it's never going to be perfect, but just go. You'll get it. You'll figure it out as.

You go. I think that's what people don't realize that I fully agree with you, and that's where the mistakes are made. But the problem is there's no other path. If you just waited, waited, waited- You never get anywhere. -you never make any mistakes, but you never get anywhere. If you start and you stumble, you will make loads of mistakes, and what exposes you and there's all these flaws and everything, but you got somewhere, and it's that awkward messiness.

Yeah, and it's hard in the moment. Anything that's worth anything is hard in the moment. It's like, the mistakes are hard, it sucks, but you learn from them, and it's very cliché, but it is so true. And you're right, if you don't get into a relationship, I have a friend who hasn't gotten to a relationship because she's scared. I'm like, You just go. And even if it's not a good one, just go and learn from it. Go on that date.

Absolutely. Second question, what is the worst entrepreneurship advice you've ever heard or received?

It's interesting that earlier you pointed out how I took the advice from the women that I was serving in my mobile business. What I didn't do was take the advice from a bunch of men who didn't understand this business. I'm not a big fan of decision by committee. Not to say that I don't want trusted people around me to help me make decisions. No, I get what you're saying. Yeah. I don't believe in this. Let me just ask a million people and then figure it out. I love using Steve Jobs, obviously a brilliant man. It's like, nobody knew that we didn't know we needed iPhones, and maybe we don't need iPhones, but we sure love them. But we didn't know we needed them. No, I know what you're saying. Yeah, I feel like I saw a preview of the new movie coming out about the founders of BlackBerrys.

Oh, I want to watch that. I didn't.

Know that. Oh, cool. Okay. Yeah, I know I saw it. I'm pretty sure I didn't dream it. Because the story is really fascinating. I think the premise of it is that the founder of BlackBerry, this is so apropos to what we're talking about, the people in his company came to him and said, I think there's something coming out. We need to change from what we're doing and go into this smartphone world. He was like, No, that's not going to work. That's not going to happen. The company was like, We're telling you it's going to happen. Obviously, we know what happened, and BlackBerry went away, which by the way, my brother had the last BlackBerry standing because he loved the little buttons. A lot of people did. And the BlackBerry was revolutionary. I had one, yeah. Of course, they were amazing. They were the first thing. But the story, as I believe it's set up in the preview, is that company could have taken the similar path as iPhone did, but they didn't. Again, I'm loosely remembering the story, but I just think it's really fascinating that sometimes you got to just try something and see if it's going to work and see if people are going to want it.

I've always been a massive fan of Steve Jobs, and I'm so and the others and the iPhone. It's just so cool. He invented this thing that became this thing. I feel like don't ever get too caught up in what people think of your idea.

Yeah, you reminded me of a famous quote from Henry Ford. He said, If I would have asked people what they wanted, they would have said, faster horses. -that was the mindset.

-i'm going to steal that. I mean, that's great because that is what it is.

If you do that committee and that focus group, you can't necessarily think beyond what you see.

So many ideas don't make it, and so many ideas fail, and lots of them don't work, but somebody's got to try. We wouldn't get anywhere.

Absolutely. All right, question number three. What is one habit, mindset, or practice that you believe every entrepreneur should try to develop?

Some awareness practice, whether it's through entrepreneurship. I listen to your meditations all the time. Thank you. I've gotten into this place of every morning before I... Not always, but most of the time, before I get on my phone and check all my stuff and do all the things, I keep my phone on sleep mode and get into a meditation while I'm still in bed. I think that quiet time in the morning, and then I'll usually write for a little while, not even a page, just something to get the cobwebs out almost. I think it's just important as a human. But as an entrepreneur, just to level set yourself. I really try to do it before I go to bed at night too. I always go to sleep now, whether I'm really tired or not, to some sleep meditation. I think I only catch the first five or two minutes of it. That means it's good. Yeah, but I really love that. I never had a practice like that. Before I'll tell you, I never had a practice like that until my separation happened. I was like, I'm by myself. We used to watch TV and then fall asleep.

That's one of those things that I'm like, I'm so glad. I almost never turned my TV out of my bedroom anymore. I know that probably a lot of people don't believe even in that. I'm actually about to move. I'm like, Do I want to put a TV in my bedroom? Because I feel like I almost never watch TV in my room anymore because by the time I get in bed, I usually want to read, I want to do my meditation, I want to write. By the time I do all that, I'm so tired. I pick up so much random information, but I heard somewhere, somebody said it. Maybe it was you who knows? Because I watch so much of your stuff. But by 10:30, you should be off screens. I think it was maybe Huberman who said it. Because from 10:30 to 4:00, your brain starts to go into depression. Again, I don't remember the science, but I was like, whether it's true or not, I like this. I want to be off my devices by 10:30. That's really my goal now, which I used to stay up and watch TV until midnight. I'm so glad I don't do that anymore.

I feel so much better. I was also on a mission to like, I got to feel better here. I got to get out of this depression and this sadness, so I better do everything I can do. Now I'm like, Oh, I'm not really that sad anymore. I'm not sad anymore, but I think I should still keep doing these things. That, I think, is important to have that practice, and I really have come to love it.

That's beautiful. I love it. All right, question four and five. Question number four, how would you define your current purpose?

That's very clear to me right now is giving back, being of service. I feel really called to help others in lots of ways. I'm starting this volunteer program at CHLA, which I feel really called to. I'm looking at doing some stuff with animals, and I do a lot of mentoring for other entrepreneurs. In some things, there's money involved, and I'm speaking at things, and I think that that's okay and good. Absolutely. Then there's some things I'm just donating my time, but it's all in the name of service.

-it's beautiful.

-for sure right now.

I love that. All right, fifth and final question, which we ask to every guest who's ever been on the show. If you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?

To be kind. We're just so divided because of... I think it's deeper than that, but it's like this notion of like... I read something the other day that was like, anger is just grief. It was just innate in us to be kind to other people. Can you imagine what world it would be so much better?

Well said. Everyone, the book is called The Messy Truth: How I Sold My Business for millions but almost lost myself by New York Times bestselling author, Ali Webb. You can grab the book right now. It's out right now. Share it, make it your next book club pick, discuss it, dissect it. If you want to have a real entrepreneurial story and journey in your hand, this is the one to have. Ali, thank you so much for coming on the show today. This is amazing. Genuinely being so open and honest and courageous in your own life and here. I look forward to continuing our new relationship. Me too. And very grateful for it. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. If you love this episode, you will also love my interview with Charles Duhig on how to hack your brain, change any habit effortlessly, and the secret to making better decisions.

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