Work, Worth & Style: Embracing Change at Any Age with M.M. LaFleur's Sarah LaFleur

This is it. The world, as you know, it is over, completely done. It's not about to be over, it's over. Some of the scientists who helped build AI are now sounding the alarm. I was selling AI as a great thing for decades and I was wrong. I was wrong. There's a longer term, existential threat, that will arise when we create digital beings that are more intelligent than ourselves. We have no idea whether we can stay in control. While others say that AI will usher in unfathomable abundance, I've always believed that it's going to be the most important invention that humanity will ever make. This really will be a world of abundance. And among these fears and these fantasies, we seek the story of our future. Listen to the last invention. On Apple Spotify Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to a certain age, a show for women who are unafraid to age out loud. I'm your host, Katie Fogarty. Beauty's, we have a first of a kind show today. Something I have never done that was so wildly fun. And something that I cannot wait to do again. Today's show is a live podcast recording that we did in the heart of New York City in the beautiful Brian Park showroom of the women's workwear brand M.M. LaFlor. And my guest is that brand's founder, Sara LaFlor. Sara has her own one-of-a-kind career I cannot wait for you to hear more. 50 women signed up to join us for cocktails conversation and an unfiltered look at how to embrace change at any age. They had to navigate New York City blizzards, snow banks, slush to get there. But they made it. So lucky you count your stars, all you need to do is pop in your airpods and settle back. This truly is such a fun one now onto the show. Thank you for coming to the first ever live podcast recording of a certain age. We are here in the beautiful Brian Park showroom of M.M. LaFlor in the heart of New York City. I'm excited to see a full room. I'm excited to welcome all of our listeners who are joining us over their airpods and their Apple podcasts. Tonight's podcast guest is also our host, Sara LaFlor, the founder and CEO of M.M. LaFlor. Sara founded this company in 2013 with a mission to help women take the work out of getting dressed so they could focus on the work that matters most of them. Sara has embraced change and evolution throughout her career in life. She's had multiple careers. She's reinvented, pivoted, iterated, evolved just like everybody else in this room. When we get to midlife, we realize that we have taken a long and winding road. We have scenic detours. We have unexpected detours. Sometimes we have a straightaway where we're moving with speed. Other times we're navigating speed bumps and potholes. But getting to midlife teaches us that the only constant is change. I'm very excited for this conversation today about how to embrace it. Welcome to a certain age podcast, Sara. What an honor for your first live recording or I should say recording. Did you record live recording? Yes, that was right. There's like so many things happening right now. There's a lot happening. So, Sara, your career has really had some incredibly distinct chapters. Your first job out of college was that of a bike tour guide in Paris. That true story, then you worked as a management consultant. You were in private equity. Now you're a founder and a retail entrepreneur. We're going to explore as much of this as we can. But I would love to start by having you introduce the brand to the women in the room who might just be meeting M.M. Laflore today for the first time. Sure. I'll start by saying that our mission is that the world is a better place when women succeed. Yes, always been at the heart of everything we do. I think the way we do it just happens to be clothing and styling. I started this brand in 2013 and my mother actually worked in high in fashion. I never thought in a million years that I would work in fashion. But she was really the person who taught me how to dress for work. Coming out of college, I really did not know how to put together an outfit. She really showed me the ropes. I think as a result, I really took to clothing being this incredible tool that helped me present myself the way I wanted to appear that way. I saw it as like, it's a costume. My mom would always say, "Why does a doctor wear a white coat?" It's not because it's practical. It's because when the person with a white coat walks into the room, everyone knows to pay attention. That is the power of costume. When I started my job, I realized most of my colleagues did not feel this way about clothing. It was such a drag to find good clothing to wear to work to the office every day. It was true. I myself really struggled to find good work where I would go to these run-of-the-mill contemporary stores. I thought the fabric is so horrible. The construction is terrible. The fit is kind of ick. I'm spending so much money on these pieces that I really don't like. Could we actually develop and create fashion designer quality clothing? This was back in the heyday of director consumer, e-commerce shopping was really just coming to the forefront. We're not selling it through department stores or boutique. We're going to sell it directly to the customer and give her a designer quality piece of clothing, jacket, dress, what have you, for a fraction of the price of what she could afford if she were to go to the department store. That was really the genesis of the business back in 2013. Since then, we've seen it through so much including COVID, which maybe we'll talk about. But now we have seven stores across the country. E-commerce is still our main business. We sell primarily clothing, everything from pants, suits, dresses. We also do accessories. We've become more of a lifestyle brand, so we offer a lot more casual clothing these days because a lot of women just have a more casual lifestyle even going to the office. After your mom, I read the press, you said that the company is named after her. Yes. And that she always look phenomenal. Yes. And you just share with us now that she really taught you the value of signaling authority and confidence with what you show up to work in. You said that when you worked in finance, you often felt frumpy despite spending a lot of money on clothing and investing. And so, what do you see as the link between how we show up and self present to work to others and how we show up for ourselves and the way we see our confidence in our value? I think clothing, first and foremost, is about how it makes you feel. I mean, I have this moment personally. I've seen it with my customers, which is really what makes me like love my business even during the hard times when an outfit works and you suddenly see yourself in the mirror and you're like, oh my gosh, like I didn't know I could look like that. I had a customer recently who came out of the dressing room and she goes, wow, I look rich. I just loved it, but it can make you feel so many things. I just think that feeling is so powerful. And so, I want to start their first and foremost. How does that piece of clothing when you put it on? How does that make you feel? And then I think comes the added element of, are you communicating what you want to communicate that day about who you are? Do you mean business and do you mean authority? One customer said, I'm looking for an outfit that says, listen to me not look at me, which I thought was spot on. We all need that out there. Yeah, yeah. That's a feeling, but sometimes you're coming in to communicate some hard news. And so, you want to communicate approachability and warmth. And I think that's also a very different look. I remember Hillary Clinton when she was on the campaign trail, someone interviewed her about what she was wearing. And she got very upset. She was like, how dare you ask me what you wear? And I get where she's coming from. Like, men don't get the same question. But I actually think it's so powerful. Should you choose to make it a tool in your toolkit? It can be so powerful. I interviewed the wonderful writer, Christine Morrison on my podcast recently. She wrote a phenomenal essay collection called Close Minded. It's a series of fashionable essays on finding yourself at any age. And in that book, she talked about her love of the white blouse. How when she puts on a white blouse, she feels like she's wearing a superhero cape. And she always just feels armored with confidence and like her most authentic powerful self. Is there something that you wear that makes you feel most like you? Yeah, so I would have said maybe this is prior to having kids. And then maybe this is also prior to turning in 42 now. So like maybe there's something there. I never wore a blazer in my 20s. And maybe even, yeah, it really in my 20s, like management consulting. Like, like dresses were my go-to. I just thought, it's so easy. Like you're sleeping so little in that job. You're like, right, sure, I say I don't need a belt. Exactly. I don't need a bottom. Exactly. There's like an adult onesie, right? And so I used to that used to really be my go-to. And then something changed. I think part of it, I had this private equity job where I was. like always the one woman in the room. It was always the youngest person in the room. And the guys were always wearing their fleece vests, which I was like never gonna wear. And it's that feeling of armor that you just referenced. For me, it became the blazer. And so now I would say like nine times out of 10, I'm wearing a blazer. I mean, I think it's, first of all, just like a very practical layering piece that I just love the extra shoulder it gives me. So I've got more blazers probably than like, it's Maldon Marcos has shoes, you know? I really, I do love my blazers. I love a blazer too. I'm with you on that one. Sorry, you have a background that's really multi-traptours as well. You are somebody who was born in Paris. You were raised in Japan. You spent four years at Harvard and now you're in New Yorker. Welcome, we love that. So with this growing up with this type of cultural fluidity, how did that shape it anywhere, your ability to embrace change? I think so too are like very inextricably linked. So my father's American, he worked for the State Department for almost 40 years. And so that meant like every three to four years, we would move around and my mom is Japanese. And so often my parents would often either be close, like my dad would opt to be close to Japan and we would live in Japan. But we just like moved around a ton and that became second nature. I think one of my strengths probably as a founder is that I'm a flexible thinker. I'm not too wedded to one idea. One of my favorite phrases is like strong opinions loosely held. I tend to have a point of view by someone presents information that says, you're so wrong, I'm pretty happy to accept that. And I do think that that has a lot to do with just growing up in many different cultures where you're constantly code switching and adjusting, which, and I will also say it has given me the great gift of knowing that actually humanity is very much the same around the world. I've gotten to live in other places after that in South Africa, in San Bia, some time in Kuala Lumpur, which was my dad's last post. But people are the same everywhere. They all want love and respect and kindness. I think that it's also taught me that. When you spend time living in other places, I spent two years in Japan after college teaching English, actually, and-- - Jet program? - I was on the jet program. - I was a jet for two years. And it was an incredible experience. I feel like I learn almost as much about what it means to be American as it was, how did these somebody who's living in Japan because I was constantly either explaining or defending or trying to translate what it was to be American. She was like, my curious students. So I didn't expect that. I walked into that country and I was surprised that I spent as much time as I did thinking about what it meant to be an American. So that was a fascinating experience. And I think that's one of the reasons why your first job out of college is a bike tour guide in Paris jumped out at me. Because I thought, you know, that's not out of the box job to have right away. And when you spend time as you did, or as I did, feeling a little bit like a fish out of water, that's not something you can learn in a book. You really have to experience it yourself. And it's incredibly valuable. So we both started in one place, and are now both doing wildly different things from when we started. So when you look at your career backwards, at the time you were trying to figure out and find your way in the world, did you deliberately set out to have these different chapters or did it evolve organically? Totally organically. I should say, like, I definitely, I thought I had a plan of what I wanted to be. And you mentioned management consulting. I would say, like, that was kind of my first office job. My first corporate job. The job you needed the outfit for. Yes, exactly. For sure. Just the way I think a lot of these corporate cultures think is it's very linear. And they kind of dangle one promotion in front of you after another to keep you on a track. And so I thought I was on a track. And I remember distinctly, like, I had an Excel spreadsheet where I outlined all my career possibilities option one through seven. And I was like, OK, that feels like I've covered all of my options. And like, long story short, options one through seven never materialized. And I'm on a path that I never would have imagined for myself. I never thought I wanted to work in fashion. In fact, like, I don't still actually feel like I work in fashion. I feel like I run a brand that's solving a problem for a customer I really care about. And so I think-- I mean, the lesson here is, like, don't fixate too much on an idea. I'm very bad at career planning. And I don't really look that far out. We're not going to tell that to any of your investors. Yeah. That's so true. I gosh. I mean, but to that point-- To that point. No, no, no. I was just thinking, like, the past five years, COVID never in a million years would have expected that. Our lender went under in 2023. For, I thought I was going to lose my business. Never would have expected that. Terrace. Last year, never would have expected that. There's only so much planning that one can do. Yeah. You have to be able to roll with the punches. Is that something that you learn by starting your own business? Did you learn it through age? How did that become, like, part of your DNA, like to understand this so thoroughly? I had experience. It's all experience. And I think had I known how hard it would have been, I'm not sure I would have gone into it. Had I known how challenging COVID would have been for this business, I probably would have just been like, you're the keys. I'm walking away. And yet, I don't know, the human strength is an amazing thing. And I think my Japanese grandmother would always say this. She was like, I'm going to try to translate it. That's not going to be perfect. But she'll be like, oh, even the biggest problems, if you just do one thing every day before you know it, it'll be solved. She was like, just do one thing every day. I think it's like the generic refrain is like one foot in front of the other. But I really truly believe that to be true. And so I think that is actually what entrepreneurship is. It is like you wake up every day and you're going to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Even though you don't actually know which direction you're headed in. And whether like the path you set out on is like the journey, you think you're going to a certain destination. But you kind of look up and you're not even sure if you're on the right path anymore, but you have to keep walking. And I think that is so much of the startup journey. That's one of the big themes that has emerged from the podcast, I think, is that you do not have to know how something's going to end to get started. So true. Because once you start, you'll be led in new directions. You'll meet new people. You'll have new experiences. Or the world will present things that you need to grapple with. Like you had to deal with the COVID pandemic. So your company started in 2013. So we're at what 13 years now. Congratulations. That's an amazing milestone. So in 13 years, we've had seismic changes in how we live and work. Obviously we've had the rise of ETH, Leisure. Yes. We dress differently. Then we have the pandemic where we didn't dress at all. And we were doing Zoom tops and pajama bottoms. And then when the world reopened, formality went away for a lot of industries. And I know that MM LaFloro kind phrase called power casual to describe how we dress, which I love, because I love good denim and a blazer. That's my dream outfit. Not wearing a blazer now, but I am wearing this beautiful striped sweater, which you can all find out in the showroom. Blues my favorite. It's gorgeous. Thank you. So when you think about all the different changes that you had to navigate, what's going on now with the company? Is there a change as a foot? Or do you feel settled where you right now? We're honestly-- I mean, the tear of news, which I don't know if you followed. This is today is February 25th. So that news came out four days ago. This Supreme Court ruling. And so honestly, right now, that is the massive piece that we're grappling with and what the implications are for our business. We think it's a positive thing. We don't know how much of it will stick. And so we're planning for that. I would say that was like the biggest thing we dealt with in our business last year. And it was incredibly difficult. I cannot tell you between April and June or July-- in April when the tear of news first went out, I'm on a text chain with a bunch of other founders and CEOs of apparel companies. And we were all just like, can you believe what is happening? Our jaw just hit the ground. And we had to cancel 70% of our May collection. We couldn't bring that in from China. We just said, please hold it. And we had to rejigger the line. I don't know. Must have been at least 70 times trying to figure out what we could afford to bring in, what we had to save for a different season. And we actually just brought in some of the stuff that we were supposed to bring in for last May. And the implications for the business have been so severe. I don't think that gets acknowledged enough. I'm sure everybody reads the news. But it's had such difficult implications. And so while I'm a little bit-- I'm cautiously relieved, maybe. I think unpredictability, I think, for businesses like one of the hardest things. And so that is really what we're trying to work through right now. And what does that mean for future collections? In the meantime, China's an amazing manufacturing partner. We have some incredible factories there that we've worked with for a really, really long time. We actually took a lot of our business elsewhere while this was going on. But that in and of itself was a year-long process. And so now we're having a little bit of whiplash saying, OK, do we bring back any of our business to China? Or do we keep it overseas? Talk to us about your vendor relationships. I know that sustainability is important to you. Hey, it's important. walk us through what you're doing on those fronts. You know, I say this to people and I think it shocks them, like, but every single piece of garment that you are wearing is handmade. Somebody was sitting behind a sewing machine sewing it. And that's somebody is usually a woman. 93% of the world's garment sewers are female. And so when we think about like, okay, what are actually like the sustainability, like such a buzzword, but like what are actually the things that you can do to make sustainable choices? It's to work with factories that treat women well, that pay them a fair wage. We often try to partner with factories that have female leadership. A great example of this is like our Pima cotton or t-shirts are made in a factory called Leaves out of Peru. It's owned by two sisters. So they're one of our preferred partners. I think that's like probably one of the most important things we think about when we think about factories to partner with. I would say on the other end of sustainability is how you care for your clothes after you're done with them. And so one of the biggest initiatives that we've done there is we have a site called Second Act where customers who are done wearing their gently worn mm pieces can upload them and sell them to any person. So a lot of our customers who are maybe not quite ready price wise to spend on full price on them. But they want something from mm. They can go on Second Act and buy something through that. And we know of incredible stories that have been forged between seller and buyer. People actually often include notes in the dress that they're like our jacket that they're sending someone saying like this jacket brought me so much good luck. I hope you enjoy it. I love that. Yeah. So we think of our pieces like we really create our pieces to last. Like I think that's actually in sustainability that is the most important thing. That is why fast fashion is so polluting for the world because they are not made to last. And we really want to focus on clothing that people can wear into the next generation. Like it's really rare. Like also women's bodies change so much right in size and shape. I do not have anything about that. Sorry. Yes. Right. Me neither. But like it's kind of not possible for you to wear something that you wore in your 20s through your 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s. And so you're going to be done with that item at some point. And we just wanted to make sure that there was a home for it after she was done with it. And that second act. Yeah. I absolutely love that. My daughter Grace who is here is 25 is the big thrifter and a consumer of the circular economy clothing. It's so important. And it makes good financial sense. It makes great sense for the environment. And it's fun. And by the way, she wears like all the stuff that is for my 20s and 30s, which I'm not able to squeeze into any longer. So I think it's really smart. You want to keep it loved and in circulation. Talk to us a little bit about your signature bento and your bento plus program because I think a lot of women don't know about it. I think it's super cool. And it was one of the things that honestly put MMM on the writer for me a number of years ago because I've been following you all along. Because as I said, I lived in Japan. I thought this was such a genius idea. And I would love for you to share with our listening audience what it is. So is a styling service that you can receive online? And for people who don't know what a bento is. Oh, a lunch box. A lunch box. Actually, in Japanese. And we called it the bento because the very first prototype of the box, the literal box that we created, that where we were going to put in the clothes and the accessories, it was two layers. The bottom layer was where the clothes were going to go. And the top layer was where the accoutrements, the belt, the jewelry, the accessories were going to go. And we were going to ship it to the customer. And when someone brought me the prototype of the box, I was like, oh my gosh, this is like my bento box for my childhood. And so we just jokingly, internally started calling it bento. And then it came launch day. And we were like, I don't know. We were like the styling edit, like the curation box. And I was like, no guys, I think it's bento. I mean, what started as a joke ended up being like the word that stuck and really led to so much of the scale of the business. The gist of it is this, you come to our site, you text briefly with one of our stylists and based on that, the stylist actually sends you a list of the items that she thinks will work best for your wardrobe. And I think what we heard from a lot of our customers is that I don't have time. And I honestly don't really know what's going to work well for me and my body based on an e-commerce site. I mean, that is the limitation of e-commerce shopping. At the end of the day, it's a 2D website. The clothing is on a model that often doesn't look like you. And you're forced to make a decision about whether or not that item may or may not look good on you. And we said, okay, if we could eliminate all of that decision making, what would that look like? And so this is our answer to it. It's like coming into a showroom and working with a stylist who knows the clothing in and out, no styling in and out, and understands your preferences and your needs and says, this is what will look best for you. And so we launched that service, gosh, back in 2014, and it is honestly what led to the scaling of the business. I think so many customers were like, I don't have time to come through thousands and thousands of pages of clothing options. Like, I just want to be told, this is going to look great on you. It turns out there's like this myth that all women love to shop. And I think shopping on occasion can be fun. A lot of times it's a chore. And I think bento is really what gets at the heart of it. We try to make it easy for her. And what has bento plus? How is it evolved? Yeah, bento plus. So we actually have a lot of customers who are like, I don't actually then want to keep telling you, okay, send it to me again or send me a new box, but include this for me. And so bento plus is essentially the subscription version of it. Customers can sign up for a variety. I think the starting is $500. You can go up to all the way to $2,000. And then you really, you work one on one with a stylist. You have like a Zoom call. It really gets to understand your preferences. And then every month or every, you can pick a month, every two months or every three months, she'll send you a box of items that she thinks will work with the existing items in your closet. And then the added element is that there's a digital lookbook. If you know Clueless and shares closet, that service actually comes with that closet. So the status actually tells you, okay, how do all the items that you have in your closet work with the items that I sent you here are all the looks that I would create for you. And for a lot of women who are like busy and I think there are moments where you stand in your closet and you're like, oh my god, I have nothing to wear. But how is that possible? Because I have thousands of things to wear. That's where that lookbook really comes into play. Yeah, it's so helpful. It's such a creative solution. Your company has really responded over the years and evolved how you reach and talk to your customer with e-commerce, retails, expansion, these creative shopping solutions. When you look at the world today, we have ATHLEASHA, PowerCasual, the change, what shifts do you see coming? Is there something that you're observing that we should be paying attention to in terms of how women shop and present themselves to the world that may not be obvious to the rest of us that don't have our ear to the ground in the way that you do this company? It's so cyclical. It's kind of funny. We were coming out of COVID and like, oh gosh, we at MMOs are also dabbled in sweatpants and I guess that's the moral to the story is don't play in the lane. You don't know how to play in. We made some good sweatpants, but then we quickly went back to what we know how to do. Tailoring is really coming back and then we see this on the runway and not to sound too devil-wears-prata, but what you see in the runway is usually what kind of is playing out on the streets two years later. We've been seeing a lot of soothing and tailoring on the runway for some time now. I do think this also dovetails with just like how the economy is and the AI revolution that's happening, a little bit of uncertainty in the economy about job security. In climates like these, people really need to show up. They're showing their employer. I'm serious. I'm here. A lot of the offices have mandated five days back in the office. If not, three days back in the office. If we think about 2022, that was kind of the height of the employees having more negotiating power. It really has flipped. I would say 2025, 2026. That's reflected in the wardrobe as well, which is so interesting. Dresses, which really, dresses used to be the biggest part of our business, pre-pandemic and then post-pandemic. It was like, it was probably like a third of the size and now dresses is up against curts is up again. I'm worried about women. I'm worried about people like change. It's a little more formality. I think there's a little bit of a marketing back to traditional femininity. Not saying everyone wants to be a tradwife. But the signals are around, okay, femininity is in again. They're not saying you have to be a tradwife to be feminine. There are a lot of powerful, independent women who want to embrace their femininity too. We're definitely seeing that in what customers are gravitating towards. For the customer that is busy, that wants to open their closet, what are the hero pieces that they should have in it to help make their dressing easier? What are the kind of signature things that you see over and over and over again that your customer returns to? I mean, I'm a big advocate for buying the suit set, even though I think very few women actually wear the suit set together. But it's the break it apart, put it together, break it apart, put it together. It just creates optionality. So I said that I was a big fan of the blazer. And when I buy a blazer, it's pretty rare that I don't buy the pant to go with it. I bought this pant and I bought the matching jacket. Have I ever worn it together? No. But it just creates more optionality in my closet. And so that's one thing we recommend to our customers. I think the other thing that we talk about is the top can actually like change your top can change an entire outfit. So like right now I'm wearing like this silk shard mousse button down and it has a sheen to it. And I think it's more sexy and I think it's more playful. And if I swap this out for like the white button down, but this one right here, I know this is a podcast. I'll try to describe it. It has a silky feel to it, but it's flat and doesn't have the same sheen. This reads much more serious and corporate. And it's just amazing how much the fabric of a top can change the entire outfit. So that's where I like to have fun. Like you were talking about your author you interviewed earlier, the white top for her is everything. It changes so much for her. And I would go further to say like you can have many kinds of white tops. Really be playful with it. And it can change the entire outfit. Yes. And she does. In fact, if you read the book, she's got about 75. But I'm like, where are you buying these all? We need to get her onto your beautiful white tops. So spring is around the corner. I know that we have hero items in our closet that we reach for. You love a blazer. I love a blazer. I love great denim. What should we have on our radar for what's coming that's fun and feminine. And we've had a very long winter at least here in New York. What should be excited about that we can easily mix into the other things that we have to create a little bit of excitement? Yeah. Color. It's the easiest one. It's spring. And my mother's Japanese in Japan, people really embrace the four seasons. And to the point where like there are certain fish, there are spring fish, there are summer fish, there are fall fish, there are winter fish. There are winter clouds, spring cloud, summer clouds, fall clouds. And Japan also has seasonal colors. And so when I like show up in "Nedipably" in my New Yorker Black, she's always like, why are you always dressed like you're going to the funeral? And so I've quite taken that to heart. And I'm just trying to bring more color into my wardrobe. And you're right, we've had a long winter. And it's so hard. And I think it goes back to the first thing we talked about, like embrace the power of costume. You will be surprised how much wearing color will change your mood. We've got some bright, it's hanging out in that area. But we've got a color called pineapple and another one called coral. And they are strong hues. And it's just hard to not be happy when you're wearing those colors. I completely agree. I have this beautiful orange winter coat that I put on during the blizzard, because I needed to cheer myself up. And remind myself that the sun is out there somewhere and I'm channeling it myself. I agree color. I can do such a sense of energy and fun and I adore it. And even though I am a total New Yorker born here, I don't wear a lot of black. Yeah, for you. Yes. Breaking out of the comfort zone. Exactly. We want to open it up in just a minute for questions from the audience. But I did want to ask you one last thing. You have built a wardrobe that works for your life. Your mom of three, your busy business owner, your constantly reinventing, dealing with challenges and change in your own business. Beyond dressing to feel confident and most like yourself and amazing. What do you do outside to give yourself the energy you need? Is it exercise? Is it time with friends? What beyond your clothing gives you a sense of confidence and sort of fills your cup? I have been working with a mental strength coach for a year. Ooh. I need more. Yes. I will say, I think I've shared how challenging some of these moments have been in the past few years. I just wasn't sure I was going to be able to get through another one. I have this moment. I think it was like the beginning of last year. It was January. And I was like, I just don't know if I have it in me anymore to keep fighting. But I love the business so much. I think that was like therein lies the rub. Like I love it so much. And yet this is so hard. And a mentor of mine was like, you should really consider working with this person. I'll try to describe him. He is like a former division one football coach, turned mental strength coach, and really meditation leader. If he's ever seen Friday night lights, he's like, I haven't. You haven't? Okay. He's like, I'm sure a lot of people in this room have. Yeah. The main coach in that show is like clear eyes, full heart, can't lose. You know, he's just like, he's so so charismatic, but like he has been through some real pain in his life. And so he really knew where it was coming from. And so my husband and I actually started working with him together. And it's a lot around meditation. It's a lot around how to reframe the things that are happening in your life. He says they're not happening to you. They're happening for you. You know, is it possible to reframe that? You know, he says humans are meaning making machines. Yes. So how can you reframe it to see it in a different way? And honestly, that has like been probably the best thing I've done for myself as like in my 20s and 30s. I just like worked as hard as I possibly could because that is like the only way I knew how to work. And I think there came a point probably also with having kids where I was like, that is no longer a sustainable plan. And I fundamentally had to change the way I see the world, see my work, and also coach myself. And so I think that I'm still, I'm only a year in and I'm still kind of feeling my way through it. But it is what gives me like a sense of calm, especially when the thing like the times are chaotic. That sounds absolutely fascinating. It makes me think of the interview that the Olympic freestyle, skier Eileen, I hope I'm not mispronouncing her name. Is it good? Yes. And how she said that she is able to talk to herself. Oh wow. And use of voice. Her inner voice, she talks herself and coaches herself because she says the way we talked to herself informs how we think and how we think and forms who we become. And I just thought, wow, okay, I'm 56 and I feel like she taught me something. It was incredible. She's so young and she's so wise and she's such a killer skier. So I'd love that you're working on your mental strength totally as well as working on myself talk. All right. Let's go. All right. So I have a question. Who has a question to share? Anyone? Yes. In fact, hi. Hi, I'm just very curious about this relationship between costume and authenticity. A lot of times, who's talking about costume is something to kind of prepare for the external and then you're grappling with like who you are on the internal and it's authentic self. I think engaging, we really reconcile that relationship. And I'm really curious, and you speak the ob you make about relationship between us to acts itself. Yeah. Wow. What a good question. You know, fashion is a funny thing and the more you study it, the better you get at it. Which I like how I dress now. I didn't really always like how I dressed in the beginning and I felt like I was trying on a lot of other people's costumes in the beginning. I would look at magazines and I'm like, I'm going to give that a try and I try it on. And now I'm like, my colleague and I were at a trade show today and we were looking at loafers and she was like, I love loafers. I was like, I love loafers too, but they're not for me. And I know that loafers just like as much as I love them, they do not express who I am as a person. And so I think I'm not saying never to loafers, but that's just kind of where I fall on the loafers to be right now. I think that's actually one of the beautiful things about Asians. Like you start to know what works for you and what doesn't work for you and you try on things for size and you're like, no, okay, I gave out a try and it's not for me. I'm going to put it down. And so I think you can continue to have your fashion kind of come even closer to who you see as your true self. And I'm at a point now where I'm like, I think my clothes are a reflection of who I am, my true self. And I think that is actually one of my one of them and loafers biggest missions. Like, you know, we have customers who've said, this is like literally a customer who wrote it recently and she said, like, she works in tech and she always said, I always used to feel like I was just like wearing jeans in a hoodie because that's what everyone else would wear. And through M.M. LaFlaur, I finally discovered what my own style is and I now actually feel like myself in the office. And I was like, that is like, there's no greater gift for me than that comment. So I think practicing fashion is actually really fun. Yeah, it should be fun. It should be fun. I love that. Yes, Jane. So it was effective. You're an accidental fashion. Yeah, about that. I don't know. But when you think about your life and your career and all the jobs you have, what, you know, consulting, right? That green all that. You learn a lot of things, right? What is the thing that skill that you feel like you picked up on one of those jobs they still use? What I used to most often now. I have to say the first job that I had in management consulting, I think like the first three months, it was all about like how to write a good email. It's huge. Right. It is a highly undervalued skill. And one of the things that they would always, I was at a firm called Bane and they had like a few things, but they always said that one of their things was answer first, like lead with your answer first. So I really do try to say that you're like, you're all the supporting things. But like, let me start with like what I think should happen. And then like, let me tell you all that. I think most people, that's actually not a natural way to write. Like usually the way you write is like, here's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking A, B and C. And therefore the answer is E. Like that's how a normal email goes. And so I often write that email and then I'm like, oh my god. And the answer is E. to bring that all the way to the top. And I think that's actually just like a, that's a communication point too, right? Like, lead with the message first. Don't end with the message. So like, that's something I probably take with me to this very day. What is something you've left behind from Bane that you never want to do again? Oh, like how much time do you have? Right? So one thing that I wish I'd recognized soon or so, Bane, amazing training ground. And like every two weeks, you've basically, you meet with your boss to say, here are the things that you're doing well and here are the things that you need to work on. And the things that you needed to work on. And the list was endless. And I focused a lot on them. I was like, okay, I got to get better at this. I got to get better at that. And I wish someone had told me that I would be so much better at my job if I really focused on the things I was good at as opposed to trying to correct for the things I was terrible at. Because the things I was terrible at, I'm still terrible at them. It turns out 20 years later, as much as I've tried to correct them. And the things I'm good at, that's actually my super power. And I wish I had harnessed that more sooner. Being like the good student. I was always like, okay, I got to go be all these things. And it turns out that was a big waste of time. Any other questions? I think we have time for one more. Yes, Laurie. You know, it's so interesting because I'm also half and half Chinese, half black. And we grew up in this atmosphere, Dylan, different. And we need to think a different way because more mothers are. But I found it very interesting that you brought up that you actually embarked on this journey recently with your husband. And I think that, many of us don't think about our husbands because we star businesses. We are doing our business thing. And our husband is just there to love us. But they're not going to therapy with us. So it would be really helpful if you would share with us what that journey is like. My husband noted therapy would need drink of it. And he was like, oh, let me buy a therapist. But they are not all open to that. No. And I'm not sure. Gosh, yes, you've found something very, very important in my life, which is, it's true. My husband and I had three kids during the pandemic. And the short of it was like, he like quickly moved to like number 27 on my list of people that I think about. It's like first my kids and then my babysitter. You know, I honestly, my daughter Grace was a newborn. I thought I would sooner. My husband walked out the door than my dad. Oh my god. 100%. Totally. Don't go anywhere. I can handle my family totally. I honestly, I think it was like the same for him too. And he's like a super hands on dad. But like, he also runs a business. And I think because our plates were so full, like we would come home every night and we would still both be thinking about work. But because we just like honestly didn't want to like keep thinking about work, we would just like stop talking. We were just like find ourselves like sitting there in silence or like watching Netflix or whatever it is. And I could see how we've been together since college. So we were like really drawing on our savings, if you will, like our emotional savings to sustain us. And there came a point where I was like, okay, I can see how the drift would happen. I see how the drifting is happening. And we need a common language to bring us together again. When he stressed, which inevitably he is quite often. And when I'm stressed, also quite often, like what's like the common language that can bring us back together? This is all in retrospect, by the way. I didn't go in like this clear headed about what this mental stress coach, like what role he would play in our lives. But anyway, we both ended up doing it together. And like a beautiful thing happened where we developed a common language again, kind of 20 years into knowing each other. And when he's having a stressful moment at work, and he's like, I just, I need some time, I now know what he needs. And I'm able to give it to him. I'm saying, great, okay, you go, why don't you go away for 30 minutes, go meditate, go do what you need to do. And he also gives me the same grace. And so that's been very healthy for us. Yeah, you're right. I don't know if we would have had as much success in traditional marriage counseling because we didn't think there was necessarily a problem with the marriage. It was just that like we were like living parallel lives. And this kind of brought our lives closer again. What a beautiful outcome. Thank you so much, Sarah. This has been such an incredible conversation. I being in this beautiful showroom, listening to the story of how you built it, what you went through, how you've had to evolve. I so appreciate your time today. I appreciate everyone who showed up tonight. Thank you so much. Thank you. This wraps a certain age. I show for women who are aging without apology. And this wraps our first live podcast, but not our last. I will be doing this again. It was such a blast. There'll be more live shows coming in the future. You can learn when those things will be happening by signing up for a newsletter over at assertnagepod.com. You can follow the show on Instagram @ assertnagepod. You can keep up for future live events truly. It's such a blast to be having live conversations with a live audience, responding, laughing. It was truly so much fun. I appreciate Sarah coming along and being my first live guest. Make sure you're following M.M LaFlora as well. They have fantastic, stylish, easy to work, clothing that makes it easy to get dressed and get on with your day. They also have a really wonderful newsletter that I subscribe to called the M-Dash. You can sign up for that over on their website. It's got great information about career, life, books. What to wear, new films, so many interesting women. I truly enjoy reading it when it shows up to brighten up my inbox. So do not miss the M-Dash. Thanks for sticking around to the end of the show and as always, special thanks to Michael Mansemi who composed and produced our theme music. See you next time and until then, age boldly beauties.