In this episode of Out of the Clouds, host Anne Muhlethaler interviews her friend, New York-based jewelry designer Jennifer Fisher. The two met in New York, many moons ago, over a long dinner at Mr Chow’s in Tribeca and had an instantaneous bond.
Jennifer is a member of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), a nominee for the 2020 and 2019 Accessory Designer of the Year at the annual CFDA Awards, a recipient of the 2018 Town & Country Jewelry Award for Retail Innovation, the 2016 Influencer of the Year at the annual Accessories Council Excellence (ACE) Awards and was a nominee for the CFDA Swarovski Accessories award in 2014. She speaks frequently about strategic leadership, brand building and empowering the next generation of fashion entrepreneurs.
A long-time wardrobe stylist who grew up in California, Jennifer started making jewelry after her son Shane was born, which followed treatment for a tumor in her chest and several failed rounds of IVF. In their conversation, she tells Anne the story of creating that talisman, a special piece that became a powerful charm to mark the birth of her baby, and how it became a natural starting point for her brand.
A born entrepreneur, Jennifer shares how at age five she was already selling caterpillar hair clips and button earrings to the local store. She also tells Anne how growing up, she watched her polo-playing, silversmith grandfather solder bolo ties and belt buckles, a likely inspiration for her own jewelry making.
Of course they discuss business, too, including how Jennifer cultivates a positive mindset despite the stress of her career (especially in the last two years), and how she lets herself learn from things that don’t work.
The two also talk in depth about the way they eat, because Jennifer, a wonderful cook, recently launched a line of condiments, Jennifer Fisher Salt (the ultimate seasoning, as it’s been dubbed by Goop). They also connect on the importance of making smarter choices when it comes to food and their personal reasons for that, too.
They finish by talking about Jennifer’s latest venture, a new fragrance (which she describes is like a cookie on vacation!) and the wonderful partnership she has with Kevin, her husband, both at work and at home.
An inspiring, joyful and very personal conversation. Happy listening!
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Selected links from episode:
You can find Jennifer at https://jenniferfisherjewelry.com/
Discover the salts & Jen's recipes at https://jenniferfisherjewelry.com/collections/salts
Follow Jennifer on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jenniferfisherjewelry/
And https://www.instagram.com/jenniferfisherkitchen/
or Facebook https://www.facebook.com/JenniferFisherJewelry
Photographer Luke Gilford https://www.lukegilford.com/
and his portraits of Pamela Anderson https://www.pamelaandersonfoundation.org/news/2016/2/26/movies-by-luke-gilford
The Glamour Magazine cover with Uma Thurman https://www.amazon.com/Glamour-Magazine-July-2006-Thurman/dp/B0026C424A
Jennifer's custom charm necklaces https://jenniferfisherjewelry.com/collections/charms-1
https://www.glamour.com/story/jennifer-fisher-cfda-award-n
Tasis School in Lugano https://www.tasis.ch/
Hashimoto's disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashimoto%27s_thyroiditis
The book Jennifer swears by, Ketotarian by Dr Will Cole - https://drwillcole.com/ketotarian
A book Anne swears by, A Beautiful Constraint - http://www.abeautifulconstraint.com/the-book-2
The song Bitch better have my money by Rihanna - https://open.spotify.com/track/0NTMtAO2BV4tnGvw9EgBVq?autoplay=true
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Anne Muhlethaler:
Hi, hello, bonjour, and namaste. This is Out of the Clouds, a podcast at the crossroads between business and mindfulness, and I'm your host, Anne Muhlethaler. So today, this interview is particularly meaningful to me because it gave me the opportunity to catch up with a friend I haven't seen since before the pandemic. So today, my guest is Jennifer Fisher. Jennifer is a talented and very successful jewelry designer based in New York City. The reach of her brand is international, and she's been worn by countless absolutely incredible women from all walks of life.
Anne Muhlethaler:
It felt very special to have this conversation and for me to delve and ask her questions I would not ask her over the course of normal conversation. Of course, we talk about jewelry, how she came to build the first piece that launched her brand, and the importance of talismans. She tells me, well, how she allows herself to learn from things that don't work, how cultivating a positive mindset and finding something to be hopeful towards daily and how trusting her gut are some of the ways that have helped her, not just build a business, but build a life and support her throughout difficult times.
Anne Muhlethaler:
We also talk in depth about the importance of making smarter food choices, which you'll see is something that's particularly important to both of us. We touch on the exciting launch of her new fragrance, and she tells me about the wonderful partnership she has at home and at work with her husband, Kevin. I find myself endlessly inspired by Jennifer, so I'm excited to be bringing you this conversation, and I hope that you'll feel the same way as you get to know Jen throughout this interview. So thanks for being here, and happy listening.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So let's do this. Hey, Jennifer, welcome to Out of the Clouds. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Jennifer Fisher:
Hi, one of my favorite people in the world, Anne. How are you? Thanks for having me.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I got so excited when I was writing up the questions before our interview, because I realized how much I missed you and how proud of you I was, and I felt all bubbly and happy inside.
Jennifer Fisher:
I miss you so much too. You're one of those people in my life that I miss all the time, and then once we reconnect again, it's like no time has gone by. It's exactly the same.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah, absolutely. It's so good.
Jennifer Fisher:
I've got a lot of friends like that.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So tell me, where am I finding you today?
Jennifer Fisher:
So you are finding me today in New York City. My name, for those who don't know, is Jennifer Fisher. I am a jewelry designer, now foraying into lifestyle and food and cooking and other design things. As I grow and get older, things are morphing. And I am at my home in New York City right now.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And can I ask you, what is this incredibly beautiful piece of art behind you?
Jennifer Fisher:
Who do you think that is, first of all?
Anne Muhlethaler:
I don't know.
Jennifer Fisher:
Can you guess who it is? You're never going to guess.
Anne Muhlethaler:
No.
Jennifer Fisher:
So this was taken by my friend, Luke Gilford, who's an amazing director and photographer, and that's actually Pamela Anderson.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh, wow.
Jennifer Fisher:
Yeah. It's really powerful. If you can really look, her eyes are watery and she's about to cry. It's really a powerful piece. And it's actually, every time I do a something and people are like, that's kind of intimidating behind you in the middle of a meeting.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh no. I find her beautiful.
Jennifer Fisher:
Isn't it pretty?
Anne Muhlethaler:
It's gorgeous. For a second, I was wondering if it was you.
Jennifer Fisher:
Some people have said that, but no, it's her dressed up. And I'm not like a massive Pamela Anderson fan, I just think it's a powerful photo.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Very. For sure.
Jennifer Fisher:
I've collected photography my whole life.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. So before we get into that and much more, I'd love for you to tell your story for our listeners, and I like to keep it quite open. Just tell people who you are, what you do and where you came from.
Jennifer Fisher:
So I got into jewelry, actually, my studies in school, I will talk about Switzerland later. I was in Switzerland a little bit in high school, which really formed who I am, and then I ended up coming back, finishing high school in Santa Barbara, California. I grew up in Montecito, which is a small town, just south of Santa Barbara. And I ended up going to USC, University of Southern California, and I studied business marketing with a fine art minor. I wish I used that more.
Jennifer Fisher:
I thought I wanted to be a magazine publisher. And after interning at some magazines and I'd watch the clothing racks go by, I realized that I was on the wrong side of a magazine. I much rather would be on the other side with the clothing in the fashion. And I was one of those kids who always grew up loving fashion, and fortunately, my mother supported that habit of mine and got me subscriptions to Vogue when I was little and I would plaster my wall with covers and inspiration, things like that.
Jennifer Fisher:
So I ended up randomly becoming a wardrobe stylist and working in LA and Hollywood. I worked in television for Aaron Spelling. I did commercials for years. I did a little celebrity styling, although that was my least favorite part of being to be honest. I really loved the commercial and advertising world, but I think it's also has to do with, because it's what I studied in school, but I always loved chatting with all the ad people. So when I was, let's see, I was 27 years old and I met this guy named Kevin on a trip to New York. And I was actually dating someone else at the time, and when we broke up, Kevin and I got back together in New York for a date and that was it, I met my man, Kevin. And we dated there's an at end of the story. We dated few years-
Anne Muhlethaler:
That's okay. Keep going. I love it.
Jennifer Fisher:
We dated a few years bicoastally and I was still styling. And while we were dating, I got sick. I got diagnosed with something called a desmoid tumor in my chest. On my chest wall, I should say. It's not cancer, it's a soft tissue sarcoma. That's very rare that comes from scar tissue and they believe it's from scar tissue from my breast implants. But we can talk about that later, and that really has nothing to do with we're talking about, but there you go.
Jennifer Fisher:
Anyways, went through chemotherapy for it and the tumor shrunk. And we got married right after. When we wanted to have kids. The oncologist said, "No, you need to get a surrogate or adopt, because we don't want you carrying a baby with your tumor." We tried all of that. None of that worked. And then I finally got pregnant naturally and that was my son, Shane.
Jennifer Fisher:
So when Shane was born, I was still a stylist. People were giving me gifts to represent him and I didn't like any of them. I thought none of them represented my personal style or who I was as a person. I wanted something heavy and I wanted a big gold chain and I wanted to wear something that felt like my talisman and my piece that I had made for my son. So I went out and sourced it and I had it made, and I started wearing in on set when I was a stylist. And literally the grips, the gaffers, everybody was asking me. It was an instant conversation piece. Everyone wanted to know what it said and what it was, and then once they knew about it, they wanted to buy one for their significant other.
Jennifer Fisher:
So I literally started making jewelry for people on set when I was a stylist. At one point, I was making so much that my husband looked at me and he was like, "Jen, I think this is a business. Maybe we should do this," or, "You should do this." And I luckily made a piece for Uma Thurman and it was delivered to her the day that she shot the cover of Glamor magazine, and she wore on the cover of Glamor. And that's the story of my business, how it started. I started selling direct to consumer fine jewelry online long before a lot of people were really doing anything like that, and it just grew that way. People started naturally asking for other shapes or different things. We started doing different gold colors, different chains, and it literally just grew organically from listening to what my customers were asking for and just doing what I wanted and hoping that people liked it.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That is awesome. I remember the first time we met, you telling me the story of the tumor and the wanting to have that talisman, something that you could carry with you. And it's a interesting because that really has stayed with me ever since then. I wasn't particularly a massive fan of jewelry growing up.
Jennifer Fisher:
Me too.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I like shiny things, but I do really relate to that sense of keepsake.
Jennifer Fisher:
Right.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And also, perhaps growing up with time, this sense that when something's precious, you're going to keep it, look after it. And there's the preciousness of the talisman, but also of the material, that can also be recognized and passed on.
Jennifer Fisher:
Exactly.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Other things would not necessarily be seen as precious and passed on the same way.
Jennifer Fisher:
Exactly. I think there's something about when you're able to personalize a piece that you can wear a fine jewelry like that, that it's not just something that you've purchased, that everybody else is going to have the same whatever design that is on it and you walk around and you see someone and you're like, "Oh, that's the necklace I have. It's the same," whatever. I think there's something to be said for making the choice to customize it on your own and to do, like my lock that I'm wearing today has my four, has JKSD on it, but no one else is going to do JKSD. People are going to do whatever they want on it, so it's yours alone and it's something that you've chosen and to make for yourself to protect you and to keep with you. And it makes me feel grounded and protected every day when I wear it. Really, I do.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah.
Jennifer Fisher:
It's true. Jewelry is really powerful.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. I want to tell you that just after we started the lockdown and I was in my studio apartment in Geneva, I'd wanted to buy a chain from you to build my own necklace, and you should explain to people how to do that because that's a whole thing. And it's interesting because maybe a month or six weeks into it, it was an immediate thing that I knew that I needed. I needed to have something to make me feel better, and I got in touch and I ordered it, and I also got an ankle chain. So I built my little custom little bundle of joy, and it's fascinating that this was something that I decided to invest into in a time that I was really dark, where I shouldn't have been spending money, but where I needed to be reminded of certain things and carry these keepsakes. So I had no idea at the time that we'd be talking about this on a podcast two years later, by the way. Although, it was in the mix. I was already building it up, but it's not something that I could see through.
Jennifer Fisher:
But how cool is that, that you now have that talisman of your own, that you were able to put your other things that means something to you? So you've created your own personal necklace, bracelet, charm, anklet, whatever it is. That's what's so cool is that you can add your own things to it and you can grow it over time with my stuff or things that have been passed down to you already.
Jennifer Fisher:
That was part of the reason why I wanted to do these loose charm necklaces is that at the time, I collected charms my whole life. My mother made me a sterling silver charm bracelet, with every place they'd ever go, they'd get me something wherever they went and I have this massive charm bracelet that's so heavy, you can't wear it. But it's just really more decor, it's really beautiful. But I remember I wanted to make a necklace out of some of them. And I remember going to certain places and everyone's like, "You don't do that. You don't put charms on a necklace like that. You put them onto a bracelet and you separate them." There was rules to how to do it.
Jennifer Fisher:
I'm like, "No, no, no, no, no. We're going to create our own rules. We're going to put them loose on a chain and we're going to put whatever you want on it. That's what we're going to do." So it's nice that that resonated with you too. You wanted the same want.
Anne Muhlethaler:
But I do think that it's a bit magic.
Jennifer Fisher:
I agree.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And it feels very special to me.
Jennifer Fisher:
That makes me happy.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Before I go back to some questions, because I want to go back in time to talk about teenage and uni Jennifer. There's something that in intrigues me about what you said about your story, all of the guys that were on set, working with you wanted this. Are you making jewelry for men as well? And how is that?
Jennifer Fisher:
Yeah, we do. Yes, we make charm because it's for men all the time.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That's amazing.
Jennifer Fisher:
Yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
How did that develop?
Jennifer Fisher:
Jewelry is for anybody. It doesn't matter what sex you associate with or whatever you are, we have this for everybody. The males love dog tags. So we do a lot of dog tags for men. We do a lot of white gold for men. We offer white, rose and yellow golds. I want to make sure that we can make something for everybody. It's just a matter of figuring out what your choice is, of what shape resonates with you as a person. And men, I don't know if it's an old school military vibe thing. I don't know what the reasoning is, but that's really the shape that a lot of them resonate towards.
Anne Muhlethaler:
It's interesting, because last year there was a close friend of mine had a chain that was passed down from his family and he was obsessively looking for something and couldn't find anything right for a really long time. And I don't think I remembered that you were doing men. Or did I? I'm not sure.
Jennifer Fisher:
It's for anybody, honestly. Charms are cool. Charms can go on anybody to be honest.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Exactly. And I do think it looks really wonderful as well on guys.
Jennifer Fisher:
Yeah. And men love wearing personalized things, especially with their children. We do key rings now. We do so many different things.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Awesome. So now, let's go back for a second because I love doing my research, even when I'm interviewing friends.
Jennifer Fisher:
I know. This is so impressive.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Well-
Jennifer Fisher:
I'm so impressed. It's so thoughtful.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh, thanks. Well, I was thinking of you when I was doing it. So one thing that I saw in one of the interviews that I caught is that you were voted in high school, the girl most likely to go to Paris for dinner. Can you please tell me that story?
Jennifer Fisher:
Oh God. I was. I think I was that girl in high school that no one could really figure out. My fashion was always wacky. I was always shopping vintage, trying to take a jacket and change it and make it my own. I'd go to Melrose and I'd go down there, and I remember I bought this really cool red velvet jacket that had this crest on it and I added all these different buttons and things to make it my own. So I was always that girl that was like, "This is not exactly right. I'm going to change it. I'm going to wear it." And I'd wear school and people were like... Crazy, wacky fashion sense. I wasn't the most popular girl in high school. I wasn't the sporty girl in high school. I just was that girl that was unique. I think people respected me for it. I did go to boarding school in Switzerland for my junior year, which I really think shaped who I am today.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Wow. Can you tell me that story?
Jennifer Fisher:
Yeah, sure. I had a girlfriend that went to TASIS, which is as The American School in Montagnola in Lugano, and it sounded magical and amazing and I ended up going for a year. I was like, "You know what? I'm out of here. Santa Barbara is boring. I got to go do something. I'm not surfing." I always knew I was that girl that was going to leave the smaller beachy town. I really always thought that I would end up in New York City, to be quite honest because I just was not that small beachy town girl. So my first chance that I could get out, I was out.
Jennifer Fisher:
So I went and it was the most amazing experience ever. I was terrified. I remember crying on a suitcase out front of a Mexican restaurant that my parents took me to. We were at our way to the airport to go to LAX, and I was like, "I don't know if I should do this. Oh my God. What am I doing?" Alone. And it was one of those things that you have to, I think take a chance in life to be independent and to do something different, in order to really figure out who you are.
Jennifer Fisher:
That shaped me in a way of having to just live on my own, fend for myself. Granted, I was at a boarding school in Switzerland. It wasn't like it was rough living. It was amazing. But having to go and make all new friends and I was thrown into a house. We lived in the attic of one of these small houses that were around the school, and I was with five different girls from five different countries, and you just got to make it work. So when you have opportunities to do something different like that, you should take them.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. And distance does really help separate us from the parents and help us grow. Personally, I know that my life really took on a completely different meaning and my relationship as well with my parents changed for the better after I moved to London.
Jennifer Fisher:
Right? But what's so funny is I was one of those kids, and I don't think I've ever said this before on anything, but I was really connected. I was one of those kids that didn't want to go to school some days when I, as little because I didn't want to leave my mom. I was one of those kids. And what's so funny is that I grew up to be the exact opposite of that. I'm like, "Oh my God, I need to call my mom." so it's interesting how you turn out and how things change.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yes. And I need to tell you, do you remember there was a TV show called Santa Barbara?
Jennifer Fisher:
Of course I remember Santa Barbara.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh my God. It's the first TV show I ever got into. And it was, what's her name? Robin Wright Penn?
Jennifer Fisher:
Yes.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Was playing the lead role and I was obsessed. So I was in Switzerland obsessed by Santa Barbara.
Jennifer Fisher:
I couldn't wait to get out.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And you were in Santa Barbara and you came to Switzerland. It's just very-
Jennifer Fisher:
Yeah. And another lesson too, I think. I should have stayed longer. We got to go to Prague when it was still... The things that I got to do while I was there. But then again, I made the choice to come home for spring break instead of going to Kenya, or I didn't stay for my senior year because I wanted to go to prom. So I made certain choices that I think now being older, I should have stayed, but it was an amazing year out of my life and it really shaped who I am today.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That's wonderful. Thanks so much for sharing that. So I also understand that your love of jewelry making and your entrepreneurial spirit came early to you. What's the earliest memory you have of connecting with jewelry or business?
Jennifer Fisher:
Well, it was probably business first. I was always a hustler. I was that kid that my parents... My father loved to gamble when I was in Vegas a lot when I was a kid, was a high roller. So my parents would go to Vegas a lot on the weekends and I'd be left with babysitters and I would always be like, "Look, I'm bored, let's do something, let's start a business." So I think every time they'd go on these trips for three days, I would start a business.
Jennifer Fisher:
I literally was the kid that would cut the flowers out of your yard, go back, make bouquets, and then go knock in your door and be like, "Hi, would to buy a bouquet of flowers?" But I've done everything. I had a button earring company. I started with one of them. I had a splatter paint clothing business. A friend of mine, we would take avocados from trees, because Santa Barbara is all avocados and lemons, and we would go on the side of the road and sell avocados. So much so that one day this guy who owned one of the bigger Mexican restaurants was like, "I'll take them all. And give them to me every week," because they were a great deal.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh my God, that's amazing.
Jennifer Fisher:
So we were always hustling. I think there were those of us that if we weren't into the surfing beach scene, we were kind of like, "Okay, what are we going to do?" Unless you're getting in trouble, you're starting a business. So I did that to keep it, but I was young. To be honest, my first memory, I made the button earrings and I had this caterpillar hair clip company. I literally sold them in a clothing store. By the time my parents got back in town, I think I had hustled and convinced them to sell them.
Jennifer Fisher:
But my grandfather was a polo player up in Santa Barbara, and a very well known one. And he also was a silversmith in his time off and he would make bolo ties and belt buckles and things for his friends. He was the guy who would teach Tommy Lee Jones and Sylvester Stallone, and those guys how to play polo. He was an old school cowboy. So much so, my father actually grew up in Montecito also. My father always made sure that my grandfather had a nice space to do his work and he would come over a lot before dinner, and it was a lot of the times in our garage. So I have memories of being out, sitting on the washer and dryer in the garage or wherever, and he was out there in his work bench, and he was making bolo ties or belt buckles for his friends. So I would just sit there and we would chat and I'd watch him do it, and I'd ask him question and keep him company.
Jennifer Fisher:
He was always wearing his cowboy hat while he did it, which is so crazy. So that was my first memory of it, and what's so funny is I forgot about all of that because he was such a polo player and this was sort of his hobby, but it never really registered with me. Even after I started my company and I started doing interviews and people were talking to me about my where is my affinity for jewelry come from, and I was like, I honestly never really wore jewelry growing up, I collected watches, which was so strange. As I got older and I was never really one to accessorize, and then finally, one day it came to me, I was like, "Oh, it's my grandfather."
Anne Muhlethaler:
Wow.
Jennifer Fisher:
And his social network.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. That's wonderful. What a story.
Jennifer Fisher:
He was always customizing with monograms and letters and things like that, to customize and personalize all these things for those people, and it was the exact same thing but different.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Wow. It's wonderful, the ways in which we get inspired and it's almost like it planted a seed and it took 20, 30 years for you to even realize that the growth was coming from those days.
Jennifer Fisher:
I know. Isn't that wild?
Anne Muhlethaler:
And I'd love to see a picture of him, by the way. He sounds quite fabulous.
Jennifer Fisher:
He's so cool. I will show you a picture of Grandpa Dean
Anne Muhlethaler:
I mean, a grandfather that wears a cabana hat.
Jennifer Fisher:
He was so handsome though. Shane kind of looks like... He sort of looks like my dad, but then Shane also kind of looks like him too. It's interesting, but more Irish looking. I'll show you a photo of him. It's amazing.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yes, please. So I'd love for you to tell me a little bit about how, after you started building your company, did you ever imagine that it would grow to the size that it has? How did you imagine your business journey when you got started?
Jennifer Fisher:
I've always been a very ambitious person just naturally. What's so funny as we have these talks all the time because it's your five year plan, your 10 year plan, as we are so much bigger now. Where do you see yourself here? And I was like, "Bigger." But I never like to define exactly what that is or what that means because if five years ago, if I had said that I would be in the food and lifestyle world, the way that I am now, I would've never imagined that. I was positive in my way of thinking daily about where things are going, and I always know that if something doesn't work out, something else is going to, so I live my daily life that way, that okay, it's going to grow and it's going to become something amazing. I don't know exactly what that's going to be because things are fluid and things change, and I think it's so funny, and I think that's an old way of thinking about things when people are like, "So tell us what you want to be in five years." What?
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah, that is such a good point.
Jennifer Fisher:
It's so true. I feel like it's so outdated. I think as certain businesses grow, yes, you have to have a plan, but I do think it's interesting that you can't say that you're going to be exactly this because you're not going to be. You never are.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah.
Jennifer Fisher:
You can be hopeful daily that things are going to go in that direction, which I think is part of how my business has grown, and the reason it has grown so much is that I don't allow myself to ever be defeated, ever. I allow myself to learn from things that don't work, and to easily try to change directions and just easily be able to just, "Okay, that's not working. Let's go and try this," or, "That sounds interesting. Why don't we give that a shot?" And I think trying to be more open-minded about things and opportunities that come your way and also trusting your gut which, it's such a cliche, but it's so true. If something doesn't feel right, it normally isn't. That kind of thing.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah.
Jennifer Fisher:
Did I answer your question?
Anne Muhlethaler:
There's something you just said that I find super interesting. What I'm hearing you say is that the way you relate to failure is different than for most people. Because a lot of people, when they fail, they just think, "Oh, that's not going to work," and they shut down or move away. And the other day I saw a really interesting interview. Excuse me, not interview. It was a talk at Stanford by Carol Dweck, who wrote the book about growth mindset. And I'd love to hear you tell me, where do you think that mindset of yours to accept and move on or pivot came from?
Jennifer Fisher:
Yeah. I think it's something that's in you. My whole life I've been like this. I can't remember a time that I haven't been like this. I think my parents did help me with that a lot by forcing me to be independent early. Not forcing me, but giving me the opportunity to be. And I think it's more about every day, I wake up and I know that it's not going to be a perfect day and that's okay. But there's going to be a lot of amazing things that are going to happen that day that are going to put you in a direction that's going to be positive.
Jennifer Fisher:
So I think you have to live every day with this positive mindset that, okay, there's going to be things that don't work out, but that also means there's going to be other things that are going to work out. So you can't be rigid in your thinking that everything has to work exactly the way that you imagined it because that's just not like not how life goes. It's just an innate positivity that I think that you have to live with daily, that some days are going to be horribly stressful and really, really hard, but from those days come other things.
Anne Muhlethaler:
You know what you sound like? You sound very balanced. The image that comes to me right now is that in order for you to be able to see the positive when there is negative is you need to be able to balance. I'm thinking of a tipping point and you know that things are going to be like this, but you also understand that it's not always going to be negative.
Jennifer Fisher:
Right.
Anne Muhlethaler:
It's kind of wonderful. Thanks for that.
Jennifer Fisher:
You're welcome. But I think more people have to think that way, and we try to raise our kids that way too, to think that way because it's so important, because it can be so detrimental to people, professionally, personally, everything everyday lives, having a negative mindset about things. Especially in this day and age, it's so important to try to remain positive about things. Life is stressful and especially growing a business is really stressful. No one understands the amount of stress that I am under every day. It's extraordinary.
Jennifer Fisher:
I was talking to Nina, my publicist about it yesterday, about how stressed out I am. There's a lot going on and there's a lot of moving parts, but in those moving parts, there's things that are really exciting and positive. So you have to try to balance in your brain, "Okay, there's this, it's really stressful, and Kevin's working on that. And this is really stressful. And Nina's working on that." There's things that I'm working on that sort of have to do with all of those things, but then I have to keep myself together and balanced and continuing the forward momentum of what I'm doing in order to keep all of this going. So you can't just crawl under the table and take a nap.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Well, I get it.
Jennifer Fisher:
It doesn't work that way. If you want to get stuff done, if you want to build your life and build all of this stuff, it's just not even a choice that I have. To be honest, if I had that choice, I still think I wouldn't do it. There's an excitement in the unknown of the stress of all of it also, which it sounds kind of strange.
Anne Muhlethaler:
No, not really, because I found out over the course of my studies that actually stress and excitement have the same route. So I think that depending on whether you're seeing things as positive or negative, then this is really two sides are the same coin, essentially. You can be excited or you can be very stressed out, and sometimes it's one or the other.
Jennifer Fisher:
I'm kind of both, and I think that's why I'm like, "Ah." But this is life. I wouldn't want it any other way. I wouldn't want it any other way.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So when I was considering the ways in which I saw part of the growth of your business, and yours as well, as an entrepreneur and as a designer, I saw that social media and Instagram in particular was a huge part of how you communicated. And as you mentioned at the beginning of our chat together, you do have a business background. This is something that you studied, and clearly you were a born entrepreneur. But you also did want for a while work in publishing. So I think that you have these three different skill sets, and I wonder if you think that's what powered your capacity to actually throw yourself into social media the way that you did.
Jennifer Fisher:
I think the social media thing, listen, I was an early adapter to Instagram. It was just one of those things that I felt it was an amazing communication tool. That's all Instagram is. It's a communication tool. It's nothing else. I don't credit Instagram to my business whatsoever, but I do think that it's an amazing way to communicate with your customers. Actually, I need to evolve more into Instagram, which is interesting. Everyone's like, "You need to do more videos. You need to do more reels." And now it's TikTok and all this other stuff that you have to do. I think there's a level of maybe it's just confidence of just going on there early. And I was like, "Throw it up there and let's see what happens." That's how my salt business started was through Instagram.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah.
Jennifer Fisher:
Because everyone was posting their avocado toast every day. It was so annoying, and every photo was your version of avocado toast. Well, I did it too. Shocking. So up on my jewelry page, I put up my avocado toast and I sprinkled some of my salt that I kept on the side of my stove onto my avocado toast, and I literally got more questions about what was on that avocado toast than what hoops I was wearing in the photo before. They were like, "What's on your eggs? What is that?"
Jennifer Fisher:
Well, first it was like, "How do you poach an egg?" And then it was also like, "And what is that salt that's on there? What are those herbs?" I don't know. Instagram's an interesting place to roll around in. But I run all the social media on my own still. I do all the content and all the posting.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Which I think is really wonderful because the one thing that I know from developing and running the Christian Louboutin Instagram is that people feel connection. They understand, even if they don't analyze it, we can feel when something's authentic and we can feel when it's fabricated. And it's generally great results come from that sense of direct trust and connection with whoever's posting.
Jennifer Fisher:
Right.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I want to ask you more questions about business, but now I want to talk about salt. I have to ask you. So come on, what is the salt? Tell us all about it.
Jennifer Fisher:
So the salt started, so my mom and dad always send me boxes of lemons and avocados. It's so funny, I get this box.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That's so California of you. That's crazy.
Jennifer Fisher:
But it's so cool because I'm always like, "Yes." I never like to waste things. So I always use my lemons or I would take the rind off. I would grate the rind off of my lemon and dry it and use it in recipes and things like that, and then I'd use the rest of the lemon. So I have Hashimotos, I have thyroid disease, so I have always been conscious of food. Not always, but since I've got diagnosed with it, which about 30 years ago, I've had this, I've lived with this. And I've always been, "Oh my God, what do I do?" No western doctor could tell me what to do with food or how to eat or what to do and I was like, always just trying to figure out on my own. But I did know that gluten was bad for you, so I've been off gluten for a very long time, as per my endocrinologist.
Jennifer Fisher:
And now I intermittent fast, but at the time when I started my salt, I was eating breakfast and I loved to eat eggs because I don't eat a ton of protein, so I would always make eggs in the morning. And I couldn't find anything out there. I would go to the stores, I'd go to all these specialty markets and I would go and try to find something to put on my eggs in the morning that would be flavorful, that would have everything that I wanted in it, but nothing was right. Everything was a rub for meat or it was like potpourri, and I'm not putting Rosemary on my eggs. It just wasn't what I wanted.
Jennifer Fisher:
So I was like, "Okay, I'm going to make my own." Kind of like the jewelry, I'm like, "I can't find what I want. I'm going to make my own." So I made this little bowl of salt and had all the things that I loved in it, cilantro dill, crushed red chili pepper flakes, my dad's lemon rind, Australian natural sea salt, black pepper, all the things that I wanted with no garlic and onion, and I would sprinkle that on everything. And the egg thing happened on Instagram and I was putting it in all of my food and Kevin was like, "Jen, this is really good."
Jennifer Fisher:
I was like, "Oh."
Jennifer Fisher:
And then one day, Nina, my publicist was like, "Let's give that as a holiday gift to all the editors."
Jennifer Fisher:
And I was like, "Great idea." So we did it as a holiday gifting to all the EICs and everybody that works in fashion, because normally they're getting a chocolate bar with like a designer's logo or their face on it or something. Nothing that's going to be useful to them when they're working late hours and tired and hungry at their desk. So we're like, "Let's send them a little kit." So we sent everyone an avocado mash kit that was natural. We got so many thank you notes from editors in chiefs, which that never happens. So they were like, "Thank you so much for sending something so thoughtful and delicious, and oh my gosh, can we buy this salt?"
Jennifer Fisher:
And I was like, "Okay. Giddy-up. Here we go." So we started packaging the salt. So Universal was the first flavor, and then we did the spicy flavor, which is the second flavor, and then I did a Japanese Curry flavor. So we've got three flavors currently of the salts. They come in a smaller container and they also come in a refill bag, so you can refill those glass, because they're really beautiful beauty containers. I wanted the containers to look gorgeous and feel nice, and you want to keep them on your counter, you don't want to hide them like a regular plastic jar. So we have the refills. And then we now have, which is so exciting, we have little travel packs, stick packs comings, because people are literally carrying around my jars of salt in their bags and they're heavy. So people can take them to go because people are taking them to restaurants to use. So hopefully, I'd love to get into having them on airplanes and in restaurants and all over the place.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That is such a good idea. Airplanes.
Jennifer Fisher:
I love that.
Anne Muhlethaler:
You need to partner with an airline.
Jennifer Fisher:
Yes we do.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. Great idea.
Jennifer Fisher:
I was on JetBlu on my way to LA and I was looking and they have all these cool little specialty things. I was like, "My salt needs to be in here."
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yes. Well actually, right now it needs to be in my kitchen because I haven't tried it and it sounds delicious.
Jennifer Fisher:
How have you not tried it? Nina will make sure you get some.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Because I haven't been in New York since you've launched it, I guess.
Jennifer Fisher:
And we're technically not supposed to send it to Europe yet.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. I know. I'm aware of these kind of difficulties.
Jennifer Fisher:
We're working on it. There's so many things, it's so hard. So we figured out how to build a jewelry brand, now we're figuring out how to do a CPG food business. And poor Kevin, my husband is running all of it. We're all just figuring it out as we go, so it's interesting.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah, it is. And I can see from your Instagram earlier today that the recipes that you're building, again it feels very thoughtful. And now I understand your story with food a little bit more. Are we expecting a cookbook? A cooking show?
Jennifer Fisher:
That's why this always goes to plan. I wanted to work in publishing. Maybe that's what it is. So we're trying to figure out what we're going to do, because right now the recipes live on my website. There's a kitchen tab on my website. You can buy the salt there, you can go and look at the recipes. So we're trying to figure out this from me. I don't use cookbooks. And I think that a lot of people don't, a lot of people do. I'm trying to figure out how to make everybody happy. Is it some sort of a really beautiful, curated book binder situation that you can choose your recipes that you want in there? Is it a subscription? We're working out what it should be.
Anne Muhlethaler:
It's interesting.
Jennifer Fisher:
We're trying to figure out what the right solution is for it, but that's definitely happening. We just have to figure out exactly what form it is. A book might be the easiest thing to do, but I think it could be cool to do something more. Maybe it's an app, where you can go and subscribe and then you download your pages every month that you want, or every week. I spit out so many recipes right now. Every day I go on The Jennifer Fisher Kitchen and I cook live what I'm making for dinner every day, and then there's another recipe. So there's one to two recipes. Normally every day, I think we're going to start shooting it and owning more of the content off of Instagram also, which I'd like to do. So we'll do that too.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. I was going to tell you, so what I find we've done a lot of us who like cooking, especially in the last couple of years is that I've definitely bought a few new cookbooks, but because I like seasonal product is that I will buy product and then I'll just go, "What the hell do I want to do with this?"
Jennifer Fisher:
Me too. Me too.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And then I will Google my favorite chef.
Jennifer Fisher:
Oh, that's interesting. Google your chef.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. So basically, I love Ottolenghi, and so what I do is I literally go, "Ottolenghi zucchini," and I just look at what comes up. But I still buy his cookbooks, and I still use them.
Jennifer Fisher:
But how many recipes do you really use out of one cookbook, do you think? Are you one of the-
Anne Muhlethaler:
10%, 15%. But that doesn't mean to say that I don't really relish and like the discovery because-
Jennifer Fisher:
Do you like holding it, and the smell or the visual of it? What do you like, because that's what I'm hearing from. A lot of people is that they really love the idea of actually holding something.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I like reading it. I like reading the cookbook and also I'm going to adapt some things because like you, I have a food situation. So for those listeners who don't know, I have been diagnosed, back in 2014 with rheumatoid arthritis and I played with my diet. So I am gluten free, dairy free and meat free. And right now, more or less disease free, so not needing to use any medication, which is still available to me if I need it.
Jennifer Fisher:
That's amazing.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So that means that there's 25% or 30% of recipes in any cookbook that's going to be meat, so that's already gone. But I can adapt it.
Jennifer Fisher:
Right.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Here's one thing for you to consider. Some of the recipes I wouldn't have tried if I'd not found them on YouTube, because they were vegetables that were maybe a little bit funky or something that in writing, I didn't love the sound of, and then when you get the context of why someone has built the recipe that they did, you wouldn't necessarily read that in the book. But suddenly, it made me feel really that I needed to learn how to make this Bahraini rice prawn dish. Oh my God, I'm going to be very hungry when we finish this.
Jennifer Fisher:
I know. I'm already hungry. That's funny. So I'll find my... See, I'm like you. Well, first of I stopped shopping for the week, like I used to do because I was wasting so much food, because I was like, I don't want to eat that now. I'll shop for one to two days. And sometimes I'll just stop on my way home and get everything that I need, knowing that I keep what I need in the pantry, like my kelp noodles, my curries, all my things, my coconut milks that I have on hand. So I can just pick up, like you said, whatever seasonal or whatever sounds delicious and then adapt that.
Jennifer Fisher:
But what I'll do, if I see something on Instagram that I'm inspired by that I'm like, "I can't eat that. That is not for me because that has gluten and dairy and everything in it that I can't have," I'm going to adapt that to what I want to do. And then I'll Google, if there's a vegetable, like I bought oyster mushrooms the other day, because I wanted to do something with oyster mushrooms because I remember seeing back, I don't know, it was a while ago. I'm actually going to probably make them for lunch. I remember seeing a while ago, someone doing something really cool with a fried oyster mushroom.
Jennifer Fisher:
So I'm like, "Let me try to do that in a natural way with almond flour or something on a salad." And then I bought frisee and looked online like how to actually properly cook the oyster mushroom because the stems are tough and things like that. So I'll go back that way and figure out, educate myself the proper way to cook that vegetable instead of using it like a fully formed recipe from a chef. So I'll just on the fly, do what I feel like doing based off of that one ingredient.
Anne Muhlethaler:
It's funny. So the two of us have got this in common that you have limitations to your diet, and instead of taking what's in the shops, we've both decided to figure it out on our own. Because I make my own almond and hazelnut milk every three days because I'm a big coffee lover and I need something that's really good, and it's homemade and that's just the only way it is. I have an unseasonable amount of different kind of flours, so I can just try to make anything when the recipe calls for flour and gluten, I just switch it.
Jennifer Fisher:
You're just like me, I have every one.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. It's embarrassing actually, the amount of stuff that's in my pantry. I'd love to know, where did that come from? Where did you find this motivation?
Jennifer Fisher:
So what's interesting is that you just used the word limitation. I don't think it's limitation, I think it's choice. We finally educated ourselves on what is right for our bodies. So that's what I think so many people out there don't understand. I'll get messages from people like, "Oh, what diet are you on?" And it's not a diet, it's me making conscious choices because I've educated myself about what not to put into my body. And I'm not limiting anything, I'm just making smarter choices. I've made a choice not to eat anything with any gums or shelf stabilizers or oils that I feel are not good for my body. More people have to talk about it about because we've got different health issues, it's these choices that we've educated ourselves on that we now implement. And it's not about being restrictive, because people are like, "Oh it's so restrictive."
Jennifer Fisher:
I'm like, "No, it's not." I eat pasta every day, they might just be kelp noodles or cassava noodles, but there is no restriction or limitation to the way that I eat now, and I don't like to even say the word diet. I just say the way that I eat now because we've just learned over time how to do it correctly. Your inflammation is gone. You're off of your medication because you are now making the right choices for your body.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah.
Jennifer Fisher:
Look at you off your meds. Amazing.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. I never got meds. I was let loose after I went to the doctor. My dad was a doctor, my half brother is a doctor, so I think that by osmosis, I am. I followed my gut instinct-
Jennifer Fisher:
Literally.
Anne Muhlethaler:
... after watching a silly TV show and I thought it was something else, and that got me to take meat off of my diet, and that's where everything changed. I misspoke. I didn't mean limitations, but what I want to put out there for anyone who's listening to us is that I read an amazing book called A Beautiful Constraint, which had been put on the curriculum by Seth Godin when I did one of his courses a few years ago, and it's amazing how creative and resourceful we become when there are constraints put around us. And I think that I've been more creative as with the way that I eat now and the way that I cook than in the way that I did in the past, which was much more traditional.
Jennifer Fisher:
Very. I read a book called Ketotarian by Dr. Will Cole, and that's what changed my life for me. I was eating traditionally gluten free, and not dairy free and not really meat free until I read his book and it changed my life. It was weird. I don't know if it was for you when you got your diagnosis with your arthritis from your doctor, but for me it was more of just, I think it was just the time of my life, I was almost 50 and I just was not feeling good. I felt I had horrible brain fog, I felt inflamed. It was always just like I was just puffy all the time. I could not figure out what was wrong with me.
Jennifer Fisher:
And I read this book and I'm like, "This is everything that I need to do that I'm not doing." And I tried it and literally, it was instantaneous. My energy shot up. My brain fog went away. You do lose weight because you're losing inflammation, swelling in your body, but it wasn't like... The way that you feel when you eat this way. I think that's what's so hard for people to understand, to start making those smarter choices for your body. I'm sure you get a lot of judgment from people from the way that you eat.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I don't really talk about it because people just always freak out.
Jennifer Fisher:
I know.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And it's complicated to go to someone's house for dinner, so I tend to bring my own a little bit.
Jennifer Fisher:
I just try talk about it and be like, "I'm not going to..." And they all know I'm that girl. "Oh, Jen's not going to eat that."
Jennifer Fisher:
"Okay. You can and feel like shit." Sorry.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. I'm used to it now. I don't mind.
Jennifer Fisher:
Yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I do love going to Italian restaurants because I know I can always negotiate the menu, which is not true about all types of food. But I'll finish by saying this. I find it super inspiring and I can't wait to put my hands on that book. I'm going to get that into my-
Jennifer Fisher:
I want to know after you read it. I'm so curious what you're going to say, because I follow it loosely. He's the reason that I intermittent fast in the mornings too. I try to. I technically don't do it because I have my coffee with my almond milk, so I'm technically not entirely fasting, but I do feel better now that I don't start eating until later in the day.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Same here.
Jennifer Fisher:
I'm much more energized. Much more energized. And it's sad because I do love breakfast.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I agree with you on the avo toast with eggs and stuff as well.
Jennifer Fisher:
Right?
Anne Muhlethaler:
Okay. Let's stop because I'm going to try to eat my microphone in a second. So going back to the business piece, one of the things that I love discovering with you. So I knew charms, but I didn't know how great charm necklaces were until I met you. And then I discovered women's obsession with hoops, which I think is going to be very important for you to talk everyone through because women are going crazy for your hoops. Please explain.
Jennifer Fisher:
I think that the hoop thing, because we all know I did not invent the hoop, they have been around for centuries. I think that what we did was we manipulated a design of them to where they are almost weightless. They feel very light on your ear and it took us a long time to do that. I think it was a matter of putting the product out there, which is a beautiful product. I'm very proud of our hoop collection and what we do because they look real. No one would know that they're not real gold. We are very careful in the way that we choose our gold colors, the way that we design and manufacture everything. They're all made in the United States, by the way too, in New York City and plated in Rhode Island.
Jennifer Fisher:
But I think it was timing, I think it was people were ready for... Hoops are timeless. Hoops have been around since forever and they've come and gone. I always say hoops are sort of like denim, so it's like they go in and out, but there's always a style of it that you need to be wearing at the time. So when we realized that we hit on a style that worked and it was balanced on your ear, we decide, I was like, "You know what? I'm going to make every size, shape, color, texture of hoop that I can." Just blanket the market. Basically a hoop encyclopedia because hoops can be worn any time of day, day to night and anybody can wear them. Really, my daughter started wearing them when she was 12 years old. We've got women in their 80s wearing them. They're pretty awesome. It's one of those pieces of jewelry, like a charm necklace that anybody can wear, any age.
Jennifer Fisher:
And it's not something that you're going to put on and it's like a giant green stone or something, and you're going to wear to a party or you're going to wear out, and then everyone's going to know you're going to put it on the next day. "Oh, you're wearing the exact same earrings." Hoops are sort of those things, no one really notices if you're exactly wearing the same pair of denim two days in a row, or you're wearing the same hoop earrings two days in a row. It's one of those things that seamlessly goes with everything in your wardrobe are evergreen throughout the entire year. Everybody needs hoops at all times. It's a fact.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yes. Absolutely. So many amazing women have worn your jewelry and in particular, the hoops, I have to say, when I look at your Instagram and when I look at the number of incredible women from all ages and ethnicities, all different type of artists and politicians, did you ever think it was going to be that good?
Jennifer Fisher:
It's one of those things. So for me, the hoop thing, what makes me really happy is when we see... Well, first of all, when I see women walking down the street, that makes me the most happy. When see someone that I'm like, "I know those are my earrings," or, "I know that's my charm necklace," that to me, still that never gets old. That will never get old. That makes me so happy. But then when you see someone like JLo go into wherever, not being styled by her stylist, but just go to the gym and she's wearing my earrings, that's cool. She made a choice to wear my jewelry, instead of being told to wear my jewelry by someone who's paying her to look good. So she knows she's going to look good in my jewelry. You know what I'm saying?
Jennifer Fisher:
It's one of those things where I think hoops give you confidence, they make you feel put together. And I say the same thing about my charm necklaces. You can put them on and you throw them on over whatever you're wearing that day and you feel put together. Those simple forms of jewelry that feel timeless are those things that you're going to want to put on every day to feel good. So celebrities are great, but honestly, celebrities don't sell jewelry, the product sells itself, and word of mouth of people talking about the jewelry. Because the unfortunate thing is that everybody, they're paid to wear jewelry on the red carpets. A lot of celebrities have contracts where they can't wear jewelry because they're signed with someone. So that whole thing is over. I think what's more important is that they're either choosing it to wear it in their off time or real women are talking about my hoops, that they have to have them because they're comfortable and they feel good in them. That's the best thing in the world.
Anne Muhlethaler:
For sure. I think as a friend, I'm excited every time I see someone that I love wearing your stuff.
Jennifer Fisher:
[crosstalk 00:49:59].
Anne Muhlethaler:
So my question really comes from a place of excitement.
Jennifer Fisher:
Because they have a lot of choices. They can wear whatever they want and they get sent so much stuff and they're styled in so many things. And it's really cool when someone chooses to wear your stuff. It's a great feeling.
Anne Muhlethaler:
It really is wonderful. Now, you've also been nominated twice as Accessories Designer of the Year at the CFDA Awards and you've received a lot of amazing accolades. So what's the most meaningful to you, and perhaps you can tell me why?
Jennifer Fisher:
Can I be honest?
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah.
Jennifer Fisher:
None of it anymore.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Okay.
Jennifer Fisher:
That stuff to me is industry stuff, and I am honored to be a part of all of that, and I'm so grateful that I've had the opportunity to have those nominations. But the stuff that really drives me daily is not that stuff anymore. It used to be, when I was younger and it was more of an ego thing. Now, what drives me and what I feel most proud of is that we have built this company to the point of where it is without outside funding. It's just us, and that's very rare to be able to do. Very rare. So all of those things are amazing and I am so proud and honored that I've been nominated for those things, but the industry has changed so much that I think it's really more about focusing on what can we do as a brand to outdo all of that stuff, to be honest?
Anne Muhlethaler:
That's awesome.
Jennifer Fisher:
All that stuff is really cool and it's amazing, but you've worked in the business.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. I find that it's a business that is compelling, and I feel like I've met people who work harder than anyone else in any other industry that I've come across, which I think is something outsiders don't see or know about or understand, so I have tremendous respect. But it's also very codified and it's quite old fashioned, despite all appearances of the contrary, and a bit stiff actually.
Jennifer Fisher:
And all that stuff is one night, and it's great and it's amazing, but it also gives you stresses that take you away from growing your actual business.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah, that's true. But I'm glad that you've gone to talk about this because it was something that I wanted to speak to you about as well. In the Katie Couric interview that you did for Skims, which I really, really enjoyed.
Jennifer Fisher:
That was a fun interview.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That was a really fun interview.
Jennifer Fisher:
She's really fun. Love it.
Anne Muhlethaler:
The two of you were great. I loved that bit where you were at Union Square Market as well. So I think it's in that interview that you gave business advice and you did say, "Do it without partners." Can you please tell me a little bit more about this? Because I have my own feeling and thoughts on that too, but I'd love to hear yours.
Jennifer Fisher:
Things have also changed since then. That interview was three years ago. Things have changed. My business is growing at a scale now where we do have to consider partners. So like I said, it's one of those funny things where you say, "Where are you going to be in five years? What are you going to do?" We don't know. At the time, I didn't want partners. Now I'm more schooled in things and we're at a level where we're getting much larger, where partners are a great idea for strategic planning and growth. We need to build a board of people, we need to work on growing our C-suite internally.
Jennifer Fisher:
So that's changed. But I think in the beginning, if you can do it as long as you can, we still don't have outside funding or partners, but it is something that we're considering. And I do think you should do it as long as you can on your own, bootstrap it yourself and grow it, so you're not having to report to others. I'm not looking forward to that part of it as much. But I think the things that will come with it, I've been so independent for so long that I'm ready for the... It's time.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. The upward trajectory.
Jennifer Fisher:
It's time. Mama's tired.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That's interesting.
Jennifer Fisher:
I'm ready for some growth. It's time.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah.
Jennifer Fisher:
It's time. You talk to so many different people and so many different people have different ideas of what your company should be, so it's quite interesting when you start speaking to people outside of your bubble.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah, for sure.
Jennifer Fisher:
Yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Now, switching things back, I think because I just mentioned the market of Union Square, which I used to love going to. So despite being a native Santa Barbarian. How do we say this?
Jennifer Fisher:
Barbarian?
Anne Muhlethaler:
I feel like you are now a true New Yorker, and I saw that come through in the various interviews that I read. And of course, New York did hurt a lot in the last few years, especially with the pandemic. And I know that a lot of people have made comments about leaving the city, et cetera, et cetera, and I was wondering how you feel about New York now?
Jennifer Fisher:
I love New York. New York is amazing. And if you knew what I had to do, Kevin and I, during the pandemic to keep my business going, it made me love the city even more because we did not leave. We were those ones. I always joke about because I was literally the person that was going in every day, because suddenly what happened with our business during the pandemic, the first week was terrifying because I think no one knew what to do. And then suddenly, boom, everybody was on Zoom and Google Meet and all you were seeing was this.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh.
Jennifer Fisher:
And suddenly, our hoop business and our shorter charm necklace business skyrocketed. So we had to figure out how to keep everything going with everybody working remotely. So I had to be the one that would go in every day and ship all of the orders alone, in the flat iron, where there was no one around. I always joke, do you remember that? That Will Smith movie, I Am Legend, where he lived alone in that ground apartment-
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh yeah.
Jennifer Fisher:
... off of Washington Square?
Anne Muhlethaler:
Washington Square. Yeah.
Jennifer Fisher:
Washington Square. So he'd go outside and the zombies were outside. That's what it felt like, but it made me love the city so much more because we lived through. I thought about it last night. It's insane that we lived through a pandemic in New York City and did not leave, with our kids. It's so wild, but what's also so amazing is how resilient New York City is. And also, during the pandemic, we did construction and opened a retail store in Beverly Hills, which is also totally insane. But LA is still different compared to New York. The cities are completely different, but New York is so resilient and it's really come back already. It's not entirely back, but it's pretty back. I went to a party this last weekend at a bar and it was hot and crowded, and dark and packed. And I didn't feel funny and I don't think anyone there felt COVID-y. It's interesting how New Yorkers are New Yorkers. We are tough birds.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. That's so true.
Jennifer Fisher:
Yeah. But the city's amazing.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Congrats on keeping things going the way you did because that's intense.
Jennifer Fisher:
It was scary. We had Kevin set up the system, and kudos to Kevin. Kevin figured out how to get all of the parts and everything to all of our employees' homes. And all of our employees, we didn't furlough one person during the pandemic, we kept all of our employees. And he figured out the system of getting everything to each person's home and them doing their work, and then it would be picked up or it'd be shipped. It's kind of amazing. Yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That's intense.
Jennifer Fisher:
That was so good.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So that's perfect as I wanted to ask you about Kevin. That's great. Thank you for that smooth transition. So you met Kevin in your mid 20s?
Jennifer Fisher:
In my late 20s, I met Kevin. We met through a mutual friend, my best friend, Natasha. They were family cousins growing up and we met. It's so interesting because our first drink was actually at Windows on the World, in the World Trade Center because he worked at Cantor Fitzgerald.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Wow.
Jennifer Fisher:
Before we got married, he had moved on to another company and worked in Midtown when 9/11 happened, but he at the time worked there. So our first drink was actually at Windows on the World, which is so wild. Once we met, it was these long phone calls every day and I would go back to LA. We had this system where we dated by bicoastally for three years, and he finally forced me to move to New York. He wouldn't propose until I moved. I was like, "I'm not moving unless you get be a ring."
Jennifer Fisher:
And he's like, "Well I'm not proposing to you unless you move here."
Anne Muhlethaler:
Wow.
Jennifer Fisher:
So I had to bite the bullet and move to New York, which is the best decision I ever made. Always, it was like, "Okay, well when our kids turn 10 or whatever it is, we're moving back to California." That will never happen, by the way.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. And as we were saying, your son Shane just turned 17, so that's crazy.
Jennifer Fisher:
17. It's so crazy. He's taller than me. It's insane.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So it's wonderful to see you talk about him. I wanted to ask you what qualities attracted you to him?
Jennifer Fisher:
I say this all the time. He makes me laugh and he's the nicest guy. He made me laugh probably three times this morning before I even got on this podcast. He's just one of those people that he finds lightness and comedy in everything, and that's very hard to come by. He's my best friend. He's amazing. I could not imagine life without him. Don't get me wrong, it is not easy to work with him.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Well, I was about to come to that actually.
Jennifer Fisher:
No. No. Most days it's really hard. What's so funny is that we'll have certain moments during the day where we're a couple and then it's like we're business partners and it's like... All day. And then we'll have an hour where we're light hearted, and then it's business again. It's funny how we always said we would never bring it home, and then the pandemic happened and it's home all the time. So he works from home now because we have too many employees for our current office. We're waiting to open our New York new flagship store, hopefully at the end of may, but we're working on construction right now. Another stressful thing. And then we're going to move our offices off of 5th Avenue and have larger corporate offices for everyone.
Jennifer Fisher:
So right now, he works from home. So he's here all the time and I have a schedule, I'll go in and out. I'm in the office much more than he is for design and for other things. But it's funny how the day ebbs and flows where we are not a romantic couple for most hours of the day, and then you have to figure out how to turn it on and off. It's a very interesting dynamic. It's not easy.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Sure. No. But I think you understood the dynamics of it. You have to turn it on and off in order to be able to... You need to see the difference, right, in the relations?
Jennifer Fisher:
It's hard. And it's hard to turn it on and it's hard to turn it off. We deal with it every day. The more stress that comes with the business, obviously it makes it harder too. It's interesting, but there's no one I'd rather do it with.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Right. Well, I was about to ask you, so when did you decide together that it was going to be the right thing for him to join the business?
Jennifer Fisher:
He joined the business now, how many years ago? Six years ago. It was always this thing where he wasn't going to really stay. It was sort of like, "Okay, he'll just come in and help and get things organized," and then he just never left and we don't want him to.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Awesome.
Jennifer Fisher:
So he's an integral part of the company. His role will change too, as we bring other people in. So it'll be interesting to see as we continue to grow and things do change, we make more of these hires, what his role will end up being exactly, but he's not going anywhere. He does all the things that I'm not good at. It's amazing.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Fantastic. That's a true partner.
Jennifer Fisher:
It really is. Which is most things. I'm the creative and the design, but he does all operations and finance and everything that I can't do.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Well, listen, I am in awe of what you have accomplished together and especially hearing about how you were able to continue to work and support and keep all of your team busy during this time. That's incredible. So hats off to both of you, that's really inspiring. I'd love to ask you one more question about Kevin. Can you tell us about Kevin and the coffee?
Jennifer Fisher:
Kevin and the coffee.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Which I want to name it in the podcast because I'm going to put links in the show notes, so people can discover the story of Kevin and the coffee.
Jennifer Fisher:
It literally was one of those things. It was like the avocado toast with the salt. It was one of those things where I have, because I have the Jennifer Fisher Kitchen account, and that account is much more personal and it shows much more of my day-to-day of being a mom and being a wife and my life outside of Jennifer Fisher Jewelry. And just one day, I was lying in bed and he just walked in with my coffee and he saw that I was filming him and he was like, "Coffee?" And people freaked out. He has a meme. Or I mean he has a little gif if you enter Jennifer Fisher.
Anne Muhlethaler:
He has a gif?
Jennifer Fisher:
Yeah. You can see Kevin Fisher bringing the coffee. He comes up. It's so funny. And it took off, and then if he doesn't do it, people are like, "Where's Kevin?" And he has women fans that stop him on the street and are like, "Kevin."
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh my God. That's amazing.
Jennifer Fisher:
"You get her coffee." It's so funny. He likes it.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That's really fun.
Jennifer Fisher:
Yeah. He's also that guy. I'm not forcing him to do it, it's just part of who we are as a couple. It's just, I cook the food, he brings me the coffee. Although, he's cooking a lot more too, which is really impressive. What's so funny is Drew wants his waffles now in the morning instead of mine, because I've been in LA for so long working, but he's mastered the waffles better than me, I guess.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Competition in the kitchen.
Jennifer Fisher:
Totally.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That's an interesting show. Let me know when it's on.
Jennifer Fisher:
Right?
Anne Muhlethaler:
Awesome. So we're almost coming to the closing questions. And before I ask you about those, I wanted to ask, is there anything else that you'd like to share or tell our listeners that we haven't covered in today's interview?
Jennifer Fisher:
I don't know. I feel like we've talked about a lot.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah.
Jennifer Fisher:
I don't know.
Anne Muhlethaler:
We're chatty people.
Jennifer Fisher:
So we do have something very exciting that's happening in a few weeks. We're having a party in LA, which is just so exciting too because it's our first opportunity, because we didn't get to do store opening for LA because it was still COVID. We literally opened, it was, was like the first people were coming into our store were wearing masks and their first time out of their homes. So all through COVID, we worked on creating a scent, a fragrance, because my whole life I've always worn a version of vanilla that I could never really get right. Same kind of thing with the salt and the jewelry. So I would combine certain scents to make my scent. It was one of those things where everyone's always like, "Who smells like a cookie?" But it was never something that was too coly, like too sweet, or I like to say that my scent that we're launching, I'm so excited about it, it's got hints of coconut in it, so it's almost like a cookie on vacation.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh my God, you sold it to me. A cookie on vacation.
Jennifer Fisher:
But it's not too sweet of a cookie, it's just... I have it on right now. I'm very excited because it's warm and it's musky and it's sexy, but it's just one of those things that you're going to want to wear daily because it makes you just feel yummy.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I can't wait.
Jennifer Fisher:
Yeah. So I'm very excited about that. We did that on our own. We did not license it. We worked hard to do it. It's coming out in limited edition on April 19th, so we're very excited about that.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That's incredible. But also, hold on a second, you didn't partner with anyone, you did it on your own. How did you do that in the middle of a pandemic?
Jennifer Fisher:
How else do we do everything on our own, man? We figure it out.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That's amazing.
Jennifer Fisher:
Yeah. So we did it on our own, but I think it's one of those things where as a brand that's going into lifestyle now and the world outside of jewelry, which is really where I want to be, to be honest. I love my jewelry brand and it will always be who I am and what I do. But I do love having these tentacles of other things. It really makes me feel more rounded as a designer and as a human. So to figure it out on our own and just test it, to see how it goes. I think just gives us more fuel for when we are ready to license and do other things and other partnerships and things that are coming down the pipeline. So that's all really exciting stuff.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. It's amazing, because it sounds like you're experimenting and just finding your footing before committing.
Jennifer Fisher:
Right, because if this one works, which I think it's going to, I know it's going to because I just it will, we have opportunities to then do other versions of it.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Mm.
Jennifer Fisher:
And also, not other scents, but also other forms of the scent in terms of home fragrance, candles and things like that. So that's exciting.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. That's wonderful. And I was thinking body oil, obviously, because if it's a cookie on holiday-
Jennifer Fisher:
I know, right?
Anne Muhlethaler:
... that's where my head's going to.
Jennifer Fisher:
I was thinking sunscreen too. There's so many different things that I'm thinking that I want to do with it. So it's exciting.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That reminds me, there was one other thing that I heard you say in one of the interviews, it probably was the Katie Couric one as well. Or was it Glamor? You said, "We don't need to be defined by what people have done in the past." So I feel like you've gotten rid of the rule book and you're doing whatever you feel is right. Is that? Tell me more.
Jennifer Fisher:
Exactly. I think more people have to live their life that way. Especially business owners and entrepreneurs. I think that we're told by so many people who are old school, so many people say to me, "Well, when are you making shoes and handbags?"
Jennifer Fisher:
And I'm like, "Never. That's not what I want to do." Why, because someone else did that in the past and probably failed as a jewelry designer doing that? Why do I have to be defined by what other people have done and most likely failed at too? I think it has to be naturally organic. And I hate using this word authentic to who you are as a person, as to what you want to be doing daily. And this is just where it's taken me because this is where my passions are. None of us are going to do the same things and for others to try to define that is crazy because they're not in my head. They're not me. So why am I going to listen to your opinion of what I should be doing? It's ridiculous.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. Where did that sense of freedom come from?
Jennifer Fisher:
I think it's from learning. We make so many mistakes as an entrepreneur and as a business owner and just in life as being humans, and we take bad advice and we listen to the powers that be. If I listen to what some of the most powerful people in fashion told me I should be doing, I would not have a company right now.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Wow.
Jennifer Fisher:
So I think it's learning to take people's opinions for what they are. It's their opinion, and you can listen to that. And if any of that resonates with you can follow through with that in your version of it. But I think for you to feel that you have to take a roadmap from someone who hasn't been down your road of what you're doing as a business owner is ridiculous.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That's a really powerful metaphor.
Jennifer Fisher:
Why would I listen to someone who is an EIC or whatever, who's telling me that I have to do this with my business? Because they've never been there before and they're not in my shoes.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. That resonates. That resonates with me a lot. Thank you so much for sharing that.
Jennifer Fisher:
You're welcome.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So now I'm going to ask you a few of my favorite questions ever, and I can't wait to hear the answers. So the first one is what is a favorite word, one that you could tattoo on yourself?
Jennifer Fisher:
This is my word that I have used for forever as a jewelry designer. It was one of the first words that I put on a brass cuff. It said, "Fighter," because I'm a fighter because I feel like I'm so tough. I've gone through so many interesting things that I've always fought my way through things. I don't know, that word has always resonated with me. And what's interesting is resonates with a lot of people, but it's not a word that's really used that often-
Anne Muhlethaler:
That's true.
Jennifer Fisher:
... which is interesting, because it's not about violence or anything like that, it's about an inner strength.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. Your inner warrior.
Jennifer Fisher:
My inner warrior is my fighter. It's my fighting strength. Warrior is a great word too, but I wouldn't put that on my body.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Awesome. I would love to know what song best represents you.
Jennifer Fisher:
Oh, God. It was so funny.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That's a hard one.
Jennifer Fisher:
No. So with your questions this morning and I was talking to Kevin and Shane, and was it Kevin or Shane? One of them was like, "It's the Rihanna song, Bitch Better Have My Money.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I love that.
Jennifer Fisher:
I was like, "Yes." No, it's actually kind of true because we also have this, this is really funny, in the back of my office, a friend of mine who is also an entrepreneur, gave me a little piece of art and it says, "Fuck you, pay me." It's all tongue in cheek and funny, but as an entrepreneur, those are all things that we live by.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah.
Jennifer Fisher:
We can't say that. We can't say it that way publicly, but it's true.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I side with you on that. Amazing.
Jennifer Fisher:
Yeah. It's kind of funny, right? Yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
What is a secret superpower that you have?
Jennifer Fisher:
What is my secret superpower? I don't want this to come off the wrong way, but it's my weird ability to guess things that other people might need, and Kevin would say, "It's like your eye," but it's not. I don't know. I think maybe it's my ability to be strong enough and saying "Okay, well maybe we need to do this. Maybe let's do this," and having the courage to do it. I don't know. That doesn't really sound right. Maybe it's my boundless energy. I don't know.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I was about to ask you about your boundless energy.
Jennifer Fisher:
It's weird. It's my whole life I've been like this.
Anne Muhlethaler:
It's not very secret, but it's secret-
Jennifer Fisher:
Not a secret.
Anne Muhlethaler:
... where it comes from.
Jennifer Fisher:
It's not a secret. I don't know. That's a tough one for me. What is my secret superpower? I don't no.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That's okay. We can let it be.
Jennifer Fisher:
Yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
What is a favorite book that you can share with us?
Jennifer Fisher:
Well, so I'm not much of a deep reader, as you might be able to guess, but I wish I was. I wish that was something that I could actually focus on because I have a very hard time with my attention, staying in reading. But when it is, and I'm going to say, and I mentioned it earlier and my favorite book, because it did completely change my life, is that is Ketotarian by Will Cole because that book, the health learning thing, really it changed my life. I'm not bowing to that doctor as being the end all, be all doctor, but I do believe that what he's taught me and others in that book is something that's really, really important to people that have autoimmune disorders. And in my 50s, for something to be that life changing for me, that's my favorite book.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. What is the last lie you told?
Jennifer Fisher:
It was a reason I couldn't go to some work event or something. Which we all have done many, many times. I think I just did it the other day.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah, absolutely.
Jennifer Fisher:
"Oh, sorry. I can't go. I got something."
Anne Muhlethaler:
Is there an embarrassing moment in your life that you could share with us?
Jennifer Fisher:
There's lots of embarrassing things. It probably has to do with... I've done so many embarrassing things, Anne, I can't even tell you. And some of them are embarrassing for different reasons, but I don't really have one that's. It would be passing gas in a middle of a very big fashion, or something like that.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That's very funny.
Jennifer Fisher:
Haven't we all done that?
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah.
Jennifer Fisher:
So I don't know. What is it?
Anne Muhlethaler:
So now, imagining that you can step into future version of yourself, what most important advice do you think that this future self can give you in your present state?
Jennifer Fisher:
My present state, I would tell me to breathe more often. I think to enjoy... As an entrepreneur and someone building your business here, we're always looking 10 steps ahead of what we want to be or where we want to go. I think that to enjoy the moment of where I am today more, and to look around. And I say this all the time, but every day is a gift. But in that gift, recognizing more of every day is going to be different and it's never going to be the same as today. So appreciating more of what happens each day as we grow and these milestones that we hit and appreciating them more because we're so in it, and you're so consumed in your bubble of, I just opened a store in Beverly Hills. That's a big deal to a jewelry designer, and I'm about to open a store in Soho, that's a big deal. But you're so caught up in everything that goes into actually doing it, you're not enjoying the moment of it as much.
Jennifer Fisher:
So that's what I need to focus on more, and that's probably what I would tell myself, to enjoy more of it the day-to-day of all of it because it's exciting. So you're looking at it as the stress of it instead of how exciting it is. So trying to slow down a little bit and appreciate what you have and what's going on a little bit more every day, instead of being so focused on what's next.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. Be more present.
Jennifer Fisher:
Totally. Which I need to work on every day.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So my last question is also my favorite. So Jennifer, can you please tell me what brings you happiness?
Jennifer Fisher:
It's my family and being alive every day to be with my family. It's the ability to be alive and to be here every day, doing what I am so lucky to be able to do, and to be surrounded by the people that I am surrounded by daily, and most importantly, my family and my husband. And my dog.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thank you so much. Oh yeah, don't forget the dog.
Jennifer Fisher:
Tito.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That's really wonderful. Thank you so much for all of your time and your answers and your energy. And it was an absolute pleasure to have the opportunity to have this in-depth conversation and to share it. I hope that many people will resonate and be excited and fascinated to find out more about you and your journey, and your fantastic cooking skills and all of your upcoming attractions.
Jennifer Fisher:
Thank you so much for having me. I missed you so much.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Me too. I will come to New York. Probably September.
Jennifer Fisher:
Please come to New York. Or more ease, let's meet in Europe.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. Okay. All right. Come whenever you want.
Jennifer Fisher:
[crosstalk 01:16:52] and I'll meet.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So I will put all of the links in the show notes so people can find you, the multiple Instagrams and the website and everything. So thanks again for being my guest on the show. Have a wonderful rest of the day.
Jennifer Fisher:
Thank you. You too.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And hopefully you'll-
Jennifer Fisher:
You look so good. It's so good to see your face.
Anne Muhlethaler:
You're so welcome. And let's catch up again very, very soon.
Jennifer Fisher:
I would love that.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Awesome. Thank you.
Jennifer Fisher:
All right. Bye. Bye.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thanks again to Jennifer Fisher for being my guest on the show today. You can find her online at Jennifer Fisher Jewelry, on Instagram @jenniferfisherkitchen, and all of the other links will also be added to the show notes. So friends and listeners, thanks again for joining today. If you'd like to hear more, you can subscribe to the show on any podcast platform that you enjoy listening to. If you'd like to connect with me. You can get in touch @annvi on Twitter, on LinkedIn, Anne Muhlethaler, and @_outoftheclouds on Instagram, where I also share some guided meditations and other daily musings, generally about mindfulness and of course, occasionally about the podcast. You can find all of the episodes and more as well on annevmuhlethaler.com. If you don't know how to spell it, that's okay, it's also in the links and the show notes. Please subscribe if you'd like to receive my monthly newsletter. So that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening to Out of the Clouds. I hope you'll join me again next time. Until then, be well, be safe and take care.