Following Your Creative Purpose with the COO of goop
When you’re faced with a new opportunity in your career, do you evaluate that opportunity based on the potential for growth it provides? My guest this week has used this measure throughout her career, and as a result, she takes career opportunities where she learns, grows, and adds value. Elise Loehnen Fissmer is the Chief Content Officer of goop, the lifestyle and e-commerce company established by Gwyneth Paltrow in 2008. Prior to joining goop, Elise worked for Condé Nast and Shopzilla, where she adopted a mindset that helped her design a career and life aligned to her purpose.
In this interview, Elise tells us of her career progression from recent Yale graduate freelancing at Lucky Magazine, to the opportunity at Shopzilla she pursued because of the tremendous learning potential that came with it. She discusses her early days at goop, when she found herself more hands-on with the team. Recognizing her own comfort with staying behind-the-scenes, Elise now challenges herself to grow by taking on external facing opportunities to contribute. In this episode, you’ll learn about the importance of prototyping ideas you want to try, and Elise shares the questions to ask when considering how new career opportunities align with your purpose.
Featured Moment
Elise: I think that we represent something that is anti-establishment—I think we’re just anti-patriarchy. All we’re saying is we want authority as women over our own bodies and we want to ask questions without judgment. We’re not going to judge other people, we just want access to the information. We want access to the source.
Majo: You shared on your Instagram the New York Times Op Ed piece, “Who’s afraid of Gwyneth Paltrow and goop?” Can I quote it? “Throughout history, women in particular have been mocked, reviled, and murdered for maintaining knowledge and practices that frightened, confused, and confounded ‘the authorities.’”
Elise: Exactly, I love that op ed, it’s an amazing op ed by Elisa Albert and Jennifer Block.
Majo: In other words, this is classic patriarchal devaluation, and I think it’s this fear, that’s actually centuries old, let’s get real. Around women’s wisdom and intuition.
Elise: And women having access to the information, and being able to make their own choices.
Show Notes
Get a glimpse of Elise’s childhood: horses, making jewelry, and attending hippy school.
Comforting her inner child and speaking to her anxieties around money and security.
Hear about Elise’s middle school years as a competitive athlete, mathlete, an artist.
The period of desperation after graduating from Yale during a time of job market uncertainty.
How landing a freelance job at Lucky Magazine became her doorway to the media industry.
Find out what Elise did in the period between working for Lucky and getting hired by goop.
Why you should work for the company that will teach you what you want to know.
Learning early on that waiting to be scouted, discovered, and invited was unrealistic.
How goop started as a newsletter in 2008 and the organic way that Gwyneth scaled it.
Goop’s approach to business: prototyping, experimenting, playing, collaborating.
Beginner’s resistance and imposter syndrome and why women excel at conquering them.
How Elise’s role has transitioned from managing to being an individual contributor.
Learn what the Netflix series the goop lab is all about and the edgy topics they cover.
The cycle of backlash that ensues every time goop does something expansive.
Thoughts about why people tend to defend the status quo and how it relates to authority.
The creative dream of writing a book instead of only ever co-authoring.
References
Who’s Afraid of Gwyneth Paltrow and goop?
Featured Black Female Voice
You may remember Kathryn from our episode called “Something More” where we talk about her journey from epidemiologist, to fashion blogger, to founder of digitalundivided, which fosters economic growth by empowering Black and Latinx female entrepreneurs.
Here’s what Kathryn’s been up to since that interview:
She has left Digital Undivided to start The Doonie Fund
She is writing her own book – she will be the first Black woman to write a business book with Portfolio/Penguin.
You can find more about Kathryn Finney work on kathrynfinney.com and on Instagram @hiiamkathryn.
One Last Thing
If you preorder my book, Break the Good Girl Myth, before July 28th at goodgirlmyth.com, you will receive a bonus training (~$300 value) to help you design your creative purpose.
In the training, you'll learn:
➕ The one intention you must clarify to get clear about your creative purpose
➕ How to more easily bring shape to your creative purpose by choosing one of the four creator paths
➕ A powerful process for choosing a direction if you have a lot of interests and passions
➕ How to turn your creative dream plan into an actionable, creative dream plan