00:05Really do your research and get a good foundation in a job that's in the industry where you want
00:11to work. I remember in my first couple internships calling my mom in tears saying this is so
00:17demoralizing and she said to me that when you're running and getting coffee you're being exposed
00:22to so much that you're just not even realizing it right now. I was designing handbags at the
00:27gap and had a lot of experience in that but my real passion was always shoes and so my
00:32husband Brian said you know we just have to start a shoe line and we didn't know
00:35anything about it really so we did tons of research we put whiteboards up across
00:40our whole apartment we interviewed all different kinds of people I took a shoe
00:43course and then we went over to Italy and we started our line. I think if you have
00:49your own company you're gonna be living this company all day long and it really
00:54has to be something that you feel super passionately about. Being both the owner
00:58of the business and also the creative director I'm getting to work on all
01:01different aspects of the business so I'm in business meetings but at the same
01:05time I'm sketching I'm meeting with my design team so I do a full range of stuff
01:10which is really nice. In a growing business every day you're presented with
01:14something new and you're having to expand your thought process even more you can
01:19challenge yourself to work on things that you had never done before. I remember
01:24when we started the company a lot of people that we went to were sort of
01:28negative like oh you're not gonna be able to do that you know not knowing
01:32anything could really be a gift and that you don't know what could go wrong and
01:35so you have this huge optimism but I do look back and think you know I can't
01:39believe that we did this you know we we hadn't done this before there were no
01:43guarantees that it would be successful but we got really lucky I guess. My name is
01:51Jessie Randall and I'm the creative director of Leffler Randall.
