The Next Chapter

I’ve never wanted to own or found my own business. I’ll admit, at least part of the reason has been that doing all that behind the scenes stuff like figuring out payroll sounds really unappealing. I don’t mind getting my hands dirty. I’ll write copy, project manage, book travel. But payroll, domain names, insurance . . . not my fave.

I do really like the right brain (creative)/left brain (analytical) aspect of building a brand and a business. It makes your day interesting and exciting to toggle between developing a detailed financial plan or digging into research data and finalizing scripts for a launch ad or the “design concept” for an upcoming seasonal product line. It requires mental agility.

I especially like figuring out how a brand can intersect with culture to create a spark. It’s kind of my wheelhouse. And I’ve missed it a bit in the last year and a half.

I also love being part of a team, all moving in one direction to do a thing. Whatever that thing may be. It’s why movie-making appeals to me. And business. You set a goal, you all move towards it. Together. (Writing books is not like this and while it is a satisfying endeavor, it is also a lonely one.)

But mostly, more than anything, I love making things and telling stories.

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” ― Philip Pullman

I’ve never let not knowing how to do a particular thing stop me from figuring out how to tell a story in a particular format or tackle a storytelling challenge.

I never went to business school or film school or MFA school at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop as so many writers do. I just start and figure things out on my own.

In 2006, I decided I wanted to write a book. It would be a memoir about my time in gymnastics. More than twenty years after I left the sport, I continued to struggle with the impact of abusive coaching. I thought: maybe if I write it all down, it will help me sort through it all, resolve some unresolved issues. It was more like a journaling exercise than a commercial one (meaning: I really didn’t think I’d ever sell it and get it published).

I didn’t know how to write a book. I’d never written anything longer than a college paper.

But I loved reading memoirs and I tried to analyze what made a memoir compelling. I reached the conclusion that a memoir was compelling (to me) if:

1. The story offered insight into a world that wasn’t familiar to me;

2. Despite the particularities of that world, the story’s themes had broader resonance that anyone could relate to . . .

3. It was well written.

I thought: well, I can do numbers 1 & 2. Not sure about 3 but I’ll give it a shot. I vowed to make it as honest as possible. I would reveal the parts that embarrassed me. Things I felt ashamed of. This is what makes stories relatable. Because we all do things we aren’t proud of. Every time I conjured a memory of something not particularly flattering (of me), if I balked at including it, I coaxed myself to include it anyway.

I committed to writing 1000 words a day. I got better and faster and got to 2000 a day. When I re-read those sections the next day, I usually deleted about half of it and rearranged the rest. But it was progress. Two steps forward, one step back. And in about 3 months I had what resembled a book. A memoir.

In the process of writing it, I had also waded through and come to better understand why I was so hard on myself all the time, why that impacted my self-esteem, and why I still had nightmares about gymnastics.

As Joan Didion said: “I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” I didn’t totally know that is what I was doing when I started the project, but I definitely learned that as I progressed.

I shared the 65,000 words with a friend, a writer. She said: this is a book. She made some suggestions. I edited.

Then I set about selling it. I was told I needed an agent (this was 2007, self-publishing wasn’t really a thing.) So I set out to find one. I sent email after email. I got rejection after rejection. Memoir is dead! (This was right around the time that James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces was revealed to be largely or partially untrue.) Maybe make it young adult? (No.) This just sucks. (Ok.)

But I kept emailing various agents and eventually after about 50 or so emails, someone said: Yes. Without reservation, without can you make this into something different from what it is right now. And I will forever be grateful to Kathy Green. For saying yes.

I’ll admit I had been about to give up, or retrench and re-write. But I got the yes. She sold it quickly. First time out. That part took maybe a week.

At any rate, my point is: I didn’t know how to write a book, but I set out to figure it out. And I did it. Like the book or hate it or never heard of it, I wrote a book. I’m pretty proud of that.

If you break things down into manageable steps — 1000 words a day, 2000 words a day, email 3 agents a day — you can get it done.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

In 2018, after I’d been publicly speaking about abuse in gymnastics for over 10 years, Larry Nassar was convicted and went to prison for life for sexually abusing hundreds of young gymnasts.

My maker brain went off: I want to make a movie. I want to connect his crimes of sexual abuse to the broader culture of abuse in the sport. I want everyone to watch it, be moved by it. I want it to contribute — in whatever small way — to making all of this stop.

I didn’t know how to make a documentary. But I set out to do so. I wrote the story, the concept. And I put my feelers out. I didn’t believe I could direct it (correctly so). So I started to talk to people in the industry and I was introduced to a producer through a friend and a directing team through the producer.

The directing team said no at first. They’d just completed a film about teen sexual assault. It was heavy. They didn’t want to revisit such heavy and difficult subject matter so soon.

But then, a few months later, I got a call: When do we start.

And we made Athlete A. Which I am also very proud of. And I’ll be forever grateful to Jon Shenk and Bonni Cohen and Julie Benello who made the movie with me. We did it together.

Throughout my business life, I was committed to telling stories as well. Levi’s is a brand that invites stories. When I worked at the company, people were prone to telling me their Levi’s story all the time. Uber drivers, teachers at my kids’ school, neighbors, everyone.

I backpacked across the country with nothing but my favorite pair of 501s!

I wore these to Woodstock! The weed wasn’t as strong then!

I met my wife in my favorite Levi’s!

I keep my Levi’s from college in a drawer and I try them on every year to make sure they still fit, to make sure I haven’t let myself go!

And so, as a person who loves telling stories, Levi’s was the perfect brand for me to work on. The campaign I created as Chief Marketing Officer — Live in Levi’s — was a storytelling effort at its core. And it was founded in this idea — something a young fan in France said during a focus group: I wear other things but I live my life in Levi’s. (Then she told us all the things she had done in her favorite pair.)

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Movies, books, brands. Storytelling is the through line in my life. It is what I love to do.

And so it is fitting that now, I am focused entirely on telling stories. Stories that I care about, not handed to me by a big established brand or company. The stories I tell now are not assigned. They come from my own brain. But are manifested with the help of of a team.

I wrote a second memoir, Levi’s Unbuttoned. (I had great editors — both my husband and the one my publisher assigned.)

I am making a documentary film called Generation Covid. As I’ve written about here, we are done filming and we are in the editing/post-production phase. I’m directing it with a partner Andrew James. Our skill sets are perfect complements. Storytelling and team work. Perfect.

And (drumroll. . .) I am starting my own brand. I’m not going to tell you what it is yet. But it is clothing. And it combines all the stories of my life. Athletics, corporate leadership, speaking truth to power — despite the naysayers and consequences.

And I’m doing it one bite at a time. I’ve got a team. I’ve got a name for the brand. I’ve got a logo and product and factories and office space. We’re going.

I’m excited to share more about this endeavor with you, but not just yet.

I’ve got to go figure out how to manage payroll. And get insurance. And purchase the domain name. And secure the social handles. And, and, and . . .

As it turns out I don’t mind doing any of that stuff too much, so long as it’s in service of something that is mine. The things I care about. The work culture I want to build. And the brand I want to invent — one that intersects with culture to create a great big giant spark.

This is the next chapter I want to write. 1000 words at a time.

Stay tuned . . . it’s coming soon.