On Purpose with Jay Shetty - Imran Amed ON: Rediscovering Your Passion & How to Know When Your Job is Holding You Back

Episode Date: March 14, 2022

Do you want to meditate daily with me? Go to go.calm.com/onpurpose to get 40% off a Calm Premium Membership. Experience the Daily Jay. Only on CalmJay Shetty sits down with Imran Amed to talk about his journey in the fashion industry. With a love for business, his career had an illustrious start with Harvard Business school & later his job at McKinsey. Both of which nurtured his analytical skills, but left him unfulfilled and in some cases even encouraged to diminish or hide his true self to fit in. As a creative at heart, he was able to break through to create the leading platform connecting millions of people across the globe through fashion.As founder, editor-in-chief and CEO of The Business of Fashion, Imran Amed is considered one of the fashion industry’s leading writers, thinkers and commentators. Fascinated by the industry’s potent blend of creativity and business, he began BoF as a blog in 2007, which has since grown into the pre-eminent global fashion industry resource serving a 6 million strong community from over 200 countries. Amed has been named in Fast Company’s annual list of the Most Creative People in Business, British GQ’s list of the 100 Most Influential Men in Britain and Wired UK’s list of the 100 most influential figures in Britain’s digital economy.Want to be a Jay Shetty Certified Life Coach? Get the Digital Guide and Workbook from Jay Shetty https://jayshettypurpose.com/fb-getting-started-as-a-life-coach-podcast/What We Discuss:00:00 Intro02:52 Bringing other voices inside the industry05:38 Getting immersed in an international global environment14:47 Finding business school to be a limiting space22:32 Building a platform to connect people with the fashion industry26:35 Feeling unhappy with where you are at now   Episode ResourcesImran Amed | LinkedInImran Amed | TwitterImran Amed | InstagramImran Amed | BiographyBusiness of Fashion See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Jay Shetty and on my podcast on purpose, I've had the honor to sit down with some of the most incredible hearts and minds on the planet. Oprah, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Hart, Louis Hamilton, and many, many more. On this podcast, you get to hear the raw real-life stories behind their journeys and the tools they used, the books they read, and the people that made a difference in their lives so that they can make a difference in hours. Listen to on purpose with Jay Shetty on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Join the journey soon. What if you could tell the whole truth about your life, including all those tender and visible things we don't usually talk about?

I'm Megan Devine. Host of the podcast, it's okay that you're not okay. Look everyone's at least a little bit not okay these days, and all those things we don't usually talk about, maybe we should. This season, I'm joined by stellar guests like Abbermote, Rachel Cargol, and so many more. It's okay that you're not okay. New episodes each and every Monday, available on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Dr. Romani and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism.

This season, we dive deeper into highlighting red flags and spotting a narcissist before they spot you. Each week, you'll hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and their process of healing. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I have this opportunity with my team to bring together people to give them a platform, to connect with one of the most influential, powerful, cultural industries

touches people all over the place. And as an industry, we have a responsibility and an opportunity to really change the world. I'm a big fan of you. I'm a big fan of you. I'm a big fan of you. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every single one of you that come back every week to listen, learn,

and grow. Now today I get to host a very special episode. I'm seated in Oxford, London at the Soho Farmhouse. If you haven't been here before, it's a magical venue. And especially what I'm here for is even more incredible. I've been invited to speak at the Voices Conference for the Business of Fashion and beyond that, I get to sit down with the founder, the CEO and the editor-in-chief of the Business of Fashion, Imran Ahmed himself. Imran, thank you so much. First of all, for organizing such a beautiful event

and for being here today on the podcast. Thank you. The organization of the event comes down to my brilliant team. I'm sure you've been meeting them in all of the little nooks and crannies around what we call our campus. But we absolutely love putting this event together, especially this year because it's been two years since we've done voices, and we think of it as the best way to bring our team together because we've faced so many challenges in making voices happen. There's a lot of people to manage, a lot of things to manage in this year,

of all years. We have something at BOF called the Voices Test, which is like resilience in the face of adversity and rapid changes. And 24 hours before we were arriving here this year, they changed all the COVID restrictions. So we had to adapt and be agile and like my team is just awesome. So it's all because of them.

Yeah, well, what's even more special is everyone's really positive too. So they're doing all this hard work, but whenever they're with you or me or with a individual at the conference and the event, they've all been just so wonderful. So congratulations to you and the team. I want to start off because we are at voices.

And I have been absolutely blown away by every speaker on stage since day one, the diversity of conversation, the depth of storytelling. You know, when I was first invited and you hear about the business of fashion, the depth of storytelling. You know, when I was first invited and you hear about the business of fashion, you're thinking, oh, well, everyone's gonna be a fashion speaker and then you're like, no, we're talking about mushrooms. We're talking about root studios, which is incredibly looking at fashion

from a completely different angle. We're talking about activism. Tell us about where the idea for voices came from and what you wanted it to be when it first started and how it's evolved. Yeah, I think, like most industries, there were already a series of other industry conferences. And at B.O.F whenever we do something new,

we wanna do it differently. We wanna add something to what's already there. And at B-O-F whenever we do something new, we want to do it differently. We want to add something to what's already there. We want it to be disruptive because my observation was that most of the fashion events that we have are just fashion people. And therefore, you have fashion people talking to fashion people about fashion, which is a bit of an echo chamber, right?

And those kinds of conversations are absolutely important and they happen at fashion week and they happen in all sorts of industry events. But fashion doesn't live in a bubble. It doesn't exist outside the intersections of other things that are going on in the world. And especially now, amid a once in a generation, public health crisis, economic dislocation, heightening global

inequality, a global reckoning around inclusion, racial equity, diversity, we are connected to everything that's going on in the world. So our idea was we need to bring other voices into the room. And so it is a conference about fashion in some ways because we touch on all those topics, but we wanted to pierce that echo chamber. We wanted to bring other people inside the industry and help them kind of open the eyes of the industry and also to help people understand the power of fashion. So we have all these other people that come inside and kind of share their time and their expertise with us.

And one of the things they always say to me when they leave is like this is such a powerful industry, it's such a cultural force in the world. And fashion has the power to change things. So we set up voices originally with that vision, that idea that we wanted to disrupt the existing trade conferences, and we don't call it a conference. We call it a gathering. And we wanted to bring other people in and just create the kind of conversations

that weren't happening enough. And what happens is everyone, the non-fashion people go away and they've learned so much about the industry and they've got all these people. And the fashion people come and they've also met the non-fashion people. And it just creates this incredible energy. Well, in my today, you're a, you know, you're a fashionable gentleman. You're always in the world of fashion, but I wanna go back to what Imran was like growing up. I wanna hear about what your passions were,

what your interests were, what you would like as a teenager. What is it that you thought you were gonna go out to do? What were your aspirations as a teenager? I think my aspirations as a teenager were in a way largely defined by what other people expected of me. I grew up in Canada in Calgary. My parents moved from Kenya to Calgary in the middle of the cold winter in 1974 in December.

They were both the first in their respective families to go to university. Well, and my mom was already pregnant. And I guess they made a decision that they just wanted me to have the best life. And my parents, even before I was born, I think they were already thinking about what the future they wanted for me.

And as immigrants to a new country with $500 and great education, they really believed in the power of education. And they came to Canada with a view to kind of setting up themselves for a new life. And you know, that was a massive risk and change for them. Wow. And four months later, I was born. So they moved from Kenya to Calgary,

and I think that day I was born, or someone told me, this kid will go to Harvard one day. And I was named Imran after Imran Khan, because my dad was a cricket player. And so I think growing up, And so I think growing up, I always felt like these expectations, you know, and I didn't turn out to be athletically gifted in any way, but I was always driven towards a specific path. You know, many immigrant families, when they first moved to the West, you know, it's a bit doctor or a lawyer or engineer. And I think when I was a teenager, I felt like those were the only options. So at school, I was really, really nerdy. I used to get up at four or five in the morning to do

my homework or to study or to prepare for tests. You know. My mom sometimes used to wake up in the morning to quiz me and to work with me. She was a teacher. My father was an architect. And they really just invested in my education. I guess I felt this pressure or expectation that I had to go down one of these paths. In the evenings, however, I was a really creative kid. And I started, my first foray into the performing arts

was as a singer. It's, I was in a boy's choir from the age of eight. Yeah. All boys choir, and we literally sang like this. And then I got into public speaking, into drama, into musical theater. And so my days were really, really nerdy and academic and my evenings were filled with extracurricular activities that were rich with creativity. But when it came to making decisions about my education, I mean, maybe I kind of knew

that there wasn't really an opportunity for me in the performing arts, you know, as a very small, brown person. Like, there weren't roles for me and there weren't opportunities for me. Getting cast and things was very, very hard. You know, I was always cast as like the impish, mischievous puck or madhatter, you know, in plays and stuff. But like, to have a real career in the performing arts was like a risk that I couldn't afford to take. Honestly, so I was really interested in business and entrepreneurship, and so in a conversation

with my father, I remember we said, well, I should study business. So I studied, I moved to Montreal when I was 18 years old, and I studied at McGill University, and I studied for a Bachelor of Commerce. And I loved, I loved my time at McGill. In part, because it was this global university, there were people from all over the world, and I'd spent my first 18 years only in Calgary.

You know, and we didn't travel that much internationally. We did lots of road trips in North America. But Miguel was my first time being really immersed in a truly international global environment. And it found it so enriching. And Montreal, as a city, was hugely inspiring. To me, it's a bilingual city. And I really wanted to learn French.

I've been learning French since elementary school because in Canada, you get trained in English and French, but I didn't really speak French. So being in Montreal gave me this opportunity to immerse myself. One of the worlds was truly bilingual cities where the locals can switch from one language to another, like this. And I remember sitting in a mall one day, the food court, and there were these two women sitting next to me.

And they were going back and forth in a conversation, and quoting, they were speaking in English, and quoting in French. And I was like, I want to be able to do that. So when it came time to graduation, I actually decided to stay in French. And you know, I was just, I was like, I want to be able to do that. So when it came time to graduation, I actually decided to stay in Montreal. I worked in management consulting in a fully bilingual environment. All my friends left. It was great to be still in Montreal, but it was obviously not the same when all my college friends had left and gone to like New York and Paris and London and Toronto and other places. So after a couple of years, my dream was to work in Europe and I asked my company for a transfer

to Europe. So I want to live in Paris or London. And this is at McKinsey, right? This was at Deloitte. This was at Deloitte, actually. This was at Deloitte, okay, fine. I worked at a small strategy consulting group that they used to own called Braxton Associates. And they said, well, you're 22 years old. We only transfer people if they have unique skills that you can't find in London and you know, you're way too young. So at that point, I was thinking about applying for business school and I managed to get an internship slash fellowship with a microcredit organization in Bangladesh. I started making plans to move to Bangladesh.

Actually, the day I was planning to quit the managing director of the office, Bob Leach was his name. He came up to my office, which was very unusual, because I would usually go down to his office. And he said, I'm wrong. I found a way to move you to London. And you know, it turned out that there was someone in the London office who wanted to move to North America, and we were just going to swap. And it was the first time in my life I faced a real professional dilemma. I had kind of convinced myself that going to work in Bangladesh was going

to be really enriching. It was going to be great for my business school application because it would show a different, you know, professional experience. But I'd always wanted to live in London. And by this point, my family, my parents had moved back to Kenya. And so I'd been traveling through London to visit them in Nairobi. And, you know, I'd spend like three or four days in London, you know, and stop off some of the way. And there was something about this city that I just, I remember first time I was like driving down Paul Mall in London, I was in the back of the cabin.

I was like, oh my god. You know, it's like one of these things you only see on TV. And I called one of my professors, Professor Anne Hale. And I told her, I don't know what to do. Like, I feel like I could go to Bangladesh, or I could go to London. And she said, Emron, go where your heart is telling you to go. You have the rest of your career to give back. Because I really wanted to go and do this service in Bangladesh.

So did you have the rest of your life to do that? If you're instinct that your heart is telling you to go to London, just go to London. And so I slept on it and I was like agonizing over this decision and I woke up one morning and Professor Hale was right. She said, I just might, heart was saying, go to London. So that's how I ended up. I'm Eva Longoria. I'm Maite Gomez-Rajón.

We're so excited to introduce you to our new podcast, Hungry for History! On every episode, we're exploring some of our favorite dishes, ingredients, beverages from our Mexican culture. We'll share personal memories and family stories. Decode culinary customs. And even provide a recipe or two for you to try at home. Corner flower.

Both. Oh, you can't decide. I can't decide. I love both. You know, a flower, tortilla flower. Your team flower? I'm team flower. I need a shirt. Team flower, team core.

Join us as we explore surprising and lesser known corners of Latinx culinary history and traditions. I mean, these are these legends, right? Apparently, this guy Juan Mendes, he was making these tacos wrapped in these huge tortilla to keep it warm, and he was transporting them in a burro, hence the name the burritos. Listen to Hungary for history with Ivalongoria and Maite Gomez Rejón as part of the Mycultura Podcast Network available on the I Heart Radio App Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman.

I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on I Heart. I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford University and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. On my new podcast, I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions so we can better understand our lives and our realities, like, does time really run in slow motion when you're in a car accident? Or can we create new senses for humans? Or what does dreaming have to do with the rotation of the planet?

So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality. Listen to Intercosmos with David Eagleman, on the I Heart Radio appRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Not too long ago in the heart of the Amazon Rainforest this explorer stumbled upon something that would change his life. I saw it and I saw all this is a very unusual situation.

It was cacao, the tree that gives us chocolate. But this cacao was unlike anything experts had seen. Poor tasted. I've never wanted us to have a gun fight. I mean, you saw the stacks of cash in our office. Chocolate sort of forms this vortex. It sucks you in. It's like I can be the queen of wild chocolate.

We're all lost. It was madness. It was a game changer. People quit their jobs. They left their lives behind so they could search for more of this stuff. I wanted to tell their stories, so I followed them deep into the jungle, and it wasn't always pretty.

Basically, this like disgruntled guy and his family surrounded the building armed with machetes. And we've heard all sorts of things, that you know, somebody got shot over this. Sometimes I think, oh, all this for a damn bar of chocolate. Listen to obsessions while chocolate. On the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts. Or wherever you get your podcast.

That's amazing. And you just told me before we went live, you've been living in London for 20 years now. Yeah, so I first moved here in 1999. Yeah. And I ended up staying here for a year with Deloitte. And it was amazing because I got to work in Switzerland and Norway and Holland

and all over the place. All these countries I'd never been to. But I was also applying for business school. And I managed to get into business school about six or seven months after I moved to London, and I've been traveling so much that I actually didn't end up spending much time in London. And at that point, I quit my job and started planning

to go to business school. So yeah, that was here. And then after business school, I moved back. Yeah. What do you think were the biggest skills or gifts you took away from business school? I think that there's a lot of conversation today about education, higher education, graduations,

postgraduate, but as someone who actually went to business school, what were the things that you felt you really took away in terms of skills that you wouldn't have got anywhere else? You know, honestly, it really wasn't about the skills. I had studied business in undergrad, and you know, HBS has a really different way of teaching. They have a case study method. I'd studied from textbooks in undergrad, and you know, HBS was offering me a different way to study business, and it was great.

You know, don't get me wrong. There were elements of it that were different. And I learned stuff, but honestly, business school is not, for me it wasn't about the classroom, it was about, again, the people. I found it really hard there at first. It's a really intense place. And if you do the Myers-Briggs test, familiar with it. hard there at first. You know, it's a really intense place. And if you do the Myers-Briggs test,

familiar with it. Yes, very familiar. And, you know, I think like 70% of the, you know, incoming class the year I started were ENTJs. The so-called natural born leaders. Yes. So you have a lot of like really similar driven people sitting in a classroom every day.

It creates, you know, it creates in some ways a very interesting positive energy to drive you to be the best you can be, but it's also in some ways it's very limiting. And, you know, I found at times it was really hard and, you know and while I was there, 9-11 happened. As a Muslim, it was a really eye-opening experience because HBS is like a community. It's a community of people, And it happened in September obviously, and I was in my second year. And I remember thinking about all of the first years I had just arrived from Algeria or Egypt or Saudi Arabia,

Muslims from all over the world. And they were in the US for the first three or four weeks of their business career. And this horrible tragedy has happened and so A bunch of us gathered all the Muslims on campus together To just say you know like this is a really supportive community and By that point there had already been some instances of extreme Islamophobia on campus. You know people were saying really

misjudged ill-informed, ignorant, hateful things. And you have to remember it was a really charged environment, it was really emotional time. And so of course, everyone was feeling, there were harbor business school. There were so many connections of people in those classrooms, professors teaching in those classrooms, and the moral trade center. So of course, it was a very emotional situation, but for those of us who were Muslim, it was also really, really difficult because there was some really, really unfortunate things that were said. And you know, I realized, and we said to the incoming class that our responsibility is

to educate people. You know, and, you know, there's one moment I was in a classroom and that we were taking this class called the moral leader. And every week we would have a conversation about a significant moral dilemma faced by a protagonist in a fictional book or a situation that happened in the world. And the professor on this particular Monday, a week or so after the terrorist attacks decided to turn the focus into the current situation. And what that unleashed in the classroom was,

you know, really hateful things, you know. And one person in the classroom said, you know, my friend was in my section, you know, I'm worried he's gonna blow up the school. Another person down the road for me was, you know, Islam is a religion that teaches people to kill Jews. Now I could feel myself really shaking because my instinct, I got up and I just left. You know, and I remembered that conversation I had without incoming class.

I was in the hallway and I left and I was like shaking. So I went back into the classroom. And everyone's hands were up. And I realized I was the only Muslim person in that whole class. So I raised my hand. And I just spoke really from the heart. I can't remember exactly what I said. But I just felt like it was my responsibility to talk. And so I came to this whole story just to say that, you know,

even at a place like Harvard Business School, you have this highly educated people really well-traveled, worldly, you know, ultimately the experience is about the community people you're with and after I spoke, the whole class erupted into applause. And for the rest of the day, people were just showing up at my house that I shared with my classmates, thought it was just a cum, and it was very supportive in the end. But this business school was just really hard.

It's not easy. I treasure the people that were there that were you know there to support me and to this day You know my friends from university and my friends from HBS there my community that you know that holds me up That push me And so it's really not about the classroom. It's about You know the community. Yeah. And Ron, thank you so much for opening up about that and sharing that because as you were saying it, I can only imagine how hard that is to reconcile internally, not just the classroom

or not just the conversations or the moral leader discussion, but to deal with it internally while you're in a place like that. I've never told that story before, because I think one of the things that happens in our career, so looking at I went off to after business school, I joined McKinsey and London, I went back, and I think one of the things that I've realized over these last 18 months or so since we were all locked down

is that I've just internalized a lot of this. I've never really understood how it has impacted me. And one of the commitments I made to myself over these last months is that I just need to be more open about it because these moments like when you look back in your life there's these certain defining moments that you're changed. And that moment that I just talked to you about,

like that was the moment that really shifted me, you know? But I never talked about it. What do you think changed about you, behaviour wise or attitude wise or approach wise from that day? What did you do internally? Now as you're saying you held on to it, it feels like something you didn't share, but how did you process it? Or did you not process it at all to more recently. I mean, I think it wasn't a moment of processing.

It's been years. But really, I think a lot of that processing has happened in the most recent period, because I was sitting at home. And like everybody, I was reflecting on my purpose. You know, why am I here? Why am I doing? Why am I working so hard?

And what am I working towards? And one of the things that's really happened in my role here at the business of fashion is I've found myself in a position of influence. I found myself in a public position. And I've realized that as a gay person, as a Muslim person, as a brown person, as a Canadian,

with East African roots, and Indian heritage. There's actually a lot of people who see themselves or part of themselves in me. And there's not that many of us in the fashion industry. Certainly not, you know, in a position that I'm so privileged to have now. So I've just been thinking a lot more about,

well, what am I gonna do with this position? And that's really a lot about what voices is for, you know? And that's why we're here because I have this opportunity with my team to bring together people, to give them a platform, to connect with one of the most influential, powerful, cultural industries that touches people all over the place. And as an industry, we have a responsibility and an opportunity to really change the world.

You know, fashion imagery spreads everywhere now with social media. Fashion used to be this like really secretive little world. Everything was kind of contained and as an outsider, with a management consulting background, to come into this industry and be able to learn from everybody and all the interviews I've done all over the years, like every person I've met has taught me something. And now I have an ability to use all of that and connect that with my curiosity and my interest in that being part of a global community,

the one that I had at McGill, the one I had at HBS, and the one that we built here at B.O.F. All of these things are threads through my life. And so the processing has happened over a very long period of time, but I think in the last 12 months or so, it's really become much more sharpened. And that's the session that we're gonna have this afternoon

with you is like everyone's going to be talking about how their purpose has been either shifted or sharpened or focused because of this period that we've lived through. I'm Jay Shetty and on my podcast on purpose, I've had the honor to sit down with some of the most incredible hot some minds on the planet. Oprah, everything that has happened to you can also be a strength builder for you if you allow it. Kobe Bryant. The results don't really matter. It's the figuring out that matters. Kevin Haw. It's not about us as a generation at this point. It's about us trying our best to create change.

Lumerance Hamilton. That's for me being taken that moment for yourself each day, being kind to yourself because I think for a long time I wasn't kind to myself. And many, many more. If you're attached to knowing, you don't have a capacity to learn. On this podcast, you get to hear the raw, real-life stories behind their journeys and the tools they used, the books they read and the people that made a difference in their lives so that they can make a difference in hours.

Listen to on purpose with Jay Shetty on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Join the journey soon. This is what it sounds like inside the box card. I'm journalist and I'm Martin in my podcast, City of the Rails. I plung into the dark world of America's railroads,

searching for my daughter Ruby, who ran off to hop train. I'm just like stuck on this train, not where I'm gonna end up. And I jump. Following my daughter, I found a secret city of unforgettable characters living outside society, off the grid, and on the edge. I was in love with a lifestyle and the freedom of this community. No one understands who we truly are.

The Rails made me question everything I knew about motherhood, history, and the thing we call the American dream. It's the last vestige of American freedom. Everything about it is extreme. You're either going to die or you can have this incredible rebirth and really understand who you are. Come with me to find out what waits for us in the city of the rails. Listen to city of the rails on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, or cityoftherails.com. The therapy for Black Girls podcast is the destination for all

things mental health, personal development, and all of the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. Here we have the conversations that help Black women dig a little deeper into the most impactful relationships in our lives, those with our parents, our partners, our children, our friends, and most importantly, ourselves. We chat about things like what to do with a friendship ends, how to know when it's time to break up with your therapist, and how to end the cycle of perfectionism. I'm your host, Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. And I can't wait for you to join the conversation every Wednesday. Listen to the therapy for Black

Girls podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Take good care. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you again for sharing that. It's truly beautiful being drawn into your personal experience. And I love that you described it as a thread because it just shows how interconnected you feel it all is. Often, people feel their life is like a series of pivots. And you've had a lot of pivots in your life, but you don't see them as pivots. You're seeing them as a thread.

I wonder when you do make the transition from successful McKinsey consultant to starting the business of fashion being the authoritative voice in the industry, tell us about what gave you the courage again. I feel like you're just one of these people that's constantly had, and I have a lot of these questions from my community, my audience. I have questions like this from private clients I work with, and people that I've coached in the past. A lot of people struggle with transition. So whether it was your transition to McGill, your transition to London instead of Bangalod

Desh, then London to HBS, then HBS to McKinsey, then McKinsey, you know, there's so many transitions here. And then you take the biggest one which seems to be where you're feeling your purpose is being fulfilled. Tell us about what gave you the courage to make that transition from a phenomenal career, which most people would dream to have at a place like McKinsey,

but then to be able to make that. I find that really fascinating. It's interesting to use the word courage, because I didn't feel courageous. I felt, I was really unhappy. And without denigrating McKinsey, because McKinsey is an incredible institution with, you know, deeply held values. It's flawed like every organization.

But walking into those doors every day, I felt like I was leaving a lot of myself at home. And, you know, goes without saying, I was leaving all my creative side at home. You know, my PowerPoint slides, they were very pretty. That was my outlet. But there was some professional feedback that, you know, Mackenzie loves feedback. You get feedback after every meeting, you get feedback after every project, you get feedback,

every six months. And in some ways, that's really helpful, but some of the feedback I was getting. It was basically like, they said I didn't have gravitas. I've been thinking about this a lot recently. They said, well, you don't have gray hair. So, you need to be less expressive. I use my hands a lot. I'm a very expressive person. Yeah, I'm an animated, an animated person.

I'm a good person. Yeah, that's my theater cycle. Yeah, I'm an animator person. That's my theater cycle. Yeah. And then one day someone said to me, what did you feel more comfortable if you were a tie and a blue shirt? And there was one meeting I was in. And everyone was

as all men who had gone to Oxford or Cambridge and they were all wearing checked shirts. And they realized that the checks on their shirts were the same, were kind of the size of the checks on their shirt were commensurate with their tenure at McKinsey. And they all got up in a row and they lined themselves up. And I was sitting down at the table and I've been thinking about that moment. And if that's not a moment of uttering, because I was wearing an orange shirt, I was a brown gay Muslim guy at McKinsey.

And these were all like straight white men. And basically what I've learned over the last few months with I realized that it was very coded language that was being given to me to tell me to not be myself. And I know that now. But back then, all I was feeling was pain. And so I wrote them a memo and I asked for a sabbatical. And someone came up to me in the New Delhi Airport and he came up to me and I was on my way to Bangladesh actually to go visit a friend of mine who was on that same program that I was thinking about doing many years back.

And he came up to me and he said, I've been observing you. I have some things to tell you about your life. And I thought it was one of those quacks, right? I was like, I don't have any money. I'm leaving. My rupees are gone. He said, no, I don't want your money. Just sit down with me for five minutes. And he said to me, I want to talk to you. And a few minutes later, he said, you're not listening to me. So, yes, I am.

So, he took a piece of paper and he wrote something down, crumpled it up, and he put it into my hand. He said, hold this in your hand. He said, I want you to tell me your favorite color. I was like, I don't have a favorite color.

I was in such a negative place. I said, I don't have a favorite color, but McKinsey told me to wear blue shirts. Blue. He said, what's your favorite flower? I'm not really a flower person, or I wasn't back then. And my cousin's wife had Calla Lilies in her bouquet, so I said Lily. And then he wrote down my name, and he put, or one, two, three, four, five over the letters of my name, and he said, what's your favorite number?

And I picked number three because I was right in the middle. And I liked symmetry. He said, open your hand. I opened my hand and the little paper that he'd given me five minutes earlier said, blue, lily, three. And he said, now will you listen to me? And I spent an hour talking to that mountain. He said a lot of really crazy things, but the one thing he said to me was, you need to

practice meditation. Wow. And you know, in my culture, I'm in his smiley Muslim, We practice something called bunlige. And my grandfather used to wake up every day at 4 in the morning and he used to practice bunlige. And whenever I tried to practice meditation, I could never do it. But it stuck with me and then through a conversation with one friend and then another friend, everything pushed me towards something called pipastinam meditation.

So I wrote this memo to McKinsey explaining that I needed a sabbatical, I was feeling deeply and happy, I wasn't sure I wanted a career in the firm, and I wasn't going to be able to think about this properly if I was working as hard as I was working. Everything at McKinsey was done with memos, I had to make a business case for why they wanted me to take this time off. And they gave me the time off, and I found myself in South Africa doing the post-Nam

meditation, which is 10 days of silence. And that's when everything changed, Because I learned how to meditate. And I will, I mean, a whole other conversation that we can have one day is that experience because it's a, by a flu from Cape Town to Nairobi, and I sat down with my parents and I said, I have done everything that you thought I should do. And you've given me this amazing education and you've given me everything you could possibly give me. But I'm so unhappy.

I need to try something different. And they were really worried about me, because obviously I was just like over-achieving kid. And all of a sudden I was in South Africa, in a mill of a forest meditating. I mean, they were worried that I was gonna turn up in the saffron room, so something, and I know you were a monk. So you...

I did that. Yeah. And they said, okay, we just want you to be happy. Yeah. And that's when everything switched and then one of the realizations I had as part of that whole sabbatical that started talking to people in fashion, music, and feeling. I wanted to work in a creative industry. And you know, when I was a young, young, young person, I used to watch this television show called Fashion File, which was hosted by this man named Tim Blanks. It was on every Saturday, and I just, there's something about that show that I always was so curious about, because Tim used to be a Milan in Paris

and London in all these places, all these interesting people, and there was a business, but there was also creative. And I was like, I feel like drawn to this industry. And so a lot of time when young people say, like, how do you know what you're passionate about? I always say, like, what were you drawn to when you were a child?

Before anyone told you what your path should be, before you understood the expectations of society or other pressures, it's inexplicable what we're drawn to as children because it's purely intuition. And so I quit my job at McKinsey and that's what my journey into the fashion industry began. And when I'm that spectacular, honestly that is so beautifully shared and there's so many parts of it that I want a deep dive on. I also want to be respectful of your time. So it is exactly the time that we promised to finish. And I'm going to ask you to promise me that we can do a part too. Another time because I feel like we just framed who you are and how you got there, but I want people to hear about what it happens after that because we're at a really beautiful

space. So I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking out the time for opening up, for being so vulnerable with our community. You know, both of us had, I never have any idea what I'm about to do, one of these, what I'm about to learn. And I can honestly say that, you know, everything you've shared with me today not only has moved me, but I know it's going to move my community. So I want to thank you, appreciate you, but I know it's gonna move my community. So I wanna thank you, appreciate you, but I know that you've got a busy schedule.

So I'm gonna be respectful of your time. Thank you. And we're gonna find another time to complete the conversation. Let's do that. Let's do it. Even after I'm back and we'll schedule it. We'll make it happen.

Does it need, yeah, it was really special. Thank you, Jay. And thank you for... No one's really asked me those questions before. You know, like when you're, when you get in a position like this, what sometimes happens is like the media creates this narrative around who you are. And what I've realized over the last couple of years is there's a real gap in the way the media has created the story of this overnight success and all the stuff in the fashion.

Yeah, just the names as well, like McGinsey, the business of it. Oh, yeah, of course everyone. Yes, yes, yes. Everyone thinks, oh, it must have been an absolute dream. No, it has been a dream. Yeah. But it's a, you know, dreams come, dreams like the experience that I've had, they come with a lot of challenge and struggle. And, you know, it's hard.

You know, it's really hard. So I'm really grateful that you, um, I didn't know what we're going to talk about either. No, I know, I just sat down and I had no idea what we're going to discuss. But I wasn't, yeah, thank you. That was beautiful, thank you. Thank you. What if you could tell the whole truth about your life, including all those tender and visible things

we don't usually talk about? I'm Megan Devine. Host of the podcast, it's okay that you're not okay. Look, everyone's at least a little bit not okay these days. And all those things we don't usually talk about, maybe we should. This season I'm joined by stellar guests like Aburmate, Rachel Cargol, and so many more.

It's okay that you're not okay. New episodes each and every Monday, available on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to podcasts. The one you feed explores how to build a fulfilling life admits the challenges we face. We share manageable steps to living with more joy and less fear through guidance on emotional resilience, transformational habits, and personal growth. I'm your host, Eric Zimmer, and I speak with experts ranging from psychologists to spiritual teachers offering powerful lessons to apply daily. Create the life you want now. Listen to the one you feed on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, each bite-sized daily episode. Time management

and productivity expert Laura Vandercam teaches you how to make the most of your time, both at work and at home. These are the practical suggestions you need to get more done with your day. Just as lifting weights keeps our bodies strong as we age, learning new skills is the mental equivalent of pumping iron. Listen to Before Breakfast on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. skills is the mental equivalent of pumping iron. Listen to Before Breakfast on the I Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.