The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Ivanka Trump On Life Lessons, Leadership, Values, & How To Be Resilient Under Pressure
Episode Date: January 13, 2025#796: Join us as we sit down with Ivanka Trump – a devoted mother, accomplished entrepreneur, visionary builder, strategic investor, bestselling author, philanthropist, & former Senior Advisor to t...he President. In this episode, Ivanka shares her journey of personal & professional growth, from launching a fashion brand to advocating for policies that support working families during her time in the Trump administration. Ivanka reflects on her entrepreneurial spirit, leadership lessons, family values, & commitment to creating meaningful impact. Ivanka also discusses her remarkable achievements & her perspective on her father’s upcoming presidential campaign as The Trump Administration prepares to return to office.  To connect with Ivanka Trump click HERE  To connect with Lauryn Bosstick click HERE  To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE  Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE  To Watch the Show click HERE  For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM  To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697)  This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential  Head to the HIM & HER Show ShopMy page HERE to find all of Michael and Lauryn’s favorite products mentioned on their latest episodes.  This episode is sponsored by The Skinny Confidential  Optimize your daily beauty routine. Shop Beauty Water (one day) EARLY at ShopSkinnyConfidential.com.  This episode is sponsored by DailyLook  Head to DailyLook.com to take your style quiz and use code SKINNY for 50% off your first order.  This episode is sponsored by Lancôme  Shop now on lancome-usa.com and use code TSC20 for 20% off Genifique Ultimate.  This episode is sponsored by YNAB  TSC Him & Her Show listeners can claim an exclusive three-month free trial, with no credit card required at YNAB.com/skinny.  This episode is sponsored by Momentous  Go to livemomentous.com/skinny and try it today at 20% off with code SKINNY, and start living on purpose.  This episode is sponsored by Ritual  Start a Ritual that’s backed by science, without the B.S. Ritual is offering 25% off your first month at ritual.com/SKINNY.  This episode is sponsored by Seedlip  Start the New Year right by visiting seedlipdrinks.com and entering the code SKINNYCONFIDENTIAL to get 20% off your purchase.  Produced by Dear Media
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The following podcast is a Dear Media production.
This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential.
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Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for
some major realness.
Welcome to the Skinny Confidential, him and her.
I have had the pleasure of getting to know Ivanka Trump over the past few months.
And I can tell you that she is even more impressive than you could ever imagine.
She is cool and thoughtful and well-read, and she's funny.
I really like her.
She's a devoted mother, an accomplished entrepreneur, a visionary builder,
strategic investor, bestselling author, philanthropist, and the former
senior advisor to the president.
I am very inspired by how she helped with the iconic redevelopment of the old post office building in Washington, DC.
You guys also might recognize her from her global fashion brand.
This brand generated hundreds of millions in sales in apparel, bags, and shoes.
I think people don't realize what a businesswoman Ivanka is.
She also starred on the hit TV show, The Apprentice.
She's authored two bestselling books.
She's served in government.
And she also led the effort to double the child tax credit.
She's really done it all.
This credit benefited 40 million American families.
And it also secured paid leave for the federal workforce.
She's really made a mark. I sat down at lunch with her before this interview
and I got to hear about how she's channeling her energy
into investing and incubating businesses.
She's really interested in helping entrepreneurs
who align with her interests and passions.
She's also returning to her real estate roots
and developing luxury hotels.
We're really excited though in this episode
to dive deeper into the story of Ivanka Trump.
I wanted to hear from her directly
about her journey from New York to DC to Miami
and what she's learned along the way.
In this episode, you'll get a bag of Chex Mix.
So you'll hear how her priorities have changed.
You'll hear what brings her happiness,
the impact she's made across all different industries,
her thoughts on everything from creatine
to Brazilian jujitsu.
We get the Ivanka Trump smoothie.
Beauty, weightlifting, time management,
and how she continues to shape the future
through her passions and pursuits.
She barely does podcasts,
so I'm honored to welcome my friend Ivanka to the Him and Heruits. She barely does podcasts, so I'm honored to welcome my friend, Ivanka, to the Him and Her show.
This is the skinny confidential, Him and Her.
This is your second podcast, right?
Only second.
Is this the only second time you've done it?
Uh-huh.
I love listening to podcasts too.
I started initially, I'm an avid reader,
so I listen now to a lot of books
and I toggle back and forth between them, I'm always like just pounding through books.
And it allows me to both have, enjoy sort of the page and the feeling of having a book
in my hand.
But in Miami, I drive a lot.
So if I get into a book, I normally start with it in hard form and then I start listening to it if I really like it after,
and I give myself like an hour.
If I'm into it, I also buy it on Audible,
and then I go back and forth between the two.
So I got used to, because of that listening,
and it was right around the same time I got into podcasts,
and now I'm always listening to something.
Almost to like my detriment, because I think for all of us,
we need sort of the calm, the peace,
the noise to just be taken down.
And I'm like such a voracious consumer of information
that I find myself sometimes filling the quiet moments
with learning or a podcast or a book.
So I don't know.
I think my commitment is to have more sort of quiet drives
in 2025.
What podcasts are you listening to?
What are your go-tos?
I listen to everything.
I listen to you guys.
I think you're great.
I'll take it.
I love Lex Friedman.
He's become a good friend of mine
and I know he's Austin-based here.
I recently met Theo Vaughan and I think he's so funny.
He's such a nice guy.
He's so sincere and curious.
And I love the podcasts he does.
He does these podcasts with just interesting people
from all walks of life.
So I find that really interesting.
I listened to one recently with a Carney. I listened to one recently with Akarni. I
listened to one with somebody who'd worked in sanitation, Staten Island for 25 years.
I think it's just awesome. So I like that a lot. There are a few business shows I really
like. This guy, Patrick, has a great show. He just interviewed my husband and it was
really interesting.
What's the show called?
It's called Invest Like the Best.
He has great stuff.
There's another great one called Acquired.
I really like that's a great business show.
And then a person who I'd been listening to for
a while and subsequently I met, he's Miami based.
David Senra has a podcast that's really good.
You'd actually love it.
Is it the Founders one?
Founders.
Okay.
It is so, he is just so passionate about reading,
specifically books on business, biographies and
autobiographies.
And he made a podcast out of just discussing various
books he was reading.
And it's great because he'll read quotes from them.
He'll talk, he'll talk you through the whole arc of
the book.
But over time, like Steve Jobs, he's done five episodes on Steve, so he'll pull in
from other episodes and other biographies or autobiographies. He'll
pull in material as well. So you really, over the course of an hour, you really get
to know the person he's profiling in a very intimate way. So it's, it's great.
And I've discovered a lot of really great thinkers through that podcast
that then I've subsequently gone back and read their books.
So it allows me like a little nibble at sort of their wisdom, and then sometimes I dive
in more.
It's really good.
Have you always been like this since you were a little girl?
Were you always this learner, consumer of information when you go back? I've always really loved learning and I
I would say like a constant in my life has been just a huge curiosity about
everything. Like there's no obvious thread that ties it all together. You
know I was never there were certain trends that. You know, I was never, there were certain
trends that I was, you know, I was always interested in real estate, I was always
interested in design, I always loved history, but I find these things and my
way of researching is to read. My way of tackling new experiences, I've often
found myself at the deep end of life, you know, having to sort of sink or
swim.
And one of my, the early ways I sort of embark on the process of trying to meet the moment
is through reading.
It's amazing.
I mean, for $30, you can learn somebody's life wisdom and they give it to you.
And having written a book myself, my husband wrote a book,
I know just how much work goes into a book.
Somebody will tell you all their secrets.
And so it's an amazing way to contextualize
an experience you're having
or to learn about something new.
Like right now I'm super fascinated in AI and robotics.
So I'll call up a friend, Actually, I called Lex on this.
He gave me some suggestions, but another professor also at MIT, actually, I called him up and
I said, look, I don't need a degree.
This was maybe two years ago.
I don't need a degree, but I really want to understand at a higher level artificial intelligence
and this sort of coming wave, the challenges, the opportunities, like,
can you create a curriculum? As if I was a freshman at MIT, can you just create something for me of
materials I can read, of articles I can read, of podcasts that you think are particularly
informative? And he said, sure. Three weeks later, I'd kind of forgotten about it. I thought he had
as well. He sends me this beautiful curriculum that I pounded through over the
next five months and it was amazing.
Is he a professor that does like that teaches about AI?
He's, he's an AI professor at MIT.
So that was like, it was an easier ask of me to make, but I've done that with,
with friends who are just subject matter experts in different fields where I
start to get curious and I
realize that I could spend a lot of time trying to curate from a place that's not so knowledgeable
or normally you can make a few phone calls and somebody will help you out.
So it's just, it's my way of learning and exploring topics.
You sound like someone that when you get into something you kind of get obsessed, but you
don't necessarily want to dedicate your entire life.
You just want like a base level of expertise.
Does that sound accurate?
Yeah. So it depends how far I want to go with it.
I mean, something like AI not being a mathematician
or a computer scientist, there's probably a cap
on how far I can go with it.
But one of the cool things about that particular space
is the amount of entrepreneurialism,
that layer over it.
So if you know the capabilities and you have a lot of sort of reverence for it and a little
bit of fear, there's just a lot of thinking you can do in collaboration with the people
who are the subject matter experts.
We were just talking about this the other day.
Not that you need another career,
but you would be a good podcast host.
Ooh.
Because you're curious.
I mean, and you do know a lot of different people.
You would make a very good podcast host.
Well, thank you.
You've lived a lot of lives.
You've been a business woman, an advisor, a mom,
someone navigating politics, family, entrepreneur.
When you grew up with the
last name Trump, how did that shape how you thought about success?
You know it's interesting, growing up in Manhattan, I had a lot of people around
me whose parents were very accomplished, were either public figures themselves or
had experienced great success, wealth, fame, whatever it may be, and great,
I guess, material success, I should say.
And I found that their children tended to fall into one of two categories.
They were either real strivers and oftentimes extremely successful, or they never got out of the gate and they
never made an effort because they were paralyzed by a fear of failure and by not living up
to the potential or the expectations that were set for them by society.
I very seldom found people in the middle.
It kind of seemed to take to extremes and a lot of people would really take themselves
out of the game really young.
You know, I'd see it at when we were in middle school
and in high school, you could just feel
that they were afraid.
They were afraid of not living up.
And I think seeing my parents, their passion,
their energy, their commitment to their work.
It made the prospect of sort of accomplishing things in my life
and having an impact exciting and something that felt aspirational.
It felt aspirational in our household.
But I also just chose to take the natural sort of insecurity, fear, self-doubt, and harness it to propel me forward.
And I see this in my daughter now.
You know, she is, it's an amazing thing how nobody is going to motivate her more than
she motivates herself.
You know, that motivation comes from within, sometimes to a standard where it borders on
perfectionism, where I'm the one actually pulling her back from striving to be so good
at everything.
And so, so I think the best kind of motivation is that that comes from within.
And sometimes it takes a while to find it.
Sometimes it takes just being exposed to the right mentor, the right teacher, the right
path. But
early on I used all of the insecurity I had and the doubt that others would
thrust upon me that, you know, well it's just because anything she accomplishes
it's just because X, Y, Z. And I use that to really motivate me to work harder, to
dream bigger, and to just go for it.
from real estate to fashion and will always be true. And that's okay because I can't prove them wrong.
You know, I...
I think you've proven them wrong.
But it's not even, I don't know, like I am who I am.
I'm proud of where I came from.
I had certain tremendous advantages in my life.
I've had some challenges in my life as well.
And so these are all things just,
I have to be comfortable with who I am. And I also, you know, I think as I've had some challenges in my life as well. And so these are all things just, I have to be comfortable with who I am.
And I also, you know, I think as I've gotten older
and as I think about the lessons I pass on to my own children,
you know, there's like nothing out there.
Nobody can validate you
and nobody should be able to take you down.
Like that all has to also come from within.
So I think most people's suffering comes from the need
for validation of other people.
And that's true in one's professional life as well.
You have to be doing it for yourself
and for the right reasons.
Otherwise, I think there's a real ceiling
on either where you can go,
because nobody works harder than somebody who
loves what they do. Nobody. Or a ceiling on your personal joy and and and peace
and happiness within your own life. Where do you think your confidence comes from?
You're very confident. If someone's listening and they don't feel confident,
how would you advise them? I'm not always confident.
I have fears and anxieties just like everyone.
I think as I've grown into myself,
I become more comfortable with who I am.
And I've adopted an attitude of it just feels better
to be me, you know, than to try to be something else,
even if people
don't like it. So I think my confidence or any confidence that I project comes
from just being increasingly more comfortable in my own skin. But I still
have insecurities and all of the rest of the things that most people, if
they're really being honest and if they're being introspective,
will admit to also having. But I think also confidence. I mean, I look back and I think
about me as a 16-year-old and I was so ambitious. And, you know, I was, there's some video footage
of me looking out of over the New York City skyline and saying, you know, I can't wait to transform
the skyline with towers that all build. And it's like, there's like a really cute confidence
that comes with having not stepped out into the world yet, you know, that like only almost
somebody who's really young can have. And then there's real confidence, which comes
from accumulated experience, hopefully combined with success.
And like that, you can't, like I look back and I was like, that's really sweet.
That's super cute.
I see it in my kids.
The confidence that's just like being young and being totally unafraid.
And then I think you learn lessons in life and even those small wins.
Some of the best things that ever happened wins, like some of the best things
that ever happened to me were some of the victory laps.
And I'm sure you both have experienced this, that now you look back, you're
like, I'm not even sure if that was like a real milestone, but it felt so good to
like, you know, slay some task or to perform beyond your expectations.
And you get a few of those and get going.
And the momentum is incredible.
I was fortunate, it sounds like you were fortunate as well.
And so it's learned that we had parents
that really encouraged us.
You know, we know people that have had parents
that have done the opposite where they kind of like,
ah, maybe that's too much for you, maybe you can't do that.
You had two powerhouse parents that,
I don't think a lot of people realize,
they work together on a lot of things.
When you think back on their relationship
and your upbringing, what lessons do you,
of all the things they've taught you,
both your mom and your dad,
what are some of the biggest lessons each of them taught you?
Wow, so many.
Starting with my mother, she really was
this unbelievable role model
for what a working woman could be.
Almost in mythological terms, you know, she was impossibly glamorous while also being
a working woman at a time when there were many, many more barriers.
Much higher expectations for both her in a boardroom context, much less forgivable absences for a school play
or a doctor's appointment, but also a working woman
at a time when, you know, other mothers
would often look down on that.
So she was straddling challenges that feel familiar
to many of us, but in a different way,
because it was a different time.
And she really showed me that I could pursue my dreams and be
in a professional capacity and be a great mom. I used to go to her every day
after school and she was the CEO of the Plaza Hotel, the iconic hotel in New York
and I'd go with her on walks and it was literally like a more well-behaved
Eloise at the plaza.
I'd run behind her and just watch her do her thing.
And my father was the same.
It was, there was never explicit instruction.
I kind of wish I'd gotten a little bit of that, like sort of sitting me down and saying,
this is how I like to be, this is how I conduct myself.
Did you notice this?
It was purely observational.
So they never jammed it down our throat, you know, come and work with us in this
capacity, but if we were curious and if we were interested, like they would
always want us around. So I would spend my weekends on construction sites just
trailing behind. And you learn
a lot like that. But I remember my mother, her attention to detail is second to none.
Like it was amazing. And you could see that in the way she carried herself and
like moved through the world, but also in the development projects and
construction projects she managed. And later on, oversaw, I remember once when I couldn't have been older than six or seven.
And part of me thinks that this isn't even a real memory, that it was a dream,
because it's too fantastical.
But I remember going to visit her at the Trump Castle, a casino in Atlantic City, that she ran.
And we walk into the lobby, and as casinos have,
they have the whole ceiling is covered with chandeliers.
And we get on the escalator, and she
points like one perfectly lacquered finger up to the sky
and doesn't even tilt her head, at least in my memory,
and says to the general manager, there's a light bulb out.
And I'm like, whoa.
And I look up and it's like more lights
than there are stars in the sky.
I'm like, where, which one?
I'm like, is she, is there even a light bulb out?
Like, but like that level of crazy detail was my mother.
She's also so funny too.
There was a, I feel like there was like this energy
where she didn't take herself so seriously. Oh my goodness. Which was like. She's so funny. I feel like there was like this energy where she didn't take herself so seriously.
Oh my goodness.
Which was like, she's so glamorous, she doesn't take herself so seriously, but then she's
such an editor and curator.
She was probably very disruptive for all these men.
Oh yeah.
Oh, I can imagine.
Well, I told you.
It's not uncommon because I developed quite a number of buildings myself.
It's not uncommon to have generational people in the trades.
And I'd meet a grandson who's,
I'd meet somebody on a job site who was the grandson
of somebody who'd worked with my grandfather,
whose father typically, seldom at the time mother,
worked with my mother.
And I'd hear these crazy stories
about how they'd hear her feet
on like the concrete slab that
had been poured three days earlier.
She'd hear the heels and know she was coming.
So she was just a remarkable person.
But I think to your point, she was very funny.
I mean, she, one of the most underrated things about my father is a sense of humor.
I don't think it's underrated at all.
I think he's one of the funniest people.
People are starting to get it.
But for a long time, like people didn't quite get's underrated at all. I think he's one of the funniest people. People are starting to get it. How long? But for a long time, like, people didn't quite get it.
I got it.
But my mother was exactly like that.
And she made him look PC.
So she was like, it was a wild household I lived in.
But she would say exactly what she was thinking, always.
Much to my chagrin as a child.
Why I believe you is I told you when we spoke on the phone
that we have a mutual friend with Nikki Haskell.
And she sings your mother's praises.
And she was telling us these stories years ago about how your mom would be in business settings
and in the casino and how she was like the detail person.
And she would recognize like every small thing and couldn't get past.
Everything. And you know, you said this,
in thinking about like that, that detail, the,
in some ways over the top glamour, you know, she was like
glamorous in the way that the times were,
the 80s, the 90s, the sense of humor.
So I think a lot of that was her rebellion
against the austerity of her upbringing.
And she left only when she was in her early 20s.
So this was really her whole childhood.
I mean, she was in Prague at Charles University
during the Prague Spring and the uprising.
So this, she was skiing at the time,
and she'd come back from ski meets,
the only people in communist countries
who were really allowed to leave the country are athletes.
So they allow them to go and participate in competitions.
And so she was on the then junior national team.
She would tell me how she'd come back after a ski race
from Austria or wherever they had gone.
And she had to first, before going home,
check in at the local police department
where they'd interview her for two hours
about her experience.
Did you like the food?
Did you like the culture?
Did you like the clothing?
Testing to see if she was a flight risk.
So she couldn't like it too much,
but she couldn't be blase about it
to the point where they would know she was faking.
So at 14, she knew she had to navigate this middle ground.
She actually told me that, you know,
it didn't take long before all of these people
became her best friends because she came home
with perfumes and pantyhose for them to give to their wives.
And she's like, they left me alone.
My interviews were shorter than anyone.
As a 14 year old, she was navigating this.
And I think that's why when she got to America,
she was so unapologetic
about saying whatever she wanted to, wearing whatever she wanted to, and I
think she really, really reveled and embraced that freedom.
When she came here, at what point did she meet your father and then at what point
did they have kids? And tell me, just so I know who was first.
My older brother, Don.
So I'm the middle child.
So how did that meeting go?
Depends who you ask.
Okay.
Because I read it in her book,
but I just, what I'd like to know from you.
They had a pretty short and intense courtship.
And she was skiing in Canada at the time
and modeling and skiing up there.
And she had come to New York as part of a group
promoting the Montreal Olympics.
So they met at, I think it was Maxime's,
the sort of famous 80s restaurant
and hit it off almost immediately.
But in, you know, they both tell some version
of a hilarious story when they first went skiing together.
And he didn't quite know how good she was at the time, which is kind of amazing that that didn't come up in conversation.
But he didn't know she was as good as she was. So he had gone out in the first few days.
She hadn't been feeling well, so she stayed at home and he had gotten a couple lessons.
He was feeling really like good. He's like, well, you know, I got a couple of lessons,
I'm doing well, I'm gonna show her how to do it, day three.
She comes on the mountain, she starts to ski, she's gone.
Like, she was, this was, I don't think I turned
until I was 15 years old, because she wasn't
one of these people to wait for you.
So she did two turns and was at the bottom of the mountain.
He's halfway up with his ski boots on.
So he jokes about how he took, he couldn't figure out how to get his boot bottom of the mountain. He's halfway up with his ski boots on. So he jokes about how he took,
he couldn't figure out how to get his boot
out of the binding. It was only his third day.
And he was so frustrated, he took off the whole boot,
still in the binding, and like sent it down the mountain
and walked up to the lodge.
And it took him like another three months
before they skied together again,
or another season, whatever it was.
But she was very athletic.
Very, very.
Her father was also a great athlete.
He taught her how to ski.
They had no lifts, so they'd have to carry
their skis on their back between each run.
They'd walk up the hill.
A lot of discipline.
So any time I complained about it being
cold, you know, in Aspen.
Yeah.
My mother would be like, get out there.
Your first tracks, you're not off,
like short hot chocolate breaks,
otherwise I'm making you walk up the hill with your skis.
Yeah, up the hill with your skis.
Do you think there's hope for Lauren Lauren?
I think there's hope for you. We're gonna get you...
We've had some rough goes on the slopes.
I've taught many of my friends.
I'm not above, like, putting my skis around you
and carrying you down the mountain.
I think you'd be like, I don't know about her.
She turns into a bit of a different person on the ski slope.
It's a bit jarring to be honest.
I've thrown poles at him.
Crying.
Have you ever done the hook where you hook the back of their jacket?
I've done all kinds.
I've hit you in the face.
I mean.
But similar.
She throws the boots off and the skis on the middle of the slope and everything starts
flying down.
I'd be a tough case.
It's so good.
I wanna see, I wanna see that.
Oh, it's embarrassing.
When was the momentum in your career started?
Like, what was the first thread
where you realized you were entrepreneurial?
And I almost think like, go back,
because I remember seeing a video of you modeling,
walking down the runway when you were very young,
like back, back.
You know, it's always been really core to me.
I was always conceptualizing the businesses I would create
or dreaming of the buildings that I would build.
It actually was more rooted in real estate early on in my life,
but I always had, you know, something I was creating
and selling to my friends or solutions
I was trying to provide for them. So I would say it's always been, since my
earliest memories, that's always been a big part of my life. And you know, I
find innovating to be really inspiring. I like problem-solving and I think when
you're building businesses or you're sort of putting yourself in a space
where you're identifying solutions for problems
that haven't been devised yet, it's just fun.
Like you can do, and I think of stuff all the time
that I'm never actually gonna do,
but I feel like it creates a certain flexibility
to your thinking and it's a good skill.
I play this game with my kids all the time,
where I'll ask them if you could invent one thing
that doesn't exist, what would it be?
And I get the funniest answers.
That's a good game.
It's fun, because they really like, they have,
you know, just with my son Theo,
it's always something relating to football.
But it's cute to see sort of what they see
as sticky points in their own, you know, lives
and sometimes really like almost comical and sometimes like brilliant solutions they apply
towards it.
Our son would just bring back the dinosaurs.
That's all he would do right now.
You know, there are, I've spoken to a few companies that are basically seeking to do
this.
They're creating through DNA.
They're bringing plants and animals back from extinction.
This is actually happening.
I feel like if they bring back the friendly ones.
They're doing it with like a woolly mammoth and like a dodo bird.
That sounds like Jurassic Park.
It's wild. And I feel like we've all seen the movie, so to speak.
You really have to be careful.
We've seen The Terminator, we've seen Jurassic Park.
We know what could happen here.
Your company that you launched a while back was incredibly successful.
And I told you this on the phone, I cannot believe how entrepreneurial you are.
How did you have that idea and how did you put it into action and execute it and make it so successful?
It actually arose pretty organically.
I met my first of 11 different partners
in my fashion and accessories brand on a real estate deal.
He also was in real estate,
but his primary business was fine jewelry.
So we started talking about, at the time,
how there was really no retail experience for
self-purchasing women and so many of us didn't want to wait for anniversaries or
Christmas or Valentine's Day to buy ourselves a bracelet we really loved
with our hard-earned paychecks. So we started talking about how we would
create an experience that really catered towards
that working woman who was a self-purchaser. And that was the beginning. And it started
with fine jewelry and then we launched footwear and we had some great shoes. It is not uncommon
for me to have three people stop me in a day and tell me that they've resold the shoes
ten times because they miss them so much. They were chic and comfortable and excessively priced
and amazing. And then we went into apparel and we did some great dresses and coats and
sunglasses and fragrance and handbags and the whole gamut. So it grew to be a very big
business, but it really was just a response to a need that I saw in
the marketplace.
You'd look at what people were wearing during the workday, and it was super non-aspirational.
Nobody was snapping a photo of the outfit that they were wearing from Ann Taylor going
into the office.
Nothing felt multidimensional. I wanted to have a dress that I put on in the
morning, that I could drop my kids off at school in, that I could go to the office
and feel confident and look professional, and that afterwards I could go on a date
with my husband or be sitting on the floor of, you know, my kids' room playing
block. It's like something that could take me through the day and help me feel
confident in all
of the dimensions in which I existed.
So we set out to do that and it was great.
It really was like lightning in a bottle.
We ended up growing the business.
We were doing hundreds of millions of dollars in sales annually.
At the time I closed it down when I went into government.
And I was-
Did we force you to close it down?
Or was it just a conflict of- An amazing experience.
Well, it was, you know, in accordance with the Office of Government Ethics.
They basically look at every asset you have, every business you have,
and tell you what they believe you should do with it
to avoid a conflict of interest.
And then you have to do those things if you want your form to be certified and-
Be able to take a position.... you want your form to be certified and. Be able to take a position.
Work unless it's certified.
So you have these third parties that have to
certify your financial statements annually.
So they went through everything and said, you
have to sell this, you have to put this in trust,
you have to divest, you have to whatever their
litmus test.
And, and I did it.
So, so that was part of.
Is that hard for you to do?
Or was it. No. So I initially put it into trust and I did it. So, that was part of... Is that hard for you to do? Or was it... No. So, I initially put it into trust and I had an incredibly capable group of people who were operating it.
I could have no involvement whatsoever. But it's very hard to put something in a holding pattern for a number of years.
So, when it became clear to me that I was staying four years to have a business where you've put
boundaries on it where it can't grow anymore, you can't do new deals, you can't
I can't promote it obviously, I can't have any transparency into it. It just
felt like you know what this feels like I'd prefer I always prefer to end things
on a high note and four years without in a very static place I think would have
been anticlimactic for me. Plus I also realized that you know coming out of
government my life would be so different and I'd want new challenges. So you know
I'm always looking forward that was an amazing phase of my life and you know at
the same time I was building that business I was spearheading most of the
major construction and development projects we had at the same time I was building that business, I was spearheading most of the major construction
and development projects we had at the Trump Organization.
So I was redeveloping the old post office in Washington, D.C., which is an iconic and
beautiful asset right on Pennsylvania Avenue.
I was rebuilding.
I had bought and was spearheading the redevelopment of Trump Doral in Miami, Florida, which is
hundreds of acresll in Miami, Florida, which is hundreds
of acres right in Miami. It was five golf courses. We sold one of them, so now it's
four and over 700 hotel rooms. Soup to nuts redevelopment. So I had a lot of different
things on my plate, but going through four years where I had to completely separate from
my life, including the city I grew up in, New York City, everything.
It's this interesting sort of wall that you have to create.
When you come out, suddenly you're like really untethered.
And for me, it was a time of amazing introspection
rather than I think the tendency to just like go back
to what you know and reconnect old wires,
you know, rejoin our family business or relaunch something I'd previously done or anything.
I really took a lot of time to think about, okay, what have I learned in the last few
years?
What did I learn during that period of time?
What am I most passionate about?
And what do I want this next chapter of my life to look like? So it's been, it's really been a time of prioritizing my curiosity and thinking forward
while simultaneously just going super deep with my kids because I recognize they've
always been my top priority, but my time in service was really, it was really challenging
to find a balance that worked well
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You and your family have always had a public platform.
And I remember used to watch you on the apprentice back in the day.
But when your dad became president the first time, what was that shift like for you?
Because I imagine that overnight overnight everything kind of changes
Where you always you always had the public kind of platform, but now it's a much different kind of platform
Yeah, very different extremely different and it was also a very emotional time
So people were sort of processing the experience for the for the good and for the bad and in very individual
Unique sometimes highly
counterproductive ways. But it was a time of extraordinary personal growth for me and learning. You know, I had
been exposed to extraordinary things in business and in travel and in life, but there are communities
that I never would have visited. There are communities that I never would have visited.
There were issues that I never would have internalized
and understood, people I never would have met.
So I really think in retrospect,
I was able to break free of a bubble
that I didn't even know that I was in
of the sort of upper east side of New York.
Can you give us a specific example of something that was really like crazy for you to see
while you were in office that you helped with, maybe at some initiative that you worked on?
Yeah, I think there's a big misunderstanding of the role that you played in the administration
the first time.
Maybe not a misunderstanding as much as a misconception and maybe a lack of knowledge.
Yeah, so you know, the way I viewed it is you have,
unlike what you're building here,
where you build for longevity,
you have a finite period of time to have impact.
And you think about that every day.
And that's part of why the balance is so hard,
because you know it's sand through an hourglass.
So when my father was elected,
I had no intention of serving.
And he came to me and my husband, and he asked for us to go with him.
And this was not what I had set my life up for.
I loved the life I was building.
Our young family in New York had an eight-month-old son when we arrived in Washington and two
children not that much older.
I had businesses I was building.
The trajectory of my life felt really exciting.
Like, I was at that place now where I'd laid the foundation
and it was growing, but there was no world in which I could imagine
40 years down the road having sort of put my head in the sand,
said no, continue doing what I was doing,
and not looking back with regret that I hadn't helped. And you know, I had very specific things I was passionate about
that he empowered me to run after and I did and I feel a tremendous sense of
privilege for having been given the opportunity. I'm so happy that Jared and
I were able to be there to help him. You know, this time it's so different because
so many people are raising their hands and I'm so to help him. You know, this time it's so different because so many people are raising their hands,
and I'm so grateful to them.
You know, we were like the pioneers,
and he really, he knew no one in Washington.
And, you know, I'd worked with him at that time
over a decade, and he trusted my ability very much
to help him execute, and of course Jared.
So, you know, I really wanted to figure out a way
to help working families, especially
working women and lighten their load.
I saw firsthand, you know, my team was comprised mainly of young women, and I know the supports
that they needed and I need to be able to do the thing that we love and pursue our professional
dreams.
And for many more, it's far more existential than that to be able to put food on the table. And so I went down to Washington with that goal and I
was incredibly focused on policies like I fought like hell to double the child
tax credit and was really proud at the end of my first year to have
accomplished that in tax cuts. And that benefited 40 million American families, over $2,500 a family on average.
So that is exciting and meaningful.
We were able to do even pre-COVID, obviously,
we accelerated it during COVID,
but the largest ever block grants to the states
for childcare support for working families,
which was incredibly meaningful in terms of creating
access to safe, nurturing, and affordable child care for families across the country.
I did a lot on workforce vocational education and policies surrounding job skill acquisition,
working with the private sector to commit to reskilling mid to late career workers, as well as to
commit to upskilling young workers to fill the vacancy that employers know before the
government which technologies they're investing in that are going to automate certain jobs
out of existence.
So I felt like it was our role and with the bully pulpit we had at the White House to
really call on the private sector to like step up and to help re-skill workers into the jobs they so desperately needed.
I mean, the economy was at this point just soaring.
So an amazing statistic at one point, this was right pre-COVID, 72% of all new jobs were
coming from outside of the workforce, not even unemployment because the unemployment numbers were so low. So it was people really getting an
opportunity to work who had been totally marginalized. They had either taken
themselves out of the economy or had been out of the workforce so long they
didn't count in the numbers. So what is the employee, all of these business
leaders who are saying we need more workers, we need more workers, what's
their role in creating programs that can help skill those people that are on the sidelines?
So over 15 million commitments were made by the private sector as part of this Pledge
to America's Workers.
I did a lot on human trafficking, which is something that I did not go to D.C. with the
intention of advocating for.
I knew very little about.
But in the early days of my being in the White House,
I took a meeting and once you're exposed
to the horror of human trafficking,
I mean, there is no greater human rights violation.
When you get in that position or in that role,
are you immediately flooded with information
that you just don't have access to as a regular citizen?
You are, like your aperture goes like this.
Yeah.
And I think that's, you know, what I, I've
spent a lot of the last few years just backing entrepreneurs, I believe,
and in fields that I never would have even understood because you just learn,
even if it's not part of your portfolio, you're exposed to, to so much in terms
of what's happening in synthetic biology, quantum computing,
you name it, that being in fashion and real estate in New York, you may not have otherwise
dug into.
So I feel like my world just widens materially.
And not because those were the things that I was necessarily spearheading, but you learn
and you become close with your colleagues
and they share that which they're passionate about.
And it was, so it was an extraordinary period of growth,
but I think going back to the original question,
I think where I changed the most
and where I expanded the most was just
meeting more people that represented different facets of America and American
life and the American experience. And that to me is something that I'm so
grateful for. And you know, because I was somewhat well-known when I
traveled, I would really meet people
and they'd come to me and share their stories.
And one of the unique things about being in that position is people will tell you in 40
seconds.
You may meet them for a minute passing through an airport or in, you know, at the end of
a roundtable and they will share with you their greatest fears, their
biggest hopes, their most intimate secrets, things they haven't told their spouses, things
they haven't told their children in the short period of time, and it hits hard.
I think made me, I hope made me, I think first off being a parent makes you more empathetic.
It should at least, I think. But this really opened
my mind in a tremendous way.
You mentioned that you worked with your father before the White House. What are the traits
that you and Jared bring to your father that complement his? Like what would he, he obviously
wanted to keep working with you. So what are those traits that he loves about you? Well, the Secret Service nickname Jared the Mechanic,
because he is an unbelievable problem solver.
You know, he sees the world.
It's great for you.
Yeah, it's phenomenal.
Yeah, and this does not just apply to geopolitics.
It applies to all facets of life,
including working the coffee machine.
So, very importantly, very importantly. But, you know, I think
that for both of us, we're really good at execution. So, when we run at something, we
tend to get there. My father saw that in me having worked directly with me. You know,
as years passed, he put himself in the position that is every
parent's dream when they're at the helm of a family company where he could really step
back and focus on that which he enjoyed doing, knowing that all else was in capable hands.
So he started really focusing on golf. He loves to play golf, so he would design the
golf courses. And I would spearhead the acquisitions of the projects and the redevelopment of them and
I would come to him for advice and guidance and with a lot of humility around what I don't know
And I think he he recognized in me that I was unafraid to say I don't understand
I don't know it's part of my process of learning by asking the right people a lot of questions
and so I think
he recognized that I had the ability to know what I didn't know and that I had a
sort of drive and dogged commitment to accomplishing goals that has always been
helpful to him in business and he thought it would be so in politics as well.
Same with Jared.
When you were doing all of that, how did you think about health?
Beauty, all these different things, because you're doing such a crazy job.
Oh no, I was like vitamin D deficient.
Yeah, I can imagine.
I look back at these pictures, I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't think I saw sunlight for four years.
I exercised to me at that point in time was going on a weekly run with Jared on Saturday mornings
or chasing the kids around the house in the evening.
So I think I had a good base in that I was never a gym person, but I loved sports.
So sports have always been this huge part of my life.
What sports do you like besides skiing?
So I love skiing.
I love surfing, but that's a recent sport. I just love it.
There's a few things I enjoy doing more.
I like racket sports, so I grew up playing tennis,
but now in Miami, everyone's into padel
and I have friends who are into pickle.
I play that less, but it's, you know, sort of fun and social.
I most recently got into jiu-jitsu,
courtesy of my daughter, Arabella, who I'm just so in
awe of because this was, she's now 13, but at 11, she came to me and said, you know,
as a woman, I feel like I need to know how to defend myself and I don't have a confidence
level yet that I can do that.
Can you get me, can you sign me up for a self-defense class? And my jaw just hit the ground because at 11, I don't know what I was
doing. I was like thinking about boys or something. I have no, but I was not
thinking about being able to physically defend myself. And so I thought it was
the coolest thing. So I called a few friends and I asked for recommendations
and I got a recommendation for these brothers in Miami, the Valenti brothers,
who are amazing. And I started driving her to these classes. She started asking me to join,
I joined. Then my two sons wanted to do what their older sister was doing. Then my husband joined.
It's supposed to be really good for kids, right?
It is good for everyone. And it's like multiple things I like. So it meshes physical movement.
It's almost like a moving meditation
because the movements are so micro.
It's like three-dimensional chess, you know, everything.
And now it's funny, like I'll watch like ultimate fighting.
And you see some of these moves are so subtle
and they'll like break out of a whole,
it's like fun to watch it now having just sort of a...
I'm like a blue belt. You can start going to the matches and doing the walkout.
Yeah. I'm not really knowing what's going on, but I'm just,
what's the first belt?
I don't want Lauren to learn because she could fold me into a pretzel and I can't
have that either. That's the last thing I need.
I have a feeling Lauren, you could already do that.
I could do a lot of things. Yeah.
I've got a lot of things I need to do.
And you may not always not want her to do that.
Yeah, that's true. I am careful to,
You may be folded into a pretzel tonight.
Yeah. Let's see what happens. I'm good right now.
I'm actually good.
It's fun.
You guys would love it.
And it satisfies both,
there's like a real spiritualism to it.
Like it's the grounding in sort of samurai tradition
and culture and wisdom.
I love philosophy.
I would say one of the core parts of my life,
and we were talking before about like knowledge acquisition.
I've always loved reading philosophy.
I use it as sort of a guide for life generally.
And I find to just to combine physical movement
and philosophy in an amazing way.
So I feel-
You're selling me on it. Yes. I love it.
You know, it's funny because my... I boxed when I was younger.
And I don't regret it because you learn a lot.
But I don't think it was the best.
I got a problem with the septum and nose has been broken.
Probably because I wasn't good enough.
But there's... I like jujitsu for kids
because it feels like a competitive way
to do combat sports,
but without doing the damage that someone like myself did
when I was younger. Does that make sense?
Oh, 100%.
I don't think it's necessarily the best thing
for kids to take a bunch of punches.
Yeah, and it's also, you know, boxing,
there's a reason why people wear gloves,
because if you actually punch someone in the face,
you'll break your hand.
So I think the, what I love about Uditsu is,
at least the discipline we practice, is it's very focused on extracting yourself hand. So I think the what I love about
having these skills make you less likely to get into a fight, not more likely to. Don't mess with people.
There's no like aggressive, it's like once you have a confidence that you can sort of
move out of a situation, there's a real focus on elevating awareness, which I think like
I walk through New York and I'm like shocked every day when I make it 10 blocks and somebody
on my left or right hasn't been hit by a car.
You know, nobody looks up, everyone's on their phone.
There's like a complete lack of awareness.
And by the way, I'm guilty of this myself,
but there's, I think this like having an awareness
of what's happening around you is super important
and it's instilled that.
We did an episode with our friend who's a former SEAL,
who's on the dev group, and we were talking all about
just the basic safety of just being aware.
Yeah.
Like of all the other things, you know, self-defense and security, all that,
it basically just being aware of what's around you.
I always find it so crazy when you see these videos of people just getting
like nailed in the streets or pushed and it's like, all they have to do is just
like look up and look around, you know?
And we're getting worse in this regard.
Not better for sure.
Okay, so when you guys come to Miami,
which hopefully you will, I'll take you to the studio.
And if you bring your kids, we'll bring all the kids
and we'll do a little class together.
Ooh, that's gonna be interesting with my daughter.
Oh, she'll love it.
Like Arabella walks, she loves the fact
that she has the capability of flipping flipping a 250 pound grown man.
She thinks it's like very cool.
So the only problem for me is she's constantly
like flipping her brothers.
And they're like eager recipients of her attention.
So she's 13, I have an 11 year old son, Joseph,
and we have an eight year old, Theo.
I wanna go back to after you left the White House
and you started implementing all these different things.
What were the other things you implemented?
I know you started weightlifting too.
What were, when you got out of that chapter,
what was like sort of your wellness, diet, health list?
Well, I think I just did like a recalibration
across the board where I said, you know,
this is super unusual to be 39 years old and to find yourself untethered to the past in the sense that I
had to leave all my businesses, everything in order to serve.
I was in a different city.
And so now you come out and you're as free as one can be at this point in their life
with all of this experience.
So sort of where do I want to aim my
attentions going forward?
And there were professional goals, of course,
but my primary goals were just to like,
be the best fricking mom I could be.
You know, every time I had to miss something,
I'm like, I will never let this happen again.
The minute I leave the White House.
And so I went like-
It's hard, it's because the demand was so high
when you were there.
It's hard.
And you, I mean, I did the best I could and I think I was there for all the really critical
moments, but you know, you don't want to miss the small ones either, you know?
And so I learned through that process and part of the reason, you know, the main reason
I am not going back to serve now is I know the cost and it's a price that I'm not willing
to make my kids bear.
Have people given you pushback for that, for not coming back?
Oh, I mean, I get the question a lot.
And there's also like a lack, there's both people I served alongside of and also people
who are just incredulous to how could you not, you know, which to me it's, it really
feels like it's very easy to make a decision when it aligns around your core values. And
my highest most core value is family. And my kids were much younger. So it was easier
to not be present. But when you have kids that are teenagers, about to be teenagers, like your physical presence matters so much.
It's crazy that you have to justify it to people to meet.
Well, you know, I don't because I just tell them like, that's, you know, that's them, not me.
So I feel super great about this decision.
Well, I think people can empathize with the price you have to put on your children
and your marriage and your family to go back and you have to put on your children and your marriage
and your family to go back and you've already served and your kids are young.
And that's why I'm so grateful for all the people who are serving because I know how
hard it is and how taxing and every one of them will do their best to balance it all.
But it is hard.
There's another element though for me, I love policy and impact. I hate politics. And unfortunately, the two are not, you know, there is
a darkness to that world that I don't really want to welcome
into mine. To some degree, I'm, you know, at the center of the
storm, because my father is about to be president. But it's
a very, it's a very dark negative, and some people love the gladiator aspect of it.
You know, the fight that that was never me.
I really did love the impact, especially as time went on, and it wasn't theoretical.
People would walk up to you and say, you know, the child tax credit or the fact that I was able to advocate successfully
for getting paid family leave for our federal workforce, the largest employer in the country
or the first national paid family leave tax credit or things like this that people benefit
from and then they tell you that.
And it feels really good.
But I also now recognize like there's so many ways to have impact.
I mean, most of the compassion work happening in the world
is being done outside of government.
I also, and when you take ambition and ego and all
these things out of it, I'm just not a believer
that impacting one life in your community matters less than
doing things with greater scale, you know, both for your own heart and like for the world.
So I think there are a lot of sort of microwaves you can impact, just, you know, volunteering
locally with your kids, setting a good example for them.
And I'm so proud of the frequency in which they want to volunteer with me and it's their idea,
you know, as opposed to mine and how it's become internalized as part of our life as a family.
And then there are huge things, huge ways you can catalyze positive change through work in the private sector.
So I think the impact I really loved and hopefully I'll live a life that continues to be impactful,
regardless of where I do it.
I went through years of craziness
and I've never become cynical
about like I think the fundamental goodness of people.
And I really do think most people are good people
who wanna work hard, provide for their families,
live a good life, have peace and calm,
make a positive contribution.
Like that is most people.
I think just for a while we weren't hearing from them.
They were busy building their lives and their families.
And those of us in the public domain
were hearing from the outliers.
And I really think that started to change.
Again, I'll get shit for this,
but I think as a society,
we gave way too much voice to people
that were causing harm.
Meaning like, there was a lot of people
that were screaming and yelling about a lot
of negative things that we just paid way too much attention to.
And I think people are now like, hey, if you walk around
on the street as a normal person,
you don't see these kind of people out in public.
They exist in corners of the internet,
or for whatever reason, we were paying way more attention than we should have.
And I kept saying, like, it's interesting
running a media company, but also doing a show.
The high majority of people that write in
are very positive, nice people.
And the people you meet normally are very positive.
It's very rare that you meet some of these crazy people,
called lunatics, actually, that are screaming
and yelling about God knows what.
And the problem is we were platforming those voices way too often. crazy people, call them lunatics actually, that are screaming and yelling about God knows what.
And the problem is we were platforming those voices way too often.
So I think people are now like, okay, enough with that.
Don't you think with what you've experienced too, there's some kind of exposure therapy
where you've been exposed to so much that you almost have this muscle of resilience
that you wouldn't have had if you didn't get exposed to that?
You become a little bit calloused, but you know, I think it's for sure.
I mean, if you're internalizing that as real, that's a recipe for disaster.
I don't think there's longevity to that.
So I think you have to build the skill to tune out that noise.
I also just think about, you know, I chose and it was at like the most volatile time.
I made a conscious effort just to like live in alignment
with my own values and not allow like the outside world
to tell me how I should be and what I should be.
And for me, it doesn't feel right to be combative
with a stranger on social, it's just not who I am.
And so I took a lot of punches that I just absorbed
and then punch back on. Sometimes I really wanted to because I took a lot of punches that I just absorbed and then punch back
on. Sometimes I really wanted to because I had like a zinger. I didn't even write it out. But at the end of the day I
never press send and I always felt good about that. And I now look like I try to
live my life in a way that models for my children how I want them to be. Like
that's all I can do. I can't, you know, change anyone
else. I can just live in a way that I'm proud of. And I'm really proud that I lived through
a very emotional time where people were not their best selves. And I kept my North Star.
And I didn't become something that I wasn't just because I was thrown into an arena that
was different, you know, the political arena that was different and people acted differently than the previous arena of the business world and the private sector.
So I look back at that with a lot of pride because I feel like I was able to maintain
my composure and model for my kids.
I always tell them, you know, that there's this concept in Judaism called Lashon Harah,
which is literally translated to evil speech.
And we talk about it all the time.
Like, I just like will not abide by like gossip in our house.
But it's bigger than gossip.
It's also just sort of the use of words for ill.
And it's something that I've internalized as an idea and as a message, you know, within
our family.
Or one could also call it the golden rule, right?
One of my best friends, his family's golden rule is just don't be an asshole.
It's so simple. Right?
Don't be, you know, and don't speak ill.
And so we've done that and I've been able to do that in my own life.
And I feel good about that in retrospect.
I take creatine. Ivanka takes creatine. We love creatine. Creatine is all the rage with women.
I'm telling you, I think it's going to be one of the top supplements for 2025. In saying that,
the creatine that I take, that I've always taken, is by Momentis. I love the research behind this creatine. They take it so seriously.
How I take my Momentous creatine is I will do a cup of water before I go to the gym,
like a bottle of water. I put two scoops of aminos in it and then I'll do a scoop of Momentous
creatine and then I'll froth it up. You got to have a frother and I'm ready to go. This
is my gym drink. And what I've done is I habit stacked this drink
Into my gym routine. So I know right before I'm about to get in the car to go to the gym
I'm gonna put my aminos and my creatine in my water bottle and go I drink it while I am working out and
I have just found that it's really really good if you want those tight, toned muscles,
because this is really weird, but the skin tightens over the muscle from creatine.
That's what I've noticed, and I've been taking it for probably a year and a half.
Michael's actually the one who got me on it.
He takes this creatine too.
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At this point in your life, Ivanka, how do you think about time?
I'm so interested to hear this from you because you're juggling so many different balls. Yeah.
So, you know, we were talking before about sort of balancing all these things.
And I think instead of balance, I like to think about my life through the lens of my
priorities and have really clear priorities that I maintain
integrity around.
And so rather than balance, because we all know, like, your child gets sick one day,
there goes balance.
Right.
Like, it doesn't matter that you had a big presentation at the office, like if you're
at home with a fever, like done.
And so it's very, like, it can be defeating to maintain something with by its nature tips
as the scales of life will cause to happen.
But if you're living in alignment with your core priorities, I think then you can have
like a bigger picture way of looking at the life that you've architected for yourself.
So you know, for me, first and foremost, it's my kids. It's my family. Now, increasingly, it's, you know,
about taking care of myself
so I can better take care of others,
and that includes fitness and nutrition.
And we were talking about how I didn't have
much of a regimen before.
Now, I look at my day and I think about the scaffold.
Like, what are the sort of scaffolds for my day
that I know I need?
I want to exercise every day. You know, I want a resistance train, I want to eat well.
So knowing that I want to do those things and knowing that those are best done for me in the morning,
like that is part of my life and that's part of how my day and that's part of how I choose to allocate and prioritize my time.
I also know I want to be there with my kid at the dinner table, you know,
on the weekends, three meals a day. On the weekdays, I cook breakfast. We don't
have anyone who lives in with us, so I get them up, we make them breakfast.
What do you cook?
Well, I should have said that Jared cooks the most successful breakfast. He makes
pancakes.
Wow.
Really great pancakes, like every other morning. I tried to make French toast the
other day,
and I'm actually like a decent cook,
but because he was traveling as,
I don't know if you're experiencing this yet,
but like they're, they can be brutal to me
when I don't do something as well as their father.
So my kids just looked at my,
I tried to make this French toast,
and then I was getting my son's lunch ready.
I forgot about it.
It burnt.
And I heard for the next 20 minutes
how my French toast will never compete
with their dad's pancakes.
I'm gonna give you a French toast recipe.
And it was so unfair.
Michael has a French toast.
I would like a French toast.
Thank you.
It's from the Rock.
I stole it from him.
Okay.
Yeah, you can find it.
But I think it's-
Well, I'm sure it's protein packed.
It's all the bread.
No, it's not actually protein packed.
It's the exact opposite. It's not, it's his's not actually protein packed. It's the exact opposite. So maybe-
It's not.
It's his cheat meal that he does.
Okay.
But it's the bread that matters.
You have to get, that's like the main thing.
It has to be a little bit stale, like a few days old.
Let it sit out for a little bit.
But what I've always been, like, so how long do you soak for?
Because this is like a big thing.
Like we had a debate with the kids, like do, you don't want it to be soggy, but you need
to be soaked
enough that it goes through that's why you got to get the brioche and then you
I'm sure people are in love this and then you put it in and you flip it once
twice and you give a little squeeze and it kind of absorbs and you throw it right on.
I don't overthink this like this you guys should see me make French toast it's
it's pretty efficient I think every dad should know like at least a pancake or a
French toast I have a buddy this is too much information,
that he'll even bring a girl on a date,
and if it goes well and she's there the next morning,
he'll do a buckwheat pancake.
It's always a hit.
So, you know, if you did the buckwheat pancake,
that was good.
So, if they get, like, the oatmeal or the blueberry,
it's like...
If you don't get the buckwheat pancake,
it's probably not gonna...
It's not gonna last.
So, oh, my gosh.
You know there's somebody out there listening
who, like, had a buckwheat pancake this morning
and is like, I wonder.
But yeah, I think you could do the same thing.
So you cook sometimes for your kids breakfast
and it's French toast.
What are you eating for breakfast?
Huh, I've got a shake.
I'm like sort of a morning alchemist.
I've got all these things that I've been told
over the years that are good.
She's going to make you give the details.
And I throw them in and it's, it's, I would
say it's a living organ, it's like a work in
progress.
So.
Okay.
We want to hear.
Like I learned recently that creatine, which I
had been dumping and sometimes I make it the
night before because really like the morning,
we're like fast and furious.
I get my kids up and we have a half an hour to
get them all up,
for them to get dressed, for them to come down,
for them to have breakfast, which we're making before I drive them to the bus.
So it is like when people ask me about my morning routine starts after I've dropped the kids off.
Like I'll brush my teeth before them, but it's really like I wake them up, run downstairs,
and then while something's cooking, I'm like doing cleanup with like the inevitable one or two children that decided not to get out of bed the first
time I came a-knocking.
So mornings are super chaotic and they go to the bus so early that I actually, it's
still quite early when I get home from dropping them off.
So that's when I, you know, I'll work out and I'll do things for myself.
I'll actually drink the shake that I've made for myself.
What's in the shake? We have to know. We've got to know the shake.
So a lot of protein. So I try to get, I think something that has been a massive change for
me since I moved to Miami. I started prioritizing exercise and initially that took the form
of yoga and Pilates and these
things that I had done at various points in my life and but now I had the ability
because I was on my own schedule to make the more consistent and a more regular
part of my life. So I started doing that and then gradually I started doing more
resistance and weight training and that's when I saw a massive difference. My whole body changed.
I felt.
I'm just doing a little Instagram story.
It's distracting.
It's distracting too.
She throws me off sometimes too.
I'm like, what's going on?
I'm like, what I do?
Do I smile?
Um, but that's when I really noticed a massive change for me and, and my body
composition fundamentally changed.
I got stronger, I got leaner and I could kind of get away with it because I'm really
tall.
So I could look lean even if I wasn't strong and yoga and Pilates, while I enjoy them a
lot more to be honest than resistance training, I was not able to develop muscle through them
and I really needed this.
I don't know if it's because I'm tall. I don't know if it's because of I'm tall.
I don't know if it's, but it's, um,
No, everyone needs to resist.
Yeah, it's been life changing.
It's like, it's one of the biggest topics on this show is incorporating
resistance training, especially as you start to age because you've got to
keep the muscle on.
And really basic stuff, you know, like I'll look in the gyms and people are
doing incredibly complicated things.
I found what works for me is like the simple stuff, like pushes, pulls, hinges, deadlifts. And again, I don't really
enjoy doing it. Like I enjoy going for walks, I enjoy playing sports, I really
enjoy Pilates and yoga, but I have seen such a transformation in terms of my
health. But I can't mention that without saying the protein element,
because it's that pairing of protein
and resistance training and weightlifting that I think,
like for a while I was doing weightlifting
and I still was not consuming nearly enough protein,
and I was not seeing the change.
It's when I married those two things
that I started noticing a difference.
So in my shake, typically the morning is like, I'm just like, I want to get to the races.
And it's also the time of like self-care and my self-care is not, I'm not going to sit down
and make myself a big breakfast. That's not where I choose to allocate the time.
I want to be, you know, get a workout in or go for a walk, meditate. So I try to make my own breakfast as quick
and as impactful as possible. So I do protein, I do things to make it taste
good, you know, banana, cacao, I put in creatine, which I just recently found out
is not water-soluble. It's not sort of stable in water. So I was putting it in
the night before, which it actually morphs into something else after around
10 minutes. So now I'll notice, I'll be in the night before which it actually morphs into something else after around 10 minutes
So now I'll notice I'll be in the gym and like these like really like jacked people
I'll see them and they're like raw dogging creatine. They're like throwing this when I do that
But it's but that's how you do it. Throw it in their mouth. Just suck it down. It's water can't be
Sit in a water bottle doesn't work anymore
Comes and you're,
somebody on the internet's definitely correcting me,
but it becomes like creoline.
It's something that sounds the same,
but doesn't, it doesn't get it done.
So you have to drink it right away.
You have to, right away.
Ivanka, I love that you used the term raw dogging
the creoline, that's, we're gonna, we're gonna pull that.
But yeah, that's how you do it.
You take the big scoop, you dump it.
That's gonna be the headline, even.
But I looked at these people, I'm like,
that's gonna be the clip we pull for the thing.
I'm like, this person, like, really,'s gonna be the clip we pull for the thing.
This person, like, really, like, I mean, talk about, like, bare bones.
Like, they can't even make themselves a morning smoothie.
They're, like, throwing powder into their mouth.
Like, it's next level.
We're gonna get you there.
But you've got around 10 minutes in water.
Okay.
So now I have my little creatine on the side of my smoothie,
and I, like, drink it really quickly.
We can get you there, and then we're gonna get you some BCAAs.
We're gonna get you some amino acids. You can putAAs. We're going to get you some amino acids.
You can put them together.
I bet you she already takes the amino acids.
You like them?
No, she already takes amino acids, Michael.
Yeah, the gentleman you mentioned before, Gary Bracca,
he told me I should start using something called perfect aminos.
So I have it in my gym and I put a little scoop of it into my water.
Okay.
That and electrolytes.
So when I work out, I just take my water.
I have like a little basket, put a little scoop of the perfect aminos.
Before you leave, I'm going to give you some key on aminos.
Okay.
Those are, and you can try.
This is, a lot of this is new to me.
So I'm like playing around.
Just put in the water, create time to work out.
No, she does her, no, you have to do it in 10 minutes though.
Yeah, but you can put the aminos in your like water, whatever, from when you're training
and you drink it throughout, you'll feel really good.
So I don't feel anything, to be honest,
but I do the research and I feel like these are-
You look great.
These are things, but I don't notice it, and thank you,
but I don't notice with creatine,
but I see the studies and I believe that these things work.
So I feel- Is your sleep improving?
Cause the creatine also, a lot of people don't realize
it's not just good for the muscle,
but it should give you better sleep.
So I take a little magnesium before bed
and I found that's been really nice for sleep.
And you sent me this mouth tape and I view it as,
no, it's, once in a while I wake up with it like in my hair
because I've like subconsciously taken it off at night,
but it's really great.
Like I view it as that night
when I'm really gonna spoil myself
and I'm gonna get into bed at 9.30
and I want the best night's sleep ever.
I'll use it and it's amazing.
So like, I love it.
So thank you.
I got you five in there.
Oh, I've got the little boxes.
I think they're amazing.
Do not disturb for your husband.
Sleep is like, Totally, totally.
Sleep has not been a challenge for me ever.
So I'm like one of those people,
I could fall asleep here if you gave me 45 seconds.
So like sleep, I feel very blessed
that even in times of a lot of stress and anxiety,
I fall asleep easily.
Sometimes I'll wake up and have that sort of 3 a.m. rumination
that so many of us are, you know,
that's when we start to get our thinking time in.
That's like 90% of the battle, though,
is just getting good sleep, you know?
Yeah.
What are other things that you do wellness-wise?
Like, do you cold punch, do you sauna,
do you do anything like that, or is that off the table?
No, I think all of that's amazing. So it's not like a daily part of my routine, but I
think it's incredible and can feel, I mean cold plunging feels horrible, but you feel
like some level of accomplishment and I do feel like you, for me I've felt like mood
elevation from it and all of these things. The sauna is great, steam room is great, all
of that's great. But as part of my daily routine, it's pretty simple.
I like to find and cultivate calm
because I've, at basically every phase of my life,
so I've just now identified this as like the status quo.
There's, you know, always a hurricane
that I find myself in this.
It's always so busy and active,
whether that's in my role as a parent
or professionally or otherwise. So, you active, whether that's in my role as a parent or professionally
or otherwise.
So, you know, things that help me with that,
I think prayer is really helpful.
I think being grounded in nature.
So I take walks as often as I can.
I was mentioning before that I love podcasts
and I love audio books.
And I actually make an effort when I take a walk now,
not to take my phone with me
Yeah, and not to listen to something because I really just want to sort of be with myself and and reconnect and you know
When I'm in beautiful areas, I you know in Miami. I love to walk along the ocean
Sometimes I'll wear a swimsuit under my clothes. I don't get out of the car and
I'll after I drop my kids off. I'll drive to the beach
totally empty, and I'll jump in the ocean as the sun's rising and it feels so good.
So little things like that that like tether me to to nature are really
important. Meditation I've been doing for for years. Is there a certain one? I've
kind of tried a bunch of them and I view them all as like quivers in my arsenal,
right?
Like at different times they do different things for me.
So I initially learned Transcendental Meditation with a gentleman named Bob Roth who is amazing
and a dear friend and will still sometimes do it even with each other telephonically
or when he comes through town.
And that's really helpful for me because there's, there's nothing to do other than sit in
silence. You're not being instructed to do anything. You have to sort of sit with yourself.
And sometimes actually that's the most challenging. 20 minutes and somebody's,
nobody's saying breathe in, breathe out. You know, you just have to sit. So a lot of times I return
to that because I think the discipline of not doing something is very good for me. I've tried Qigong which is like a moving meditation. I've tried
breath work. I have a friend Lucas Mack who's amazing. Him and his partner
Helly do these incredible breath routines that can be really centering and
grounding, yoga nidra. So this is when I talked about before like I get curious
about I get curious about this too like like different ways that I can sort of physiologically control my body and control my mood and control my nerves.
And I think all of these different things serve a purpose. So I don't view it and go in and out of different practices, but I view it as just tools I have
for whatever moment I'm facing.
You know, a lot of times people ask, you know,
how do you deal with stress and how, you know,
there's stress that is within your control
and there's stress that's totally external to you.
And I think like the number one way I can deal
with those things that I have little control over
is just to prepare to meet the moment as like my higher self and my best self and that's like really simple stuff
So it's like great as a cold plunge is and I like it's great
More important than that is like going to bed early
Like not drinking too much if you know, you need to be on and you're going through a period of like high stress
nourishing your body, little, you know, finding moments of calm and not being over scheduled, like
making carving out time for yourself to be reflective and to think.
And a lot of the people I admire most, they're not the people running from thing to thing.
They're extraordinarily busy and they take great pains to carve out of their day an hour, two hours, and
they'll sit and read and they learn and they're proactive around the knowledge
they want to acquire and then how they want to utilize that. Charlie Munger is
somebody who I've read so much of his work. I mean he is, could argue for, he
lived over a hundred years and was one of the most busy, productive people
and he would take large chunks of his day just to learn and to read and to explore.
I'm not that disciplined yet, but it's an aspiration of mine and I do try to look at
my schedule and ask myself where I'll have the time to be proactive instead of reactive. Busy's kind of overrated.
It's, I think the nervous system is going to get the best PR in 2025.
That's my prediction.
I think busy and productive are not the same thing.
What do you say busy's for the bees?
Yeah, everyone on TikTok gets mad at me, but I was like, yeah, listen,
like bees work hard and ants work hard.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
But I think there's people that do a lot of hard labor
and really difficult things.
And I'm not saying that I'm not taking anything away,
but I think when people lead with how busy they are,
my big question is like, well, how productive
are you being with that busyness?
100%.
And I think there's an awakening to this. I remember early in my career in a very
sort of professional corporate setting, there would be executives in a real estate firm
who would leave their jackets on their seats as they went home at night because they wanted
people to think and leave their lights on because they wanted people to think they were
there longer. Like it was an old mentality, right,
that they had probably inherited from a generation prior.
What I find, like, really inspiring is
not only people who can create and build,
but, like, people who's, like, have great families,
who are well-connected to their kids, who are kind.
Like, this full person is what I try to emulate.
And I look back at different iterations of me, and while my priorities haven't changed,
my energy has.
Like, I had this like hardcore working mom energy when Arabella was first born.
And I think that was born out of like an insecurity, you know, that I was still so young and I
was playing in the jungle of New
York City real estate and I had to be great even before I was great, you know, and I put
a lot of pressure on myself and I felt like I didn't give myself the sort of freedom to
be comfortable in those relaxed moments. I was striving a lot, as one does when they're young. And I see my
energy now and that kind of ambition is so much more fully integrated into me as a human
being. I don't think there's anything charming about working so hard, you get sick that you don't give yourself enough time after.
Like with Arabella, I mean, I fought hard
for paid family leave in the federal government
and we had some amazing wins on that front
that delivered that policy to 9 million more Americans.
Yet I was super uncomfortable with taking it myself.
Uh-huh, I relate to that.
I was so uncomfortable.
And then by the third baby, you're like,
oh my God, I just want to be at home and just be-
100%.
You can't even give yourself three months.
And I'm like almost, this is me being critical of my,
but I'm almost like ashamed.
I'm like, what was wrong with me?
And it was because it's one of two things.
It was either I was too insecure
or I hadn't built systems that could withstand my absence.
Both of those were my fault.
Like both of those were me not being a good leader in those early days
and the fact that I felt uncomfortable, the fact that I couldn't really take
the time off for myself psychologically or physically and and I'm just not that
person anymore. So I I'm much happier with this. So when I think about like time,
you know, how how we think about time, it's so ephemeral,
it's the one thing none of us can stop.
I really think about living life in alignment with my core values, my priorities.
And I guess I'm at an age and a point in my life where I have the wisdom to realize like
that's the way to be
happy as opposed to living for anyone else.
Well, I mean this as a real compliment to you and your family, your parents, and you
and Jared as you parent.
How busy you guys are and how much you have going on, literally at the highest levels
of the world, it seems like you're all very grounded in family and you keep that in perspective. Like, it seems, your father seems like a great father,
your mom seems like she was a great mother,
and you guys parent, and there's a lot of people
I think could get lost in the ambition
of all the things that you've accomplished
and that your family's accomplished,
and they kind of lose sight of what's really important.
And I think your family is one of the examples of like,
you guys have all kind of turned out well
and stayed close together
and parented well and have good kids and I think that's that's rare.
Look I think I think Esther Perel said something to the effect that the you know quality of your
life is the quality of your relationships and I believe in that I think almost all sort of sadness
and happiness arises from these interpersonal relationships
and those that are strong, those that aren't strong.
And I think it starts with family.
It starts with friends.
We were talking about like what's self-care for me.
Self-care, a big part of my self-care is staying connected with my friends.
You know, just reaching out when I need them, reaching out to check on them,
and making sure that I'm prioritizing that
for them and for myself,
and really putting the work into these relationships
that are so important in my life.
I bet that it's difficult at times
when you have friends for them to be able to relate
to what you've gone through.
I mean, it's like crazy what you've gone through and it's like...
It's pretty crazy.
You maybe have a friend for each era?
Like a specific friend.
You know, some of my friends are...
I've known since I was a little girl.
Yeah.
So one of my best friends, I've known her since we were in kindergarten.
We went to school together.
And she's still one of my best friends today.
One of my other best friends I've met more recently
and we relate on sort of like this spiritual level.
And there's just what we talk about
like transcends like the day to day.
And I feel like I have these sort of philosophical
and intellectual conversations with,
and it's super nurturing for me as a human being
to sort of step out of the day to day issues
and have these more abstract conversations.
So I love that.
But yeah, it was interesting moving to Miami
because when I moved from New York,
which had been my home base my whole life, I lost a lot of family support system.
You know, Jared's parents were really involved.
They would take turns walking our kids to school on the days we couldn't do it.
His mother used to fill our refrigerator.
For the first like 10 years we were married, she'd go on Costco runs to New Jersey.
I'd get a call once a week being like I'm going to Costco
What do you want and some of my friends would be like do you find that like annoying is she like overstepping?
I'm like, I love it. Like I don't have to drive to Costco. It's great. She'd fill
And like the refrigerator at our office
So she knew every girl who worked for me like what they liked and she'd bring it back for a Costco
So it was I love my mother-in-law for so many reasons, but that was one of them.
But that was like an amazing support system.
And we went to DC and we lost that.
Obviously, my father was there, but he was pretty consumed with everything going on.
A little busy.
A little busy.
So that was interesting.
On the friend front, I made these amazing
friendship sort of forged in fire because you're really like being thrown into a lot
of intensity.
So you really see who will be with you in a foxhole.
Did you have some that pulled back?
Like did you have some friends that had been with you before the presidency that kind of
like leaned out a little bit?
Well, I had, you know, what I basically told a lot of my closest friends
when I went to Washington, like, I'm like,
I don't, I'm gonna have the bandwidth
for work and for family.
And so like, I really am gonna try not to be a bad friend
to you for the next few years, but like, give me some grace.
Like, I'll be there if things are bad.
Like, I'll be the best, like, bad time friend ever. I'll be on your doorstep with like a box of tissues, but I may miss a lot of the
celebrations in the coming years, just because I know I'm like, I'm going to
leave it all on the field.
If you have a friend that needs a birthday, you might miss a birthday.
And that was true.
And what I realized in coming out is like, you need the birthdays too.
You know, like you need, you need both.
You need to be there for-
I might miss a birthday and I'm only just doing this podcast.
But yeah, there were definitely, it was not friends.
I definitely had some acquaintances who, who, you know, their politics diverged wildly
from that of my father's and they took things personally or got overly emotional.
But I'm actually really proud of the fact that like, and I think part of it was also growing
up in the public eye, like I had a pretty keen eye for what was real.
And so the people I really had led into my life over the years-
You already had a filter.
... didn't surprise me.
And I feel really blessed by that because I have friends who, you know, they don't speak
to half their family because the time was that emotional.
But I also don't I'm, I'm, I never judge someone by their politics. So for me, it's not a litmus
test. So I would expect that back from you. So I, you know, I have friends across the
ideological spectrum and I view conversations with those who disagree with me as like an
opportunity to learn. I may not agree with them.
I may partially agree with them, but I view that as,
I feel like that makes you like a full human being
when you have people in your life who disagree.
And you know, politics for most people,
it's a small part of their life.
There are a lot of other areas
where you can vehemently agree.
And so I focus on those. Rapid fire questions. Oh, rapid fire. Let's get up. Rapid fire.
Let me take some water before. Yes. We've covered some ground.
We have. You guys are really great at what you do. Really. It's amazing. Michael's going to take
that compliment and apply it to his own self.
I'm going to pull that clip and I'm going to use it as my meditation.
Exactly.
Your, your daily affirmation.
Well, I'm sure you've been told it before.
It's going to start with the raw dog and creatine and then you're saying
you're really good at what you do.
It's going to be a loop.
No, you're like amazing, obviously to be in this business, you have to be great
conversationalist, but I feel
and this has been true when I've listened to the interviews you do, I feel like you
allow people to show who they are and you're curious to get to know them.
And I feel like that when I've listened to different interviews that you've done.
So it's-
I think-
Keep up the great work.
I think we just like to learn about people and why people think the way they do and their backgrounds and you know,
doing this for as long as we've done it. You realize that most people come to their conclusions from, you know,
a good place and it's a lot of upbringing, it's a lot of culture, and it's a lot of family values,
and it's a lot of who you know and where you've been. And I think when you look at people in that way,
as opposed to some like prejudgment based on their politics or ideals,
you really can get to know people a lot more
and you can empathize, use the word empathy,
or like you empathize with why they believe
or think the way they do.
Most people don't have bad intention.
That's what we've learned from doing this show.
Yeah.
Carl Jung said that thinking is hard.
That's why most people judge.
And I believe that.
Like, it's easier to judge.
And, you know, I like to listen, I like to learn,
I like to ask questions.
And that sort of informs me as a human being.
My dad used to say,
two percent of the world thinks, eight percent of the world
thinks they think, and 90 percent never think.
Which one are you?
I like that. I like your dad.
Not as nice of a delivery. Oh, yeah, my dad, he's a character.
Favorite book you've read recently.
Ooh. Oh, recently. Okay, recently, that's helpful.
So, right now, I'm reading something which is pushing it for me.
It's outside of, like, my normal genre.
It's like a cyberpunk sci-fi book called The Diamond Age
that a friend recommended to me
that's you know rather different. I actually recently reread sort of sci-fi
or sci-fi as well Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which is a blast. I've been on
a little bit of a of a thread here but I'm enjoying it. I also I recently reread
Jitterbug Perfume which I think I sent to you which is such a wild ride. I also I recently reread Jitterbug Perfume which I think I sent to you.
Which is such a wild ride. I love mythology. I love it's it's just such an
amazing story and I think for you for years I go through ebbs and flows. I go
really hard on philosophy and psychology to some degree and history and biographies that I'll go
through these periods where I just want like I'm like bummed I'll be on I'll be
at like the beach with like something like Ridiculous like Plato's Republic I
literally did this at a water park and I'm like why did I pack this as my
only book and I'm like why don't I have like? So I actually have to force myself to read more fiction.
And I think that's like the busy bee, like the doer,
you know, that for some reason I feel like I'm accumulating
a different type of knowledge in biographies
and that's like a false premise.
Like I learned so much from the fiction books I read,
but it's also enjoyable.
Like you get a good laugh and you can, you can really sort of escape the world.
So, so jitterbug perfume,
I would recommend to anyone.
And then there are some, you know,
there are some tried and true.
I, I, I, a friend of mine told me how
she started reading every book that was assigned to her children.
And now they call it, we used to call it like English,
they call it language arts.
And so I thought, what an interesting idea.
So it's actually been really fun.
So it's allowed me to revisit a lot of books.
So I just read Fahrenheit 451 that my daughter was reading.
My eight-year-old is reading his first novel in class,
which is The One and Only Ivan.
So that's been really fun because then at the table I can ask them specifically and
I remember it, not just like in broad brush.
It's really interesting and I learn what they like, what they don't like.
So that's been really interesting.
You can test them.
You can be like, chapter seven, what happened?
The outsiders.
Exactly.
You remember the outsiders?
I'm rereading the outsiders.
I never read the outsiders.
Oh my God, I read that and I was like, okay, it's leather jacketsading the outsiders. I never read the outsiders. Oh my God.
I read that and I was like, okay, it's leather jackets and slick hair.
That's what it is.
Maybe I'll, I just read the Animorphs with my son, which is like, they morph.
I remember reading those as a kid.
And so I, there's like a whole series.
So we read, we have this funny bedtime routine.
He's, you know, my daughter at this point just like wants our space.
My middle son, he wants like a good cuddle with his dog.
And my youngest son, he just will like milk it for...
If I gave him three hours, our bedtime routine would be three hours.
I love that.
My umbilical cord needs to be connected at that age too to my son.
Oh my god.
It's, it's, and you know, he's actually, he's so independent.
He's my most independent because he's our third, but he's also like our most like cuddly and like,
he's like, you know, he's quite literally is our youngest,
but he still has like his beds full of stuffed animals
and every night we choose which stuffed animal
we both get to cuddle with while we're reading.
There's like every time I go on a trip,
I bring back a new one, so it's piled up.
We have all of these different things that I bring back or Jared will bring back from
travels that we have to do as part of a routine.
So we have a Tibetan singing bowl.
We have these like chimes from Bhutan.
I picked up a bell at a wedding that I went to in Mexico and you know I say whenever you
hear this noise it's me loving you.
And so he like rings it when I'm not there.
And we do this after reading.
We say our prayers together.
And then I do the chime.
I've got this like leaf thing.
All of these wild little like noise things and they're all piled up on his bedside and
we go one by one and do this routine.
And it takes a long time.
And some nights I'm like-
I would live it up until he wants to stop.
I mean, they want to stop at some point at 13.
No, not at 13.
We're not going to 13.
Yeah.
Honestly, like you wish you could make it.
I was fucking getting in bed with my son at 13.
We're going to like, maybe like 13 for a boy.
You don't want to be laying in bed with your 13 year old boy.
Well, that's one of like the most interesting things about kids.
Like I feel you see in their eyes, like when you're in that age, how old are your kids?
Four and two.
Four and two.
Well, our daughter's turning five.
Okay.
So you're going to start to see with your five year olds when they start to internalize
like the messages of the world around them, both your expectations,
society's expectations, and it's like really interesting because it starts to
happen I feel like most around like six, seven, eight, where they become
self-conscious. How they look, hugging you in public, what they are saying, like
there's nothing more amazing to me than when a child says something completely embarrassing,
you know, because they don't care.
And they're not trying to embarrass you, they're not trying to hurt you, they're just saying
exactly what you had said five minutes earlier or what's on their mind.
They're not self-conscious about being loved and hugged.
And as they get older, they start to, you know, sort of have this imprint on them.
So for me, what I think about a lot with, with all of my kids is how do I maintain
this and, you know, obviously they have to be growing, they can't be naive to the
world, but there's something so pure about just being.
If my daughter stops hugging me in public, I'm probably going to cry for sure.
It'll happen probably for like a moment.
Do you remember what we were doing at 13? You can't be laying in bed with our son at 13.
Let's not tell Yvonne what we were doing at 13.
I was probably right there with you.
Like I said, we've covered a lot of ground.
I don't know, I'll compare notes later.
Yeah, I'll hope we can compare them.
This is a scandal section.
The rapid fire.
Your guilty pleasure.
Does it have to be one thing?
No.
My guilty pleasure. Maybe this is a notes one thing? No. My guilty pleasure.
Maybe this is a notes comparing session later.
I would say, yeah, you know, I would say, obviously,
they're like boring answers, like certain types of food
and that I love.
It used to be like really bad reality television.
That's mine.
Housewives.
So I got it became a problem, though,
because we don't have a lot of TVs in the house.
And we have basically like two and one's in the bedroom.
And my husband would lose his mind.
He'd come in and he's like, I can't hear that.
Like turn off the squawking.
Like he would really.
It's annoying as a side sound.
If you're not an active participant.
It would drive him crazy.
He's like, I feel like, he would say he like feels
himself getting stupider. So he'd make me, and it was this whole thing. I's like, I feel like, he would say he's like, feels himself getting stupider.
So he'd make me, and it was this whole thing.
I'm like, why can't you just let me watch my show?
So I kind of have stopped doing that.
And I actually say, and it's not like guilty, it's kind of nice is I love like that time
after your kids are in bed and you can like just take a minute for yourself and like there
are creams involved and face, I love that.
It's not like a long nighttime routine,
but whatever it is, it feels really good.
And that's been kind of the substitute for me.
That's my last and final rapid fire
is what are your beauty tips?
What are the creams you're using?
What are the makeup products that you like?
What are your go-tos?
So I have been using this makeup product from Estee Lauder since I was like 14 years
old and it's a concealer that is just, I mean, and basically the tube is this big and I've
probably only gone through three bottles.
Like this thing lasts forever, but it's amazing.
So I love that.
It's called Maximum Coverage, but I don't wear a lot of face makeup,
so I'll use it a little bit under my eyes,
even when I don't need to, it's just such a part
of my routine.
I don't love so much foundation or things.
I prefer to focus on skincare rather than makeup.
So I like a good mascara, especially when I feel tired,
but I feel like when my skin looks good
and feels good, I feel good.
So that's where I'll prioritize.
And I love like serums and moisturizers.
And right now I'm using something called sea buckthorn oil.
And it's just very moisturizing.
And I love it.
I am addicted to lip moisturizer.
So I always have to like wherever I go on my bedside table, there's a lip moisturizer. So I always have to, like wherever I go on my bedside table
there's a lip moisturizer. My favorite one was by Glossier, thebomb.com and
they've changed the formula. So I'm like on a mission to find the original.
I have a few bottles left that...
Can I just stay for Glossier?
Honestly, my daughter walked in and it was like she had found like gold.
She had two bottles that she had found like somewhere in her room or whatever.
Backs that she's like, look what I found, Bob.
I was going to scramble to get that old formula.
This is my recommendation, lawless lip mask.
Okay.
I feel like it's similar.
It's like a lip mask that you wear.
I just like feeling hydrated.
Yeah.
So everything like some people, I'm, you know, I just like feeling hydrated. Yeah. So everything like some people I'm you know don't like that I really like especially at night feeling
moisturized. So I like the thicker moisturizers. I use MBR moisturizer. I'm a
sunblock fanatic and that's one thing that that I'm just so I have so many I
have sunblocks for every occasion. I have you know the heavy sunblock when I'm out
doing water sports or surfing or you something in the hot Florida sun.
During peak hours, I have that heavy zinc one
that your face looks all white
and even with the best formulation, it's horrible.
That's good though, because then people won't recognize you
and come up to you at the beach
when you're trying to have your meditation.
There you go. Yeah.
There you go.
It's a great way.
So put on zinc.
But the Alt-MD is pretty good for that, so I like that. And then I have the thinner ones. There's a great way put on zinc But I you know the alt MD is pretty good for that so I like that and then I have the thinner ones
There's this new sunblock called Nuda that I love for just more daily wear you gave me one
That's amazing with the caffeine in it. So that's a great sunblock. I have sticks
I have I have it all so sunblock. I'm pretty nuts about that and I think living in Florida. That's especially
That's especially true.
Quickly, I got one more.
Oh, and one other product that I fell in love with recently.
A girlfriend of mine came out with it.
It's called John T. It's a lymphatic drain.
It's like a body lotion.
And that's not an area I ever,
I always use drugstore products and this is relative,
it's relatively well-priced,
but it is so good and smells so delicious.
And it's all these Brazilian,
it's a Brazilian formulation that like, it just,
it's amazing.
It's beautiful.
And we both like Isabella Grutman's jewelry.
I love her ring.
You were wearing that really pretty,
I think it was emerald ring.
Yeah.
Isabella is a dear friend and she's an incredibly talented jewelry designer and clothing designer.
Yes, I just had to shout that out. I know it's not beauty.
What is your one last...
Last one, and I know we got to get you out of here. We all got to jump.
Your dad is about to become the president once again.
What are you most excited about this time around compared to the first time?
Oh, that's a good question.
Yeah, I mean, listen, we...
Sorry, I'm more curious about the cream.
Listen, not to say I'm not-
I'm like, it's been years since I've been asked
about moisturizer.
That was great.
I remember- Sorry.
Did take a mental note about the body cream for myself.
But I figured I'd end with this one.
So, you know, it's this ride that we've been on
is so unusual.
So, you know, most people who become president,
they've cut their teeth on a congressional run
or something state or local.
And then eventually they work up the ladder
to running for president
and maybe, maybe actually being elected.
So the fact that he did it on his first go,
first time out of the gate,
and then we had the experience the first time that there was a four-year break and then
he's come back in with such a strong mandate.
I'm just-
Probably the greatest comeback story in maybe the history of the world.
Yeah.
Maybe.
It's incredible.
And he's got so much energy and support and excitement.
And I think the four years has really allowed him
to calibrate how he wants to spend this next four years.
And he's incredibly excited and enthusiastic.
And I think about, you know, my role the first time
was very different.
We were like the pioneers.
Nobody was really knew what to do with him
as a political figure.
And now there's so many capable people around him, many of whom we've worked with in the
past, almost all of whom we know very well.
And so, you know, I think about in this moment how I can also support him because I know
what the job is, like in a very personal way, having been by his side for four years.
And it's the world's loneliest position.
The enormity of the decisions you're making
on a daily basis, how transactional everyone is with you, you know, your
closest friends, everyone's passionate about something and they all want to
spend the short time they have with you selling you on what they think is
something good and positive and productive for this country in the world.
So it's a very lonely perch.
And I would often think about this during the
first four years, but now I'm having a little
distance from it.
I think I'm most looking forward to just being
able to show up for him as a daughter.
And be there for him to take his mind off things,
to like watch a movie with him or watch a
sports game, to know that he can be with me and be himself and just relax and for me to
be able to provide that for him in a very loving way as his daughter.
So that's how I'm sort of thinking about how I can best support him in this moment.
But he's excited. We're excited.
I think there's a general excitement in this country that that has been
catalyzed. And and I think it will be a great four years.
And the inauguration is coming up. It's coming up.
Yep. It's in a little over a week.
Week from when this airs. That's true.
I'm sure a lot of people already know where to find you.
But if they don't, where can they find your book, your Instagram, your Twitter, all the things?
Yes, you can find me at my handles, Ivanka Trump, and I'll be in Florida.
And your book, Women Who Work, you can get it on Amazon.
Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on
the show. You're welcome back anytime. If you want to come back again to talk about
more health, beauty, skin, diet, fitness tips. Thank you for doing this. Maybe we'll kick
Michael off. Thank you so much guys. You can't kick me off. Thank you, Valka. Thank you.
You're welcome. Sit right over there. Yeah. You can be the co-host. Let's do it. I could
use a break. Interview Michael.
Oh, no.
Thank you.
Be sure to head to ShopSkinnyConfidential.com to grab the beauty water before it sells out.
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