I love it when people come out to cheer for our speakers before they've said anything. So, it just shows how beloved Cindy you are. We've known Cindy's face and name for over four decades, but I really want to get into the extraordinary business.
I say more than two decades.
More than, more than two.
I'm always like we've known each other for more than 20 years. So,
We go we go back. But I think fewer people know how you built this extraordinary business empire and really took very bold and unique decisions to do that. I want to go back to the beginning because you came into the modeling world where oftentimes there is a cap or shelf life on age, and fashion, every face, new trends, very, very fast-paced. But you really helped, I think, reframe what a model could look like in terms of how you approached your career beyond modeling. Did you always believe that there was something bigger in your career beyond that at that stage in your life?
No, absolutely not. In fact, I left—I was at Northwestern studying chemical engineering and my modeling career took off and I had to make the decision, I can't do both well. And I left school, but I thought I'll come back, you know, I'll come back at 25 when they put me out to pasture. So, I truly didn't have a big vision. But what happens, fortunately, my career went well and I got to work with so many incredibly talented people from, you know, not only photographers, hairdressers, and makeup artists, but also the clients and the designers. And if you want to, you can be a student in any situation. And I think I just kind of soaked it all up. And I had kind of one modeling experience doing Sports Illustrated where it just kind of was—I didn't feel like they were listening to how I wanted to present myself. And so the next year I was like, you know what, I'm going to do my own calendar. And that was like the very first thing of me taking my own power. And then that went well. And then the next time I had an opportunity, and it was an exercise video, I did that. And so it was like baby steps toward I guess what today we call brand building, even though there wasn't such a thing as like personal brand back then. No one was talking about that, and it was pre-social media and even pre-cell phones.
You can imagine you defied expectations in terms of what a career could look like. You mentioned the exercise videos, the calendar, and the like, going to MTV, bringing sort of a higher fashion voice, more accessible voice to your brand as well. Those though in retrospect feel like they were bold decisions, and many people had a lot to say on those decisions, knowing you from one world and seeing you go into these other worlds. How did you navigate that feedback, and did you see it as bold as others did?
I think so many times those chances that we take are like the defining moments in our career, right? So, one of mine was doing MTV at a time when I was definitely at the height of my career and doing Vogue, and MTV offered me this little show, and I think I made the least amount that they could legally pay me. And my agent was like, "Why are you doing that?" But I don't know, it was just like that little inner voice that told me, why not? And it gave me an opportunity to speak and to not just be a two-dimensional face on a magazine, like people got to know me a little bit. And because of that, that led to things like Pepsi because fashion had a very, at that time especially, a very specific Vogue crowd. Not everyone followed fashion the same way. And every little thing that I did to expand that, like doing Playboy, which also was a very big risk. But when I decided to do Playboy, instead of getting paid a lot of money, I said, "I don't want the money, I want the control," which I guess in a way is saying I want the power, because I wanted to be able to kill the story if I didn't like it. I was like, okay, we can dance this dance together and let's see if the images we come up with I feel good about, I feel empowered by. A very dear friend of mine took the photos; his name was Herb Ritts. And in the end, again, that opened me up to this male audience that fashion wasn't hitting at that time. So, all of a sudden, I had more options.
You made many of these risky decisions, some of which worked and some of which didn't. Was there one experience that was really formative for you in terms of how it may have shaped the opportunities you pursued or a different chapter in the work that you did?
Yeah. And I think, look, I think even the things that you try and that maybe don't succeed in the way that you hope they would, they're still learning experiences. And for me, one of the big ones was, as a model and you're on the cover of magazines, all of a sudden you're getting scripts sent to you and people think maybe you want to act. And actually the first time I got an audition, they handed me a script and they were like, "Can you read this?" And I just started reading it, and it was with Mike Nichols and he's like, "Oh, well you can read," but he didn't say, "Can you act this?" And I'm a very literal person, so I was like, oh, he meant like I should actually perform this. I wish he would have said that. But I did do a movie and it was not, shall we say, well-criticized, like definitely got raked over the coals. But even before that, I realized in doing that film, I'm very comfortable in front of the camera being Cindy Crawford. As soon as you try to put words in my mouth that aren't me, I couldn't even believe it. So that was such a gift for so many reasons. One, my sister came and worked on the film with me and we had this cool house in Florida for four months. So it was like a great experience that she and I shared. But for me professionally, it was like, oh, I can shut that road. I can say I'm not even pursuing that; I'm not thinking about that anymore. And that was so freeing because then it helped me double my efforts on the things that I do like and that I feel comfortable with and I feel like I'm good at.
You've talked about some of the insecurities you had as you navigated these types of opportunities, going into a boardroom and not necessarily understanding a P&L statement and a spreadsheet, which I think a lot of us can appreciate. But that time and in those meetings, you also said that it was incredibly important in terms of how you thought about your brand and your voice and what you can bring to these types of businesses.
Yeah. So, I guess I'd been on a board with a tech startup, so I had a little experience. But when I started Meaningful Beauty, I was probably like one of the most important people on the board as founder. And I was very good at calculus, but P&Ls are like a different type of the brain, and also just some of the supply chain and stuff, that's not my forte. And we would always start the meeting with that, and by the time they got to the part that I was good at, which was more the marketing and product development and all that, sometimes I found myself shrinking a little bit. I found myself afraid to say, this is my opinion and I feel strongly about this. And it definitely took a few years for me to go, I'm not an expert on very many things, but I am the world expert on Cindy Crawford, the brand. So if I say I think this works for Meaningful Beauty or for Cindy Crawford, no one really can argue with me. And I slowly embodied that. And at the same time, I have an incredible team, so a mutual trust developed where I love having great, smart people around me and letting them do their job. I mean, it took a few years for me to not micromanage every second. But now I love when—because I still kind of want to approve everything, but now I hardly have any notes, which is great because they know me so well and it's such a gift to have that kind of working relationship with people.
You talk about knowing what the Cindy Crawford brand is. What is it?
Well, I think I'm—look, I'm Midwestern. I am a girl's girl. I am about wellness, and obviously wellness encompasses so much: it encompasses fitness, it encompasses anti-aging in terms of outside as well as inside. So over the years, I've got offered, let's say, a cigarette campaign. That was an easy, "That's not Cindy Crawford." The more you can visualize what your brand is, I think it's much easier to say, "Oh yeah, this is on-brand, this isn't on-brand."
You can see what's on-brand and obviously have a better sense of how it reflects your values, but there's no shortage of opportunities that have been coming across the table for you over the decades. And I'm wondering, is there a discipline that you applied or framework that you applied in terms of really understanding which are the ones you wanted to pursue and why?
Well, I have a couple answers. I think I kind of touched on it earlier when it's like, as a young woman when I was single and I didn't have kids, it was like, "Why not? Why not?" Then you get a little older, your life gets busier, I had a husband, I had kids, and the question flipped and was like, "Why? Why am I doing this?" And it has to be worth spending time away from my kids. So that's one answer. And then the other one—wait, I had a second thought there, and you got me all excited about—
Yay. It was the way you talked about sort of how two almost accounts that you talked about in terms of—
