Introduction

Patrick: [00:00:49] My guest this week is Maureen Chiquet, the former long-time CEO of Chanel. Maureen also spent much of her career at The Gap, growing Old Navy from scratch, and serving as the president of Banana Republic. The topic of discussion is her experience running large businesses, and in finding one's way in a career and as a leader of others. I hope you enjoy this conversation, and that encourages you to, among other things, travel somewhere new and interesting in the coming year.

Patrick: [00:01:17] One of the most pervasive themes in the book, which is this ability to put yourself in other people's shoes. Maybe talk about that idea and how you came to that idea, and why it's so important.

Maureen: [00:01:23] Yeah, this was a really early lesson I had, but then it seemed to keep reinforcing itself throughout my career. When I was at L'Oréal, the first thing they do at L'Oréal is you go on the road, "sur la route," they call it, and you become a sales rep, basically with a little suitcase.

Patrick: [00:01:39] Love it.

Maureen: [00:01:39] Yeah, it was amazing. Now, here I am. I'm an American, by the way, and I'm 22 years old, and I'm sent to, not any part of France, I'm thinking I'm going to go to the Côte d'Azur. I am sent to the north of France, the Ch'ti, which is coal mining country, and I get a hypermarket as my account. Fabulous. I'm like, okay, I can do this. It's the Mammouth, the Mammoth, really is the name of it. I go in, and I am ... By the way, I have studied the marketing material, because I'm a good student. We're launching Studio Line hair gel or hair mousse. I have studied this, and I know what it does for your hair, and I know how you should apply it.

Patrick: [00:02:15] All the facts.

Maureen: [00:02:16] I am so good, I'm going to sell this, to the same guy who sells frozen peas, who buys frozen peas and sanitary napkins. I'm like, I've got this one. I walk in, I say hello to this guy and I'm getting out my marketing brochure and about to tell him how the mousse ... Of course, he's got shiny hair, Brylcreem hair. How the mousse is going to give him further expansion and more volume to your hair. He's like, "No, no no." He's looking at me like, just cut to the chase. I soon realized that we were not speaking the same language. He wanted to know what kind of discount he would get, and I wanted to tell him my beautiful marketing product. I realized I had to actually speak his language. I mean, I actually had to put myself in his shoes. That was the early lesson that helped me, I think, throughout my career, realize that we look at it one way but we actually have to look at it in the ways that our customers look at it, our colleagues, different people who work for us.

Patrick: [00:03:05] There's a guy I had on the podcast who started a company called Sir Kensington's, which has a new ketchup.

Maureen: [00:03:10] Yeah, the mustard, or ketchup, yeah, yeah.

Patrick: [00:03:11] The ketchup, yeah. He told a similar story where he would go into restaurants and they would try to sell chefs, basically, on using Sir Kensington's instead of Heinz. He'd tell them all the nutritional facts, and the sourcing facts, and all this stuff. It just wasn't working.

Maureen: [00:03:27] Right over the head.

Patrick: [00:03:28] He realized that it was far more effective to sit and have a beer with them and understand their context, and build a relationship that way. Basically let them give him the door through which he could walk, versus trying to ram facts down someone's throat.

Maureen: [00:03:41] No, that's exactly right. Know that, I learned it even in a weird way when I was speaking French. The first time I went to France, you learn French out of a book. You have the grammar structure, you might know the words, but boy, go to a country and try to start speaking it every day, things fall apart quickly. You quickly understand you can't translate. I can't look at this thing sitting here called a table and say, "Table, what is table in French?" Une table. It has to start to come from a different place, and in fact you have to enter into the French language. The context of their language and their expression. In fact, that became so important when I got to Chanel and I used French and said ... I never spoke English to my French teams, because I felt that if I spoke their language, which I did, and even if at times it was more awkward or more difficult for me to find the exact right expression, that we would have a different kind of conversation. That they would feel that I was on their side. That ends up counting for a lot as a leader, for sure.

Patrick: [00:04:36] Do you have any single, other than that one you mentioned, most memorable sale from the early days walking around with a suitcase?

Maureen: [00:04:42] No, but I do remember that I got the whole tête de gondole, which is the end cap, and I was so psyched. But no, I actually think I ended up doing better than I thought, even though I'm shy, so going out especially in France, in French, in the north of France and all the conditions. But I think I kind of like adversity sometimes, because it's a challenge, so it's like, I can do this.

Patrick: [00:05:03] One of the things that obviously you wrote a lot about too is just the creative process. There's a couple of juxtapositions in the book, so one being creativity versus logic in decision-making, even education, humanities versus the STEM type stuff. I would love to hear your thoughts on the interplay between again, the kind of cold hard facts and the more emotional side of it.

Maureen: [00:05:22] It's interesting. I mean, granted, I was in an emotionally driven business you could say, because particularly by the time I got to Chanel, nobody needs a $6,000 tweed jacket. But that said, I think we discount the fact that we're emotional human beings, and most decisions that we make, even once we think-

Patrick: [00:05:37] Almost all.

Maureen: [00:05:37] Almost all.

Patrick: [00:05:38] We rationalize it afterwards.

Maureen: [00:05:38] We think we're practical, right. Yeah. I mean, those are emotional decisions. What I learned, and it was really when I was a merchant that I learned this first, is that you can have all the numbers. You can study what sold in the past. I'm sure you can look at algorithms to figure out, now even more than when I was a merchant, to figure out predictively what might sell in the future. But at the end of the day, a customer goes into a store and looks at a product and goes, "I want this," or looks at an ad and goes, "I can connect to this. This feels like something important to me." By the way, I think emotion is becoming more important, not less, inasmuch as when I look at my kids who are both "millennials." They don't buy products from companies that they don't believe in. They don't buy brands unless a company is environmentally sound, there social justice systems are right. For me, emotion is equally if not sometimes more important in the way that we have to think as business people. Because we have to reflect who our customers are, at the end of the day.

Appealing to Emotion and Identity

Patrick: [00:06:40] If you had to break down the most important emotions, whether that's ones you need to manage or appeal to in customers, how would you think about that?

Maureen: [00:06:47] I always think that empathy is one of the most important things that you can have, both as a leader but as a business person. Because ultimately if you're thinking about putting yourself in a customer's shoes, that requires letting go of your perspective for a second, and sitting in theirs. For me, that sort of empathetic way of being ends up scoring high, and I've seen it. That, and I'd say the second thing I'm going to add is curiosity. That's not really an emotion maybe, that's kind of a way of being. But I've noticed that the best merchants are curious, because they're not looking at something at face value. Then there comes of course agility, and the being able to sort of change and move with the really rapid changing environment that we're in.

Patrick: [00:07:30] One of the things that I've found interesting reading about this stuff is the notion of somebody's identity, appealing to points of their identity. I can't remember the person's name in the book, but there was a section there about how models in an advertisement should be seen as aspirational tools. They allow people to project their own desires, sort of onto this. Can you talk about that idea?

Maureen: [00:07:50] When I was at L'Oréal, the part of the business that I loved, talking about creativity, was the part of creating images. I loved it, I think more than all the marketing studies and things like that, and charts and graphs that we were doing. I was just drawn to this idea of creating an image that could draw someone to your product. I remember these endless marketing meetings, where you'd have the agency on one side of the table, and you'd have the customer, which was L'Oréal, on the other side of the table. L'Oréal with their marketing briefs and checking off the boxes of, does the hair look this way? Are the eyes right? At the end of the day, really what you're looking at is a picture of something, that either you say, "I identify with that," or, "I want to look like that," or, "I don't." With these models, and I got very close to the art director, who explained to me, because I thought, "Well, wait a minute. Aren't you using women in a way that's sort of ..." I had this sort of instinct about, it feels kind of weird. You're using women for their beauty. He said, "No, no. This is an aspirational thing. You want to buy the products because they're so beautiful, and there's something that they give to the camera that's not just plastic, physical beauty. It's an aura of beauty that draws a customer to your product." To me, it was a really fascinating shift of frame to say, "No, no, it's not using someone. It's actually inspiring someone, so that they aspire to your product."

Patrick: [00:09:10] I would love to hear the contrast between kind of thinking about these ideas at somewhere like Old Navy, versus Chanel. I read an amazing book, which I did not expect to like but someone recommended, called Luxury Strategy. It talked about basically the difference between marketing in luxury and everywhere else. If I had to summarize the book, it's like, "Do the opposite of marketing."

Maureen: [00:09:31] Completely. I'll never forget, one of the funniest meetings. We had a new employee when we were at Chanel, and this person was from, sort of like me, from a more mass-market environment. We had to raise prices of our classic handbag, because we actually hadn't raised prices in years, so it was time to kind of inch them up. He was quite afraid that if you raise prices, you sell less units.

Patrick: [00:09:54] The opposite, yeah.

Maureen: [00:09:56] Absolutely the opposite. I'll never forget him looking sort of wide-eyed in the meeting, going, you've got to be kidding, we sold more units, not less? Really, less is more. I had to unlearn absolutely everything when I got to Chanel. Coming from Old Navy, it was all about exploit what you've got. Don't sell 10,000, sell 1 million flag tees. More is better. At Chanel, the more you sell, the less exclusive you were. Handbags are a perfect example. You don't want to see Chanel handbags coming and going on a street, otherwise that means ultimately, your brand will be less valuable. What luxury companies, this may have been in your book, but what luxury companies really do is they care quite a bit about the image of their brand. They're preserving that brand image in many ways. The trick is, it's not just preservation, you also have to push it forward. You have to figure out what that delicate balance is, between kind of holding it into a very prestigious or historical place, and making it modern and appealing to a broader range of customers.

Patrick: [00:10:54] Maybe say a little bit more about that last piece. In your book and also in the Luxury Strategy book, there's this notion of tradition being one end of the spectrum that's really important, non-changing aspects of the brand. But this need to evolve, because the best marketing, it catches your eye because it's different and new and unique. How did you strike that balance at somewhere like Chanel?

Maureen: [00:11:12] It's almost a constant conversation when you're in that kind of company. For example at Chanel, you've got Gabrielle Chanel, this woman. An iconoclast. I mean, she really changed the way women dressed forever. Took us out of high necklines and corsets and long gowns, and put us in jerseys and fluid products that allow us to move freely. That was her idea, so in a way she was very contemporary. One point that company, and it still does, but we wanted to tell her story. But you know that you can't tell it just as a history, because one-

Patrick: [00:11:43] Right, it's kind of cold.

Maureen: [00:11:44] It's cold and it's boring, and also not everybody has heard of it, but a lot of people have. We did this thing called Inside Chanel, which was kind of a cool retro take on her story. It was in chapters and it was really cool online. But once we finished that, the idea was okay, what can we do now that's really current to our consumers? Then we switched to something called Outside Chanel, which was basically looking at women who embody her spirit and her character. These were people who are famous, some women who are famous, who are less famous, who are artists, who are dancers, who are business people. It was a pretty cool way to say, how do you look at history? You can't forget your history and you have to keep anchored in it, but you also want to move that history forward and give people a reason to believe today that your products are still as great as they are.

Patrick: [00:12:30] Yeah. One of the ideas from that book that was just so amazing. It really sticks with me, is that you almost want to make it as hard as possible to buy the product.

Maureen: [00:12:37] Yeah.

Patrick: [00:12:38] Make people go to weird place or go through weird processes.

Maureen: [00:12:41] No, it was fascinating. When China was growing really fast, a lot of our competitors decided that they were going to grow really, really quickly in China. Granted, Chanel had the advantage of being a privately held company, which means that whatever you read in the luxury book that you read is exaggerated. Because you actually don't, you really don't have to do anything. Your shareholders are a small group of people, right?

Patrick: [00:13:04] Right.

Maureen: [00:13:05] As long as they want to do it, you're in good shape. Everybody was expanding, opening four, five, six stores a year in China, which for luxury is a lot by the way. We didn't, and my philosophy on it was, you've got to make it feel really special. Number one, you've got to make it feel really special and rare. But mostly, you've also got to have a kind of service that you need in any country, and it's got to match, at least, the service that you might have in Paris or in New York. That's not an easy thing to do when you're going in and you're working with a new culture. I think rarity becomes a really key issue in any luxury brand, is how do you maintain rarity? Also, how do you balance that with growth that is needed, not by the way just in publicly held companies, but also in privately held companies?

Patrick: [00:13:46] If you were to generically offer advice to a business, let's say, that is trying to build an effective brand. How would you frame that advice? What are the dimensions of that, that you think people should think about?

Maureen: [00:13:587 Everything has changed so much. I think the most important thing is, what is your purpose? Why are you here? Why are you doing what you're doing? For me, that seems to be equally if not more important than any other aspect of a brand that you can have. I think about purpose brands as being ... Nike's a great example of a purpose brand. They're here to make everyone athletes. In their mind, everyone is an athlete, and that's core to their being. Everything they do exudes that purpose, and the everyone isn't a random word, either. It's really about, it doesn't matter who you are, your gender, your race. You too are an athlete for them.

For me, Chanel was also to give women confidence. There's something about being able to really give women confidence. Once you have that, to me, you can hang so much else off of that. But if you're missing a purpose, and lots of brands are, I think the chances of success today, where there are literally also hundreds of thousands of more brands than there were maybe 20, 30 years ago, before the internet boom, I think is really important.

Patrick: [00:14:58] We talked at dinner about this book I had just finished, about the founders of Banana Republic. Where it was this incredible.. first of all, I didn't know. I don't know anything about any of this stuff, so I didn't realize that Banana Republic was this wildly different thing at its inception than what it is today, with this crazy safari, secondhand stuff, and Jeep Wranglers in the store. I didn't know any of this, and I just thought it was so neat how organic the process was through which the husband and wife built this business. You could see that purpose sort of develop naturally. It wasn't something that was decided in a conference room and dropped in. It seems like the organic nature is really important.

Maureen: [00:15:33] I think that's a great point. Because a lot of times, I think we're seeing a lot right now. These great businesses being built by HBS graduates who have an idea, and sometimes they're great ideas and they really are purposeful, and other times it feels a little bit like-

Patrick: [00:15:47] Mercenary-like.

Maureen: [00:15:48] Yeah, yeah. We've studied this, we've studied that, we've looked at it from 10 different angles, we think this is it. No, I think for example Chanel, when she started her business in the end of the 1800s, early 1900s, she wanted women to be free to move. That was really what she wanted. She wanted to be free to move. It came from such a pure instinct of just, I hate wearing a freaking corset, you know? I think women should be able to move too. To me, that's purpose, and if you can continue to capture that. That gets back to our conversation a little bit, on history versus modernity. To me, that's a modern idea. That's still a modern idea. You can take that idea and continue to contemporize it, and it is a purpose.

Finding Your Own Purpose

Patrick: [00:16:26] We can kind of shrink that concept down from the company to the individual, and I'd love to hear maybe just as an example how you think about your own purpose through the years? And maybe that's something that's changed and evolved a lot, and I'd love to hear about that. But there's also a section in the book about, I think the way you phrased it was, for people to find their own trademark within a business, whether it's as an employee or starting a business. I'd love to talk about what you've learned across your career there, sort of personal purpose and how that can be harnessed for good.

Maureen: [00:16:52] Yeah, that's a great question. It's so interesting. I don't know that when I was 22 and graduating college I had any clue of a purpose, other than I want to live in France. But that's actually something because in that was a deep, deep love for beauty. I wouldn't have been able to call it that when I was 22 years old. But the first time we went to the south of France and I saw the way the sun set on these gorgeous limestone buildings, and the sound of the cicadas, and the smell of the lavender, I was hooked on something that felt really important to me. I kept that within me, and I kept that throughout my career. Realizing that as it evolved, it was actually really about beauty in general, not just of things, not just of places, but beauty in people. I think that's kind of kept me going from job to job. It's certainly, my story about going to the Gap for the first time, what did I see? I saw something that touched my heart, because it was beautiful. When I went to Chanel, it was a very similar thing. There was something about the beauty that they were creating for women, and also giving to women to a certain degree, was something that touched me.

I've actually seen my purpose evolve a little bit, but really remain similar no matter what articulation it is. Right now, for example, I'm trying to write a TV show. I'm fascinated by TV, it's become a bit of an obsession. But it's so good right now, the stories that are being told are amazing. I was a literature major, and the other thing that I've always loved other than France was stories. I think stories have the power to change the world in many ways. It's that I'm finding that what I'm writing about still is, how do you begin to find beauty in yourself? How do you begin to find beauty in other people? I'm still finding that that theme resonates throughout my life, just a different way of going about it, or articulation of it.

Patrick: [00:18:39] I want to come back to the TV series, because I'm really interested in the whole process behind that. But before I lose the thread, just any thoughts on how people should think about how one's own purpose relates to their job? How that can be harnessed?

Maureen: [00:18:54] It's funny. I talk to a lot of students, go to universities and do chats. The other, actually this week, I did a talk at BlackRock for the women in BlackRock in their Lat Am division. A lot of young women were there, and there's always this question of, how do you figure this out? How do you find this? I always say, to connect that to a job, there are three things that I always consider. I'm in this question, by the way. The three questions, I should say. I'm in these questions all the time. The first is, what do you really care about? When you eliminate getting that promotion, or making more money, or having that great new house. Underneath all that, what do you really care about? What makes your heart beat fast? What could you not live without? To me, that's the first thing you want to identify. The second thing is, what are you good at? What are you naturally gifted at? And everybody has something. Usually, those two things are kind of connected.

Patrick: [00:19:48] Feels good to be good.

Maureen: [00:19:49] Right? That is exactly it, and I'm pretty good at seeing things. I have a discerning eye. I think, anyway. I hope. It's natural that this love of beauty and a discerning eye kind of go together. Then the third thing is your circumstances, sort of where are you in life? Sometimes we have to take jobs that we don't want to take. Sometimes we have to do things because we can't relocate. I feel like that's equally important in all those things' way, on how you can kind of fashion your purpose. But what I say to people in those cases is, within the job that you're doing, what can you find that really gets you excited? How can you begin to tilt in that direction? I think about L'Oréal. I had a classic marketing job. I was a product manager. But what I so loved was the creative side of the job. I so loved being with the art director, going on photo shoots. Literally almost in a physical way, if we were at one of those tables, I would move closer to the creative folks. I think there's almost a way of intending and putting yourself out towards that place that you really love, even if the job itself isn't quite that yet.

Patrick: [00:20:51] I want to come back to the writing aspect now. How did you start to triangulate, this is a creative process question, really. How did you start to triangulate on the style that you would have, or what you wanted to write about? I'd be curious, what kind of shows you think are excellent? Any of those ideas about how you even begin this process.

Maureen: [00:21:08] I think it started with, I saw this show called Transparent. Have you seen that one?

Patrick: [00:21:13] Yeah, it's the Amazon one, right? I haven't seen it, but I'm aware of it.

Maureen: [00:21:14] Yeah, Amazon Prime. It's exceptional. A person named Jill Soloway did it, and it's about their father. Their father became, well, I guess became a woman when he was 70, so she now is a woman. Really, that's the idea of the show, but the way that it's shot. The subject matter is kind of one of those subject matters you don't expect, a trans woman at the age of 70 coming out. It's actually a true story, somewhat. But it's a show that you don't expect, so it's an unexpected topic. But more than that, the way that it was shot was completely different than any other TV show I'd ever seen. It felt very organic, and it felt like you were entering into somebody's family, and sort of dealing with all their family dynamics around identity, really. Around who am I, what is my gender or not?It was a really fascinating show for me, and I thought, god, something appeals to me about this kind of story, where people are actually questioning their identity. Obviously, my book is called Beyond the Label, so it's still kind of a thing that intrigues me. I went from there and I started watching shows like Billions and Handmaid's Tale. We're watching Succession. Just the richness of storytelling. And oh, Orange is the New Black.

It was like, I've got to do something here. I've always loved film. I studied film when I was young. I've always loved stories. I have a lot of stories to tell, because I have a sort of rich past, I think, with 13 years at one of the highest level luxury companies in the world. My story won't be in the way of Transparent, it will probably touch on some things that happened in my life but not really. It would be fictional. It just felt like the right thing to do. I have no idea how to do this. I've signed up for a school in New York, I took lessons. I actually threw a really great number of sort of luck, really through this school, met somebody who I could co-write with. That's really been it, but it's almost like this weird pull that I get. It was like that Miles Davis poster. On the street you see something. You go, wow, that feels really vibrant to me. Not to mention the fact that I end up going where energy is. Think about this. When I started at Gap, it was right before the huge growth that we had. I was there from 1989 to 2003, so '89 was right before the Gap got great. I went to Old Navy, Gap started to kind of go down. But I went to Old Navy and then we built that.

Patrick: [00:23:42] The rocket ship, yeah.

Maureen: [00:23:43] Rocketship. I go into luxury, what was it, 2003? Right before the huge luxury boom. I kind of feel like for me, there's energy there, too. You're following, not unlike Boyd Varty and his tracking. You're following something that feels energetic to you, because you connect to it.

Patrick: [00:24:00] I love that. Since you mentioned Gap, it just makes me think about it. Maybe say a word or two about Mickey Drexler, a character that I'm sure people would love to hear about. Sort of an iconic CEO in his time. I'd love to hear your impression, and maybe what you've learned from him above all else. I'm always fascinated by mentorship, and kind of passing down lessons from one level to the next.

Maureen: [00:24:17] Yeah, Mickey is incredible. He's an incredibly dynamic person to work with and for. But one of my favorite Mickey stories is when I was a young merchant. Turns out we were going to do a marketing campaign for denim, and I was in charge of denim. Now, denim was not my favorite job, only because there were a lot more logistics than in other merchandising jobs. But my boss was on maternity leave, and he was going to determine what jeans would be shot in the next campaign, and the head of advertising was in this meeting. They called me in, and I was seven months pregnant. By the way, when Mickey calls, you go right away. There's no time to spare. I'm waddling down with my huge belly down the hall of the Gap, and I've got my jeans on a rack, I've thrown them together, and I had decided that we were going to really go after this stovepipe jean. It was a brand new denim. I was pumped about it, and I was a young merchant. I don't think I was arrogant, but I think I thought I knew what I was doing. He said, "Show us your jeans." I show him that jean, I said, "This is going to be our number one jean. It's in this fancy new Japanese fabric." He feels the fabric, he says, "All right." He's like, "Yeah, but I don't get it, the fabric's fabulous. Why aren't you doing that in your classic fit jean?" This was the jean that we were selling the most of.I was like, "Oh, because the classic fit, it's not cool. It doesn't fit well, it's high in the waist," it looks like jeans that people are wearing right now, by the way. But, "High in the waist, and pegged at the leg, and everyone is wearing wide-legged jeans." He's like, "How many of the classic fit are you selling?" I had to go look at my trend, and 20,000. He said, "Do you have a jean like this one, this new one that you want me to do?" I said, "Yeah. It's the wide-leg, but we're out of stock." He said, "Yeah, but how many selling of it?" I was like, "3000."

Anyway, he started to get really angry at me, because I kept arguing. I was like, "I know, but Mickey, this doesn't even fit, and the sales are declining." He starts sort of almost foaming at the mouth, he was so angry. Finally I said, "They didn't hire me or put me in this position for you to tell me what was right," or something. Anyway, he walked out of the room, stormed out. He was really angry because I was fighting with him on it. I'm seven months pregnant. I'm like, I've just lost my job. I have to call my husband. I don't know how we're going to make ends meet. I don't know what we're going to do. I go back to my desk, I'm crying. I get a call, immediately. A second later. "Hey, Maureen? Mickey." Oh, shit, here it is. He goes, "Listen. You're a really great merchant, but you've got to learn to listen." He goes, "Not just because I'm the boss, I just mean listen, like open your ears. To your customers, to the world outside of you. You've got to listen."

It was one of the best lessons that I ever had, and it stuck with me, because you know he was right. I was on my train, and I wanted to sell him something, and I wasn't taking in any of what he was saying, nor any of the reaction of anyone around the table. From that moment on, I really learned that lesson from Mickey, and watched him do this in meetings where Mickey always had, has, a strong point of view. But I would watch him in meetings, and he'd think something is great, but then he'd turn around and he'd ask like 10 people in the audience, "What do you guys think?" He really was open and porous to the way other people were looking at something. To me, that was such a great lesson. To be honest, he wasn't saying that because he was the boss. He really was saying that because he listens to people.

Leadership Styles and Culture

Patrick: [00:27:39] It's a great excuse to talk about some of the things you wrote about leadership, inside of the book. Contrasting this command and control sort of top-down order-based structure with a far more, I guess setting the table, is how I would put it. Creating the context for others to succeed, but not really necessarily directing. Creating the space, but not directing the activity. Is that a fair summary of the lesson?

Maureen: [00:28:00] Yeah, totally. It was a really interesting time. I took over Chanel, it was 2007 as the CEO. It was 2003 when I joined the company. You've got to picture this, because it was a crazy thing. I sit down at my executive table and there are, around the table, 10 men. And me. Now, I'm about 43 years old. They're at least 10 years, I mean, some of them were 20 years older than I was. I'm American. I speak French, but I am American, and they are literally all European, with maybe the exception of one, and mostly French. My claim to fame is, I have sold millions of units of flag tees off the back of a Chevy truck in a strip mall in the USA. And these guys have all been in the luxury business, and I kid you not, 20-plus years, most of them at Chanel. You can imagine that coming into that, in a way, I was cooked. But coming into that, there was no way that they could trust that I was going to be their boss, yet I was.

I had to start to think about, how am I going to be as a leader when they have more experience than I have, and when probably they don't really trust anything that I'm going to say? I can't go back to my leadership books and get a vision, and have a strategy, and go ahead and rally that team, because they're not going to believe me. I've really got to think about a new way of doing things. Not to mention the fact, this was 2007, so three huge phenomena for us. The first was the internet. This is the beginning of the digital boom. For a luxury company, it wasn't just an opportunity. It looked like a tremendous risk, because we talked earlier, it's all about exclusivity and rarity. And now you've got your message blasted all over the internet. Anyone can say anything about you. It's about control in the luxury business, so all that opposite stuff that you really want to do, the internet is now sort of dispossessing, right?

Patrick: [00:29:55] Breaking it down, yeah.

Maureen: [00:29:56] All right. You've got that phenomenon. Then you have globalization, which again, looks great. Floods of people in your boutiques, only you have customers who want to spend two hours with their sales associate in their private dressing room. How are you going to handle hoards and hoards, busloads of customers from BRIC countries who don't speak the language? You don't know their culture well? That ended up being a great thing and also very challenging. But you also had millennials who again, this new generation for us, both as employees but also as our customers. What they care about weren't typically the things that we were thinking about. The environment, social justice, having a lot of responsibility right away. We weren't geared up to that, and we were having clashes between the old guard and the new guard. I walked into a situation very unfamiliar, very unknown. 10 guys around the table, in a time of history that was incredibly disrupted. We're going to have to change everything.

Patrick: [00:30:49] Sounds like fun.

Maureen: [00:30:50] First of all, I can't go back and look at the Wall Street Journal to figure out how to be a leader, because that's not going to work with these guys. But by the way, they can't go back to their history books either, because anything that they were used to doing before is going to-

Patrick: [00:31:05] Is changing.

Maureen: [00:31:06] Is changing. That's when I started realizing, I need to engage in a different way of being, but probably so do they, so maybe we could do this together. It was then I started to shift my own leadership style into a much more listening, much more collaborative. Really getting their points of view, sitting at their side of the table, trying to figure out how to create teams in new ways where not everybody was siloed in his or her region, or his or her business unit, but really getting us to work and breaking that up differently.nAll of that led me to, this is a little bit later on, thinking about having to transform our culture. Because what I realize is, despite all my efforts to do this, and all the things that CEOs do like roles and responsibilities, and org charts, and move people right, and move people left, that this was actually something fundamentally cultural. We grew up in a culture where command and control leadership is the right kind of leadership. However, when you have countries all over the world, and now tens of thousands of employees, but then lots of them new, coming into countries and China, you can't command and control. You actually don't have the power to do that. You've got to create a culture where people fundamentally understand your brand, and in order to do that we all had to shift our leadership. That's when I started this immense leadership initiative, which we didn't call a program because I always feel like programs are start and stop, whereas leadership is something that continues on, and that was when we started active and conscious leadership.

Patrick: [00:32:32] Talk more about that, because it's kind of like the whole idea of, you can't airdrop in a purpose. It's got to kind of be organic. You can't airdrop in a culture, either, and so if you're trying to shift a culture, what's the strategy for doing that? It seems like a daunting problem.

Maureen: [00:32:45] First of all, yeah, you have to be pretty patient, number one. Because I consider it's like a five-year minimal process. But my thought was this. This is a kind of funny thing. We were in a meeting, and we do these things like, what do you think is good about our company, our brand? What does everybody think is right? What does everybody think changes? Everybody kept blaming this person called Culture. I was like, "So wait a minute, who is this person Culture?" They kind of all looked around and I said, "Guys, I think it's us."

At this point by the way, there were 20 of us, and there were women on that team, thankfully. I'd done part of my moving and integrating other pieces. I decided to launch this initiative, but what was kind of interesting about that, because you're right, you can't just drop it in, is how I went about it. Which, by the way, is a story about the biggest flop of my entire career. It'll go down in history, I think.

I now have taken note that listening and collaboration, flexibility, curiosity, all these things are leadership qualities we need to possess, and we're going to change our culture to integrate those qualities into it. By the way, this is at the same time that there's all these sociologists coming up with this term, feminine leadership skills. I'm like, right, score. I'm at Chanel. I'm a woman. We have lots of women who work here. We service women, and by the way, she was an iconoclastic woman, this is great. I am going to do this, and I'm going to launch some feminine leadership skills within this group of still mostly men but some women. I had a coach at the time, and I wanted to get it done right away. You said you can't airdrop it, I wanted it airdropped, right away. It's now July. I hire this team of consultants from California. Don't forget, my team is still mostly European, and I don't know what I was thinking, but I did that. Then it was the month of July, I decided I'm going to take my team offsite in July and we're going to launch the beginning of this program. Now, July ... Have you ever worked with anyone in France?

Patrick: [00:34:41] No.

Maureen: [00:34:42] Okay, so July is the worst month of any time that you can pick to launch a program like that. It's like-

Patrick: [00:34:48] Going into August when everyone's gone.

Maureen: [00:34:50] Right. They're getting ready for their August vacation, so either they're cramming to get done, or their head's already in Provence. I mean, so forget about it, you're not going to get anything done. But I decided, I have to do it, this is the right timing. I haul them into a conference room. Actually, not even a conference room. It was a ballroom somewhere in the west of Paris. It was spitting rain that day, that was not my fault. But then I decided that we needed to do some team-building exercises. I take my very French team out to the garden, and it's now raining, and I ask them to hold hands and sing Kumbaya. And this one guy on my team goes, "C'est un jardin d'enfants," which is basically, "This is kindergarten!" It was a disaster. I then take them back in, and I get up on my bandstand and said, "We need more feminine leadership skills! We need to collaborate and listen and be agile!" I was obviously not walking the walk, right? I totally missed it.

Anyway, they literally nearly kicked me out of the room. Total tissue reject. And Chanel, the culture is very defined there, so when things aren't going well, you know it, and I knew it right away. But in addition to feeling that things weren't going well, when people don't want to do something, particularly I guess this is true of France. I'm not sure about the States, but in France this is true. They take out their calendar and they show you all the reasons why they can't do it, because they're way too busy. We're not going for this. I get back home, this is an utter disaster, what am I going to do? My coach calls me. The HR person calls me. The consultants call me. We're going back and forth. We had an offsite booked in September. It's now July, whatever, 15th or 20th. I really just sat there and thought, you know what? I realized what a mistake I'd made. I thought, I've got to push the reset button. I am going to stop everything, cancel the offsite, and start over. I know that actually these qualities, that I think that we need to have, not just because they're feminine leadership. That's sort of a, actually a label that I don't know what I even really believe. But we need to have these qualities because they're 21st-century qualities. These are things that we need in our world, with our interconnectedness, with our globalization, for millennials. These are things that we need to possess in a much greater quantity than we have them. But I didn't go about it right, so I wrote a note to my team and said, "Look, I'm canceling the offsite. I don't think we're ready, and I actually want to hear from you what you think is right about the culture. What you think needs to change, and what kind of role do you want to play? Who will you be in this?" I spent two hours with 20 people, basically, one by one, a lot of hours, 40 hours or so. Collected everything, collated all their ideas into something that we call the From's and the To's, and we met again in October. Sat around a much smaller, in a much smaller and more discreet room, and that meeting went a lot better, and that was the birth of this leadership initiative. Which by the way, I fired the consultants. We decided to create from scratch, and we decided to do it collaboratively so that they could have a part in what we were going forward with.

Patrick: [00:37:51] Looking back now, what do you think the best outcome from that initiative was or has been?

Maureen: [00:37:56] The collaboration that came from being able to be much more vulnerable with each other and much more real. I have a little story about that. Our first speaker was a guy named David Whyte. David's a poet, but he's a poet who has an emphasis on leadership, and especially on introspection, on self-reflection. Even though my team by the way was now on board, this is January, when they heard that for our leadership initiative the first person was a poet, they looked at me like I had 10 heads. They were like, "Are you kidding us? A poet?" David, and he's worth looking up because he's got a beautiful voice, and his poetry is amazing. David comes in, he's an English guy, he's got a brogue, and he's very masculine. He stands there and talks for two and a half hours. I'm thinking, oh my God, this is going to be a disaster. Two and a half hours, and no one moved. No one even went out to smoke a cigarette. It was incredible. But what he does is, he talks about his own life stories. He tells about a time that his daughter and he got in a big fight, and how that resolved. He talks about when he lost his best friend. He talks about leaving his job and going into his calling as a poet. He's weaving everything with his poetry, but also with a notion called courageous conversations. These are the conversations that we're supposed to be having, but that we're not having or that we're too afraid to have. It could be conversations with the world, it could be conversations with the future. It could be a conversation with your team, or with your partner, or conversation with yourself. What are these conversations that you're not having that you need to be having? He talks, and again, nobody moves. It's incredibly sort of intense.

Part of this program was, or initiative I should say, is you get speakers but you work with them on their material and how that applies to the company or not. The idea was, we would break up into teams of two, and talk about a courageous conversation that we weren't having, possibly with our teams outside of this room, so that people felt safe. They went ahead and started the exercise two by two. They picked a partner, and I realized I didn't really have anyone to have a courageous conversation with, so it was kind of like, okay. Well, what do I do? But I guess I'll just sit her and write my courageous conversation. I also started watching them, and they were really into it. I started writing, here's a courageous conversation I guess I'm not having with them. David decides to wrap up the day, he calls everyone back, and people by the way were really moved by the exercise. You could see sort of the intensity. He calls everyone back in the room. He says, "Maureen, do you have anything else to say?" I have to say, that whole time I was feeling so out of integrity, because it was like I'm making them do work that I'm not doing. I did something I never expected. It was like a last minute crazy thing to do, but I got up and my legs were literally shaking underneath me, and my hands were trembling and sweaty. I got up and I said, "Here's the courageous conversation that I'm not having with you." I said, "Sometimes I'm afraid. Sometimes I'm worried you don't trust my leadership or you want answers to questions that I just can't give you. But I can't and I shouldn't run this company without you, so I need your help."

I'm now, with my paper in my hand. My hands are sweaty, I can almost feel my hands right now sweating. I look up, and I'm thinking, I've just totally screwed myself. This is a disaster. I see these empathetic eyes, almost like people could see themselves in what I had said. Even tears in some people's eyes. But then the weirdest and craziest thing happened, which kind of gets to the point of the story. Is a guy in the back row, who by the way was the same guy who said, "Jardin d'enfants." Very skeptical guy. He's looking at his feet, and he raises his hand halfway and he goes, "I'm an imposter." He goes, "I pretend to know things that I don't so I can impress my teams." Second guy raises his hand, I am not kidding. These are guys, by the way, at this point in their 50s. Second guy raises his hand and he says, "I don't really listen, I just try to validate my point of view." A third guy raises his hand and said, "I'm terrified of the unknown, which is why I'm so slow to make decisions."

From that day forward, it was almost like something broke open, and we could be real with each other. We could be in a space of vulnerability. And what that did, and it's a long story, but what that did was that actually helped us be more innovative. Because when you can trust that your team members aren't going to shoot you down, or that you're not going to be humiliated or embarrassed by an idea, you come up with a hell of a lot more ideas. And you listen a lot more. Because you know how somebody feels. All of a sudden from that day forward, it was kind of the beginning, and ideas began to germinate a lot more, so we could do things. One of the famous things that gets quoted in a lot of articles about my time at Chanel, we harmonized our prices around the world. Nobody in luxury had ever thought to do that. There was a time that our prices in China were 70% higher than in Europe. Part of it had to do with the appreciation of the yuan, but it was a really messy situation. Mostly because there was a lot of gray market out there when that happened. But we made this decision that it wasn't fair for Chinese customers, and we were engendering a business that we didn't believe was a good business, which is selling goods for pretty black market, that we should harmonize this. Everybody else in the industry, when we did it, their jaws were dropping. Wait, what about margin? What about..? It was the best decision we ever made. It completely changed the game for us. That kind of idea came out of someone not being afraid to say it, and I think when you create an environment where people trust each other, you can do things that you've never expected to do before.

Courageous Conversations

Patrick: [00:43:42] This idea of courageous conversations is interesting, and I wonder if there are any hallmarks or signposts, I guess, to help people find what...Because the difficult conversation or courageous conversation thing, it's something that's come up a couple of times. Are there markers of that? Is it just something you know needs changing but you don't want to address? Is that it, basically?

Maureen: [00:43:59] Yeah, I think so. I think you kind of know you're supposed to be talking about this, but you just for whatever-

Patrick: [00:44:04] Inertia, and everything.

Maureen: [00:44:05] Yeah. Inertia sometimes. A lot of times, just avoidance because it's painful and it's hard. When David Whyte tells the story, he talks about his daughter stomping up the stairs, and him coming and going into her bedroom with a cup of tea and saying, "Let's just talk about this." Because we asked him later, "So how do you have a courageous conversation?" And his first thing is, "Change the conversation that you're in. Change the conversation that you're in." It really makes a lot of sense. I mean, people came back from, I had one guy on the team who came back from this session with David Whyte, and it was a great decision, because it was time for him. He decided that he was going to retire. Because it was a conversation he had been avoiding having, and he sat down with his wife. It was touching, you say, is that good or bad? How does that help the business? Well, actually it does, because that allows you to get new talent and-

Patrick: [00:44:55] More resources, yeah.

Maureen: [00:44:56] Yeah. I kind of look at that, and it's hard with cultural change, right? Because there's no ROI you can directly put on these kinds of things, except that you're changing the mindset of a company so that they're prepared to deal with a future that's way less certain, way less known than the past, right? To me that's sort of what CEOs should be doing.

Patrick: [00:45:17] It seems like something that's true not just in business, but in any set of relationships. I guess business is a set of relationships too. That the more you let stuff build up, it has weird downstream effects and blockages that you probably don't think about. Sweeping something under the rug isn't just sweeping something under the rug. It's like creating a creative blockage elsewhere that is a huge impediment. Just avoiding those systems, whether it's conversation or otherwise, systems for avoiding those kinds of blockages are key.

Maureen: [00:45:43] Yeah, totally. I mean, I think that's it, and I think you're right. It's kind of a system and a technique too, and what I learned with that is not just the courageous conversations and the effect that you're having with someone else. But the ones that you're not having with yourself. That's self-reflection, and even getting the members of my team at Chanel to sort of think about where they are was incredibly helpful. I had one guy for example, who was in marketing. A really talented marketer, but his love and his strength was in the creative process. I think I could kind of see myself in him, and sitting down and asking him, "Have you had this conversation with yourself?" Then eventually him sort of revealing to me, "Yeah, I'd love to be in creative," and moving him, and he's now the creative director of the fragrance and beauty area, and watches and fine jewelry. I think these conversations can apply to so many parts of our lives.

Patrick: [00:46:37] Giving people that nudge. It seems like such a gift, you know?

Maureen: [00:46:39] Yeah.

Patrick: [00:46:40] How do you think about this introspective process, I guess now versus the rest of your career? I'm always interested by how that changes through time. We met through the Vartys, and Boyd and family are sort of my spirit animals when it comes to this topic. I'd love to spend a few minutes here on how you think about introspection.

Maureen: [00:46:59] You know, it's interesting for me. It's always been, I guess always since I had a coach at the Gap, so not always-always. And took note of the fact that when you actually sort of go deep within yourself, that there are resources that you never knew you had. There are new ways of looking at problems that you think you can't solve. I kind of feel like it's not just for a career, it's for a lifetime. Now I'm finding, and my partner Tess is a Zen student and we do meditation, but the more that I can sit with myself and with those thoughts, the more comes up. What I find really interesting is, introspection doesn't just have to be sort of an exercise. So it doesn't even have to be a meditation. It could be just spending some time considering where you are, who you are, or with your partner and doing the same thing.

We spend lots of time talking about our lives, about our aspirations, about what we're feeling. Sometimes you don't even know what you're feeling until you kind of talk about. I think that process gets you into places that are much more interesting than if you're ignoring your life. I know for me, I don't think I would have started writing a TV show if I hadn't sort of been introspective and gone, "Wait, what is that tickle? What's tickling me about this? Why do I find this so vibrant?" It's not like I was looking for something to do. I'd come off just writing a book, and I couldn't wait to do this. Something was coming up.But you might have that experience and ignore it because you've got a busy day, because you've got kids at home. It's taking the time to do that, I think kind of leads you, as Boyd would say, to your next track. I mean for me, it's been the case, anyway. Now it's sort of almost a habit. But you also start, I think also with introspection, the other gift is that you start to see how other people see you in a way. You can step out of yourself more readily because you're more open to embracing someone else's point of view.

Patrick: [00:48:53] Yeah. The thing that I've enjoyed most about that process is giving people more benefit of the doubt, maybe is the right way of putting it? Or being more empathetic, I guess is the word. More understanding, that everyone's got stuff they're dealing with, and things are hard, and don't give people too hard a time. It seems like a simple but powerful idea.

Maureen: [00:49:09] Yeah. I mean, it was one of the things I used to teach young merchants. It's sort of like, I remember, not even young merchants. I'm thinking about at Chanel, I had a conversation with a guy once. He was working with an outside vendor, and he was complaining about this vendor, who was a creative guy and who was a little bit nutty. He couldn't stand it, because the creative guy could never hit the deadlines. He's like, "He does whatever he wants, and he never hits the deadlines." This creative guy is kind of a well-known guy, so I had to stop this person who was working for me and say, "Why don't you sit there for a second and think about what it must feel like for him? If you were him, how would this feel to you?" Just that taking yourself. Because I think in a weird way, that's introspective too. It's like pausing for a second to say, what must this be like on the other side? All of a sudden he had a much greater understanding both of the other person, but also of himself, because he saw where he was hammering his ideas and sort of being stuck in his own way.

Patrick: [00:50:09] Since it's something we share, I'd love to talk about some places. The beginning of this whole story was you being drawn to France, and I think we share a love of Africa in common for sure. Just talk a little bit about what it is about some of these places that most appeals to you, and maybe highlight a few of them that draw you back.

Maureen: [00:50:25] For me, the French are interesting and France is interesting because I find there's an embrace of everything that is beautiful and sensorial. The French also particularly in the south of France, which is what first attracted me to France, kind of take time living life. There's a sense that things slow down a bit. Before dinner you have l'apéritif, and the sun is setting, and you're taking time with your family or with yourself to slow down and just look at what's beautiful in front of you. I've been attracted to France, I think for that incredible sense that the French just appreciate life. Sometimes they can be in a hurry and ornery and all the things and reputation that Parisians have, but there really is a sense of enjoyment, of something that tastes good, of something that looks good, of a beautiful smell. I think that's why they're so good at luxury, by the way. Africa is so interesting because I went for the first time, probably 15 years ago, something like that. Maybe not that long ago, but it's been a while. I have never had a vacation where I've just forgotten about absolutely everything else.

Patrick: [00:51:28] Everything else. Totally.

Maureen: [00:51:29] Part of it is, and I've also never been so tired after a day of riding around in a car. You're like, wait, what did you do today? I didn't exercise, I just rode around in a car and I'm exhausted. Again, for me, it's being filled, having your senses filled and sort of entering into this world where you do see that everything is connected. You watch when the leopard is out and is approaching you, and you hear the go-away bird, or you hear the barking of an impala. That sort of energy of everything working together, to me is completely sort of ... I am no longer myself. It's almost like the I disappears, and I'm part of this bigger landscape called the world. For me, Africa has been, I don't know about you, but for me, Africa has been a lot about that kind of letting go of oneself, and into this much bigger thing that is our universe.

Patrick: [00:52:18] The only other place that is comparable for me is New Zealand.

Maureen: [00:52:21] I've never been.

Patrick: [00:52:22] It's actually the same reason, but a different context. Like in Africa, and these are the two places I've come back from depressed, like sad that I had to leave.

Maureen: [00:52:31] Totally, yeah.

Patrick: [00:52:32] The deal in New Zealand is, there's wildlife, but it's not about the wildlife at all, it's about the landscape. This is South Island specifically, which is glacial. You just honestly can't believe what you're seeing. It doesn't seem real. It's the same idea of making you feel very puny, and the beauty there is just so overwhelming that you just kind of lose track of, like you said, everything else. That to me, when I asked about spaces, and France has I think some of those qualities too. Places or settings that do that seem really powerful.

Maureen: [00:53:02] I always think of it as a sense of awe. For example, I look out the window today, and this tree right here is so red, and it's getting redder every day. Every morning I wake up and look at it, and I get a sense of awe in my heart, that nature makes that happen. Almost the absolute amazement of the natural world that we somehow get cut off from, and I think you can't help in a place like New Zealand, where you're just ... It is all around you, or in Africa. We forget that this incredibly inherent life exists, beauty in life exists in our world. I think New Zealand sounds amazing. Africa, I'm addicted to it. It's almost like I'll go back whenever. Tell me when. I mean, the smallest things, and also I find that the reason we're so relaxed there is because we're engaging every part of our bodies and our senses. We're no longer using just that little thing called our mind to try to figure stuff out. By the way, I come back with a million ideas. It's almost like a meditation to be there, you know?

Patrick: [00:54:06] If I had to sum up our conversation, I would say it's about openness and immersion. You have to have both of those things, and maybe it's literally physical spaces like Africa, or somewhere else. But not everyone can get to Africa, it's so far. It's a long way away.

Maureen: [00:54:19] Yeah, exactly.

Patrick: [00:54:20] It's burdensome.

Maureen: [00:54:21] But go hiking.

Patrick: [00:54:21] Exactly.

Maureen: [00:54:22] I mean, it's really a question of a state of mind. Surround yourself with something that's incredibly beautiful. Go to a play. A couple of weeks ago I went to this play, this show in New York, at Lincoln Center with the Shaolin monks. It's incredible. They practice this beautiful sort of artistry, kind of dancing martial art form. I went to it because the guy who choreographed it actually did something for my leadership work at Chanel. He choreographed some stuff for us in Morocco.I mean, I just got completely absorbed by the movements of these people onstage. I don't think you have to go to Africa. You know what I think it is? It's letting go for a second of where you are and your complicated, busy daily life, and allowing yourself, you said it, the immersion into something that is greater than you.

Patrick: [00:55:11] You've given a lot of it already, which I appreciate. I wonder if there's any closing thoughts or advice, maybe specifically for younger people, starting on a career let's say, that we haven't covered. Any notes from being a leader, from being a worker, from your whole experience that you'd want to leave people with?

Maureen: [00:55:29] It's interesting. I think because I have two girls who have recently finished college and are out in the world. One has just got the job, the other one is looking for it. One of the things I can say that I'm most proud of but that I would encourage, in both parents but also in the younger set of people who are looking for what they want to do, is really staying close ... I mean, people call it passion. I don't think it's passion. It's way deeper than that. It's really staying close to that thing that makes your heart beat. I know I said that earlier, but one of my daughters is ... Both of them graduated from Yale, so they can really do a lot of things. Jobs aren't that easy even with that, but my oldest daughter has been dying to run an organic farm. After Yale she went off to work, actually, she joined a program for a year on an organic farm in Whidbey, off the coast of Seattle. I think about that, and I think, she's doing something because she feels passionately about the food that we eat, and about the way we grow it. That's what she cares about in the world. I love the fact, and you know what? She's not looking to be CEO of anything. My younger daughter is now tutoring inner city kids in Houston on how to write. Again, that's just something she cares a lot about. When I think about that, I just think life is short, you know? Yes, we all want to make a lot of money, we all want to have beautiful things, but in the end of the day, I feel like you are sort of the actions that you take in the world, and those have to be close to what you care about. I don't know, that may sound a bit trite.

Patrick: [00:57:05] No, that's lovely. That's great. The closing question that I have for everybody is for the kindest thing that anyone's ever done for you.

Maureen: [00:57:11] God, people have done so many kind things for me. I wish I could come up with one. I mean, there's so many. It's funny. I can think of examples of my ex-husband, who was very kind when we changed our relationship and became friends. I can think of my partner today, who was so kind to be with me throughout that process of really figuring out who I was, and separating from somebody I was with for 26 years. To me, I can think of my kids. I think of that part of my life, because that was incredibly tough. It was incredibly tough after 26 years to change a relationship. My kids, who held that space for me, and who well might have been upset and angry came back to me, and trusted me. To me, that's ... There's sheer kindness in that.

Patrick: [00:57:58] Yeah, wonderful.

Maureen: [00:57:59] Yeah.

Patrick: [00:58:00] Well, this has been an absolute blast. I appreciate all the time, such a great perspective.

Maureen: [00:58:03] It's so cool. Thanks a lot, it was amazing.

Created by @_Nick_Diller