There’s no such thing as work life balance you get the most joy out of your work and your life when you find that opportunity for that work life mashup Lori Bush Lori bush is a woman committed to the science of skin care a beauty and wellness entrepreneur founder of solvasa
Integrative Beauty prior to that she was the president and CEO of rhan and Fields where she grew the company over a billion dollars in sales you’re an icon for so many women everything that I wanted to do I took it on myself if we seek to find real meaning in our work we
Need to start with a very personal why intention over habit attitude over age and presence over everything I started learning a lot about the gender cultural Dynamics in business they’re very subconscious but they are very much hardwired a woman will show up and be fully qualified but Express a lot of
Self-doubt so women tend to pull themselves down a little bit what advice would you give to women out there that are struggling with some sort of bias in the workplace oh gosh um welcome to this week’s episode of the VIN V show I am here with Lori Bush who’s the co-founder
And CEO of svasa she’s also on the board of tap away and she was the CEO previously of Rodan and Fields a multi-billion dollar U skincare company which she built literally from the ground up she’s faced tons of adversity in her life including overcoming cancer and she’s a role model to thousands and
Tens of thousands of women out there who look up to her and have been just huge supporters of her her Endeavors uh as clients and as partners in her business so she’s an amazing person we’re going to dig into some really great details and I’m excited to have you in the
Studio Lori hey Vinnie it’s really fun to be back with you and doing something together again absolutely um I mean let’s just touch on that you know we met 11 years ago now yeah basically in a parking lot yeah um then he followed me out he followed me out to the parking
Lot one day at the alliance the CEO’s meeting you were just back I think from South Africa first time I met you I had put a case out in front of everybody about uh my challenges of um taking on the one part of the business at the time
That I felt that I couldn’t myself do which was really the consumer interface on Tech the user interface on Tech and um and so I was putting that out there as sort of my case and building this Tech infrastructure and you followed me out to the parking lot and said I can
Help you I think we were in seasta pole California or something and um the best part of it was the way you defined yourself um I asked you to come in and just Shadow me and um help me understand the internet of things and we ultimately
Defined you as my I think you defined yourself as my Joe Black so everybody is wondering who this guy is following me around and yeah and I oftentimes had you like as a stealth visitor on conference calls texting me messages and things that was really great IED some of the
Board meetings or at least the executive team meetings it was very Str it was definitely the MEO black type um situation and uh it was fun it fun it was really fun it was fun I it was good old days so Laur you know back then you
Were running ran fields which I I watched you grow that business from I like what when I when I came to when I joined there it was um 30 people I think size of it made in lane and then and then it grew to I mean billions of
Dollars by the time yeah well I when I exited we had just hit the billion doll run rate which was just the feather in my cap but I think the most fun thing was that you know somewhere out there there was this somebody said something once where I built the company from 50
Million to a billion which was kind of funny because we never actually had a $50 billion a year and the thing that um the 0 to 50 was actually the more difficult part than the 50 to a billion but um when we actually on our fourth anniversary we hit the 100 million doll
Run rate and um you had helped introduce me to Yammer and we implemented Yammer in the company and that morning I came in and I wrote for our happy fourth anniversary to everybody and I said we would um they said we’d hit a 100 million run rate in four years when pigs
Fly and then I had my management team running around the company later that day shooting off these flying oinking pigs as um so those are the kind of fun things we did back in those early days it fun days of building a company it was
It was great to be there uh that was it was actually a very opportune time for me I I had come off my previous company I was starting gift the gift card platform and I I like I was on a startup salary so I wasn’t making a lot of cash
From gift and you were like hey can you consult a couple days a week and that actually helped a lot pay the Bulls back in in those days because it was and so I’m very always very grateful and thankful to you to having me there learned a lot from you and hopefully um
We helped you launch some really amazing things going forward yeah thank you it was great um so you know I think um I I want to start a little bit back and and and let go back to your background so people get a sense of where you’re from
Before we jump into the really meaty stuff um but you know you just walk us through you know where you were born and and how you got into uh skincare I know you you uh a VP at Neutrogena which is pretty amazing so when you were very young at
That at the time weren’t you one of the youngest I think um one of the youngest VPS and one of the only female VPS at the time which absolutely yeah that changed over time which was a good thing but yeah now going back I’m originally from Cleveland Ohio uh fun fact about
That I went to um to school high school and um Cleveland Heights High and Heights High has become um kind of well known these days um back in 2018 I was inducted into the Heights High Hall of Fame along with wait for it um Jason and Travis Kelce
So and so you know they have their podcast New Heights and a lot a lot of Nod back to to the Cleveland Heights area which was what did you ever meet him oh I have photos with him we were literally inducted into the Hall of Fame
Together wow even know who they were at that time really but you saw Taylor in the background that was back in 2018 um right before Jason got his ring it was funny I was at um Temple University last just this past weekend or last Friday where I’m on the um the board of
Visitors for the business school and I was in a little coffee shop there and there was at the checkout counter there was a a tip jar there was a two coffee mugs and one said Travis and the other one said Jason Kelsey and you were supposed to put your tip in their
Favorite and of course it was Philadelphia so the the Travis cup had like 20 cents in it and the Jason cup was full of dollars so that was but I’m from Cleveland um I grew up I’m um I’m Jewish interesting time to be Jewish these days um that was part of the
Reason I was back at Temple in the business school because I endow a a a fund there for um female leadership female entrepreneurship and just wanted to have a talk about some of the the values and things that are going on on campus these days there’s a new Dean
That I was involved in the committee to bring them on board and um you know that’s that’s weighing heavily on me these days what’s going on on our college campuses and well you maybe let take a second and just go you know let’s go with that for a second yeah well one
Of the things um when I um retired or attempted to retire from Rodan and Fields and um I wanted to and I sold my interest in the company back and it was it was a you know a lovely event um pretty much took care of my future and
My retirement um or my attempted retirement and I wanted to do something to give back and I went to business school I went to I got my graduate degree at Temple undergrad Ohio State go bucks um and I um and so I I was asked to work with the um the institute for
Entrepreneurship and Innovation and I decided to um endow a fund that would be like a a seed fund for entrepreneurs I am just um I just love working with um people who have vision and who are courageous and willing to take things on the school wanted me to focus the fund on female
Entrepreneurs and then they had to actually convince me to do that um because I just believe anybody with a great idea I want to support and get them off the ground but the convincing was that um females have a little bit more time raising money and some of it is just the
Way the female brain is wired and how they approach things but some of it is also the bias in business and the male competitive model and all that things I like to speak on I’ve been involved in um working with some amazing um young um Visionary entrepreneurs who are female I
Agreed to go with a female route but you know what’s going on right now on um with you know this this element of you know anti-Semitism and um things that are hard for me to Fathom and uh things that I didn’t you know I knew there was
Always some level of it but I never imagined that in 21st century America um I’ve just I’m I’m at at my very core and Optimist and I believe in all the the positivity and the human spirit ir and human nature and I I never wanted to
Believe that we can get to a place like where we are today and so given that I’m endowing this um this fund and I was in Philadelphia I really wanted to spend some time on campus with the director of development and the new Dean who is
Amazing um I really like him a lot and to just have a discussion about you know within the context of that University how they’re approaching Dei I was delighted to learn that the um the head of Dei is Jewish and her husband’s a rabbi um because I think you know Dei
Has come to represent almost the antithesis of what the letters stand for and so that was weaned very heavily on me so um I was back there but going back to um female leadership and how I got to where I was and and am started my life
In Cleveland Ohio um we don’t want to go too deep into my childhood otherwise it’ll turn into a therapy session um but you know for most people that’s probably true yeah yeah you well you met my mother at one point in time my mother passed away in April and um had a very
Interesting relationship with my mother she had um uh a lot of the um the Hallmarks of what today would be called um uh narcissistic um personality uh syndrome and but back then I didn’t know what it was I just knew that um you know the the values that she um represented weren’t
Consistent with who I wanted to be when I grew up my father um was a little bit different he was kind of badass and kind of crunchy on the outside with a soft chewy Center and so a lot of the values that I grew up with were were his values
But he died young and so um a lot of what I have my life has been about was on one hand you know trying to make my mother happy which was almost an impossible task and the other hand trying to live up to the expectations that my father had for me
And sadly he never lived to see you know how my life ultimately evolved or or meet his grandchild I’m sure he’d be very proud of you now um I know he would be and I I I pay a lot of tribute to him my personal businesses are generally
Named after him my Vineyard I live on a beautiful Vineyard in southern in Northern California now um that we call Gremlin Vines and where Gremlin came from was um my father when he was in the military was um my maiden name was hermalin and he became known as hermalin
The gremlin and then it just became the gremlin and then it was shorten to GM so his nickname through life was in in his adult life was Grim so I name everything after Gremlin and and um you’ll see that appearing on some of my Social Media
Stuff and then um my my email addresses but anyway I think part of dealing with a narcissistic mother who um really didn’t invest herself in us she invested in herself um and my father who um I think had some regrets in life that he didn’t know pursue a higher education
And things like that um those values led me to be very very independent in many ways when I was young I’m reflecting on it and I think back to things I did that were you know in this day and age crazy so when I was young I I I loved roller
Skating and I was um I I took figure skating lessons on roller skates which is close to being a useless hobby at the end of the day but I loved roller skating but to um go to my lessons in roller skate when I was in the third
Grade I would get on a city bus and go and um take my roller skating lessons and then I decided I wanted to get into archery at one point so I got on a city bus and I went to take archery and everything that I wanted to do I pretty
Much had took it on myself and never really had the support of of my parents so much um my father working my mother also worked so when we moved away when I couldn’t access some of those things by by by bus I had to give them up and and
Not not not go further but I think that aspect of um seeking to to do something to learn something to um to develop some skills um and having to be really self-motivated and and self-actualizing on all of it um became pretty material and in terms of a lot of the the
Decisions and career decisions I made in my life and personal decisions as well okay so when you when you left home you went you you pursued a degree what did you study so um undergrad I studied medical technology I um I excelled in kind of the the stem um
Classes I was actually um I wanted to go to Boston University because I just wanted to get away from Cleveland and I thought it would be really cool and and um I was recruited actually by MIT because I scored really well in math on
My SATs and um but I didn’t want to go to MIT because that didn’t sound like it would be so much fun so I really wanted to go to school in Boston but um I was a I ended up at Ohio State because um Ohio State kind of rolled out the red carpet
For me as an honors student and and at Boston I would have had to fund it as a private school in some way and my um my parents we were you know lower middle class family at the time and um my parents weren’t willing to mortgage
Their house to send me to college so I pretty much um defaulted to Ohio State which was really an amazing wonderful experience um but I was heading down the path of um Premed and this was in the um the mid 1970s and I would say a third of the
Freshman class at Ohio State was Premed and I it was very competitive and I ultimately um got kind of off track in a weird way at the University where I had um too many credit hours to to stay in the the path I was on so the school had
Actually asked me to I guess the term would be unmat triculate for a while and go as a continuing ed student because of not having the qualifications to go through the on the program I wanted to go through but having too many hours to stay as a a
Freshman or a sophomore it was a very weird thing and I just got kind of fed up with the academic structure of things and so I decided to downshift get a degree in medical technology so that I could just get through school and then figure out what I wanted to do with my
Life and for a short time I regretted not um stick the route of of Premed and then I ultimately had the opportunity to go to medical school hand it to me on a platter because of some work I was doing um career-wise and I ultimately decided
That um that I didn’t have the patience for to be a a um a service oriented person in in the medical community and so I I decided to pursue um product development ini in the in the medical space to start and you built your career by I mean you
Basically built your career in skincare um ultimately I started off actually doing product um product development in diagnostic medicine and that was a really material thing for me um because uh I was working in a particular area and I was given the opportunity to do some pretty amazing things very early on
In my career um to velop tests at a Clinical Laboratory that I was working in initially and I I was able to travel to like the Mayo Clinic or the um Centers for Disease Control and work with some of the leaders in the space I was working in which was thrombosis and
Hemostasis that’s basically clotting I was a clotter um and I um I would learn I would go to see how they were doing things and I would always think to myself you know there’s got to be an easier way to do this and so um and I’m
Kind of a cook I like to cook and invent recipes and so um I would just really try to find an easier way to simplify what I was learning to do so that I can make it more practical and implement it and so I was ultimately hired for by a
Company for which I was doing some clinical trials in The Clinical Laboratory and based on that I had some ideas for a product and I um this was probably the most impact thing that ever happened that led to the rest of my career so I had this idea for a product
It wasn’t something the company was specifically working on I was very Junior and what they allowed me to do was stay there after hours use the laboratory to invent so it was kind of an entrepreneurial thing did they own the IP what would they own the IP they
Would ultimately own the IP they they did um and interestingly the I so I was working on this initiative what it was is I was looking to build a diagnostic kit for um to to diagnose a a condition called Von Willer Brand’s disease and at that point only specialty Laboratories could do it
And I wanted to create a kit that any laboratory would be able to do that screening test that diagnosis and not going to go into what it was all about but I was working on this test I had this idea and actually the Breakthrough ended up being one of those
Serendipitous things where I made a little mistake in doing what I was doing one day and it was that mistake that ended up being my breakthrough and um and we ultimately launched this kit and at that point in time you know I had to kind of learn business stuff on the fly
Like I was working on creating you know the doing the pricing structure and doing you know the cost analysis Without Really ever having the education for doing standard cost and all those kind of things that one would do and writing the spe Manufacturing specifications and and by fire and right and creating you
Know the the the the customer service knowledge base and all of those kind of things ultimately we launched the pro the product it was a wild success as far as things go for in that space became actually an industry standard um it doubled the volume of the
Company I was working for but you ask about the IP this point in my career I was making $177,000 a year year oh wow and I got a $200 bonus for my invention and why why was that why was it because it was a privately owned company I I was had a
Fairly Junior title and um the company didn’t see me in the bonus Pro I me why why would you stay in the company after they gave you a $200 bonus um because I was building my cap abilities my experiences and I was given the opportunity to be very entrepreneurial
And and create things and at that point in time the creation and the purpose and my expertise and I was building a great reputation too and to me at that point in my life that was actually more important than the income so um so even though you weren’t feeling you didn’t
Feel valued you felt that you could at least learn and grow yeah and it was you know there is and I’ve I’ve I’ve shared this aspect of when people talk about being an entrepreneur you know um uh you know being an entrepreneur oftentimes requires you convincing people to fund
You and give yourself money but if you’re in an an in an organization that allows you to be creative and entrepreneurial with their money which this company was allowing me to do and they were getting the benefit out of that I was getting the benefit out of just getting that in intrinsic growth
But just to finish off the story ultimately that’s when I decided oh and I was in the hallway one day and this is kind of a sad thing I I’m overhearing the head of sales arguing with the CEO of the company saying where can I find a
Salesperson for $30,000 a year unless I hire a Medtech and I’m thinking I’m a Medtech so Medtech equals low salary and so I thought I better just um kind of re Rebrand myself and change my Equity from being a Medtech who works in the lab to being a a business
Development executive and so I went back to school to MBA and got my MBA and I expected really staying in that that really Chang that changed a trory for you that that just overing that conversation well part of it did it it took me into oh how long did you stay
With the company for well I ended up transitioning into marketing for a while but ultimately I had to go back into the lab to do some product development oversight because they replaced me when I moved into marketing with a PhD scientist who um brilliant man but
Couldn’t get out of his own way it was one of those things when somebody is a subject matter expert in something they often times can’t see the the the forest for the trees and um and they get so deep in the details that they um they
They don’t look outside and a lot of times the answers to business in general but even in product development it comes from unexpected places and and and outside things and I I’ll give you a quick example of what happened so this PhD scientist is going to um we were I
Had an idea for a product and the product was we we manufactured laboratory reagents that would come in little bottles and you reconstitute them with water and um they they took up a lot of space and in the particular area we were working in hospital Laboratories would want to buy
Um like a a large Supply like an entire lot of the reagents because whenever they switched reagents they had to go through another calibration process with their controls and everything to reset everything and that was lengthy and expensive so they wanted to buy a whole lot of whatever it was so
We’re making these laboratory reagents and they’re in bottles and a lot of the companies that were making these reagents would have a service where they would basically inventory for the hospitals and distribute for them and we weren’t in a place to support that kind of distribution really we’re a small
Private company so I had this idea of can we make the instead of having everything in the jars that you were constituted can we do things as little tablets and um so that we could put basically a a full lot into a kind of a small cube that they could store and so
We hired somebody from the pharmaceutical industry that made pills that came from I think you know McNeil that had Tylenol or something and he starts this process of starting to turn these reagents into tablets and he’s going through this process and I’m walking by the lab and looking in the
Window and he has this this group of development people um making these things into slugs and chopping them up and going through sibs and I’m seeing power powder flying all over the place and he’d start off with his Supply and at the end of it all he’d end up with um
Tablets that had about 60% of the um functioning and that they should and and about 60% of the full quantity and so things just weren’t happening and this is going on for like a year or so and finally the the CEO of the company the
Owner or the company says you got to go in there and figure out what the guy is doing observe what this that the pharmaceutical industry is going through this process to make tablets um and you’re doing it very manually there’s there’s got to be a way to do this more
Easily um what would you do in the you know when you’re developing things for the Pharma industry and I ended up calling A supplier of lab equipment and I brought them in and I said okay how do we prototype tablets and he brings in this thing that looks like a wearing blender
And you put all the material into it press a button and then like 20 seconds later you have this material that’s ready to go that you put into tablets with like close to 100% um of the results and and 100% of the quantity in there and as a result of
That the the PHD scientist lost his job sadly but I was sent back into the lab to to take over the lab again which isn’t what I wanted to do I really want wanted to build businesses you a victim of your own success um and so what
Ultimately happened is I um I met a man in an elevator in Las Vegas named Steve Bush and um Steve decided that um he was going to marry me as he tells the story when he met me in the elevator and um he shows up in
Philadelphia uh a few weeks a week later and he keeps coming back and the next thing I know I was getting calls from Recruiters in um in Minnesota which is where he was living at the time that’s when I knew he was serious and I um I interviewed for a lot of different
Positions in the medical device space But ultimately this company called minetonka Corporation um which was in um Beauty and personal care products skin care they had a medical division for basically medical skincare products and they didn’t know the difference between really um Pharmaceuticals and medical device they just know they wanted a a
Medical marketing person and they hired me and um I first launched a wart treatment product I was kind of known as the wart wart Queen for a while great reputation to have um and um and even in that situation again I’m launching a pharmaceutical product in a company that
Was a a consumer Products Company I had to figure um things out on my own to a large extent and um I was working with a much more limited budget than most Pharma companies would have and it you you learned to be Scrappy and learn how to bootstrap things and create um new
Ways of doing things as well as new products okay so I want to wind back a bit because some of you said sat with me you said it’s harder for women to raise money than for men and you said there were two reasons for that uh well there
Are a lot of reasons for two but you highlighted two re you two two two reasons why you want to go and jump into those and give me some more color one of the reasons is I think women um they need to for the most part believe that
They are 100% qualified and capable of delivering what they’re going to to deliver where men I think if they’re you know 60% sure maybe not even they’ll show up with confidence you know there’s um you know a kind of a vulgar way of putting it is um um men make it up women
Go to confession and and so you know a woman will show up and be fully qualified but Express a lot of self-doubt use a lot of qualifying words and um does and and and has uh we have have a harder time evoking that that sense of confidence and that’s why I
Think having that early entrepreneurial experience and having a track record um is is helpful um for for women well what advice would you give to women who are in that situation right now where they don’t think that they’re the competent enough they don’t think they learn to lie like a
Guy no but how do you how do you how do how do you bridge that Gap because you know I’ll tell you what it’s not an easy thing to do I mean even in um recently in the recruiting process for um a new c
A CEO at a um at a large public company that well Tupperware that’s been in in the news for being having going concern issues which you know it’s an amazing brand and a a a spectacular brand and a really great company lost its way a little bit and recruiting who I believe
Was absolutely 100% the the perfect CEO and her concern was you know what if I can’t turn this around and when you look at it you know um and and Coach it was it’s a win-win situation for her I mean if if she doesn’t turn it around she has that
Experience and and she has a CEO experience but now CEO experience in a public company um and and if she doesn’t turn it around you know it’s that it was was too big of a uh a a hill to climb I think she’s going to turn it around I’m
Already seeing the evidence of that but if she does turn it around which I expect she will I mean think about um what that means in terms of you know being a a CEO a female CEO in a public company which is a limited thing but you
Know um just getting getting that aspect of having the confidence and um and projecting that confidence is something that you know we there are so many times I’ve been invited to um participate in women’s leadership meetings and and women’s you’re an you’re an icon for so
Many women but what I find a lot of times is when women get together um with all due respect to some of my and most of my amazing female colleagues there is a tendency to go a little bit um kumay aish which is not at all surprising
Because one of the things that um women are were it relates back to the way our brains are wired women are more um wired to work in a in a team structure and in a plat in a flat playing field where um and we grow up that way you know if um
Men men are more used and boys are more used to existing in a hierarchy it’s changing today it’s changing a lot but especially when I grew up you know you had um you know men’s sports and everybody kind of understands who is the the star on the team who is the um
Benchwarmer who’s uh but at the end of it all everybody goes out and has you know a a hot dog together um for women or for girls you know there was there’s no winning in dolls you play and you play and you play Until somebody gets
Mad and goes home um and so in this kind kind of flat playing field when a woman in a elevates herself above other women the Dynamics get kind of um weird so women tend to almost pull themselves down a little bit and that’s something we’re learning to get over and I think
We can do better in terms of pull themselves or pull others down what pull themselves they’ll take themselves down to to a to uh uh you know and it you’ll see it happening for instance if um if a woman uh has a a female executive assistant mhm a man’s observing a woman
Manager in business and she goes to her assistant and she kind of chats her up you know how’s your weekend how are the kids blah blah blah I like your shoes yada yada yada I um here is this um uh report I need um formatted by um
Wednesday can can you get that done for me looks like she’s wasting time and killing time but she goes up to the woman and says you know I need this by by Wednesday you know it’s just like okay um whereas so you’re kind of bringing yourself down to you know an an
Equal level whereas if I had a a male assistant and I I asked if he could get it done by Wednesday it would sound a little more like it was optional for him where as and it’s just it’s just that the the way wom sure not sure I agree
With that I have a I have a male personal assistant but you’re a male okay so maybe that’s M but you he’s he’s great he gets the stuff done that I need to optional yeah but if you but what’s and and you would be great with a female
Yeah um assistant but and and again it’s changing but I can give you an example of of you know I’d get on an airplane for instance and um I would often times because I traveled a lot be sitting in the first class cabin and I’d get on
First have my coat in my hand men would start to get on the female flight attendant doesn’t take you a Cod doesn’t like I’m invisible now it’s gotten better I will say as I’ve gotten older it’s gotten much better but um they’d take the men’s coats they’d offer the
Men’s strings and I’m still sitting there holding my coat but but the best example of this and I started learning a lot about these female male cultural Dynamics the gender cultural Dynamics in business when I was at Johnson and Johnson and um and because of understanding this and understanding
These dynamics that we don’t even realize we’re doing they’re kind of hardwired subconscious they’re very subconscious but they are very much hardwired um and a lot of it relates to the reproductive imperative supposedly so um I I’m getting on an airplane it’s a small Regional plane there’s not even
A first class cabin on it and I am so compl client because I know if I get out of line I’m going to be put in my place so I um I get on this this plane and I’m right behind the the bulkhead and so I
Take my my purse my handbag and I put it in the overhead cuz there’s no um space in front of me and I take my headphones and I tuck them in beside me on the seat and this was back when you had to wait until the ding went off to use your
Electronic devices and all of that so I’m sitting there with my little device my headphones beside me and a the flight attendant comes over and she goes you have to put those in the overhead she points and I said my headphones and she said yes FAA requirements I said my
Headphones and she just looks at me so I hand them to her she puts them in the overhead she goes to the man who’s sitting across the aisle from me who’s got one of these big binder portfolio briefcase kind of thing sitting at his feet and she says we’re
Going to have to Stow that for off and he says that’s fine can I take something out of there first and she says of course and he pulls out this great big binder and sets it in his lap and she puts the the case away okay the the plane takes off the
Ding goes off where I’m allowed to use my electronic devices but the seat belt signs still on so I ring the the flight attendant call button and she comes over and with very flat aspect I say would you please get my headphones down and she takes them out and hands them to me
And I say say thank you and she goes are you going to be angry the entire flight and I said I think I am and I said you made me put my headphones in the overhead and I watched you put that big binder in that man’s lap and that makes me think there’s
Something about me you don’t like and that hurt my feelings and she looks at me with this shocked at and she goes you’re right I don’t know why I did that and for the rest of the she was just tripping over herself to take care of me and make it
Up to me but what I knew is what was really going on is that she was waiting on me mental conditioning what yeah some sort of mental conditioning right yeah so really understanding those female male Dynamics I think is something that women need to be um coached to understand because otherwise they’ll
Fall trapped to themselves as well as to some of the other biases of the male brain as well well you mentioned the male brain earlier on uh as one as the other the other um aspect of fundraising which is difficult right yeah so the thing with um you know with with men
Women you know and we’ve already done it in this conversation we tend to be a little bit like circuitous in the way we think about things men are very linear and you know and and one of the things you need to learn in that’s part of my
Job though I got to keep you on on track here so you know bullet points three bullet points maybe five five but really three for for a man where women could have 20 bullet points but we’re perfectly happy just getting to one of them in the course of anything if if if
We if we get if we come to an understanding and you know that’s another male female thing um and we’ve actually run into that together with the um you know uh women are Shoppers and men are Hunters you want to kill the problem I want to explore the problem
You keep sending me that the nail in the head video pull the yeah you’re pulling the nail out of my head which for for anybody who hasn’t seen it go to YouTube and watch we’ll post it in the notes below yeah it’s not about the nail it is hilarious and Vinnie was
Always wanting to pull the nail you’re always wanted to pull the nail head I was hanging on like but Lori we can fix this Lori we can fix this and you just didn’t want to you I didn’t want to fix the problem I wanted I didn’t want you
To kill the problem I wanted to understand what was be the underlying aspect so I can make the decision absolutely different brains what what advice would you give to um you know women out there that are are like struggling with some sort of bias in the workplace how do they deal with
It you know it’s first of all to understand where it’s coming from and sometimes it’s um it’s to confronted headon and um you know so and and you’re seeing less and less of it and I feel like it’s almost going the opposite way right now where you know in in
California on on I know for public company boards and it might even be for private boards I’m not really sure but for public company boards you they need to have a female um board member and um that aspect of of diversity of the the
Dei um and you know to um to a large extent it’s it’s a catch22 for women who are you know the companies want to of I get I’m I’m on several boards and because I’m on several boards I get recruited for more boards and uh one of
The things I will not do is I will not accept a board even consider a board position when the primary reason I’m being called is because I have two X chromosomes um but it’s a catch 22 for women who really want to get that board experience but don’t have the board
Experience so um and so how do you create that um equity and so the one thing I I really recommend to to women a lot in business is spend a lot of time with men find a male Mentor um to work with and um explore what some of your
Challenges are in navigating the the male competitive model and you know to me um you know i’ I’ve not been a believer in affirmative action because I think it’s and as a br person I don’t like I left South Africa because I thought affir action was stupid yeah
Well it’s also insulting in a way for people to assume that I got where I was or I had the opportunities I had because of my gender and I mean I mean I I get that there’s there’s this like issue with opportunities and lack of opportunities in certain societies and
Whatever and I I get that there’s this path but let’s not confuse it for what it is it’s not the best people that you’re hiring it’s the best based upon some filter whe whether it’s color gender or whatever else and that doesn’t make for meritocratic society it just
Doesn’t so we have to in my opinion we have to break down all these biases and say let the best let the best Thrive and if you have some if you have some disadvantage you know what overcome it work you know like get there like there
Are ways that and some of the most accomplished people you’ll see from the worst backgrounds overcame it by working harder than everyone else and I I just think that that like you know and it’s you know people may say oh it’s easy for you to say you made it well you know I
Came from AP parti South Africa I I grew up in in like the the poorest parts of the country and I built my way up with no Rich family not like I had to do it myself and that just made me work harder and and and and try to get there and
Then I think it it’s very insulting because when you when I got older in my 20s in South Africa it was all about affirmative action and trying to hire people of color for senior roles and it got to a point where it was actually um I you know I made this observation I
Think it was 2009 that we we had this problem in South Africa where um you know white people couldn’t get jobs so technologists so guys coming out of University Wen higher because the government implemented black economic empowerment rules and affirmative action and what were these guys doing these are
Highly Educated Tali of people they were starting companies because they had no other option and I made the observation back in 2009 or 10 that in 10 years we’re going to see more wealth in the hands of these people because they were pushed out of the workplace into you
Know entrepreneurship by you know and you know and it’s happened and so and now there’s huge push back about all the wealth that’s been created but these guys you would you know they wouldn’t get jobs the the and and the Counterpoint to that well I wouldn’t say counter point but the complimentary
Point to that was I’ll never forget this example um we were hiring for an accountant I think or it was a you know like a CO type guy in my my my first company and we had this black candidate who came in phenomenal guy came from my
Alma Ma you know he University of Cape Town well educated like really smart I wanted to hire him like on the spot and I you know made him an offer he got double he got paid double to go to a bank because they had quotas to
Hit and so you know what happens in this situation really is that I think people um underestimate how these perverse incentives basically lock people into corporate jobs because now he got stuck in a corporate job I don’t think he ever left versus being in like a startup
Where he could learn and then start his own company and grow from there and I just think that that we create these perverse incentives and I I just think that needs to end totally and that’s actually when again when I was I mentioned I was at Temple the fox School
Of Business with a new Dean there and um since I’ve been on the board which has been for several years and a lot of the discussions is how we recruit the the the most desirable candidates but there’s also the aspect of wanting to have a lot of diversity Temple does have
A lot of diversity it’s in um uh North Philly just the the geographically it lends itself to diversity but in trying to get the um the most desirable black students for instance and they’re thinking well we’ll throw scholarship money at them well at the at at the long
And the short of it is those students are going to be getting you know scholarship offers from the I and know pen is you know WR you know miles away and um but on the other hand and I I know from the alliance of CEOs discussions about companies looking to
Acquire more diversity in their talent whether it’s female whether it’s people of color but the the talent pool isn’t there so what I have been focused on and I did the um the 501c3 we had at um Rodan and Fields was from my perspective about um creating Talent pools at a at a
Much younger age starting at the high school or even Elementary School level where you you create um incentives and opportunities for people from you know more challenged economies or um and different um uh or or or where there’s lower expectations and you you cultivate that that belief in oneself and also the
The the preparation you need to get to where it’s going the um that organization by the way is called buildon and um it’s really about breaking the um the uh the the cycles of poverty and low expectations by developing leadership in in very challenged um environments at at
A young age and it’s just breathtaking to see what what kind of how you can change lives by by focusing on leadership and education at a very young age so from the University perspective I’m saying we need to work with companies to start identifying Talent at at a much earlier
Stage and cultivating that Talent through the university and into the workplace so that we create that leadership yeah so I you know I I can I can say that I think that the cost of education is one of the biggest factors with lack of diversity because we if we
Have these you know if we have this this high cost even at preschool level like preschool education is not is not paid for by the you know by the government right so you can have free schooling Public Schools you don’t have public preschools which means that in the most formative years kids from
Underprivileged communities don’t get what they need brain development wise to you know so when they enter first grade they’re behind uh their peers because first grade’s free but the preschool isn’t so the parents who are paying paying you know th000 bucks a month $2,000 a month to put their kids in
Preschool to enhance their learning they have an advantage and and it’s sad that it does fall in sort of underprivileged communities that they don’t get this benefit and then that has a ripple effect over that child’s life and career like kids in the first you know six
Years and then I’d say the next six years of their life those first 12 years are formative you’ll look at kids going to high school and they don’t have a good solid foundation for the prior you know 12 years they’re going to struggle well Malcolm gladwell’s actually done
Some several podcasts on education and the reality is um you need to get to to kids really young and at really early ages pretty much all of the um a lot of the M vast vast majority of my nonprofit work and and um and donations contributions all revolve around
Education um one way or another it’s um it’s been an important part of my life and and um you know I know that you know my the one the the probably one of the most valuable things that my family did was to move us to the um the suburb that
We moved us into where it was a more affluent suburb but we were in the um the more economically challenged part of that suburb but it put me in a school yeah that was a very highly rated nationally education system and I know that um and that was free right yeah
That was public school public school yeah I mean a lot of my sort of philanthropic work in South Africa is linked to um just education uh donations to educational institutions and one of the things I’ve got to say I’m really proud of the high school because now
That high school is um it’s a ma U majority minority so the high school is majority PE um people of color but they still graduate um a you know the over 90% of the student students and over 70% of the students go on to higher education and so maintaining a culture
Of academic Excellence um it’s it’s it it doesn’t need to be a an an economic situation but unfortunately it’s evolved to that for so many areas I want to touch on you know you overcoming breast cancer recently and how that changed you know your view of the world and how it
Change your philosophy and business and life and just some thoughts on on that and and you know um it’s something I think a lot of people struggle with obviously it’s it’s you know Cancer’s become pretty widespread and if you haven’t if you haven’t had it you know
Someone who has type of thing yeah everybody knows somebody yeah yeah so so how did you deal with it yeah and I you know I didn’t think it could happen to me I always thought I was you know the healthiest person on the planet although I will say throughout most of my career
I did um I I arguably wasn’t good at at at supporting my body’s resilience to stress dress I didn’t sleep enough I used to joke I’ll sleep when I’m done and I would average somewhere between 4 and 6 hours of sleep a night six was unusual it yeah and my husband would say
You know you got to sleep more you’re going to get cancer and at that point I didn’t believe there was a connection between sleep and cancer it was like you know cancer schmancer I’m fine I’ve got things to do and it wasn’t that I couldn’t sleep it’s that I just was too
Busy to sleep and I used to consider that one of my core competencies that I could work more hours a day than anybody else um we’ve all been there yeah and you know what that doesn’t what I’ve learned is that doesn’t really support your productivity anyway um when I when
I retired and I’m using the air quotes there because I kind of screwed up my retirement but when I left Ro stud company well and that was actually the outcome of the the breast cancer experience um I had um I I I had a hard
Time I I lost my sense of identity when I stepped out of my career as much as I wanted to retire and as much as I was in you know a a financially fortunate place I still felt like I needed to do something to be productive I had a
Non-compete at the time um I thought I was going to stay on as a an advisor and a board member um to Rodan and Fields when I left and you know it took me probably about a month longer than it takes most people to realize that the
Incoming or the new CEO doesn’t want the old CEO breathing down her neck doesn’t need the old CEO breathing down her neck and and I had to to separate more completely than I expected to but I had a non-compete which in the state of California is actually um a hard to
Enforce thing but I was going to comply with it and so I was you know keeping myself busy on the sidelines but in the meantime I’m getting calls from all kinds of people wanting to start companies in the in the beauty or skincare space or in the direct selling
Space and I’m saying you know I’m going to um have to defer until my non-compete is up and that is going to be July 1st of 2017 July 1st of 2017 I get my breast cancer diagnosis on that very day wow I had found a little lump it was through
Um self exam and I made a habit of doing um self breast exams um which for any women listening please please please know your body really well because mamography completely missed it even when I could feel the tumor there mography still didn’t see it um and in
The state of California when you have mamography you get the results and it says you know no abnormalities detected but then there’s this little statement at the bottom that’s the disclaimer that says you have dense breast tissue basically so all bets are off and you
Know as a human being I look at the no abnormalities yay ignore the disclaimer because that’s not going to apply to me right and it turns out that was it it’s it’s a thing so um anyway I get the diagnosis and um I found the little tumor went for
It and and the days um that followed shortly after that I started getting calls from people who I had said call me back on July 1st and you know we’re coming into the Fourth of July weekend and um I’m saying look I don’t know I all I had was the diagnosis but no
Staging nothing else and you know it’s a scary diagnosis I was feeling that I found it early enough that it was going to be okay but um I was I was saying to people who were calling me and one of the the people who called me was um uh a a plastic surgeon
Um a a good friend Dr Paul nassi who um I was working I was going to work on a project with um some people may know him from the TV show botched and um he um he’s we’re talking about you know I’m telling him I don’t know if I can work
With you I don’t know what my next weeks months or whatever are going to look like but you know he was he was empathetic but you know also talked about well let’s give it a few days I said but let me ask you some questions about surgery and reconstruction and um he
Goes well I’m a facial surgeon but to really understand things you need to talk to my friend Dr Christy Funk and she is like the go-to person um specialist for breast cancer she’s often on television she’s the surgeon that did the surgery on Angelina Jolie and Cheryl
Crow and so I he you know this was on the 4th of July actually I’m having this conversation and and um and this is you know having amazing people in my life Christie um called me that day she actually called me on the 4th of July to
Talk to me about my breast cancer and I’ve got to say having the opportunity to really have somebody who takes the time to work with you and help you understand so I make the decision to go very aggressive in my treatment and my surgery and do the prophylactic bilateral mastectomy hopefully not too
Much information for you with reconstruction and what I come to learn is that the surgeon that you’re doing the um most of the work with is your plastic surgeon more so than your your breast surgeon as you’re going through this reconstructive process and my breast surgeon is a leading surgeon I
Mean my reconstructive surgeon Dr Ru Chopra in Beverly Hills getting to all of this though what I learned through all of this is I had Dr Christy Funk who really cared about all of me in terms of who I was and what was important to me how old I was the
Decisions about what the treatment should be took time to talk to me Dr Chopra um actually made house calls and we’re chatting about life and business in general my my oncologist that I’ve um been seeing since 2017 um took a personal interest in my life when I would have a question for
The oncologist he would call the breast surgeon or and so I was getting this very holistic approach to breast cancer but also importantly at the time Dr Funk Christy Funk was treating me she was writing her book breast the owner’s manual and which was really a book more
On women’s health and she was giving me the um the gys to read and give her feedback on on it and I got very close to her also I was introduced to somebody from the ooser center of Integrative Medicine from um UCSF and another friend
Gave me a book the teir effect that her friend Dr Elizabeth um Blackburn who is a Nobel laurate had just written and that just came out and I’m starting to learn about um you know after having spent my whole career pretty much or the majority
Of my career in Beauty and skin care and focusing on lotions and potions to keep this looking young and vibrant and Youthful that if you’re not managing what’s going on in your head and and internally that you know all the cosmical in the world aren’t going to
Keep you youthful looking and I started as a result of all this um and this is where I have this big belief in return unlock and my breast cancer was a very I love that luck yeah a bad luck event but you know people all have good luck and
Bad luck events in their lives but fortunate people are people who take those events take lemons and make lemonade and yes and um you know I I started to really think about my well-being as well as the industry that I was working in Beauty and Skin Care on
A far more holistic level and I if I didn’t create I’m one of the first to really Advocate something that is I call integrative Beauty and it’s the Skin Body Mind connection and so as a result of having these amazing doctors all working for me with me not just my
Cancer or my surgery and caring about who I was and with Chopra we had lots of discussions when I’d go in about the beauty industry and skincare and he had had a vision of developing his own product line and one day he cuts to the
Chase and says would you take a look at at my ideas and I said can I put my clothes on First and which is kind of awkward but um you know it was a day at the office for him but so I you know I I
Take a look at what he was doing and he had this interesting idea of bringing together the best of Eastern tradition and Western cosmical for a skincare line but I said to him you know the world doesn’t really need another skincare line everybody in their dog seems to be
Launching a skincare line these days but what the world needs is a far more integrative approach to beauty and and you treat your patients that way if you’re if you’re going to do something if uh bring something to Market bring start with a need and this is you know a
Need as opposed to coming up with a clever answer so um that’s really how my current company came to be svasa svasa that’s amazing Lori well I wish you I wish you luck with that uh I think it’s I know you’re going through some some great product development changes and
Really good things Happ I didn’t expect to be here at this point in my life but you know like I said you know the one thing you know you’ve been excellent at everything except retiring I’ve made my sure mistakes but I’m show you um yeah well actually you
On that topic what’s the biggest mistake you’ve ever made in your life that you you wish you could undo the biggest mistake in my life I don’t you know I don’t know if I’ve made huge lifechanging mistakes but from a business perspective um and I would say it’s um
It’s probably salasa my current company and I think um I started the company without clarity as to my why and why I was doing it you think you were just trying you were just doing it because you felt it was a um a natural extension of what you just been through no not
Really um I I why did you start if I had to dissect it which I actually spent some time and had a lot of conversations when I was trying to make a decision to go forward um I I think I started it because I had that I had to fully scratch
That um that that’s um founder itch if you will so at Rodan and Fields I technically wasn’t a Founder I took I I took the lead at the company for as as a pivot in terms of the go to market strategy it was basically a relaunch so started from Ground Zero um but
I I I wasn’t the founder so I thought this is going to be my opportunity to take what was purely my vision and you know in conjunction with with r Chopra and um build something that was completely transformative from the ground up um but being a I didn’t really
Understand that um what being a Founder meant because I was thinking of it in the context of what my role was at Rodan and Fields where Dr Katie Dan and Dr Kathy Fields who I totally adore just it was such a privilege to work with them
They were the founders I was the the CEO building building the company what I didn’t realize is as this excuse me if it sounds a little arrogant but I didn’t have a Lori Bush as the founder and I didn’t want to take on the CEO role
Which I didn’t at first and I didn’t want to step back into a you know a 20 47 um operating role in a business again and I thought I can hire people to to do that but you know and I thought that I could coach from the sidelines and say
Something that people would immediately get and understand like one of my philosophies in in business has always been treat every dollar like it’s your last yeah and get the greatest possible return on everything you do and um I think that entrepreneurial experience where I was I found myself
Through my career oftentimes being the master of what I called what I would think of as pet projects somebody got an idea and there’s a project it has no budget it you know it it’s it’s not consistent with where the company is or what it’s doing but the the CEO or
Somebody wants this done it would land in my lap and those were some of the the greatest learning opportunities for me how to bootstrap and and in the case of svasa we actually raised a a decent amount of money out of the blocks and I turned down money CU my feeling was and
What I’ve experienced is if you have money you spend it if you don’t you get really creative true and I there was a lot of spending going on the um we overbuilt infrastructure and ways that weren’t really that necessary for the business at the early stage and as a
Result I pretty much had to step in and um and re structure the go to market strategy I mean it didn’t help that we launched in January of 2020 and a lot of things got blown up and things that still going and you still trying to we’re still yeah I
Haven’t failed yet exactly I wouldn’t bet against you what is your I’m I’m going to give you a couple of quick questions here what’s your what’s your favorite book recommendation that you give oh man I’m such a book junky know but I think the the very top of my list
I’m going to have to I’m going to go with predict predictably irrational okay um Dan Dan arielli it’s behavioral economics but it’s it’s I’ve ripped Pages literally almost out of the book and said this is what we’re going to do I’ve watch I’ve watch his stuff on YouTube he’s really good he he’s
Fantastic um okay what what what daily habit do you have that you think other people should do um intermittent fasting good I was an early adopter really early adopter uh it’s it it car mind actually that’s why that’s that’s that’s why um what’s the best bit of financial advice
You’ve ever received um oh gosh um I think it’s probably the idea of besides me telling you about Bitcoin which you didn’t listen to I didn’t listen to and I am what I will say is back in 2014 I think I am a shitty investor so my the
Advice I would give to others is do the opposite of what I do um because I get seduced by people I like and good ideas and without really sometimes doing as much due diligence as I should but I think probably the best financial advice
Is um you know go um 85% very safe in your Investments and um you know go wild with 15% do you remember the time I told you I’m very scared of bonds yeah you see what happened recently I like I’ve been I’ve been the anti-bond guy for
Years it took it took a while cuz I was way ahead of the pack I think 2017 18 I was like I didn’t listen to that advice by the way oh yeah that was you were telling me at the start of Co you know just basically you know get out of the
Market get out of you know everything and I I didn’t really take that advice the start of Co was was a bad probably bad time listen to me but eventually the I think the Bond thing really tend to it’s I mean it’s been horrible this past two years
Um uh oh I’m I yeah so I haven’t been really good at taking Financial advice can you give us something good what what what would you what would you give as advice oh gosh uh you know I’m not the right person to get financial advice for
But I you know I do I I I am learning a lot more um but I’m just coming out of you know a a series of of of board positions on spaxs and um and you know I I I I guess basically the best um advice
I could give is um do do your due diligence before you do your own research yeah give me a common misconception about business or life that you’d like to sit the record straight on yeah um I think the most common one I actually did a a keynote on
This at at a university for a graduating class for um in business school and I think it’s that there’s um no such thing as work life balance but um but what I do believe is that you get the most joy out of your work and your life when you
Find that that opportunity for that work life mashup that letting your um your your your life’s you know um advise and support your your work and your your work to you know um be part of the joy in your life absolutely um I can’t remember who said it but uh it was if
You do what you love you’ll never work a day in your life was who said that I joke that you know the term work life balance didn’t even enter the us vernacular until the year after I was out of graduate school so I missed the memo basically okay and if you can go
Back in time and meet one person throughout history who would it be oh gosh um throughout history you know I would probably oh who would it be um because I I think of people who I would I I’d like to meet now but um you know I had a real
Um I would probably say Christopher Reeves and I I um I was a huge just in awe of how somebody could not have been in a more horrific situation in his life and the irony of his situation is super it makes you believe in God like this could
Not be a random occur trapped in this you know in this failing body but what he did to to to make to to contribute and help support others and and continue to operate businesses and things in that situation I was just always in awe of that so good choice it’s probably if you
Gave me more time to think about it I might come up with I was always so impressed by that he’s a really good one I mean Lori this has been a fantastic conversation thank you so much for joining me here and um you know really appreciate having you on the show and I
Think we’ll put all your uh social media profiles in the in the the section below and uh just below it’s not about the nail exactly we’ll have that as well but Ju Just quickly your what’s your handle on on Twitter Instagram uh Lori H bush I
Was pretty early on so i’ I’ve got a a short one okay great so people can find you there but thank you so much for being on the show oh thanks for having me
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