My first account was Neiman Marcus. I cold-called them just like I had cold-called businesses when I was selling fax machines for seven years.

Don't be intimidated by what you don't know.

Courage is doing something despite the fear, and I've worked hard on being a courageous person.

I've always leaned toward a feminine, funky style, even in business settings. I used to paint my nails blue in 1993, before it was mainstream.

I started thinking about joy. Everything in our society is so purposeful. Let's bring joy back to the experience.

Most of us want to tell our coworkers or friends, or husbands or wives, our ideas. For what reason? We want validation. But I feel ideas are most vulnerable in their infancy. Out of love and concern, friends and family give all the reasons or objections on why [you] shouldn't do it. I didn't want to risk that.

I would say where I feel like I'm struggling the most in learning and giving myself permission to fail is in finding the balance in life. There are different aspects to women: there's the mother, there's the working woman, there's the wife, the friend, the sister, the daughter and so just figuring that all out. I continue to want to try new things and give myself permission to not be great at it.