[upbeat music] - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein.

Welcome to "Side By Side."

My guest today is a Yale University graduate.

She was critiqued that she needed more gravitas by presenting herself more professionally at work.

That review changed her life, and 11 years later, she started an innovative company that designs women's clothing.

Today we'll meet Lisa Sun, founder and CEO of GRAVITAS.

- [Announcer] Funding for "Side by Side" with Nido Qubein is made possible by.

- [Narrator] We started small, just 30 people in a small town in Wisconsin.

75 years later, we employ more Americans than any other furniture brand.

But none of that would've been possible without you.

Ashley, this is home.

- [Narrator] For 60 years, the Budd Group has been a company of excellence, providing facility services to customers, opportunities for employees, and support to our communities.

The Budd Group, great people, smart service.

- [Narrator] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally, thanks to our teammates.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.

[upbeat music] - Lisa Sun, welcome to "Side by Side."

Your life story is fascinating.

You went to Yale University and you majored in biology.

- And political science.

- And political science.

- And international studies.

- And international studies.

And today you're the entrepreneurial lady who began this fascinating company.

I want to get into that in a moment.

But first you worked for McKinsey and Company, and in a performance appraisal, they dared to tell you that you did not have gravitas.

What did they mean by that?

- Well, first of all, thank you for having me on.

I'm such a fan.

I was at McKinsey and Company for 11 years, which is a very long time to be at that management consulting firm.

Most people stay two years.

And the first year that I was there, I had my annual performance review as a business analyst.

Lots of people have an annual review.

And I walked in, and the first line of the review said, "Lisa comes across as young and overly enthusiastic at times.

She should seek to have more gravitas."

I didn't know what the word meant, by the way.

I had to go look at, this was 2001, L-I-U, look it up in a dictionary.

And it said, "Dignity, importance, and depth of substance."

Who has that at 22 years old?

Who has all of that?

And when I went and asked my boss, "How do you get gravitas?"

She said, "Go buy a new dress, wear big jewelry and great shoes."

I was making $43,000 a year, I was a size 18/20, and my boss just told me to buy new clothes.

- You were a size?

- 18/20.

- 18/20?

- Yeah, I was a size 18/20.

I've been various sizes throughout my life.

And I said, "Why do you want me to buy new clothes?"

And she said, "No, no, no, no.

Okay, let me explain.

Every morning when you wake up in the morning, you're the first person you have to look at, and you have to like yourself.

I can teach you how to be good at this job.

I can't teach you how to like yourself."

She said, "I put on a dress, and it reminds me to believe in myself."

Dumbo did not need a feather to fly, but it reminded him that he could.

And she said, "Whatever it is in your life, you need to remind yourself every morning to believe in yourself."

So really, the clothing and the review, it wasn't about clothing.

It was you have to be the first person to like yourself every single morning.

Otherwise, who else is gonna look at you and see anything great in you until you see it in yourself?

- And then you decided you're gonna start a company.

You just woke up one morning, looked at yourself in the mirror, you said, "I like you, let's start a company."

- No, no, no, no, that was the first year of 11 years that I spent at McKinsey and Company.

And what was great is I lived around the world, serving great fashion retailers, brands, beauty companies.

I got to work with the CEOs of the greatest brands in the world and help them solve really tough problems in short timeframes.

I was going to leave the firm and they said, "It's okay, take 11 months of paid leave, it's yours, and decide what you wanna do next."

I went around the world by myself, and the last two months of this time off, I went to Taiwan.

My parents are from Taiwan, and they decided to retire in Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan.

And during that trip, my mom convinced me to take my life savings and start my own business.

- Really?

- Yeah.

Which is very rare for Taiwanese parents.

They want you to be accomplished in corporate America, which I had done for over a decade.

I was really surprised that they wanted to support my entrepreneurial journey.

So that was 2012.

I flew back to New York City and signed the documents to start my own company.

And we launched a year later in 2013.

- Wow.

I wanna talk about the company in a moment.

And how did you end up at Yale?

- How did I end up at Yale?

Well, you know, it's funny.

- I don't mean that in terms of intellect.

I mean that in terms of expense, in terms of access.

- Of course, my parents are immigrants.

They came to the US with nothing.

When they came in the '70s, they were in Southern California, my mom worked on a hamburger truck, my dad worked on a loading dock.

They ended up owning restaurants, convenience stores.

I always say I cut my teeth working at the Mongolian barbecue, all you can eat, $4.95 at lunch, $11.95 at dinner.

And what was interesting is my parents saw achievement and education as a gateway to a better life.

I skipped two grades, so I started high school at the age of 12.

- You started high school at the age of 12?

- I know, at the age of 12.

- [Nido] Where were you at the time?

- I was, my parents had decided to settle in Fontana, California.

I was the valedictorian of Etiwanda High School, 400 kids in my class.

- Wow.

- And I was one of the first people to ever go to an Ivy League school from Fontana, California.

My high school was only 11 years old.

It was a brand new high school that had been created.

- And so you graduated as a very young person.

- At 16 years old.

- 16 years old?

- But my family, I think, and I think it's very common for first-generation immigrants to use these markers of success as a way to almost bury some of the pain that it took to get here.

When my parents were running their restaurants, my mom bought a Yale Mom t-shirt and wore it every single day, and I was so embarrassed.

- She was dreaming for you?

- No, when I got in.

- Oh, when you that in, oh.

- She wore it every day.

And I asked her a couple years later why she did that.

And she said, "No one treat me like dumb immigrant if I tell them my daughter go to Yale."

And so there was always an expectation for high achievement.

And now I know that was part of my parents' ability to cope with being the only Asian family in a very small town in California.

- How fortunate you are to have had a mom and a dad with such wisdom.

- My dad, when I was 12 years old, he decided that one of the ways I'd have enough money to go and pay, it was $28,000 a year in 1992 to go to Yale.

And he convinced me to enter all the speaking competitions.

So we went to Toastmasters every Tuesday, and I learned how to become a public speaker.

And I won the Rotary Club, the Lions Club, the American Free Enterprise, all these speech competitions, and paid for my first two years of college.

- Wow, that's amazing.

And now you are a celebrated professional speaker, traveling the country, speaking to large companies, represented by one of the leading speakers' bureaus.

I always say, "Only in America."

- Only in America.

- Only in America.

- By the way, only in America can your first speech coach be your dad, for whom English wasn't even his first language.

But it was more this determination.

He would always stand on the side when I got on stage, and he would, right before I went on stage, he'd say, "I believe in you.

You're my firstborn daughter and you're going to win this."

And think about having that voice in your head.

And even now as a professional speaker, I still hear my dad's voice in my head before I go on stage, because that really helps you deliver your message.

- How encouraging is that?

That's wonderful.

You are, you have siblings?

- I have a younger brother who lives in Brooklyn.

- And is he, has as much initiative, and desire, and commitment as you do?

- He does, and I'm very, very proud of him.

He's an artist, he's a filmmaker.

I'm very, very proud of the work he does.

- That's awesome.

All right, let's talk about GRAVITAS.

So you start a company.

You went back to New York, signed the papers, started the company, put your savings on the line, with your mom's blessing.

And what does GRAVITAS do?

- Our mission is to catalyze confidence.

- Catalyze confidence.

- Confidence.

Exactly.

- How does one do that?

- There's thousands of fashion brands, why do you need another one?

And I always said to my, I say to my team, "No market is too saturated if you understand unmet needs, if you understand that there's a niche, there's a gap that no one's filling in someone's life."

And so when I, I think deeply about women.

I have been a size eight, a 22, a 12.

And the first thing that I knew that we could do is we could be size inclusive.

- How did you go from 22 to eight?

We gotta talk about that.

- It took a long time.

It was years and years of work.

- It started in your head.

- It always starts in the head.

I don't think it's a physical transformation you go through.

It's an emotional and mental transformation.

And by the way, it's up, down, and up again.

It is a lifelong commitment to really understanding how much you love yourself and how that gets expressed in all aspects of your life.

Anytime I have felt bad about my body, I have taken stock of what I love about myself in that moment.

So many women I dress.

- All the way back to the advice of your boss.

- You have to yourself first.

- Look into the mirror, you gotta like yourself, yeah.

- And so I realized that there were three gaps in the market when I started the company.

One was size and body inclusivity.

And I felt very committed that, whatever size or body type you are, we can be there for you.

There will be at least two products that work for you.

We don't design from a fashion standpoint.

We take people's bodies and we design from the body back.

So we build the dress around bodies.

We build the dress around sizing.

And I think that's very innovative.

- And as a man, I don't know what you just said.

[chuckling] - Well.

- What does that mean?

You don't do it for every person?

- No, we don't, but there are six common body types, in terms of how women are built.

So you might have fuller hips, or you might be fuller in the middle, or you might have a tiny waist.

There's lots of different body types.

And when fashion brands design, they'll say, "This is a cool silhouette, now let's just retrofit it to different sizes and body types."

We think the other way.

We think there's six types of women that we wanna dress, size zero to 26W, what are two or three products that might work for each of them?

And we design around that.

And that's why women will come to me and say, "Well, this brand never fits me."

I'm like, "Well this is what their fit model is."

They use one fit model and they're trying to get everyone.

For us, we always say, "At least two products are gonna work for you.

There's at least two things that we make that were built for you and your body type."

So that was the first thing that we built around.

The second thing we built it around was innovation, in terms of, let's think through how to be the most valuable player in her closet.

We don't have to own 100% of the closet.

We wanna own the 10% that, when she puts it on, she goes, "This is it, this is what makes me feel good."

A lot of women, like the dress I have on today is the day women got the right to vote, it's newsprint.

They'll say, "I get the most amount of compliments in my GRAVITAS piece."

So that's the second thing we do.

And the third is, we come up with things never done before.

So our first product we patented globally, putting shapewear into clothes, so you don't have to wear an extra shaper.

My newest innovation is a jumpsuit that you don't have to get undressed in to go to the bathroom.

You probably don't understand that one, Doctor.

- But it sounds fascinating.

- But that's a big deal.

That's a very big deal, - That sounds fascinating.

- not to have to get undressed in the bathroom when you have to pee when you're in a jumpsuit.

So I think that those are the things where I said, "We can really exist here, and compete against much bigger brands."

- Where do you get those ideas from?

I mean, do you, is out of your personal experience?

Some of it, for sure.

- Well, there's two sources of it.

One is my personal experience.

I'm a very good listener.

I love to listen to women's unmet needs and their wants.

And the second is we listen to our customer.

We let her guide us.

And we are very open to feedback.

I always say, "Feedback is a gift."

If someone takes the time to give it to you, it means they care about your development.

And so if a customer takes the time to tell us, that means they want us to be better.

They want us to perfect something.

They want us to introduce a new idea.

I got an email recently saying, "Why don't you go up to size 32?"

And I said, "We want to be there for every woman."

We need to be big enough that we have the development resources because you can't just take a size 18 and grade it to 32.

That's not what we do.

We literally think through every single size on its own.

- Speaking of the dress you have on, you said it's the day women got the vote.

Tell me more about the dress.

It's fascinating.

It's a lot of articles from lots of different media, it looks like.

- Yeah, and I think what's interesting about, I'll tell you first what this dress represents, and then how we created it, 'cause I think the how is almost more fun than the what.

- [Nido] So this is one of your products?

- This is one of our products.

It's called the Evelyn Newsprint Dress.

And we released it on Women's Equality Day two years ago, which is the day women got the right to vote.

And we went to the National Archives, and we got articles written by women journalists who didn't get credit, they didn't get bylines.

And we got rights to use all of these different articles.

This fabric is printed in New York City, and it's 100% sewn by our workers in New York City.

So you create a job.

- It's made in USA.

- It's made in the USA.

And I feel very proud that we created a product that number one says something.

- It's a conversation piece.

- It's a conversation piece.

- Everybody's gonna ask you, "What is that?"

- I walked on the set, and everyone was, "What are you wearing?"

But the most fun part.

- Do people stare are your dress and try to read the article and stuff?

- Yes, and you can read them.

The newsprint is legible.

I've had people stop me at restaurants and ask me, and ask for my card to go purchase this product.

But what's fun about this is, every summer, we have high school and college interns.

Their project is the same project every single year.

Design a collection for Women's Equality Day.

So they start in June, Women's Equality Day is August 18th.

They have basically six weeks to work with our design team, to cost it, to get it into manufacturing, to market it, all of that.

This one was designed during the pandemic as a virtual internship by Hannah Duncan, and she had this idea to do newsprint.

And I love that this came from an intern.

This whole idea wasn't - That's awesome.

- necessarily something our design team came up with.

But it's been, it's become our bestseller.

- Amazing, amazing.

So GRAVITAS is all e-commerce?

- It's all e-commerce, and then we do.

- How does that work?

I mean, I'm trying to understand, if it's e-commerce, so do you Zoom with the customer?

Is the customer going to the website and can figure out who they are, and where they fit, and what category applies to them?

- So one is, it's an online shopping site.

So we do our best, as much as we can, to help people select products.

If people email us through the website, we do schedule Zoom appointments, we do help people, over email, figure out what dresses are right for them.

The second thing is, you mentioned I'm a professional speaker.

Well, every time I give a speech, we will often do a popup called The Confidence Closet.

So imagine a two or three day conference, I'll give a keynote.

And what the conference organizers and I will do is we'll create a private space for women, and they can book personal appointments for 20 or 30 minutes.

And I always say, "In The Confidence Closet, I get to understand every woman's vulnerabilities."

No woman goes into a dressing room without insecurities.

No one goes in going, "I got this."

They come in with all the things they hate about themselves.

And my goal is to create these safe spaces where they actually can feel really good about themselves.

I say that's an analogy for how we're take, the dressing room is how we're all taking on the day, by the way.

We're walking into every morning, thinking about our flaws and not our potential.

- Why is that?

Why do women always feel that way?

- Well, you know, I always say, "We're born fully self-confident."

Ask any five year old what they're the best at in the world, they'll tell you right away.

I'm the best at soccer.

I'm the best at hugs.

I'm the best at everything.

And I think women, in particular, during their adolescence, start to lose that because they experience setbacks, disappointments, comparison.

- Judgment of others.

- Exactly, envy, all of a sudden your influence and social circle has widened, and so you start to focus on your flaws.

Women are most likely to admit that they're wrong than they are to advocate for themselves.

In that adolescent period, they get pushed into a deficit mindset, or a shrinking mindset.

I underestimate my own abilities.

I think about my flaws rather than my potential.

And anytime someone comes into a dressing room, that's exactly what she's doing.

I'm going to lose 10 pounds.

I have big thighs, hips, whatever it is.

And when something doesn't fit them, they blame themselves, not the product.

So what I do in these Confidence Closets is I say, "Let's pause.

We have to stop.

If you bring that negative energy into this environment, I can't help you."

So I ask a series of questions.

- You gotta like you, right?

- Correct.

So I ask them what they're the best at.

I ask them about what, tell me something you're most proud of in the last six months.

All of a sudden they just start to smile.

And I say, "I'm a dress whisperer.

I get it right on the first time.

My job is to find something that fits you, not for you to fit into it.

So before we start looking at this rack of clothes, 10 minutes to talk about you."

And no matter what happens, they come out of the dressing room and they go, "This is a skinny mirror.

You've tricked me, Lisa."

I'm like, "No, it's from Bed Bath Beyond, it's $29.95."

And they go, "What did you do?"

By the way, I don't allow mirrors inside the dressing room.

You know why?

It's a trigger for the deficit mindset.

As soon as you undress and see yourself, you don't wanna try on clothes.

So the mirrors are outside.

I know I'm really good at my job, I know I can get it right.

So once I put you in a dress that I know will work for you, you come out and you see the mirror outside.

That is the entire analogy for how people feel about themselves, and women specifically.

Women are more prone to a deficit mindset, a shrinking feeling, a shrinking effect of underestimating their own abilities.

- Well now Lisa, you are, I mean, you're in a tough business.

E-commerce is a tough business, it's highly competitive, as a medium, in and of itself, is very highly competitive.

You are also in a tough sector of business, apparel, fashion, which is very difficult.

What have been some of the toughest challenges you've faced and how did you overcome them?

- Well, let's go back to March of 2020.

I make women's apparel for office, work, and events.

And our sales in March of 2020 weren't just zero, they were negative.

We have a 30-day return policy, so if you'd bought something right before we went into lockdown, you sent it right back to us.

We refunded more than we sold.

And in that moment.

- Did you call your mom and say, "Mom, what did you get me into?"

- Well, her answer's always like, "You will success, Ma believe in you," by the way, like she's got an unabashed belief in us.

And what I said to my team is, "In this moment, how can we help people?

How can we pivot with purpose and not with profit in mind?"

And what we did for 2020 is we used our resources to make hospital gowns, face masks.

We pivoted the entire manufacturing operation to personal protective equipment.

And so when I tell people this story, they're like, "That's unbelievable that you could do that."

I said, "It was about survival and preserving our beautiful brand that we had built for when things would get back to normal."

Now though, what I think is interesting is, this is a very tough business, fashion, and it's highly competitive, e-commerce is hard.

And I believe that we'll win for two reasons.

One is we create products and storytelling, and create jobs in a way that I believe no one else can.

I mentioned earlier this product I have on, this is a real story.

And I think to convince a consumer to part with their dollars, you have to be able to tell them a real story.

This is something special that I have to have in my closet.

The second is, I believe in my team.

I believe that we are resourced with so many superpowers and talents that there's very, who else can make hospital gowns and face masks, 72 days from April to July of 2020?

That's an incredible team that I work with.

- It is, yeah.

So as you look towards the future, how do you plan to grow?

Is it just by mere fact that America's a large country, and there are lots of women out there?

Is it a niched market directive?

In other words, women between this age and this age?

I'm scared by fashion, [Lisa chuckling] because fashion is an ever-moving, ever-changing, globally-influenced product.

But you seem to have the courage, and the faith, and the tenacity, and the grit to keep going.

- Well, from a future standpoint, we've built our business around two product categories.

One, which is great basics with a twist.

So we make like an $88 legging that people buy five or six of.

And that is a basics product where we do believe we make the best version of that.

I think there's a lot of loyalty in that.

It's like finding the great pair of jeans, or finding that one pair of pants that you know is magical.

So I do think we'll continue to build loyalty around that.

And that, I think, is regardless of age.

At that price point, regardless of age, socioeconomic, you can invest in that one great most valuable player pant.

The other part is what I'm wearing.

There's things that we wanna tell stories about, and that is a niche, that is a very specific target.

It's less fashion, it's more about being the most valuable player in the closet.

And I think when you take it away from fashion, and trend, and cycle, and having to keep up, because we're followers, we're not setting any trends, we're fast followers, you take away that pressure of if you miss a season, if you don't get it right this season.

The second thing is, I'm coming out with my new book in September of this year, 'cause I realize not everyone gets 20 minutes in a dressing room with me.

How do they get to participate?

- So this is a book for women?

- It's a book for women about confidence.

We're redefining confidence, outside of the traditional narrative.

And I thought to myself, if you don't get 20 minutes in a dressing room with me, or you don't understand our website, I wanna give you a book where you understand our philosophy.

And by the way, through that process, maybe you'll buy something from us, maybe you won't.

But at least you're part of this movement that we're creating to catalyze confidence for women.

- So GRAVITAS is a private company.

- It's a private company.

- Are you making money?

- I will say we are doing okay.

- Yes, because it's a cycle, especially e-commerce, it's a cycle.

It takes time.

I'm familiar with e-commerce companies, and furniture, and other sectors, and it takes a while for it to sort of get going.

- I will say e-commerce, and I've been doing this nine years now, it's a working capital-intensive business.

It has significant cash requirements to keep going.

So if you're asking me from a total bottom line standpoint, yes, we are doing well, but from a cash standpoint, that changes month to month.

- It's a lot of demand on the cash all the time.

- It really is to forward purchase inventory.

One thing we have done though is, half of our supply chain is in Asia, and half of it's in New York.

The New York City supply chain, we do tell customers it's anywhere from four, to eight, to 10 weeks to receive a product at times, 'cause that allows me to turn cash better in New York City.

- Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Well, I'm always fascinated by entrepreneurial leaders who have an idea and they have really clear vision, you seem to have a clear vision, and then have a solid strategy, and use practical systems to succeed.

You just talk about, you speak, you do all these, whatever you call them, closet.

- Confidence Closets.

- Confidence Closet.

And then they execute consistently.

Those are the elements of fundamentals for success.

So Lisa Sun, I thank you for being with me on "Side by Side."

You're an intriguing, inspiring, and certainly inventive leader, and we wish you the very, very best.

GRAVITAS, the name of the company.

I can't wait to tell my wife all about it.

- Thank you.

- Thank you for being here.

- Thank you for having me.

[gentle music] [gentle music continues] - Funding for "Side by Side" with Nido Qubein is made possible by.

- [Narrator] We started small, just 30 people in a small town in Wisconsin.

75 years later, we employ more Americans than any other furniture brand.

But none of that would've been possible without you.

Ashley, this is home.

- [Narrator] For 60 years, the Budd Group has been a company of excellence, providing facility services to customers, opportunities for employees, and support to our communities.

The Budd Group, great people, smart service.

- [Narrator] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally, thanks to our teammates.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.