Reese Witherspoon & The Perfect Book Club Funnel

🔥 How Reese Witherspoon went from Hollywood A-lister to powerhouse entrepreneur—rewriting the script for women in media & business.

Time Stamps:
01:10 Breaking Stereotypes and Empowering Women
03:01 The Impact of Media on Female Representation
08:32 Reese Witherspoon's Strategic Business Moves
10:40 Lessons for Digital Business Owners
20:25 The Importance of Mission-Driven Business
25:09 Thinking Big and Long-Term Strategies

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Transcript

Episode 086: Reese Witherspoon

Joanna Newton: [00:00:00] In an interview she did, she was talking about getting scripts and, reading through them and deciding if she was gonna audition or be a part of the project she. It's like stories with women always come to this point. There's chaos, there's a disaster. And the woman looks to the man and says, what do we do next? what do we do next? And in this interview she was giving, she said, what woman have you. Ever met that looks to a man and says, what do we do next?

Women are known to be great in crisis. we can pick up the pieces, figure out what to do, whenever she's reading these roles, she found women weren't one dimensional, unable to help themselves, and just honestly didn't have great meaty stories. 

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Her First podcast. Today we are continuing to highlight High Achieving Women, and this week we're talking about Reese [00:01:00] Witherspoon and how she built an empire well beyond Hollywood. Hi, my name is Joanna Newton and I'm the co-founder of Millennial Marketer and Agency that helps creators build their own digital businesses.

Michelle Pualani: Hi, I am Michelle Houston, founder of. To be honest, beverage company, a non-alcoholic functional spirit line, as well as coach and mentor to where personal development meets personal branding. 

Joanna Newton: we decided to talk about Reese because she has such a fascinating story. She's. Known for being a Hollywood Alister. She has done some amazing roles, some amazing memorable movies, but the work that she does goes well beyond being an actress. She built her own production company and she's also really lived her career with a really strong mission.

And so today we're gonna talk a little bit about her story and how she's used things like strategic thinking and storytelling and building ownership to really create. Her own empire and we'll talk about what we can learn from that.

Michelle Pualani: [00:02:00] Reese Witherspoon is an inspiration. I mean, the way that she started out and how she's evolved, I think she's an incredibly smart businesswoman as well as okay with being seen one way and acting differently in another way. We've talked about this on the podcast a little bit before, but sometimes we get into our own heads and think that we have to be professional in all settings.

We've gotta look a certain way, we've gotta talk a certain way. And I think Reese is the type of person that's a great example of you don't. Always have to be one way. You can, you know, as an actress, he takes on these different roles and with legally bond being a total bimbo, but then also on the backend being incredibly put together, well-spoken and very successful.

And qualified. So it's a great way to see yourself and allow those different aspects of your personality and who you are come out. 

Joanna Newton: Yeah. And she had such great success as an actress. You know, thinking about Legally Blonde Walk the Line, you know, she's a a-list Hollywood star, she's blonde, she's [00:03:00] beautiful. She could. Easily in a couple of ways get discarded when she gets older. Unfortunately, in Hollywood, a lot of women have a shelf life of, you know, say 30 years old and then they're too old to take on certain roles.

But she's still acting, she's still getting jobs today and, and really great ones. She could have also easily been kind of discarded as a, a throwaway kind of character, but she's had Oscar nominations and done some really incredible work. one of the amazing things about. that I think is so great about the legally Blonde story is that it does take that like blonde bimbo stereotype and show how people are so much more than what's on the outside and that they can really dig deep and be intelligent and achieve really big things. And that's such a great, Blonde is such a great story of female female empowerment. You know, as she went about her career, she had a lot of success, but she always found that really great roles for women were really [00:04:00] scarce. In an interview she did, she was talking about getting scripts and, reading through them and deciding if she was gonna audition or be a part of the project she. It's like stories with women always come to this point. There's chaos, there's a disaster. And the woman looks to the man and says, what do we do next? what do we do next? And in this interview she was giving, she said, what woman have you. Ever met that looks to a man and says, what do we do next?

Women are known to be great in crisis. we can pick up the pieces, figure out what to do, honestly, in most cases, and how it shows up in my life. My husband is absolutely amazing, a human being, but when something goes awry and not as planned, he looks to me and says, what do we do now? what are our options? Whenever she's reading these roles, she found women weren't one dimensional, unable to help themselves, and just honestly didn't have great meaty stories. they feel one purpose instead of being multifaceted, which women are, or they're [00:05:00] the damsel in distress instead of being part of the solution, which all of the time women are.

And that was really frustrating to her to kind of be stuck in those types of roles.

Michelle Pualani: The expectations put on women and being pigeonholed into a certain category is somewhat due to pop culture, right? Like we look to our media, we look to our entertainment, we look to the world around us in order to determine how we feel about ourselves, how we feel about each other. And unfortunately, we have this.

Narrative over our history here in America of ultimately oppressing women. We've talked on the podcast, right, about financial access, not being able to have bank accounts. The limitations that were put on women from an early age in terms of not being able to vote transpires to this day, like we still have those.

Limitations as an undercurrent of the way that we live our lives and as we see more women entering business, as we see more female entrepreneurs, as we [00:06:00] see women taking a larger predominant role as C-E-O-C-M-O-C-F-O, like big titles in the corporate space, then also in the personal branding space as well, having a presence, getting themselves out there.

You know, there's a lot of stories about. Young girls not seeing representation, whether that is from a BPO representation perspective or even just women in general in seats of power in industry in these places in which men. Have predominated. And so all of that impacts the way that we see ourselves, and it impacts the way that we put expectations on others.

And so Reese Witherspoon has done a really great job in changing that narrative by affecting media and entertainment, which determines those voices and which brings to the forefront these ideas, these concepts, and the way in which we wanna change. Yes, grassroots is great. Yes, politics is great. [00:07:00] being, you know, professional or going at it from a really technical perspective is great.

But when you think about consumption and when you think about our culture and when you think about, especially America today, we are so influenced by media, social media. Movies, music, pop culture, when you can actually affect change at the pop culture level, it's surprising to see the ripple effect and the amount of people that are then changed by what's happening in pop culture.

So I think Reese Witherspoon has taken a really important role in changing that narrative and doing so in a way that appeals to so many people and changes so many minds.

Joanna Newton: And I think sometimes we can. Discount the effect that pop culture and the movies we watch, the TV shows we have affect, our state of world. One thing that I, you know, is coming to mind for me is, you know, when, when you and I were little, we grew up watching, Disney movies of women waiting for Prince to come and save [00:08:00] them. and that started to shift as we got older, right? As we, as we got older, and I'm a little bit older than you, but as we got older, we started getting more, more multidimensional female characters in Disney movies. But you know, as a kid I always dreamed, you know, of. Finding my husband and all of those things and getting married, and I'm not saying those things are bad, but because of those narratives I saw as a child, it affected what I saw for myself.

Now I'm raising a daughter. She's seven years old. She has grown up with Disney princesses like Moana, who has no live in love interest, right? Like Elsa and Anna, who, you know, Anna has a love interest, but it's a deep, meaningful story and partnership, right? She's not like waiting for her prints.

Elsa doesn't even have a man and she's fine with that. She's on her own personal journey, right? she doesn't have the same thoughts in her head of. looking to marriage, looking for a partner, looking for a man the way I did at that age, like she's definitely affected that. It probably also has to do with like [00:09:00] parenting, but like my mother was affected by the popular culture at the time.

I'm affected by the popular culture of my time as as a parent and. I love that for her that she can find someone someday, and that's a great part of life and relationships are an amazing part of life. But she's not just sitting around longing for that day that she gets to get married and have babies.

And so what Reese Witherspoon did, you know, she could have easily just been like, well, I'm famous now. I'll take whatever roles that I get. I'll take my check, keep making money. You know what I mean? She got herself to a place of privilege, She's sought after. She can pick and choose her roles. She has some capital too.

Like now she has money. She can invest, she can do things, she used that place of privilege to really affect. Women's stories one of the ways she did this was with her book club. Reese Witherspoon started a book club and would basically promote new and upcoming artists.

So artists would sign with her. She would, have her book [00:10:00] club. Use the book. And then part of that contract was she would get first rights or write a first refusal for the movie rights or the TV show writes for that book. you know what that did was, one, it helped her expand and amplify the reach of.

New authors, she purposefully picked books that had great female stories. A lot of them were female authors and really pushed great female narratives and by promoting them, distributing them, helping them become best sellers, helping them get distribution right. A great marketing, tactic for those new authors.

then she said, Hey, you know, if the time comes, I will, I'd like to have the first choice of. Creating that movie, creating that TV show. so she started a production company in conjunction with all of this, where she's created some just really, really great pieces of art and stories like big Little Lies, little Fires Everywhere, and Daisy Jones and The Six. These are all really great stories that feature complex female stories. They're not just good or [00:11:00] bad. They're not. or pure. They're full well-rounded women and telling just really great stories. And so she's really been able to affect that narrative by promoting those stories and turning them into movies and TV shows.

Michelle Pualani: When I first heard about this, I think Cody Sanchez was the one who did a little clip about how Reese has developed this business model. I was just blown away with the intelligence of it and the creative strategy to it. I think sometimes we feel super limited. Now, if you're in the digital space, if you're a coach, you're a creator, you're a business owner, typically, there are ways that things have been done.

And whether that's digital products or coaching or one-to-one, or you're creating a membership, there are all of these ways in which you can make money, you can offer value and ultimately build to your business model around. And we tend to just fill into those ways in which. It's always been done. We do a webinar, we host a challenge.

We do these things, [00:12:00] and on one hand it is helpful and positive to listen to and understand and learn from people who have been able to do it before. But on the other hand, if you think of all of the. Exponentially successful business models out there, it's because they developed something new and something creative, and I think that it gives us the opportunity to think more creatively about the way that we are approaching our businesses.

You don't have to do it the way that it's always been done. If anything, if you can take a step back and think more critically and creatively about what it is that you do, how you bring value to the world. Then perhaps package that differently. You might have more of a breakout success because it's not what everybody's used to seeing.

You become a commodity when you are just what everyone has access to all the time, and they've seen that before. They've purchased socks before they get the course. That helps you improve your skin. Like there are all these things, and I'm not saying that's a bad thing and you can make money and it is successful, but.

If there's a way in which you can [00:13:00] think a little bit more about how you offer something in a new and unique way, and then really get behind that, it can mean a world of difference for your business, for your future, for success, for the brand that you're building and the personal representation that you bring to the industry.

So thinking more creatively and and creating something that's maybe a little bit more interesting. then the other piece of what Reese has been able to do is that she. Built an audience. She built traffic. She did that through the medium of a book club. She was able to grow a huge amount of. Easy attention.

Now, not easy in terms of the methodology in which it grew, but now you have millions of people who are attuned to what it is that you're doing in a very niche way. Books, predominantly books about strong female characters. Oh my goodness. How then can I take that audience and be able to. Monetize it in other ways, the movies that she produces, the TV shows that she produces.

Do you think that if she's [00:14:00] seeded the investment from her book club of the book, that they're not gonna watch that TV show in that movie that they were somehow a part of? No. They are gonna be fully invested. So how can you think about your customer journey? One, building an audience of niche. People who are going to pay attention to what it is that you're talking about, what it is that you're doing, and then how are you seeding that experience so that the thing that you bring to them next, and the thing after that is going to be a part of that original journey so that they're bought in and invested from the very beginning.

Joanna Newton: Yeah, I think there's so much that we can learn from this story, especially as, like digital business owners, coaches, creators, service providers, because essentially Reese created a funnel. she had maybe a higher stepping stone than we have because we are not Hollywood A-listers.

Right. Maybe there's some listening to this podcast, but you and I are not Hollywood A-listers, so we don't have this like audience that was built by that background. But she said, we'll create a book club. have some research and [00:15:00] development, right? Because we're gonna see which books do people really like, which ones sold the most, which had the most traction? Then create that story from that book club, and you have this like great cycle where you know that that book or that TV show or that movie is gonna come out as a hit the was done, the relationship was built, the groundwork was made, and then. that TV show movie that takes a lot, a lot of money to create. That's something that you've already built the audience for. It's there. They're ready. And for us as creators, that first step of building an audience can feel overwhelming, but I know people with. a thousand followers that are bringing in income regularly because they're doing exactly what she's doing. They're doing market research, they're talking to their followers, they're understanding what they need. giving freebies and workshops and things to kind of get the feel for what they want, so they know what offers to make, and then they make those offers and Sell it to the people who are like.

Literally saying this is [00:16:00] what we want. I recently launched with a, client of mine they do one-on-one coaching services and they were full. They're just like completely full. I. And they have too many people to help. we help them start a course that kind of gave people the first phase of their one-on-one coaching as a course product. sent out a couple of emails and sold like 13, in a couple of days because they already had that relationship and that audience. They don't have 50,000 followers. They don't have a huge audience, but they have enough people that they can have that relationship with and build offers.

Michelle Pualani: A couple of things is that. Even from like actors, actresses, singers, that doesn't necessarily guarantee the success of a business. There have been a lot of personal brands and images in our pop culture who haven't been able to be se successful or profitable with products that they've introduced. So it's definitely not a guarantee.

We can look to someone like Reese and maybe in your head you're thinking like, oh, of course she can do that, because she's really well known. As an actress, you still have to have [00:17:00] a great. Offer. You still have to provide great value and you still need to sell people into what it is that you're doing. So don't discount that, know that you are fully capable of that same thing.

If anything, you actually have the opportunity to be more profitable because some of those personal brands just as faces are actors, actresses, singers, models, et cetera. Uh, A lot of people don't invest. In what they do because they're just seen as entertainment. So there are a lot of. Brands online who can have millions of followings.

And when I say brands, I mean personal brands, faces of people, but they cannot convert. They have absolutely no money coming in the door because they don't understand the sales process with the value, the offer proposition. then there are those people who have like zero representation from a personal brand.

They started from scratch, nobody knows who they are and they generate millions of dollars. the success. In terms of fame does not equate to financial income. And keep that in mind as you're thinking through this and listening today. For sure. then [00:18:00] the other aspect of that is, what we're looking at here is long-term strategy, I love this about the case study of Reese and the book club, is that she is investing in books that will not come to fruition with production for years. She's investing in authors.

they write the book. Maybe it takes time. People have to read the book. They move through that process. Maybe they get the rights to it, maybe they don't. Maybe they move through production. Production could take years. So what she's been able to create is this long-term vision and strategy.

She wasn't focused on. What's hot right now? How can we move this along as quickly as possible? Let's just do this thing. Okay. It's not exactly what we wanted, but Sure. We haven't actually run it through the book club yet, but let's just move forward without getting their feedback. No, she's paying attention to each step of the process, her and her team, I'm sure.

But this is a long-term vision and strategy, I definitely want you to start. Thinking about your business in that way as well. There are things that we do in the short term, and there are [00:19:00] things that we do in the long term, so thinking through that long-term vision and strategy can be really helpful to support you for the exponential and kind of like that hockey stick growth, that momentum that you're gonna be able to build.

If you're constantly focused on today, tomorrow, very short term, you're not gonna be able to grow with your business over time, and it's not gonna scale in the way that you want it to because you're always. Chasing after, kind of like the instant gratification thing.

Joanna Newton: Yeah, and you have to be. strategic with those partnerships. if you're a service provider and you are offering coaching or done for you services or something like that, and you wanna get your business to the next level, you're always going to be stuck in how many discovery calls you can take.

What's that close percentage? How many can you serve? And you're gonna be stuck in that wheel forever if you don't think outside of the box. Things that you can start thinking about is building partnerships with referral partners or building partnerships with rev share agreements. You do?

Well, I do. Well, sometimes [00:20:00] people get really caught up in the like, well, I'm not gonna do anything ever for free. I should get paid. And yeah, you should get paid. sometimes there's places where it makes sense to say, you I believe in what you're doing and I'm gonna have a bigger payday if I support you.

And then we both share in the profits, There's lots of ways to think about strategic partnerships with people, but if you wanna go from I'm a one-on-one service provider to like, I have an empire, you're going to need partnerships and you're gonna need other businesses to do that. And there's lots of ways to think creatively about this. And that's what I love you brought up earlier, Michelle, is if you're going to make that business impact, if you're going to do that, you can't just do what everyone else is doing. You can't just follow someone else's roadmap. You can learn a lot from other people's roadmap like we're doing in these episodes, right?

We're learning from all kinds of people. We've talked about Beyonce and Chap R and Sabrina Carpenter, and some of the things they've done to. Build their empires and, their brand and, they're known for. you have to do something different [00:21:00] or you're just going to fall in, in a run of the mill business owner.

I don't, if you're listening to this podcast, I don't think that's what you want. You don't wanna just be an average service provider at their desk. Being a freelancer, you wanna build something really, special. I think another thing, outside of. Partnerships that we can learn from Reese is, she really has a mission, her mission is to really great female stories. stories are underrepresented. These great, rich, multidimensional women aren't seen in film. then she's creating a movement to bring those forward. So it's not just read this book, watch this movie, watch this show. It's saying, Hey, women You are amazing and multidimensional, and stories that represent you should be on the big screen, be part of this movement that gets that done.

It becomes so much bigger than just like a TV show. again, when you're thinking about your business, what does that mission for you? It doesn't have to be about [00:22:00] inspiring female stories, but what is that mission for you? Is it Diversity initiatives? Is it about equity of money across your employees?

Like what is the thing that gets you going that you can then share with your followers to help them connect with you and help them connect with your mission?

Michelle Pualani: This is something that I feel like we need more of in this industry. When you talk about digital businesses And online entrepreneurship coaches, service providers, creators, we have so much of the same. And especially with ai, it's just a lot of noise. there's a lot of content that is the reproduction of something else. Think about trends in general, trends are the same thing done over and over and over again.

Maybe with a little bit of your unique spin. Ultimately it's got the same sound, it's got the same dance move, it's got the same voiceover. it's a lot of the same. And I think this is something that I really missed out on from the beginning is I wanted to create fitness products and I was kind of just trying to follow [00:23:00] in the steps of people who had come before me, oh, they did it this way.

And so that's what was successful. And so let me try to do that thing I lost. The mission and I lost the values and I lost my passion for what it is that I did and how I was showing up because I was trying to fit into the algorithm and I was trying to use the hooks that other people told me to use, and I was trying to create content in a way that would appeal to people.

And I feel like I never kind of broke through. A level of success that I was satisfied with, I feel like that was because we missed this authentic, genuine connection to the personal mission and purpose of what we are here to do. Like that essence of our call it destiny, call it universal. Led, whatever you want it to be for you, but I really truly believe that we're all here on this earth and uniquely qualified and set up based on our experiences, our learned skillset.

Our natural tendencies and personality traits to be able to offer something very valuable to the world. And [00:24:00] when we spend time investing in what other people have done and paying attention to their visions and their strategies, we lose that intuitively led experience of how we're meant to present to the world.

Now, are there marketing principles and foundations of sales and offer creation? Absolutely 100%. It is important to learn those things as you go, but you can have incredible success just by showing up with a purpose. I mean, Malala is a really great example of this. She didn't come into the game being like, okay, how am I gonna write a book and how am I gonna speak on stages and how am I going to be one of the most world recognized influencers when it comes to human rights?

And female rights. She just had a passion, a care for something really important, and she believed in the right to education for women, right? And she started taking action in that direction and everything else manifested from that. She followed her purpose. She was aligned with intuitively where she was felt to be led.

of [00:25:00] course, there are things that come later on with. That experience, but I feel like we need more of this. I think that people get online a lot of times just to make money, and there's nothing wrong with that. we are all in a space of needing to feed our families, needing to take care of ourselves and building wealth.

But I think mixing that with your purpose and your passion driven. And in again, intuitively led I don't know, divine purpose, whatever you wanna call it. I think that is something that we need more of because a lot of times we get into it, we start the Etsy account, we sign up for the course, we start e-commerce, we start doing drop shipping.

We do all these things that don't amount to anything. And even though it's good to trial and experiment. It just leads us down this path of wishy-washy, I'm gonna go this way, I'm gonna go that way. And we're no longer driven by that genuine, authentic kind of reason for voice and personal mission in the world. So I'm thinking on this so strongly right now, and I highly encourage as your listening to think about it as well.

Joanna Newton: And when you add to [00:26:00] all of this, the sort of overtaking of AI in our world and in our industry, you can. Really see how a mission-driven company, a creative entrepreneur, someone who's doing something a little bit different and a little outside of the box, they're gonna be the ones that rise to the top because if everyone else is going to AI for.

Everything that they do, everything's gonna get even more of the same over and over again. So when you're able to add your spin, your personality, your mission behind a company, you are really gonna grow and grow and succeed. I think when we look at the story of Reese and what she's done, we know that she thought outside the box, you know, there are plenty of Hollywood starlets that come and go. but we're sitting and talking about her because she did something different. And she built a business and she did all of that. And what she did was really think beyond her role. she was an actress and she's become a director, a producer, a [00:27:00] influential woman, From actress to that. And she just thought beyond her role. And that's something, as women, I think tend to, this is my job description, this is what I'm gonna do, this is how I'm gonna be, but we need to start thinking if we wanna get to that next level, think beyond what your role is. If you have a job and you have like a nine to five and you wanna move to the next level. Think beyond your job description, If you're a business owner and your company is doing half a million dollars a year and you wanna be doing a million dollars a year, you need to think like a million dollar business owner, right? And you need to get yourself out of like your mindset if you're going to see that level of success or influence.

So whether or not you're like, I want a lot of money. Or I want a lot of influence to change the world, or you're like me and I want both. I would like to both have a lot of money and change the world. You have to think like someone who has a lot of money and changes the world and to [00:28:00] get yourself to that next level.

Michelle Pualani: One thing that I wish I'd been told and learned from an earlier stage in when I started businesses, and let me tell you, we've had so many businesses failed. We started over 10 years ago. We've trialed different things. Everything from a chocolate company to a labs testing on a mobile front. We've done online stuff like we've been all over the board. I really think TBH is gonna be a sticking point for us. In terms of everything culminating to this point and being successful. So we go. Very exciting. But one of the things that I wish I'd actually learned from an earlier age even was that a business is not a business is not a business. And you'll start to understand that yes, you can take any concept and idea and scale it pretty successfully, that there are different types of businesses that have.

Different models that have different profitability and different requirements for running them. Think about a restaurant versus an agency and marketing versus a delivery service versus a physical [00:29:00] product. All of those and in the industries that they're in have different potential. And so depending on what your goals are, thinking through, what do I care about, what am I passionate about, what are those things that I'm genuinely interested in?

then how does that align with an industry that has the potential for scale or opportunity? The media company that Reese built sold at an evaluation of $900 million. Just shy of a billion, It probably would've been valued at over a billion if she'd decided to hang onto it for a period of time.

However, I. Media entertainment. If you look at the software industry and what things have developed over time, it's like the amount of money there is very different than CPG or online brands. we want you thinking bigger. I. Think about the opportunity that is here. You can leverage your personal brand into so many things.

If you approach it with the right intention, the right strategy, and the right vision associated with it. you don't have to pigeonhole yourself into, oh, well [00:30:00] I was told to sell $7 digital products, and that's how I'm always gonna run my business. No, like you don't have to do that. There is a lot of opportunity out there.

There's a lot of ways to be creative and there are a lot of things and potential that you can do with what you're creating. So don't stop. I. Think big and just realize that there are always additional opportunities or ways of looking at things that maybe you've never thought of before. So think creatively and continue to see yourself in this larger, bigger vision of your entire life and where your business is headed as a whole.

Joanna Newton: Thank you so much for listening. As we talked about Reese Witherspoon, her journey, and what we can learn from her as female entrepreneurs. I hope that you stick around with us. Make sure you subscribe, follow us. If you have a minute, go ahead and leave a review. That's helps us find more people to enjoy the podcast and be a part of our community.

We can't wait to see you in the next episode.[00:31:00]