Helping Companies in Crisis Return to Profitability with Chelsea Grayson

Have you ever wondered how struggling companies turned things around to be successful again?

I know I sure have. I always wonder what the bottleneck was…

Was it the leadership? The products? The operations? The experience?

This is why I was THRILLED to bring on Chelsea Grayson to hear all about her experiences doing this exact thing!

Chelsea was sought after and brought in as the CEO of True Religion and American Apparel to make them profitable again.

Think: bar rescue, but for renowned retail companies. We love a good transformation, am I right?

In this episode, you’ll get an inside look into the rebrand strategies that took place to turn things around for American Apparel and True Religion.

Click play to hear all of this and…

(00:01:49) Chelsea’s answer to the question, “Can you have it ALL in life?”

(00:02:40) Chelsea’s experience as a single mom and the challenges of balancing career and family.

(00:06:31) Chelsea’s career progression and the renowned companies she’s been a CEO at.

(00:08:19) How she developed the skill of fearlessness in approaching challenging situations at work.

(00:09:54) Chelsea’s decision-making process and transition to the role of General Counsel at American Apparel.

(00:16:07) Chelsea’s decision to take on a VERY challenging opportunity despite financial limitations.

(00:17:52) How Chelsea handles problems step by step.

(00:26:10) The details Chelsea implemented in her rebrand strategy at American Apparel that made it profitable again.

(00:29:40) The challenges Chelsea faced when revamping the brand at True Religion.

(00:38:26) How to get chosen in a career or sector you want to be in.

(00:43:38) Chelsea’s personal experience of overcoming a scary situation.

(00:46:44) How Chelsea dealt with rejection when she was passed up for a board position.

For full show notes, visit:

jasminestar.com/podcast/episode417

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I built my website with Showit because it gives me total design freedom.

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Transcript

(00:00:01) - It's a. She.

Jasmine Star (00:00:15) - Welcome back to the Jazmin Starr Show. Ladies and gentlemen, from your hearts, we have a firecracker who has entered the room. There's going to be explosions of amazing and awesomeness. On that note, welcome to the show, Chelsea Grayson, I'm so happy you're here. Thank you for.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:00:28) - Having me again. And your beautiful home. It's a privilege. Yeah. Thank you, thank you.

Jasmine Star (00:00:32) - No, I want to start us off right. So I'm going to follow my notes just to hit a couple key points today. You're going to be learning from LA's top 40 dealmakers. Chelsea Grayson is a former CEO of several renowned companies such as True Religion, American Apparel, Spark Networks. Y'all prepare your hearts for what is going to be in store now. I did a lot of creeping before. I really wanted to get a general sense, because I had mentioned in previous podcast with Susan and with Jocelyn, the backstory of clubhouse, the dynamic that you guys had been having. Now I'm going to pause for a second for people who are watching and listening.

Jasmine Star (00:01:04) - My mentor Susan came on, we had a conversation, and she's the one who introduced me. So we're looking at this as not just a three, but a four part series. And so if you have no idea who Jocelyn is, I mean, we got to go back and watch that video. You have no idea who Susan is, go back and watch that video or listen to that podcast. We're going to be dropping them week after week. So now we have Chelsea, and we had these conversations in clubhouse around business owners, and we're talking about the struggles, the ups, the downs. And you were so well versed in so many different things. And then every so often on some of the research I was doing, you have children and you have had a phenomenal career and you are successful by all intents and purposes. And so the question that we're going to start off with, which I thought was really intriguing, was, do you believe you can have it all? No.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:01:49) - Absolutely not.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:01:50) - Come on now. You can have a little bit or a lot of all of it, but you can't have all of all of it, you know,, I and so my kids are I'm an empty nester now. So I do speak from seasoning, wisdom, experience and age. So I have a lot of opinions about this because I'm sort of on the other side of it. My kids are, oh my gosh, this is going to age me 22 and 20. So my daughter is about to graduate from UCLA and my son is a sophomore at northwestern, by the way. He's he's double majoring in mechanical engineering and applied math. And to this day, I still don't know what engineering is. So somebody wants.

Jasmine Star (00:02:24) - To.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:02:25) - Explain it to me in a way that will make him proud. I really appreciate that., but no, I mean, it takes a village for sure. A wise lady once said that, and I had tons and tons of help when they were coming up. I was a single mom.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:02:40) - I got divorced really early, so you could even say that was me not having it all, because, you know, there's probably a part of me that still, you know, blames myself a little bit for that, for not holding that marriage together or not, maybe working hard enough at it or doing the things I need to do to be a better wife to so that it didn't all spiral. So. But I was early divorced, so young mom with young kids five and three. And yet my parents, you know, were kind of nomadic early living in and out of my house as I was raising my kids because my career, you know, took me on the road. I live on a plane for pleasure also, but for sure for business. I've always lived on a plane, not even so much domestically, you know? I mean, I've been all over Europe and all over Asia and parts of Africa for business over the years. So I would just be gone and I had to be gone in order to do it.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:03:33) - And you can't say to anybody, well, I can't take this trip because of my kids. Guys can say all sorts, you know, I'm going to go. I'm leaving the office early today to play a round of golf because it's, you know, they're going to maybe be getting a deal done on the golf course. You know, women, we can't say I'm going to have a day at the spa with a bunch of women I'm going to try to develop business with, because that's just playtime, right? So, you know, I've always advised women, if you're going to leave the office to do anything, doctor's appointment, see your kid's soccer game, which, by the way, dads get rewarded for all the time. You know, you want to go see a soccer game that your kid is playing. That's great. You're a great dad. If you want to leave early and see your kid's soccer game as a mom, you're just effing off, you know, type thing. So I always tell women, don't mention your kids, ever.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:04:19) - Don't say you're going to a doctor's appointment or kids soccer. Say that you've got a meeting out of the office and that's where you're going. And so vice versa. When you get called to be on a plane, you know, and or you have to travel for work, there's no excuses. You have to pack your bag and go. So I was constantly gone as I was coming up in my career. And so I had to figure out a way. Some people hire a live in nanny, you know, they have a full time staff or what have you. I brought my parents in, you know, and I was lucky to do that. I was born and raised in Los Angeles. We still live in Los Angeles, you know, and so and they live really close to me. And for that, my parents and my kids are very close with each other, very close. They have an incredibly magical relationship, which I have to admit, I feel away about every once in a while.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:05:03) - I love that they're so close and my kids get that special relationship with them. And and I have, you know, still people I rely on to this day when I need help, you know, with that team. But. You know, they have my parents, arguably at some points in time, have had tighter relationships with my kids than I did. They know things about my kids habits, likes, dislikes, you know, things that I don't even know about my kids because I wasn't around for parts of it, but my kids were very well raised. You know, when I was there, I put in every effort in the world. I was totally engaged. I made sure to take trips totally off the grid with them so that there were absolutely no distractions, you know? And every time I had a break in my career, I made sure to dig in with them, you know, and really capture that time.

Jasmine Star (00:05:46) - Okay. When we talk about the breaks in the career, because I want to actually bring everybody up to speed with what that actually looks like, because everything that I read and researched so impressive about what it is you're doing.

Jasmine Star (00:05:59) - Okay. And now we have a fuller picture of the decisions that you're making and how you're finding success in life, in family and in business. And so you call yourself a recovering lawyer. I'm a.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:06:08) - Recovering lawyer, yes.

Jasmine Star (00:06:09) - A recovering lawyer. And then I know that you clerked with a bankruptcy judge, and then you became a finance lawyer.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:06:14) - Yeah, well, I started out as corp fan, and then I was an M&A lawyer. Yeah.

Jasmine Star (00:06:18) - Okay. Yeah. Okay. And then you became a partner. Yeah. So already you're seeing this career and you're trying to find this balance and you're moving things along. And then this is how you became in consideration for okay, you became a partner and you were focusing on distressed companies.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:06:31) - Well okay. So there's a story there. Yes. Please allow me. Yes please. Okay. So because it kind of has to do with what you're talking about zigzags or breaks in your career or just where you think you've hit a roadblock and you just have to make lemonade out of lemons, you know? Yes.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:06:43) - I randomly clerked for a bankruptcy judge. It was the best thing ever, a long term, now that I look back at it. But it was just when you get offered a federal clerkship for any judge, you have to say yes to the first one that comes along. He was the first one that came along. You have to say, yes, that's the etiquette. And then I started out as just a healthy, corp filled lawyer at Jones Day, by the way, with every intention of always of making partner. You get one promotion as a lawyer and that's from associate to partner. And I'm not in it not to get promotions or make more money or get a bigger whatever, right? I'm always in it for the next thing, you know, and there I am, happily practicing in 911 happens that little mini recession happens after nine over 11, and then there's no corp fin activity at all. All the powder dried up. Nobody's taking their companies public, right. There's no debt to be had.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:07:26) - Even so, I figured, well, I've got this bankruptcy stuff in the background. I went to my distressed lawyers and I said, you know, I'm a corporate lawyer, but I can also do distress, and I'm not scared of it. So they just stuck me out a bunch of distressed M&A for the whole recession. So I pop out at the end of the recession, a full blown M&A lawyer. And I do healthy, healthy, healthy. But people also know I'm not scared to run into a burning building. So that's how I developed that sort of, you know, dual brand of I was a partner in the M&A group, but I was also fine with doing distressed and restructuring out of the bankruptcy world.

Jasmine Star (00:07:56) - Where did you sharpen that skill of? I mean, that is like a pretty bold statement. I'm not afraid to run into a burning building. Yeah. Where do you think that the developed? Because I've seen it. Knowing what I know about your career, and I only know about your career off what Susan has said, which is amazing, but also on paper.

Jasmine Star (00:08:10) - So that is distinctly a pattern running into a burning building. Where did you how did you develop that skill of saying, unafraid to do things that people run away from?.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:08:19) - Well, professionally, I mean, because there's personal reasons too, of course. But we can do that if you want. But professionally, career wise, you know, once you do it once or twice and you realize that there's hardly any situation you can't get yourself out of or fix or transform, and there's hardly any situation that's so dark that you can't put better words on it just for PR purposes, you know, or convince people to follow you, you know, on a mission to turn something around. There's so many tools in the toolkit. It's also kind of fun because in distress, you can be a lot more flexible and riff a little bit because you can't do all the normal stuff. You know, it's not traditional, so people expect you to be more creative and expect things to look a little wonky. So if you're expecting wonky, then, you know, then kind of the sky is the limit.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:09:09) - So it's really fun. So once you understand that, it's really easy to keep your powder dry because you're not going to get lost. And you know, you know what the pathways are. And you could just kind of I don't know, like I said, you can riff with it a little bit. So I enjoy it. You know, people look at it and they're just sort of like, oh my God, everything is falling apart and there's so many different things you have to touch. But that's always the good and the bad news too. With a distressed situation, there's tons of low hanging fruit. Low hanging fruit is easy to pick. The bad news is there's tons of low hanging fruit. That shouldn't be, but it's I don't know. It's easier on the inside once you get in there and you orient yourself.

Jasmine Star (00:09:44) - And so this is when we talk about running into burning buildings. Yeah. You're you move into can you talk about the transition into American Apparel. Yeah. And how this two things are interconnected.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:09:54) - Yeah. So I was kind of at a crossroads in my career. I had made a critical error. And I don't like that because I'm a perfectionist a little bit, you know, like you don't.

Jasmine Star (00:10:02) - Say like I, we have talked all of like five minutes and I'm like already like Enneagram one are just try it forward.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:10:10) - I had charged forward with a decision I had. Made a lateral move to a different firm. That is a great firm, you know, and I was succeeding monetarily, but culturally it wasn't the right fit for me. And it took a minute for me to admit that I had made a mistake. And I had diligence the culture properly enough. But I decided I had an offer from my previous firm, and I had an offer to go back and take the same office, the same title, the same executive assistant, the whole thing. That was going to be really easy. So I had tentatively accepted that and I was just waiting for my distribution at the at the firm I had lateral to, and I was going to make the move back, but it felt a little bit like moving back into Mommy and Daddy's house.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:10:49) - So I don't like regression either. You know, going back to something, you know, revisiting unless it's old friends., and so I wasn't jazzed about it, but I knew it was something that was going to be comfortable, and I was going to continue to make a whole bunch of money. So fine, you know, it was in that moment of vulnerability before I went back where I was open and, you know, flexible. That I got a call from the new chair of American Apparel who had come in at the behest of public company. But there was a big,, hedge fund that was kind of in control, and they had asked her to come in and clean house. So she had suspended the CEO and founder, you know, for cause pending the results of a of an internal investigation. She had wiped clean the rest of the C-suite, wiped the whole board clean, and she was just rebuilding. The first position she wanted to fill was the general counsel position, because she needed somebody to come in and make rules and then enforce rules.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:11:43) - If you know anything about what was happening in American Apparel, every kind of crisis imaginable, liquidity, culture, governance, you know, every kind of lawsuit, every SEC investigation was happening there. And she had found people that she wasn't particularly thrilled with. She was randomly having lunch with a long time client of mine, the GC of CBS Corp. I had done all of their deals for them. And he said, have you looked at Chelsea Grayson? It'll be hard to pull her away, but just see if she's willing to come in and do this for you, because she doesn't take any, you know. So she came and talked to me and, you know, she said, you're going to take a 50% pay cut. I'm going to give you equity that probably won't be worth more than ashes and dust, because we'll probably take this through. And 11 and you know, but do you want to come and and she said you're born and raised LA. This is the rare public company headquartered in Los Angeles.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:12:35) - At that time there was like two others maybe. And she said, there's 10,000 manufacturing employees, because remember, we were vertically integrated. We made everything ourselves in and around downtown Los Angeles. And she said, you know,, 10,000 textile manufacturers who are all immigrants. They rely on this job in order to even just stay here. They'll they'll lose their jobs if this company goes away. And the barriers to entry are so high, this company isn't going to exist again after this, you know. And she said, and there's a beautiful message here, isn't there, about female empowerment and body positivity and pro-immigration rights and all of these things notwithstanding what had happened with management. She said, don't you as an la native, feel like you owe it to your city to come and and transform this company and save it.

Jasmine Star (00:13:20) - If that is not a pitch? Okay, so I just want to pause and I want to draw out there through a through line. Yeah. You are unafraid of running into burning building.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:13:31) - That thing was in was charcoal at that point.

Jasmine Star (00:13:34) - And so you have this opportunity to go back to the thing that once was. And so it's like notion of burning the ships. You are now given the opportunity to take something that is already been told to you. It's probably not going to amount to much, but hey, choose this creative adventure because when it is charred and us, you have the opportunity to be creative versus the safe, the predictable and the very successful standard path. And you chose to run.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:14:03) - Very unlike me. I grew up really very, very,, I hate the word poor, but we were on the lower end of the economic scale, you know, I mean, my dad, brilliant. You know, aerospace engineer, but, you know, look at Southern California, you know, what happened in the 80s, by the way, I'm 52. So we're going to talk about the 70s and the 80s a lot., but in the 80s, you know, aerospace, you know, went away.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:14:24) - I mean, Rockwell was done with their shuttle project. It went to NASA and everything else. Boeing, you know, Northrop everything was moving to the East Coast. So that was a dead duck, you know. So we certainly were strapped for cash when I was growing up. And I loved my childhood. It was so cultured. We did all the free things or the lower cost things, the museums, the camping nature, you know, the zoo, the the Hollywood.

Jasmine Star (00:14:52) - Bowl on the Discount Knights Hollywood.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:14:53) - And the discount Knights. Come on.

Jasmine Star (00:14:55) - We lived like the first Friday. Like you're going to the they're museums free.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:14:59) - Okay. With my parents with their cheap wine and us with our little. Yeah. I mean just that. Okay. That and I love it. And that for me, it's like I read Evie Babbitt's novels and I'm like, that was my childhood. You know? I love it, but not a lot of. Money. So I grew up very aware of things are going to run out on the dinner table before we're all full.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:15:20) - I have hand-me-downs from all of my friends who are very lovely, and they're willing to help me with that, but they're never going to be my clothes. I do a garage sale every year so I can get myself to Disneyland, and I sell all my toys, you know, and then I have to re-up the next year. That's not destitution. But it's also like you're aware of the end of the money in every room you're in. And so I've always, you know,, wanted to not have that, you know, I've always tried to, at every turn, build more wealth, more wealth, more wealth, more wealth. And it's one thing to go to a place that's in transformation, where you know, you're into the ground floor and it's going to grow, and your equity is going to be worth so much. In the end, it's going to be worth it. It's a loss leader. You know, it's another thing to go in where you sort of know what's going to happen, you know, before you're there.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:16:06) - So.

Jasmine Star (00:16:07) - So what made you make that decision? I mean, now knowing that there is money limited in every room that you walk into. Yeah. And there is the room that is safe and stable, and there is the room that is literally on fire. And somebody saying it will burn to ash. Yeah. What made you. I didn't believe.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:16:22) - It. I'm really good at what I do and I just didn't believe it. I was like, whatever you said, lady, I'm coming in and I'm going to save this thing.

Jasmine Star (00:16:30) - I mean, I'm just like this blooming hell. Yes. But like, where did that come from? Like, what are you good. What are you seeing or what do you know about you that applied to that situation going to make it magical?

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:16:39) - Everything I had done up to that point and looking back, it wasn't even much. That was like the first 16th of my career because I did so much after that, you know? But at that point I felt like I have, with some hiccups, you know, generally hit it out of the park.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:16:54) - I am going to slam this. I am going to.

Jasmine Star (00:16:57) - I was made for this moment. I was made.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:16:59) - For this moment. This is it. This is everything. Everything is coming to me. Everything is going to come into my office. I am going to make this work, you know. And we did.

Jasmine Star (00:17:08) - So talk about that.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:17:09) - Yeah we did.

Jasmine Star (00:17:10) - We. Okay. But I wonder, is there somebody who's hearing this? And it just seems like so far it's like, you know, so many steps removed from where they are. But if we were to dial down it into what we're actually looking at, there is somebody who's listening, who has been doing something, they've been training unbeknownst to them for a moment, and then we're all going to be faced at different moments in our life to choose the safe and narrow or the unpredictable. And so all I want to do is create a framework that you decided to bet on yourself, not out of hope, but out of doing the work and saying, listen, not everybody could do it, but I could do this.

Jasmine Star (00:17:43) - And so I just want to like pause there because somebody is listening and saying, okay, now when you get in, after making this big, bold declaration, what does it actually look like? Yeah.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:17:52) - Well, what it looked like it looked like apocalypse, you know, I mean, so first of all, I looked at all the different ways it was in crisis and all the different things that went wrong there. And I'm also not an idiot. It was a measured risk, because if these had been the things that I didn't have any skill set in, right, you know, or if I wasn't familiar with these, some of these issues already, you know, or if I didn't feel like I had a team of advisors that I could bring in and help me with the peripheral stuff, you know, then I wouldn't have done it. You know, I mean, there's certainly some industries or there's some issues where I'm sort of like, not that I've never done that before, because I've never done that before is a little different because you can apply stuff from other scenarios.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:18:27) - But just like realistically, that's not it. But this, you know, I was like, all right, the company is in a liquidity crisis. It had lost over $300 million in the previous five years. Well, I started my life off raising money. I was a corp fin lawyer, corporate finance, you know, and so. Well. No, you.

Jasmine Star (00:18:42) - Actually started your life raising money at your garage sales. That's true. I mean, that's not you are. You are training for that your whole life.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:18:47) - Disneyland ain't cheap, okay?

Jasmine Star (00:18:49) - And you don't just get to New Zealand. You want rum and ice. You want that high, right? Right. That's so funny. Because your memories of Disneyland are lemon ice. And my memories of Disneyland are churros. You know, it's like. Brown girls like.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:19:03) - Those. Churros are.

Jasmine Star (00:19:04) - Amazing. They're amazing. They're like giving a.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:19:05) - Mexican restaurant next to the mountain.

Jasmine Star (00:19:08) - Back there. I know exactly if you don't know now, you know.

Jasmine Star (00:19:10) - Okay, so yes, we're putting on the training for this. Your whole life you have been doing this.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:19:14) - That I knew how I know how to raise money, and I knew how to do weird, funky raises like we did an ATM right at the market raise, which, you know, only lawyers really even know about it. It was just, like, weird and funky in the dark recesses of raises, you know, but culture, you know, I understood culture because I'd been in leadership positions at my firm and I understood, you know, how to spot toxicity and culture, how to weed out the bad apples, how to spot talent that should be there. But they need some therapy, frankly, you know, because the culture, so many bad things had happened at that company from a hashtag MeToo perspective, it was before Hashtag Me Too, just before. But it was the mother of all hashtag MeToo. So half the population was PTSD, you know, and you had to give them therapy and half of them were like Stockholm syndrome, and those are the ones you couldn't save where they were like, yeah, we have a terrible leader.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:20:02) - And he kidnapped all of us and we're in a cult. But what are we going to do without him? He's the only one that can lead us properly. Those you're never going to decode them, you know? So you kind of have to. But I understood all of that because a lot of that actually happens at law firms because it's such a tough gig, you know, and they demand so much of you and you live so much at the law firm that, you know. So I kind of understood that governance. I mean, I lived in a boardroom up until then, you know, I represented these huge public companies in their M&A transactions or other, you know, activism, you know, from shareholders or whatever. So I understood governance and how we had to fix the disruption that was in the boardroom. There were the friends of the ousted CEO that were still sitting in the boardroom transcribing notes of what was happening and just shooting them to him real time, so you couldn't make them move strategically without him knowing and messing it all up ahead of time.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:20:49) - Right. You know, and then there were half $1 billion of lawsuits. I mean, I'm a lawyer, not that kind of lawyer, but still, I understand how to not freak out. Everybody gets sued. It's the cost of doing business. You just have to approach it logically. SEC investigation check. I've done those. You know, there was going to be a proxy contest for sure. I've been doing that all my career unionization attempt. Now, that one was tricky for me morally because I come from a union family. But, you know, again, I put on my advocate hat. As an advocate, you have to represent the client you're confronted with. And if you're on the other side of a unionization attempt, you fight like hell to defeat the union. So because I understood union mentality from the other side, I kind of understood why this one was wrong and it wouldn't be good for the employees. And that's how I approached it mentally, and that's how I approached those employees, you know? And so if you just take each problem step by step and figure out, do I have the skill set and the seasoning to approach this and solve it or not? Then you can get down to 97% of the stuff.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:21:48) - Yes, maybe 3%. I'm going to wing it, but I'm pretty good at that too. You know, by then I had some edge on me, you know, and so I never felt overwhelmed. Now, that said, I slept there all the time. You know, I slept on a couch, which I had to take penicillin for every day because, of course, you know, it was like the couch. The famous casting couch for it.

Jasmine Star (00:22:08) - Yeah.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:22:10) - , but, you know, there was tons and tons of overnights there. Luckily, it was a clothing company, so I could just go downstairs and just get clothes every morning, you know? So it's not like it was without its long hours. It's not like, you know, I didn't sacrifice a lot at home. Like what we were talking about. It wasn't easy, right? But it wasn't daunting. It wasn't overwhelming. I just took it bit by bit by bit. And then slowly, what happened was by the end of that year, it was a full year.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:22:37) - All the business of that company started to come through my doors as the general counsel, so they had no choice but to give me a business title, my first business title ever, chief Administrative Officer, which put a bunch of business functions under me. The CEO who was in at the time. It was amazing. She was dealing with the apparel side of the business, but what was important that first year was knocking down all of these crises, you know, and we were also making some t shirts on the side type thing. Right? So by the end of that year, we ended up doing a debt for equity swap with Goldman Sachs and the rest of our bondholders. They were planned 11 like we had predicted. And they came to me and said, look, we know you really well. You're a known commodity for us. We want to switch out CEOs. Would you be interested? Which is nuts, because, you know, I mean, going from lawyer to the little. Yeah. To CEO of what was then a public company, you of course say yes and you say yes right away.

Jasmine Star (00:23:32) - Can we pause? Yeah. You say yes, of course you say yes. There's a lot of people who do not say yes to say what is. But what was the pathology?

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:23:40) - , again, just, you know, confidence in myself, not cockiness. You know, I approached it, you know, obviously knowing that it was going to be a big learning curve for me.

Jasmine Star (00:23:48) - You've never done business? No. And you're saying I'm going to be a CEO. Yeah. Okay. And that takes.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:23:53) - A lot more financial acumen. You know, understanding of statements and understanding of, you know, business and operations then. Just being a lawyer who happens to do some business stuff, right? Right. So I knew that what they weren't, didn't know was how much I didn't know.

Jasmine Star (00:24:09) - No they didn't.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:24:11) - The bondholders, you know, had every bit of confidence in me because I also have a big charisma. I exude my confidence again in a non cocky way. My ego is not on the table or anything like that.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:24:24) - But I'm going to own my room. I'm going to own my meeting. I'm going to own whatever, you know, conversation I'm in. So a lot of times I'll think I come across as being a little bit ahead of where I actually am, okay. But that allows me the space to catch up because I have credibility. I they'll trust me and then I'm catching up behind the scenes, which of course I do because I'm diligent and I'm a hard worker. And yeah, I don't like the word perfectionist. I used it earlier, but I'm trying always to do all the right things. And so of course I'm working really hard to catch up, but that, you know, and I think that when you're offered opportunities like that again, you don't waver. You don't say, well, let me think about it. Let me consider and let me talk to. No, it's a yes. Got it. And then you just deal.

Jasmine Star (00:25:02) - Yes. And I'll figure it out. Absolutely. So you say yes to being CEO of American Apparel.

Jasmine Star (00:25:07) - Yeah. And talk about that transition from. Well, I know the story, but fill in the story because you have a very full career that is so impressive. And this is this is a starting point. This is a catalyst. That was.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:25:17) - It. That was the turning point. Otherwise I just would have been a partner in my law firm for the rest of my life, which by the way, would have been great. You be your rich, you you're comfortable. You know, you probably never go into the office now because of Covid, you know? And so now you're just sitting at your house, on your computer all the time quietly, you know, I mean, it's a great life, you know? And I would have been really happy. I loved being a lawyer, notwithstanding all the lawyer jokes. You know, I actually really loved advocating. And I was a lover, not a fighter. I was doing deals, not litigation. So I didn't have bad days. You know, it was all great because we were contributing to the economy.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:25:49) - When you close a deal, you know, and you launch the ship type thing, you know, but that would have been a really different life. It would have been a more quiet life. It would have been a life without all the adventure. You know this for me, switching from the law side to the business side was absolutely, yes, the turning point for a lot of things in my life. And how long.

Jasmine Star (00:26:09) - Were you the CEO at American Apparel?

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:26:10) - So that was for three years. And so what we did was we came in, you know, I had a strap plan, which included, if anybody ever walked into any of the American Apparel stores, you'll appreciate this. It was like a clown vomited in those stores. You know, you'd walk in and there was like, you know, all the t shirts and the leggings and the bodysuits and the bodycon dresses, but then, like, there'd be scrunchies and nail polish and, you know, for no reason, sunglasses and just, you know, all this weird.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:26:34) - The mannequins were crazy. And it was there were so many SKUs. You know, you'll appreciate this as a business owner that thousands, tens of thousands of SKUs, you just couldn't some of these sold, you know, five units a year or something. You know, it was just like cats and dogs, cats and dogs. And then there was like the top 20 things, you know, meanwhile, our wholesale business was, you know, going gangbusters. And it was a fashion basics business, the original fashion basics business, you know, it's an imprinted business, distributorship business, you know. So I kind of took a page from that side of the business. So the first part of my Strat plan was, you know, completely reduce and streamline the SKUs on the retail side, make it a basics business. So people walk into the store. It's very it's like gym animals for adults. You know, it's very easy to put this shirt with these pants and these jeans and these this legging with that body.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:27:26) - And then you can end up with and it's all the color palette is very simple. Then you end up with, you know, just sort of a beautiful allotment of the stuff people really love about American Apparel. The hand was unmatchable. You remember how soft and gorgeous that hand was because we made it all here and stitching. We had patented stitches. We actually got patents on our stitches at the seams, at the shoulders and at the neck and all of that, you know. And no. Do you remember there was no branding, right? It was just you only knew it was American Apparel when you looked at the label, people were pressuring me to start branding because it was a hugely branded atmosphere at that point, and I just refused to do it. So I just reduced down the SKUs, reduce down to these fashion basics, reduced product, kept everything made here. But that was part of the rest of my strap plan. It was American Apparel, and we had done a brand study. And, you know, everybody said Made in America the most important part of this brand.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:28:16) - To me, it was really difficult for me to think about offshoring, but we had to offshore because it's really expensive to make here. Now. post-Covid is actually a lot more doable because of the way supply chains change during Covid, but back then it was prohibitively expensive to keep doing it that way. But you have to change the label. It can't say made in the US if it's not made in the US, even if parts of it are made in the US or means parts of it are made somewhere else. So I negotiated with local and federal label regulators. Believe it or not, those people exist and got it to where I could do labels like made in the US with foreign components designed in downtown Los Angeles but made in Bangladesh, whatever. And we had done a follow up brand study where the customer said, yeah, I care about made in the US, but if it's a dollar less and. Made somewhere else. That's the one I'm going to buy. So I knew people would be sort of open to it.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:29:05) - So that was the second part of my Strat plan was to reduce cost by three plug and offshoring my, you know, supply chain, which was the start of just a complete change in the business of that company.

Jasmine Star (00:29:16) - And that's crazy because when you're talking about not having the brand, you were pressured to build a brand and you stayed true to what it was, and you did your job there for three years, and then you move on to be a CEO of True Religion, which is the brand is, on the brand side, the most branded version. Yeah. After you make all of these changes and you do what you set out to do, what happens in American Apparel and then how do you get to true religion?

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:29:40) - So we got American Apparel profitable again. Wow. Yeah, we got a profitable again. And,, we rebuilt the customer base. We totally ripped out the e-commerce site and rebuilt it. So that became profitable. Learned a lot about E-com at that point. It was just the beginnings of e-commerce, sort of, you know, and influencer marketing.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:29:59) - And how do you kind of keep track of all of that? Digital marketing was just coming on the scene, you know, but people were unsure of it. So we did all of that, beautified it, left some breadcrumbs for a new owner to, you know, kind of follow and deal with, put it in process and sold it to Gildan, which is a public company that's probably in the back of some people's t shirts. They're in the room now, you know, and Goldman Sachs was really happy, you know, and said, can you come do that all over again? We also own true religion and can you come? We're having different problems there. They had just come out of a bankruptcy and they were looking to, you know, revamp the brand that true religion like American Apparel is a beautiful, you know, heritage legacy brand with this sort of like gorgeous halo that had been kind of knocked to the side a little bit because it had been surpassed by all the other streetwear brands that were then and still remain popular, the Supremes of the world, you know, and all of that.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:30:51) - And sure, religion had been in that group and maybe even a progenitor of that group, but had sort of fallen by the wayside a little bit. They had lost their way. They didn't know who their customer was anymore. The marketing had fallen to the side of who their customer actually was. They hadn't kept up with body shape and size, so their size range was too limited and they didn't have enough stuff that fit different body shapes. And so they had just fallen behind in all sorts of different ways.

Jasmine Star (00:31:14) - So another burning building.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:31:15) - Another burning building, totally burning. Had to that one was a different set of problems. But I took some of my learnings from American Apparel, like the e-commerce stuff I learned at the beginning of martech, of digital marketing, you know, and I learned there truly had a weaponize marketing technologies, you know, truly what state of the art is and how you can weaponize each pixel of content, you know, and learn all the levers and all of that. And I really put all of that to work at True Religion.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:31:44) - So that was a huge part of it. They had a supply chain that was purely external, but I also had to renegotiate all of those, you know, I mean, I was negotiating like indirect procurement costs at that company. That's how deep we went on cutting costs. You know, I had to recruit a whole new C-suite and middle executive management team, which is a skill that everybody should learn. You know, in terms of how do you figure out who to keep and who to jettison, and then how do you recruit great talent when you're at a place that's not paying top of market, you know, and might still have some hair on it, you don't know? And we switched out. I mean, I got involved in micro detail there that I hadn't been involved with in American Apparel, like choosing models and choosing the events that we were going to go to for experiential, you know, because the customer had gotten so alienated from us.

Jasmine Star (00:32:29) - Was it more marketing focus for you at True Religion? It sounds like you're doing a lot of marketing, a lot of.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:32:33) - Marketing there, and some product, again, because we, you know, we needed to, you know, true religion was very specific. It was a stiff $300 pair of jeans that either looked amazing or bad on you, depending on what kind of mix you had, you know? Well, I didn't like that. I wanted to put stretchiness in the denim, you know, which you can't. And then I wanted to make different body types, types and different, you know, cuts for the jeans so that everybody looked amazing. They could find something in there that made them look amazing, you know, and then pair it with different stuff that was more streetwear than cowboy. They'd kind of gone more cowboy, which wasn't really the core customer who was actually paying for the stuff. You know, people were buying, that brand notwithstanding, they were being pushed away by the marketing, you know? But it's a gorgeous, beautiful brand. That was going to be fine either way. But it was really important for me at my core to make sure that the customer was being addressed respectfully.

Jasmine Star (00:33:23) - And so you,, moved to true religion? Yeah. And then what point in your career are you saying, okay, I'm ready for a change. Yeah, it's ready for change. Yeah, I'm ready for the next burning building or adventure, for sure.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:33:33) - I mean, behind the scenes. After I sold American Apparel, you know, I was comfortable then, and, you know, I just had a minute to think. I thought, well, you know, I've seen my mentor who had been the chair of American Apparel. She's made her whole career now sitting on boards. Oh, my God, that's something you do. I didn't realize that was something a person could do. They could just sit on boards for a living, you know? Gosh, let me start to think about that. And I started to look at the money. You could achieve both the cash and the equity and the companies they give you, and also the sorts of things about those gigs that I really. Looked like.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:34:01) - I would love sitting in the boardroom, you know, lending up from on high or, you know, kind of seasoned advice, you know, but not having to get mired in the doing of it all day long because I was exhausted at that point. So I had started to quietly acquire board seats at that point, trying to diversify industry. You know, I took a seat on.

Jasmine Star (00:34:18) - How did you get your first board seat.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:34:20) - So I did that. When I took the CEO gig at American Apparel, I said, I'm only, you know, I'll take this. Yes. But also I want to be on the board. Okay. So I started to think about that already. Wow. So they put me on the board. So then I could already say I've got a public company board seat, right? The chair of that board is actually kind of interesting because there's so many different ways to the boardroom. You know, the chair of that board was also sitting on the Delta down to board, and she had been the one remember to recruit me to American Apparel.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:34:44) - So she saw it, knew what I could do. So she said, you.

Jasmine Star (00:34:47) - Know, you should.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:34:48) - We're looking for a change agent on the Delta, which, by the way, is C really a $9.1 billion company that is actually really sexy when you get inside the four walls. I know it sounds dental insurance doesn't sound that interesting, but there's all this disruption happening in the industry. Invisalign. You can go to the corner and get your teeth whitened. You know, you can get all this stuff. It's all data. See, now, nobody really even uses dental insurance anymore. So they had to come up with ways to fight that market disruption. They need a change agent. And so she said you should come sit on this board. So now I'm sitting on this huge behemoth of a board, you know, but totally different, you know, because it's just a bunch of like, pale male and stale, right? It's just a bunch of white guys sitting in, like, a very 1970s boardroom type thing, you know, but really fun to help diversify that boardroom and really fun to help them kind of see what was coming down the pike.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:35:31) - I took a few other board seats, you know, at the time, one that came from a former GC that I had negotiated a deal across the table from, and he just liked my spunk and said, we have we're I'm now I'm at a company that's going public and I'm the GC. I'd love for you to come interview for the board. You know, you'll bring something extra to it. So, you know, you just never know where you're auditioning. So you should always feel like you're in interview mode for whatever your future career goals are. You know, always be interviewing for that next thing. So by the time I was at True Religion and there I also was on the board and I had a few board seats under my belt, I could legitimately put a board CV together and mark it myself as a professional director. So that was my goal. So after I left True Religion at the end of white agreed to sit there for a particular term. You know, left right before Covid, had I known Covid was coming, obviously would have made a different decision, you know, and then,, started to get more board seats.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:36:25) - So sugar, Fina, Morphe cosmetics, you know,, a couple others that are behind the scene again, to diversify industry that aren't as sexy in terms of brand name, but were really pivotal in terms of gaining manufacturing and infrastructure experience. And one of the board seats I took was again through my chair from American Apparel. And the woman I'd been on the Delta Dental Board with, she was chairing Spark Networks, which was a big Nasdaq company that owns all these dating apps. J day, J swipe, elite, Single Christian Mingle, silver, you know, silver, single Zoosk heritage brands again whose halo had fallen just a little to the side. My cup of tea. Right. But I went and just sat on the board and I was on the board for, I don't know, 4 or 5 years. And then you're always planning succession when you sit on a board. That's always the right thing to do. And I happen to be on the succession plan there, and it just so happened to be that we ended up needing to look for a CEO.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:37:20) - I dropped in first on an interim and then on a permanent basis. And there it is, my third public company CEO gig.

Jasmine Star (00:37:26) - So you went back to operating when you said, I'm not, I said never.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:37:28) - Yeah, I said no more. But you know that. And that was you know, I basically kind of lived in Berlin for a year, you know, bought back and forth, you know, and, that was again a Nasdaq company, but headquartered in Europe. So that taught me a lot about just the culture of that kind of a boardroom and that employee culture. post-Covid, European employee culture is really a different thing. You know, it's a very unique thing and taught me a lot about that. That was a tech company. We just happen to own dating apps so that, you know, evolved my toolkit to now be able to kind of do hardcore more or less sort of hardcore tech stuff, you know, understanding how to consolidate tech platforms, understanding why you need a different set of engineers than the ones you currently have, you know.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:38:12) - So yeah, it was unexpected, not something I planned, but again, not something you say no to. When you say that you're switching out management and they say, well, you're on the succession plan, do you want to drop in as the CEO? You say, yes, you know, and you just go from there.

Jasmine Star (00:38:26) - Yeah. So somebody is listening and they're watching the trajectory of your career and you say, yes. Now, for somebody who's not accustomed, I firmly believe that every skill is learnable. And if there's somebody who's not accustomed to saying, yes, what are you telling them? What are you coaching like? What are three things that you can get like starting today. So this podcast is all about one thing. This person is listening. We want them to learn one thing and take action. So for somebody who's not accustomed to saying yes, what are three things that they start doing? Gosh.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:38:51) - Well, I mean, first I would say read all the books you possibly can on CEOs or leaders that inspire you because those books are going to be.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:39:00) - Full of inspiration lessons some chapters are devoted purely to. Here's a horrible mistake I made. And here's how I pulled myself out of it. Or here's a time I got fired. And then I got what's the guy I just read? What's the guy's name? He's the coach of the Chiefs, right? Andy Reid thank you. Thank you, sports person.

Jasmine Star (00:39:21) - I know.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:39:22) - It always helps to have your team in the.

Jasmine Star (00:39:24) - Room. Right. Exactly.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:39:25) - The Eagles fired him.. Big mistake, big one. And actually, he was winning for them, but they fired him. I don't even know why. And now he's, like, on his way to being one of the winningest Super Bowl coaches. Right? They've won like three times for the Chiefs. I mean, you know I'm not a sports person, but I play one on TV..

Jasmine Star (00:39:46) - You read the books about the read the books. Yeah. Sports. I read the books. Like read the.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:39:50) - Books about people that you admire.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:39:52) - You might be surprised to see all the things they said yes to and maybe failed fast, or maybe didn't fail, you know. And so those will give you all sorts of lessons. I firmly believe reading stuff about people you admire can teach you and inspire you, you know?, so that's one thing, you know, and I think another thing is, you know. Think about where you feel weak, or think about sectors where you're sort of like, that's a sexy industry or sexy sector, but I'm not getting picked for that kind of stuff because that's not the stuff on my resume. And take this time while you, you know, have a lull or while you're not getting picked for that stuff to go join the trade organization that that sector sits in to go to summits and seminars and, you know,, watch panels that sit in that sector. There's so much you can gain, not from an operational level. You're obviously not going to learn the meat and potatoes of that stuff by going to those, but you're going to learn the lingo.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:41:00) - You're going to learn the right words. You're going to learn the big general buckets and categories that those areas face, or the big things that you need to understand to at least have an intelligent conversation and that you're a quarter of the way there, like what I said earlier about exuding confidence or like walking out like chest for I don't mean like chest, but just like chest first. Right? Just like walking in and just, you know, being barrel chested about something that's kind of part of that. Knowing the right words, knowing the lingo, knowing the big general concepts that'll make you feel more confident. But it will make people engage with you more, you know, and then you'll get more of those questions that you'll want to say yes to, or that you'll be compelled to say yes to, so that that kind of energy begets energy on that one, you know, and then,, third, again, I think it's just about saying yes to the first thing that terrifies you, and then it just becomes a way of life.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:41:54) - And I know that's tricky advice, because for somebody who's sitting there saying, well, I never say yes to anything or I'm scared of that, you know, what do you mean? Just say it could just be anything, saying yes to coming down and doing a podcast with somebody you've never met before. But you know who has a big, gorgeous podcast that could be, you know, where they've interviewed all sorts of incredible people. Some people you might be intimidated by, that you might sort of feel like, well, gosh, I mean, what am I just say yes to all the things, you know, and then it'll start to feel like a way of life.

Jasmine Star (00:42:22) - I think I'm going to repeat back for people who are struggling to say yes when things feel intimidating, there's a lot of education. You want to read books that show how other people might not have been as qualified, unfunded, unconnected, uneducated. And they're saying is number two, to think about the weaknesses or sexy sectors and then join trade shows and summits, learn the language.

Jasmine Star (00:42:44) - And then lastly, it's make it a way of life. Yeah. And start saying yes and stacking proof. Yeah. That you have the willingness and the ability to do that.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:42:51) - Even in your personal life. If you start doing that in your personal life, you know, again, this is not about that. This podcast is about that. But even if you start practicing that in your personal life and saying yes to things, it'll bleed over into your professional life.

Jasmine Star (00:43:03) - So has your personal life played into like the reason why you run into burning buildings? Yeah, I.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:43:08) - Think for sure. I mean, you know, we could go dark or I could just stay light, but, you know, I yeah, I think I've seen dark stuff, you know, I, I mean, I think like any again I'll, I'll get personal for a second. It's what it is. You know, I don't mind telling the story. I think many women have experienced some sort of negative,, situation with a man, you know, and I when I was a teenager, a guy attacked me when I was running, so I was still living at home.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:43:38) - I was still in high school. A guy just popped out and,, you know, pushed me into the bushes with complete mal intent, you know, to do whatever he was going to do. And but I something was watching over me. Somebody or something was watching over me that day first because I was in between songs on my Walkman. We had Walkmans back in the day. I was in between songs, and I was running on a side road that had gravel, not a sidewalk, so I could hear his footsteps in the gravel behind me. So I kind of turned around to see what was happening. And there he was, and he pushed me into the bushes. But I was I had just a minute to get that sort of thing that you need to spring into action, but it was one of those fight or flight moments, and I had not been confronted with anything like this or challenged like this before, which is great. You know, I was, I don't know, 15 or 16 maybe.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:44:30) - So it's good that that kind of thing hadn't happened to me before. But there it was. And in that moment I really did. I had a conscious thought of, well, I can lay here and let this happen and that maybe, you know, is going to be what it is. Or I could fight right now and not let this thing happen, and I might really get hurt and it will hurt, period. Because we're going to tussle. But you know, which which 1 a.m. I going to do? You know, and I chose to fight. And you know, those things where they say moms can like, pull a car off their baby if they need to. They just get superhuman strength. I somehow got us up and,, Needham, where you're supposed to need them, you know, and then pulled his hair head down with his hair and broke his nose with my knee. And then he was. He was totally incapacitated at that point. And then one of the football players from my school happened to roll up in his car and pile me into his car.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:45:22) - He saw what was going on and took me away from there, so I got out unscathed. So this guy's blood was all over me, but none of mine, and I got out totally unscathed. But that that right there taught me that I remain composed and crazy situations that I can think intelligently and logically. In a situation like that, I can see ahead what I'm going to do and that I actually act on that stuff. So I just don't scare enough for nothing. So that was a that impacted my life from that moment on. So I'm not saying I'm happy that happened, but it shaped a lot. It I was already that person, but it told me I was already that person and it gave me. That's everything. I mean, it motivates me in every single way. I know I got through that. There's not nothing you can show me that's going to scare me.

Jasmine Star (00:46:07) - So then applying that same belief that you run into burning buildings and you have an inner strength, somebody here's your story.

Jasmine Star (00:46:12) - And they think Chelsea's different. She set apart. She's not. So was there a time or has it been a time that you felt like a distinct recoiling, rejection, terrible loss lesson? And then you're applying this same theory, like how are you taking your losses because you hear this beautiful, amazing success story. Yeah, I have.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:46:32) - Losses all the time. You know, I get the word no constantly. You know, I get that it's you're not for us. I get the.

Jasmine Star (00:46:39) - What's one thing that, like, hit really hard?.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:46:44) - So I was I'm going to try to do this without naming names. So right after I left,, Sparc,, we sold it. We turned it over to the lender., I had had to take all my board seats down to just one, and I chose one of my public companies. I'm still on that board, Exponential Fitness. But that's a very light load for me. So, you know, I'm trying to energetically sort of build it up.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:47:08) - And there was a company that was getting hit by an activist, and they had to put on a certain amount of additional board members to fight that activist behavior. This is a company that competed with one of my previous companies. I know everybody there. I totally understand the business. I get exactly what they need to do and why the activist was coming after them. And I interviewed for that seat for one of those board seats and didn't get it. And the reason I didn't get it, the actual reason is because the activists ended up coming in there in the middle and was just able to force their own three people down the company's throat. And that's just how it works in governance. You know, that's just how activism works. But I so believed I was so perfect for that board seat that I took it very personally. I did at the moment. I took it very personally. Everything's about Chelsea, right? The whole world is revolving around me. That's how you think in a moment of loss, right? That's what everybody.

Jasmine Star (00:48:07) - You know, nobody likes.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:48:08) - Me. I'm the problem. Everyone's out to whatever it is, and you start thinking that. And I knew logically and from what? All the people that I'd interviewed with explained to me was just like they had no choice. They had to take these other three people, you know, it was never going to be the people the company was interviewing. But I took that very personally, and that happened for just a few hours. That's it. I will allow myself to wallow for a few hours. You know, you have to let the kind of grief and loss go through you, and then you just have to shake it off. And you have to remember, number one, the world is not revolve around you and weave in the world doesn't even revolve around human beings, because we've been here for the shortest amount of time of any living creature ever, you know? I mean, the dinosaurs were here for tens of tens of tens of millions of years. You know, we're nothing.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:48:51) - So the world doesn't revolve around me or even us. This has nothing to do with me at all. This has to do with macro external forces that were already at play. That probably wasn't even a real interview, you know?, truth be told, because they just had to kind of do it, you know, in order to show the process, you know, number one and number two, I can continue to be sad about that or frustrated still knowing that should have been my board seat. But I'm going to compartmentalize. And that's what I'm really good at doing, is compartmentalizing. I can keep that over here, return to if I need to. I can dip into it for motivation in other situations, or I can just even allow myself to be sad about it at night or frustrated or whatever. But I've got. You know, nine other columns of stuff that I've got to get done today, this year, in three years, in five years. And I'm not letting that hold me back.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:49:40) - And I'm also not going to let it detract from my confidence when I walk into other rooms and interview for other positions. So it's about, you know, kind of decentralizing your space in the universe and then compartmentalizing it so you address it in the right way, but you move on. That answer your question.

Jasmine Star (00:49:55) - I can't remember any question like now it feels like I'm watching it and witnessing a really cool time in a new chapter of your life. Yeah. So where we've seen these multiple changes and then now I'm actually seeing you in real time, using the same skill set that you have applied to other businesses. And like I'm going to activate in a new way to get a new boards. Yeah. So what do you think as we close ten years from now, that version of you. What does she tell you today?

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:50:21) - She says, just relax. It's all coming. You know, you needed a break after,, you know, after you got done with the rest of that, you know, you're still in the third chapter of your career the way you wanted it.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:50:32) - So let this stuff come to you. Because I'm such a charger, I just go, go, go. You know, when I find myself, when I find myself not as busy as I was yesterday. You know, I'm creating the energy. And sometimes you just gotta relax and just let the stuff come to you, you know? So I think the person ten years from now is doing what I've always been doing, you know, chairing big public company boards. I've got one in the pike. I got an offer from one that I can't talk about, unfortunately. I was hoping to be able to talk about it today, but it's just one inch shy of the proxy going out, so I just can't do it, you know? But I'll still be honest. Collection of public company boards. Still my fun private company boards that allow you to be much more playful and again, kind of play in the margins. Yeah, exactly. You know, and still doing fun stuff like this, because this is where I really get my energy is talking to people like you and bouncing ideas off of each other, you know, and then hopefully maybe with like a grandchild or two.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:51:27) - But after my kids get married to amazing people.

Jasmine Star (00:51:30) - The caveat the established.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:51:31) - Careers and then, yeah, because I'm in a I'm, I have a redo coming that I, that I'm going to really do my best at. I'm going to have a do over my grandkids. Oh my gosh, I'm going to be with them all the time. That's I'm gonna pour everything into my grandkids and I cannot wait for that to happen. So yeah, ten years from now, give me a couple of grandkids, too.

Jasmine Star (00:51:48) - That's,, a beautiful, beautiful book ending. Right? So we started off with the story of how your parents came in and were those powerful grandparents, and you get to repeat a beautiful, beautiful history. That's so good. Oh, good. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. For people who want to go deeper with your journey and watch as you collect those board seats, the way that will collect monopoly properties. How do they connect with you?

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:52:11) - So a couple of ways I guess.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:52:12) - So I've got a website. I always keep everyone updated, but mostly it's Instagram is really fun for me. It's a creative outlet, so I put a lot of stuff up on Instagram and LinkedIn of course.

Jasmine Star (00:52:21) - So tell people, where do they? What's your website? Instagram. Yeah, it's all easy.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:52:24) - So Instagram is just Chelsea Greyson LinkedIn is just Chelsea Greyson. The website is Chelsea grayson.com.

Jasmine Star (00:52:31) - I did a little YouTube.

Chelsea A. Grayson (00:52:32) - Show during Covid. The people always return to it. It's done now, but a little bite sized chunks of, you know, career advice and business advice if you want to go take a look at that. But mostly look, if you want to reach out, you know, shoot me a message on LinkedIn. And I try to return everything within reason.

Jasmine Star (00:52:45) - That's that y'all. That's incredible. Well, you heard you heard it. Chelsea, thank you so much for being here, y'all. What we wanted to do with this whole series was empower other people to understand that the world, specifically the business world, is much bigger than we actually ever understood or that maybe we've had accessibility.

Jasmine Star (00:53:02) - I've always said that this podcast was about giving accessibility contingent on action, taking one piece of action. And if you took just one piece of what Chelsea had said, I hope it is running to burning buildings. Always say yes and find a way to get the thing you want by simply saying yes. Thank you for listening to The Jasmine Star Show. It is an honor and a privilege. I.