The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Valeria Lipovetsky & Gary Lipovetsky - How To Have A Healthy Relationship Or Marriage, Successful Parenting, & Your Own Business

Episode Date: July 31, 2024

#733: Today we’re sitting down with Valeria and Gary Lipovetsky, creative marketing experts, podcasters and influencers. We discuss working alongside your partner, hands-off parenting, entrepreneurship and career shifts, building a team, and the importance of a niche business concept to last the long haul.   To connect with Valeria Lipovetsky click HERE   To connect with Gary Lipovetsky 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 brought to you by Soaak.   Go to soaak.com/skinny and use code SKINNY at checkout to get your first month free.   This episode is brought to you by Equip Foods Go to equipfoods.com/skinny or use code SKINNY at checkout to receive 20% off your order.   This episode is brought to you by Nutrafol Nutrafol is the #1 dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement, clinically shown to improve your hair growth, thickness, and visible scalp coverage. Go to nutrafol.com and use code SKINNYHAIR to save $10 off your first month's subscription, plus free shipping.   This episode is brought to you by Sun Bum Visit sunbum.com and use code SKINNY at checkout for 15% off your first purchase.   This episode is brought to you by Caraway Ditch the chemicals with Caraway. Visit carawayhome.com/HIMANDHER to receive 10% off your next purchase.   This episode is brought to you by HERS.   Weight loss by HERS is realistic, not restrictive, and is focused on giving you access to the solution that's right for you. Visit ForHERS.com/tsc for your personalized weight loss treatment options.    Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren 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.

For me, content was always my thing. I love creating content. I love the media business. So for me, doing the product, it just drained my soul. And at some point, we were looking at each other being like, what are we doing? That actually put us in an inferior cash flow position. Because although that was generating millions of dollars a year in product sales, it was taking away Valeria's attention.

Welcome. Welcome in. Today, we are sitting down with Valeria and Gary Lipovetsky. Okay. I have been wanting to interview Valeria for as long as I can remember. And when I came to her with the idea to do a podcast swap, she was so in and she's like, let's do it with my husband, Gary, because it's perfect for the him and her show. So her and her husband came on and we discussed everything in this episode. We talked about working alongside your partner, fatherhood, motherhood, hands-off parenting, hands-on parenting, entrepreneurship, career shifts, their background, building a team, the importance of niche small business, and concepts that last. I found this episode

very engaging. And after this, I went and did Valeria's podcast, Not Alone. So you can go listen to sort of part two with her and I on her podcast. And we kind of have like a girl talk situation. Valeria is a famous content creator. She's a purpose-driven entrepreneur, a creative director, and a podcast host. She's a mother of three and married to Gary. Gary is the co-founder of Valeria Inc. and The Creative Method. Him and his wife worked together just like me and Michael, so this dynamic was fun. On that note, Valeria and Gary, welcome to the show. This is The Skinny Confidential, him and her. How did you guys meet? We've been married for almost 12 years, so there's going to be the 12-year dynamic here. How long have

you guys been married? I don't know. We've've been together since we were we've met when we were 12 years old we've been together since we were 20 so like okay it's been a while how old are you guys now i'm 37 okay so how many years is that we've been married we got married in 2016 he didn't marry me for math it feels like we've been you know we've known each other for 12 years so it just it feels like so just a long time okay so you understand this we understand okay so we met to answer your question we met uh the first time we met was at my best friend's shabbat dinner in toronto canada it's when i moved to canada and i actually had a boyfriend so it's not like it was oh my god this is going to be my husband we met he left some kind of impression on me because he

told me that he was, he went to the Playboy Mansion. I did go to the Playboy Mansion. So I was like, that's a random thing to share the Shabbat dinner. And then we haven't seen each other after that for a year. I broke up with a boyfriend, moved to New York, came back to visit my mom. And that's kind of where we got reconnected. Yeah. That's kind of your version of it, yeah. What do you mean? What is your version? Let's get the him version.

Well, I mean, the version of it is that, you know, yes, we did meet at a French Shabbat dinner and I didn't see her first. She told me she had a boyfriend and then I met up with her a year later and the year later I saw her and she didn't have this boyfriend around. I'm like, hey, you know, what's up?

What's going on? And then she told me that she had broken up with his boyfriend and I politely, you know, suggested to her. I said, you know, what's up, what's going on? And then she told me that she had broken up with his boyfriend and I politely, you know, suggested to her, I said, you know, uh, there's this play and there's like some stupid shit that I would never have seen on my own. But I thought, oh, she's like a young girl. She's into all this like artsy nonsense. So I said to her, Hey, do you want to go to this play? Right.

And so she did the, she did something that it was amazing. She politely said to me, yeah, you know, we can all go with like our mutual friends because it turned out we had a lot of mutual friends. We can all go together. We can go to this play together. And that was her like

really polite way of turning me down. Right. And I thought that was really nice of her. So when I realized she wasn't interested in me and also her friend,

her mutual, like our mutual friend, Mary, I asked Mary, I said, hey, Mary, can you find out like, you know,

what's her situation? And Mary never got back to me. And that was Mary's polite way of saying she's not interested in you. Right. So I get it. So I thought that was really cool. So we became friends. So I dropped all the, I'm looking at you because you know what I'm talking about. I dropped it all. And I said, okay, we're just going to be friends. Cause I figured, you know what? I'm going to network with her. She's a beautiful girl. She probably knows other, you know, amazing women. And you know, it's already time for me to get married. I was in my late thirties and we started hanging out. So everything was dropped, just friends. We were communicating by BBM. You guys don't know what

that is. You're too young for that. What are you talking about? Blackberry messenger. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what that is. Yeah. Yeah. I wasn't a Blackberry girl. Go ahead. So anyways, we were communicating by BBM and one day she came in, she was, she had come in from out of town. I was, it was a long weekend and I was the only person she knew that was still in town. So she contacted me and said, Hey, you know, we should, you want to hang out? And I understood that she's had nothing better to do. I said, yeah, you know, we can hang out and we just hung out.

And that night we went, we went for dinner again. It wasn't a date. There was another couple with, not another couple. There was her friend who was visiting from out of town and my buddy and the four of us went out, not a date. Those two went home early. Her and I went for a drink. We got a bottle of champagne.

We drank probably half of it, which means we were both drunk because we don't drink. And then we kissed and that I knew she was mine. That's my story. Yeah. Wow and then i pursued her to the ends of the earth until she agreed to marry me two and a half months to new york yeah two and a half months later married i proposed no proposed yeah yeah don't you think the secret to getting the guy is to literally just do nothing and ignore them every story that i hear that's successful, the girl was like, I'm not interested. You're annoying. You're like a gnat.

Leave me alone. And then the guy leans in. Well, we do like the chase. Yeah, but you know what? I think the difference is there was a chase, but it was very respectful. I never made him feel like, oh, you're just, you're in my space.

You know what I mean? That's why I think he keeps mentioning how I turned him down in a really nice way because i was always very thoughtful with my response so i think the secret is like that balance of being a human and kind but yeah it doesn't hurt that you know i was kind like beautiful and smart and you know all those she was checking all your boxes correct was i kind well i mean we were so young i don't know if I was kind I'm gonna say I was kind yeah you can rewrite your own story you can remember my own story what what do you guys think is the secret to a successful marriage because the reason I wanted to have both of you guys on the podcast

when the opportunity came up is you guys work together too and michael and i understand that dynamic what is the typically we say if you're in a relationship don't do that i think that's harder to figure out than the other stuff i don't know if you guys would agree with that or not meaning like it's been easier for us to figure out how to co-parent and how to be in a relationship but the harder thing was figuring out the work dynamic i sometimes come to gare and i'm just like you know what i wonder what would be the situation if we didn't work together, because again, to your point, we are, we are involved in each other's like every aspect of our lives. And I'm a very individual person.

Like I need my space. So I sometimes when we go through it, I'm like, I wonder what it would be if we didn't work together and Gary's completely against it is like, if we didn't have this passion together, we would have grown apart. Because what I think you see with a lot of couples is that each of them kind of diving into their own career and doing their own thing, and that's when, you know, the roads are starting to split. Where for us here, when we share about our day or about a situation or about a

challenge, we so understand each other because we're in it and we have the same goal and there's no place for interpretation, I guess. I think to answer your first question outside of the business case is how to, the key to a successful marriage in general, because I think that was your first question. That was the first thing. I think it's about letting your partner develop as an individual, letting them evolve on their own, working on yourself to make sure you're evolving. So like your fitness, your mind, your, you know, spiritually, all of the things that you need to do as an individual to continue to improve, consume the right content and all of that. So if your partner is evolving and developing and improving and you let them do that and you

don't have this like jealousy and wanting to always be, you know, a part of every activity and knowing everything. And then you're doing the same thing for yourself. You both evolve simultaneously, you improve simultaneously, and then you come together to share in those kind of, in, in, in those learnings. And I find that that's been really good for Valeria and I, like I did something stupid lately, like recently in my i just i turned 51 not long ago and i decided i'm gonna get a motorcycle which i never did before so she didn't even say a word to me well she didn't say a word to me so yeah i know it's my midlife crisis you were kind

of my midlife crisis but but you know i did that and she didn't question me and now i go out i spend so much time on my own on the road and it's very therapeutic for me. And I come back and I come back the improved version of myself. And she does similar stuff. Like she'll go out with her friends and she'll do the things that she reads a lot of books. I don't read as many books as her. You don't know what I do, which I think is nice. It's great.

So it's, it's, it's the space. She has another job down the street at the strip club, Gary. Yeah, no. I have a whole other life happening. I think that's really good advice though. If she worked at the strip club, I think I have a whole other life happening. I think that's really good advice, though. If she worked at the strip club, I think my degenerate friends would probably let me know

who frequent, you know, those kind of places. The ones that are going for the lunch special. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But on the, you know, but on the business side,

yeah, I mean, Valeria's, she's an entrepreneur. So, you know, and she's just like one of these naturally born, like, savant entrepreneurs. So,

if we weren't, we would have worked together regardless because regardless of what she would have pursued, I'm not the type of person because I'm an entrepreneur too. I wouldn't have sat by the side and said, okay, go ahead and do that on your own. I would have found the synergies and we would have connected either way. Yeah, that's true. So this was just inevitable. I would love to lay the foundation up for our audience about how each of you grew up before we get into to now. I was able to listen to a podcast where you shared your childhood. You you had I don't I don't know if wild's the right word. You had a you had an interesting childhood the way you shared it. Can you talk a little bit about how you grew up? Yeah. So I was born in Russia and my mother had me when she was 19. And then

we moved to Israel, just her and I, when she was 21. So we grew up together. She was a single mother without the financial assistance, never met my father, biological father. Didn't have kind of the financial assistance. And I just kind of went through life figuring it out with her. She was such a rock, very strong figure, not was, is. Very strong figure in my life. But with that came also a lot of, you know, hyper independence and a lot of understanding of how to move in the world in a different way because my surrounding was a lot of kind of normal and I didn't come from normal.

So it was just a lot of that. And then I started, I left home when I was 16 with modeling and I started traveling and working and making money. And that was just kind of my childhood. I feel like it was really short lived and it's kind of hitting me now that I'm hitting 34 soon in September where I'm just like, I kind of feel like the little girl in me needs to, you know, get back a little bit of her childhood. It's kind of like you had to grow up pretty fast. Very fast. Yes. Very fast.

Sorry, may I add something? Yes. He is so detail oriented. I'm just like, well, no, but she's missing a fast. Yes. So, sorry, may I add something? Yes. He is so detail oriented. I'm just like, Well, no, but she's missing a lot of crucial points of this.

So when she says she was born in Russia, she was born in a place and she spent the first couple of years in a place and she was the product of a society that were just, I don't know how else to say it. They're just murderers. Like everybody was killing each other. There was no law. No, you're, you're, you're, you're laughing. You're laughing, but you know, members of your family, your

mother's family were murdered. Okay. They were fine. That's true. And, and it's kind of a detail and this is, this is like, I've blocked so many memories in Russia, there's Moscow. Okay. And then there's the rest of Russia.

And the further you get from Moscow, the more you're likely to get killed in the street. This was back in the nineties, right? This was, this was, she was born in 1990 when it was still communism right before 1992 and communism stopped, right. And it became a democracy over there. Right. So she comes from a very rough place.

So when people, you know, when let's say like, you know, musicians talk about coming from really rough places in America, those are all like, you know, very different, that's like, you know, I don't know, like that's like a Jersey suburb compared to where Valeria is from, like where she was born into. And then she moved to Israel and in Israel, she lived in a place where it was a lot of, you know, immigrants who had come from all over the world. There was like a whole exodus. It was a big, yeah, Russian immigration.

Yeah. And if you don't mind me asking, why was your father not with you? Had he passed or was he? No, they just, I mean, they were babies. My mom was 19, he was 20. So it was actually very common. I don't know how it is now, but a lot of my Russian friends in Israel grew up without fathers. So I didn't feel like it was something, you know, out of the ordinary in that environment. Your mothers just wanted to get the kids out of the environment?

Well, my mother at that point was like, yeah, we have to either leave or we, I don't know what's our future here. So she... In Israel or in Russia? In Russia. Leave to Israel. And Israel opened their borders to like Russian Jews. So for us, we did the Aliyah, like coming to Israel. And yeah, she always tried to see how she can build a different kind of future.

So when we moved to Israel, it was a very fast decision, but a survival mechanism for her that she still operates on. But yeah, that was, that was just kind of the environment i grew up in but i never when you tell the story it's so interesting when you tell all these little details to me i don't i can't explain it it doesn't feel like this dark scary traumatic so here's so here's the thing her mother and i were the same age her mother's a year older than me so her mother and i were not like it's like not like a normal relationship between like a son-in-law and a mother-in-law yeah so she like i know what was going on back there right because i'm also from

that generation oh that's and i'm also from that part of the world that's interesting that's interesting and i speak russian and chills that's crazy you see it from a totally different perspective well i'm i was born in ukraine okay okay but i was we'll get into my stuff in a bit and but I speak Russian and I'll, I'll tell you why afterwards. But I know the stories, like her mom will tell me the stories as a child. Of course, she wasn't really privy to this stuff. Her mom's a gangster.

Like when I, like she's, she's like, she's lived stuff that like you guys, like none of us can understand myself included. Right. So like going to Israel, this like, you know, having her at 19 and then the dad kind of dropped off cause he, you know, he went to israel this like you know having her at 19 and then the dad kind of dropped off because he you know he went on his own way and then you know moving to israel doing one immigration then eventually moving to canada but like that's like it's tough like this isn't like i don't want to i don't want to like trivialize like single moms in other parts of the world but these are really extenuating and difficult circumstances like her mom's a survivor and she shielded valeria from a lot of that i know later

in life and then i want to get to gary's childhood but i know later in life you you ended up finding your dad yeah and the way you talked about it was really aware and a point it was amazing the way you talked about it when I heard you on a podcast. I think it was your own podcast. Maybe Melissa's. Can you share why you decided to find him? I know you did a vlog on it. Give us a little bit of behind the scenes on that. Yeah. So I was 26 at a time and my mother called me and she said, I'm going to Russia to visit her mother, my grandmother's grave. She said, I think you should come with me. We'll do a little route trip.

I haven't been back to Russia since we left when I was two. So when the opportunity kind of showed up, I was a little hesitant because she did say, we can't, we're going to go back to the town where you grew up, where I grew up, and you'll be able to see your father if you're interested. And I came to Gary, I remember, and, you know, for me moving, even though she shielded me from a lot of what was going on, I still operate as a, you know, survival mode. So when I came to Gary, my first reaction was like, I don't need it. I got moved on with my life. I don't need to explore this open Pandora's box. Like, I'm not going to go. We sat down and he

said, you know what? You, you don't know if this opportunity will ever come up again. You don't know if he's going to be alive next year, just go. So I decided to go and I decided to vlog. I've never before shared very raw emotional vlogs on my channel. So that also was very scary for me, but I filmed it more for myself and honestly to show the kids in the future and later on decided to publish it so when i went and i saw him and i met him for the first time yeah it was a very disconnected type of encounter because i've already i don't want to say healed because probably not, but I've already pushed it down so much that I didn't have anything else that I needed from him. How old were you when he left your life when you were two? Okay. You were two. He left earlier than that. Two is when you left

Russia. We left Russia, but they were going kind of back and forth. So not to, not to minimize it, but I was wondering if like, if he left at like seven or eight no different than two you know i oh i grew up always knowing that there is a father but the only i remember i saw one photo of their wedding everything else she cut in half so i never really saw his face so that one photo and i was like oh it kind of looks like me but i i just i never cared for me my mom was always this like one person that my ride or die no matter what will go through anything and i just didn't need or feel the urge to learn about that side of the family but uh yeah it was very cold it was handled in a very russian way so the russian way is to sweep everything under the rug like nothing happened

and that's how you know watching the vlog even today when i met him and my grandfather your biological my biological grandfather they were just like hey how are you how's everything so happy you came here there was no acknowledgement no acknowledgement you know no these aren't sophisticated sorry these aren't sophisticated it's not even about sophistication i just think it's a very cultural thing it's a very cultural thing to just be like, okay, yeah, move on. We continue. Nothing happened. So for the record, I think this guy is a deadbeat.

My personally, my husband would think the same. Yeah. So I understand. Yeah. If I were to meet him, I would shake his hand out of respect and stuff, but I think he's a deadbeat and the reason is, is because like, he never took care of anything. It's like, you know, you have a kid.

I know, I know he was like 19 or 20 years old when she was born but still once you become an adult to not make a phone call to say to her mom hey listen can i send you whatever i need to send her that to me that's the man weren't raised like that can i ask you a question what is it like for you to see your husband now be such an amazing father is that weird i'm sure it's amazing but i mean is it also like it like is it weird to see him with your children being so hands-on first of all when i first of all he's not decided that he's going to be my husband one of the things that i was looking for is the father like a stable

father figure because obviously I didn't have that if we had a daughter and I would see him with a daughter I think I would have gone through a big like emotional yeah thing you know but because we have three boys I think I look at it from a different way. Obviously it's amazing. I knew he's going to be an amazing father. I had no doubts about it. Um, but I'm healing through watching him. But if we had a girl, it would have been, it would have crushed me. I know it. And by the way, I'm less hands-on than you think, but that's, that's, I'm consciously less hands-on. I know. Yeah. When you guys talked about this, I heard something about this. I'm, I have this in my notes.

I want to talk to you about that. I just don't think boys should be coddled. Okay. Okay. I'm, I'm into it. Michael's into it. I want to attach the umbilical cord to my son. My son and my umbilical cord is attached.

He's not cropping it. Yeah. You're not helping him. And I tell him he's living with his mom for the rest of his life. And there's no one but his mom. My dad is turning 80. We're going to his birthday soon. Oh, wow. And so he's-

He had you late. He had you late. Yeah, he comes, yeah, he had me late, like 42 or whatever. 42, yeah. Yeah, but he's- And his parents, like we said, are 20 years apart. Yeah, 18. But then he comes from a different generation.

And then my mom is half Japanese. And so there was not- Wow. There was no coddling in the house. You know what I mean? And I tell her all the time, I'm like, you don't want to... Listen, people are going to disagree with this,

but I agree. I think with girls, it's maybe... But boys, it's tough out there in the world. And I think if you coddle too many people... Here's what happens. I've seen a lot of my friends that I believe were coddled by their mothers. And I think they struggle later in life

with women who don't give them that same kind of coddling. And a lot of women, especially now, you want to date a strong, purpose-driven woman, you're not going to get the coddling. And they don't know how to process that if they've been coddled a lot. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes a lot of sense, yeah.

It makes sense, but I have to say, you guys are looking at it in a very simplistic way. It's not like, oh, you're coddling. And this is where we're a little bit apart, and that's fine. Listen, I think that for a child, a boy or a girl, they need to build a feeling of safety and that connection to the parent. The first seven years are critical. That being said, I always felt loved and safe.

I just don't think coddling was the best. Coddling, 100%. Coddling, a hundred percent. Coddling is different, but there's, it depends what you define as coddling. Hold on a second. This is why in my opinion, okay. I'm no like biological expert, but in my opinion, this is why you need a man and a woman to raise a kid because you have from the man's perspective, you build resilience, they don't kind of over parent where they're

they're coddling them and you need that love and affection and that safety that only a mother can give you need the combination of the two you know are you familiar with scott galloway he was just talking recently about and he's got boys i believe but he was saying that single mothers who raise a daughter the daughters tend to typically be, okay, no real issues. Single mothers that raise a son, and listen, I'm not, this is tough circumstances,

but when the male leaves the house and there's a man, there's higher statistics for crime and poor behavior in the boys if the man is not in the household. Because the boys aren't answering to anybody in real time. Yeah, and listen,

I may have butchered all that, but if you guys listen to Scott Galloway talk about this, it was interesting because they're saying women somehow or little girls have more emotional capability to kind of like process things. But boys, if they're left to their own devices

without a male figure, they tend to go off the rails a lot more. That I agree 100%, honestly. I have a younger brother and my mother moved to Canada. He was 10 years old. And I mean, he can attest to it himself, not having a father figure, even if he had one until 10 years old, but from 10 to, you know, gone through teenage years and 18 and 20, it was hard. You can tell that it was missing in his life. So I definitely agree. Gary's very bullish on it. He's always like single mother. Yes, women can do it, but it's just. A woman can never, a woman can't teach a

boy to be a man. She can't make a man out of him. She just can't in my opinion, because she's, she's not a man. I don't know. How can she do it? You know, there was a defining, there was a defining moment for me when our 11 year old first started walking. And there was, there was a moment that made me really understand the different, the difference and, and respect the different perspectives that a man and a woman has when it comes to raising kids, we were at, we were at a summer at a party or something and our now 11 year old back then, he was just starting to walk, so he was like maybe one and a half, something like that.

And he was like waddling beside me and he fell down and I looked at him and he looked at me and I said, get up. And he grabbed my pant legs and he pulled himself up. And there were two sets of people sitting like within like a distance where they could see us. There was women sitting and there was men sitting and they were all looking. The men were just looking at me normally. And the women are like, why don't you help him up? Right. And this is just like a natural response to something that they're seeing it shows that though that story just shows the whole

trajectory of it correct yeah but you need both you need you need both yeah i think that what men instill in boys is the idea of like you are able to figure out yourself that feeling of autonomy and independence and resilience where for women, yeah, we're, we're taking care of their emotional needs. But if we had girls, I would be like, go to like, I love the way she turned out. I'm so like, go here. This is your guiding light. I'm so much softer.

I'm just being honest. I'm so much softer. You have one of each. Yeah. With my daughter. And I'm glad. Completely different. Completely different. Completely different.

But, you know, when I think back on my life, and again, like, I'm not commenting on anyone else's experience. I'm just commenting on mine. When I think about, like, what my father gave me most, he gave me a lot of things. But the number one thing my dad gave me was confidence. Confidence in myself. Yeah. Right? And when I talk to him now, I'm like, oh, a lot of the things that i've been able to do in my life are because of that confidence that he instilled in me and do you

know how he did that he he did it in a way where it was like there there was always of like one you have to pick yourself up there's no other alternative but also when you you can pick yourself up that's exactly going back to your story round it out okay now we need to get into gary's childhood yeah let's gary you're in the hot seat what was your childhood like so okay so i was born in in soviet era ukraine wow yeah and i'm a jew so jews weren't liked in soviet era ukraine well take us as someone who was not born yet to explain what that means well what that means is that in okay so my so my mother, so for example, my mother who passed away recently, she was a Holocaust survivor. Okay.

Wow. And the Jews in that part of the world were blamed in general by society for World War II because Hitler and the Nazis were coming after the Jews. Right. So, so not, I mean, this isn't a political discussion, but so in an environment where Jews are just hated, they're just hated. And this, in the sense that my mom, when she would try to go to university or like college after high school, they just looked at her and this is like the administration. It'd be like, no, you're a Jew.

You can't come here. So it was, it was like that. Right. It was like that. And you know, my dad would get beaten up. Like I have one of my best friends, his dad literally became like an Olympic boxer because he was Jewish because he had to learn how to fight. So that's just the reality of the world.

It's not really, you know, talked about. So growing up in that environment, I didn't grow up in that environment. My parents grew up in that environment. In addition to that, you know, like Ukraine in that environment. In addition to that, Ukraine in the fifties and sixties, when they were coming up, it was just a very poor place. It was all iron curtain. It was like North Korea, you couldn't come and go. You're stuck there. My parents never left Ukraine until they were in their mid thirties when we left Ukraine permanently. That's wild.

They never traveled. The most that they could do, because it was all Soviet Union, they actually ended up breaking through and going to college. They both went to college, and they went to Moscow, which I know you're thinking like, how is it possible that Ukraine, it was all one, right? There was no separation. It was all Soviet Union. That's why I don't speak Ukrainian. I actually speak Russian because my parents grew up only speaking Russian. They know how to speak Ukrainian, but they never actually practically spoke Ukrainian in like the, you know, in the forties, fifties, sixties and seventies when they were, when they were in that part of the world. So I grew up speaking only Russian.

That's why my like culturally I'm, I'm Russian, even though geographically I'm Ukrainian. So in 1976, we left, we were supposed to go to Israel because the only people that they were letting out of like this, with this North Korea style government at the time were Jewish people. So everything was closed. Nobody could leave except Jewish people and Jewish people were all going to Israel because by that time Israel was formed in 1948. And then by that time, Israel was saying, okay, like if you're Jewish, come here, we're going to like help you out with social services, you know, get you guys on your feet and whatnot.

And so we were supposed to go to Israel. We did all the paperwork to go there. There's like this buffer zone, which is Italy. So we went to Rome. And so I was, whatever I was, two and a half years old. And in Rome for, in that six month period, while we were waiting to get our paperwork cleared for Israel, my father heard of Canada. So my mom said, listen, we're leaving the Soviet Union. Part of the reason is so that our son doesn't have to serve in the army because it was a mandatory army. And she said, we're just going to go to Israel where it's still mandatory army.

And she goes, well, what's the point? Let's go somewhere where he doesn't have to serve in the army. We don't want him serving in the army. Because she didn't look at the Israeli army as... She looked at it as the same as the Ukrainian army. So she just didn't want it for me. And so my dad said, okay, let's bounce and we'll go to Canada. So we ended up going to Canada. So I arrived in Canada when I was three years old. One thing that I am so passionate about is frequencies. I know you guys are like, oh my God, Lauren, please. But I'm just so passionate about them. They were invented in like the 1700s

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let me tell you. This has been something that I have become a practitioner at, is hair. I have really tried it all. And there's a couple of things that I do that I think have really helped. I obviously went from blonde to brunette, which has been life-changing. I microneedle my scalp. I do scalp massage. I also am not a big fan of washing my hair a lot. I probably wash it, I don't know, like three times a month. Sue me. And then I supplement. And the supplement that I use for my hair that has helped with hair thinning, shedding, and hair issues is Nutrafol. You guys have probably seen this brand everywhere. It's very popular. Nutrafol is the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement. It has over 1 million people seeing thicker, stronger, faster growing hair with less shedding. And I'm one of them. And this is something that I

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promo code skinny hair. That's Nutrafol.com promo code skinny hair. This is really wild because there's a lot of similarities between your stories. Yeah. Yeah. So when he's speaking Russian, you guys, when you met, did you know he spoke Russian? Yeah. Yeah, of course.

I mean, I think one of the things that connected us so much is our cultural, you know, similarities. We grew up with the same culture. And I think we also feel very, like I know him and he knows me because of our history, the family history, generational history, you know. Generational trauma. Yeah, all that shit. Yeah, a lot of it. When you were 16 and you went off to model, what was that like? It was my form of escape. Back then when I was 16, my mother and my stepdad, who is the father of my brother, they were getting a divorce. So I just wanted to escape that and find and build a new life for myself. So when I left home, I don't think I was really thinking about it. I mean, for me, I was already had a way to make money and I'm just like, let's go.

What about like the cattiness of other models? I've heard like horror stories on this podcast. Did you experience that or was it pretty smooth sailing? Yeah, I experienced it. But Lauren, I grew up in Israel. Like I grew up where there is. You're like, I don't care about the cat. Not only that, like there's real problems in the world. You know what I mean? Like people were blowing up. My mother, you know, got saved because she missed a bus that blew up by like a suicide bomber. So to me, I mean, I look at life in a very different way. I have friends that lost their families. Like I,

the cattiness and all that stuff at the end of the day didn't really change much for me because it was my way out. I ask you this specifically because I don't sense any cattiness in you. And so it would be interesting to observe what you've gone through in your life with you don't seem catty at all. It just would be interesting. Like I can't imagine people seem catty at all it just would be interesting like i can't imagine people being catty to you does that make sense yeah i think people were catty not because of me but because of them like a lot of the cattiness was coming from girls that like when i lived in paris i lived with 13 girls in an apartment okay that's like's like a recipe for disaster. Now, all of us are just trying to survive, trying to land the same jobs.

You know, it's aggressive. And a lot of the girls, they come from cultures, Russian cultures. They're very catty. And it was, yeah, it wasn't the best environment to be in, but I was just like, okay, what's my North Star? What am I trying to achieve here?

You know, for me, it wasn't the small things. It was the bigger thing. How do I make more money? How do I kind of progress in my career? What's next for me? And how did you transition out of modeling? And then I would love to know how you guys came together to start working together. Whose idea that was, how that happened? So I I met Gary in Canada for the first time. I was still modeling. When I moved to New York, I moved for modeling. I was already, I was 20, already starting to be like, okay, what's my next move? Like I knew that I'm not going to be this like A-list supermodel, but I was making good money. But there's also an expiry date. So what's next? I honestly didn't have an answer. I had no idea what I'm good at and didn't

have a lot of confidence in myself and my abilities. And that's when I met Gary. Like Gary mentioned, he proposed three months after. Two and a half. Two and a half months after we met. Details. Right. Decisiveness. Yes. And then I moved back to Canada. A year later, we got married. And for me, I was like, okay, I'm going to be a housewife. I'm going to... Really? You thought you were going to be a housewife? Yeah, for a little bit. Really? Because I didn't have a direction. I got married at 21. What the hell do you know at 21? Yeah.

That is young. I was like showing my tits on the bar. Right. I wasn't showing my tits to my husband. At the bar? Yeah. The strip club. Oh, cool. tits on the bar right i wasn't showing my tits to my husband at the bar yeah oh yeah oh cool you see i skipped that but yeah but for me that's it it was uh i was like okay i'm married i felt some kind of safety i was with a man that you know was truly healed a lot of aspects that i've had

from childhood i always call him this is the first time i'm hearing about this so this is that's why it's good to come on these podcasts. It is. It's really good. We don't have opportunities. Do you know how many things I've heard for the first time on the podcast? This has been on a couple of shows. I have a lot more up my ass.

So you better watch out. Go ahead. Yeah. So for me, I always tell them, I'm like, any of my daddy issues were kind of resolved through Gary and our relationship. So I'm,

I feel like I'm in a good stable place, but yeah. It makes sense. I mentioned my mother and father are 18 years apart. Her father left her when she was three. And the reason I asked about the age, my aunt was 13 when the guy left and then my middle aunt was seven.

He's a real deadbeat. He emptied the bank accounts too, took everything. My grandma was an immigrant. But she would maybe never say this, but I think the reason the age gap has worked with them is maybe the same reason it works for you guys. It's like, I think there's part of her looking for that security and replacing

and finding a cover. Like, I always find it interesting because it was normal to me growing up to see that age gap. And my parents have been together for over 40 years now. They just had an anniversary. Congratulations, guys. When you know the stories like this, it doesn't sound strange to me how two

people with an age gap like this. I think society is so quick to jump in. Like, how could these two people that are so much older and younger be together? But you have to listen to how this could come together. And I imagine he's provided a lot of security and comfort in your life. Yeah. A lot of just, you being grounded and i felt that and i just felt like when i met him and you know i often say it wasn't like love at first sight it was a different kind of deeper feeling like a feeling of this man but this isn't sorry not my back no matter what and that is more important than anything for someone who comes from my you know experience from my experience, from

my childhood. That's why, yes, with the way you mentioned you're much softer with your daughter, she will choose a partner based on how you loved her. And that's kind of scary to think about. Well, I think about that because she says the same thing a lot. I think that as a parent, you probably all think about it. You model what your kids are going to be looking for later, some good, some bad. I think sometimes kids will seek out the chaotic behaviors of their parents because it's comfortable. And sometimes the ideal is that they seek out the good. So we talk about that all the time. We just came up together. We were on a trip and we said, okay, we never want to fight in front of the kids. We have to have a word.

And we made an agreement. If we say that word in the middle of it, it's like, that stops. You don't do anything in front of the kids. Not that you want to shield them from it. They got to see some conflict and see us resolve. But they don't need to see every conflict. Absolutely. They don't need to see me strangling him with a belt.

You know, we can save that for later. That's a different kind of thing. Yeah. So when you guys decided to go into business together what did that look like how far into your marriage was that so for context when valeria and i got married um when i proposed to valeria it never crossed my mind what she would do like at all whether she would work or not work. It just never crossed my mind. So, you know, I was working, I was in and out of kind of, you know, various online businesses since, since 99 as an entrepreneur.

Before that, for three years, I worked for, you know, tech companies. You know, one day I saw $10,000 hit our bank account and I didn't, I didn't know where it was from. And I didn't even know that Valeria knew where we banked. Right. I really, I really didn't. I really didn't, I didn't know where it was from and I didn't even know that Valeria knew where we banked. Right. I, I really, I really didn't. I really didn't. And, you know, before that she had gotten, she had, she had recently gotten,

like Valeria came to me and she said like, I want to go to college and I want to go to college, I want to, you know, get, get something, get a diploma of some kind. And I said, well, if you're already going, why don't you try to get an MBA? Because I think that's probably the most practical thing you can do is learn about business because I don't have any formal business like I have a degree in geology and so well you always laugh when I say I have a degree in geology. Because I think it's hilarious who spends money to get a degree in geology. No you know if I could go back to school oh dude I have a degree. Michael has a degree in pussy. Yeah well. I thought he went to U of A. But that is arguably more valuable than geology.

Well, no, but I studied regional development, whatever the hell that is. I don't even know what that means. I think that. Like geology. Go ahead. We're talking about you guys' career. Go ahead. No, no, that's okay.

Sorry, where was I? Geology. Yeah, so I said to her, I said, if you're already going to go to school, go get an MBA because I felt I made the mistake of not getting a formal business education where I spent the four years in college. I may as well have gotten something a little more practical. I'm going to put my geology career on the sideline. Yeah. Right?

So I said to her, you should get an MBA. She goes, I'm really not interested in that. I'm like, what are you interested in? She's like, holistic nutrition. I'm just like, sure, do whatever you want. No, I toyed with the idea of going to a university. But I mean, I finished high getting, of going to a university, but I, I mean, I finished high school, not going to high school. I did it while traveling in different countries. I would go to the Israeli embassy, do my exams and move. So I haven't been in a school

environment for so long. I'm like, I don't think it's going to work for me. So I was like, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to learn nutrition because I was pregnant already, our eldest Jake. And I was like, this is going to be great for the family and for myself. Right? So valuable information. I went, got my degree throughout the program. I was like, I'm going to open, what do you call it? An office. And I'm going to see clients and I'm going to give them nutrition advice and they're going to pay me. And I did that once and I fucking hated it. And then the woman contacted her like four days later, said, listen, I paid you $200 for the hour and I'm still fat. That's what I was like.

Four days later? Yeah. Yeah. It was. Well, you gotta give it a beat. I know, but back in the day, you know, because in Canada it's, uh, what's that? The social healthcare thingy. Yeah.

So holistic nutrition is not covered under it. So she had to pay cash. Got it. So she's like, listen, I gave you cash. Where's the magic pill? I'm like, I don't have magic pill. So that's when I decided that this is not going to be the business for me but i already had all this knowledge and information and i wanted to find an

outlet and where i can share it so i started a blog the modern fox ah it was wonderful um i shared different recipes that was 2014 15 no so fairly early to blogging i don't think so 2010 i feel like was when it was hitting yeah it was hitting in 2010 i started 2016 so that's not that late i mean so you're not crazy late it wasn't crazy late i got a little bit of traction like from my community really, but I did feel like it was very not challenging. Okay. It felt very stale. So I was like, okay, what's another form of media that I can experiment with? That's how I discovered YouTube. And YouTube was the next platform. YouTube for me was the scariest place on earth. I'm just like, I need to put my face out there and speak and like people hear my, you know, me, it was very scary, but because I was so

scared of the criticism, I was like, this is time to level up and, you know, solve my own issues through this. So I started experimenting with, uh, with YouTube and doing it. He didn't know anything about it. He was going, he was doing his job, comes back. I knew you were doing it. I just wasn't paying attention. I was doing something, but we already had two small kids.

That's when that $10,000, he came back and he's like, where's this money from? It's like, I got a sponsorship. I'm like, somebody paid you $10,000 for what? What'd you do? Yeah. And she's like, oh, I did. I, what was it? Was it a cosmetics brand?

No, it was like a probiotic or something. You're like, it's sexworker.com. Don't worry about it, honey. Yeah.com don't worry about it honey yeah i'm calling the bank i'm calling the bank where did the wire come from i want to know the name of the sender he was worried he's like what are you doing stop i was not worried i didn't think you were doing anything like that and so the money came in and i said like what are you doing like i sat there i sat there explain to me what your day looks like and she says well i spend an hour a day in front of the camera filming myself, like doing, making content. I said, what do you do?

The route, what do you do? What's the rest of your day look like if you're not filming yourself? She goes, well, then I spend another like nine hours editing video. I said, how the hell do you know how to edit video? She goes, I went to YouTube and did a search for how to edit video. So I'm like, wow, she's a genius too. Right? So I said, okay, I said, let's do this.

I said, let's hire a videographer who can do editing, who can do both shooting and editing. And that person will, you know, and then instead of you spending an hour a day in front of the camera, you know, maybe you should spend three to four hours a day in front of the camera and spend another four to five hours a day researching content ideas and making yourself like better in front of the camera like the entrepreneur and gary yeah learn how to be better in front of the camera and learn how to like add more value and put more value into the content right so she's like this isn't a business this is stupid i go no it's okay like we should do this and she said but what if we don't get another sponsorship to pay for the salary of this person? No, we already had, I already had enough like income. It was making, it was more than the 10,000. The 10,000 was the only thing I saw.

The him and her show is so fun to have another him and her. So we can hear that we're, everyone's alike in their marriage. Not at all. Not at all. But yeah, so that was our first hire, the videographer. And. Sorry, hold on a second. I remember you said to me, what if we don't know? Wait i remember you said to me what if we don't

no wait you said to me what if we don't make another big sponsorship check like that yeah that's going to pay for the videographer's salary yeah my response to you is like but what if we do yeah right and then we and that stop don't make fun of me because that's how it happened no yes and then valeria put out she started putting out i don't know 7x the amount of content and with volume comes scale as you guys know. Right. So with volume comes scale with quality volume comes scale. And then from there kind of fast forward. Now we're like, I think 16 or 17 person company. We have Rachel, who's our CEO who runs it. We have multiple layers of management departments for, uh, monetization, you know, editing, pre-production,

post-production analytics. So yeah. And we built it out and that was eight years ago. And you guys played with doing product and it seems like you were like, what I like about the way you approach that is you did it, but you were like, I don't want to do it. I want to focus on what I love from what I heard. But you can speak more eloquently. Absolutely. I think that I'm sure you guys know, you know, when you are in this new developing industry, there's so many opportunities coming your way and your attention is every like we can do this and we do this and let's do this. And the product line was just, you know, everyone was doing it. We you think about it very logically.

We have the audience. We just need a product to sell. No problem. A lot of people come to me for fashion. Let's do fashion. It started with accessories, very small with sunglasses and some jewelry. And then we saw like people were really into it. So we started doubling down on it and building it out. And I didn't even had a chance to stop and ask myself, is this something that I really want to do? Or are we just jumping on another business opportunity, which is fine too, but it takes a lot of hard work and a lot of dedication. And for me, content was always my thing. I love creating content.

I love the media business. So for me doing the product, it just drained my soul. And at some point we were looking at each other being like, what are we doing? I was literally flying to Portugal to go to the factories to try to find like the right, the right manufacturer. And while thinking, if I spend that time right now creating and doing what I love, oh my God, we're like 10 X everything, you know, then with this clothing line. So at some point we made a decision and we truly tried everything. We brought in staff, we changed them, we changed different manufacturers, did everything in-house, external. And at some point we're like, okay, this is not working.

We're not, that's not our strength. And it's time to just let go and go back to what we're really good at. Yeah. It's hard when you start to build a platform and have success. I'm sure you've exuded this and you get all sorts of opportunities and they sound great on the surface, but then you weigh them against what it takes you away from. Even if you look at this infrastructure, it's really like it's stemmed from content. Yeah, absolutely. We're on a mic still after all this time, three times a week, every week.

And like that's kind of the stuff around it is servicing this and then the other it services other things as well but like it's a it's it's hard because people start to bring oh maybe you should do this and this i'm like if it takes you away from the main that's the problem yeah then the other stuff just all gets sloppy it's like that book the slight edge yeah you have to go back to what you're you have to as you go on you have to go back to what made you big in the first place with ryan holiday the writer yeah he wrote writes a lot of stoicism like obstacles the way he goes enemy yeah he was on your show recently yeah yeah i love him he's amazing and he was on here and he

was saying like you work so hard to do the thing you love which in his case was become a writer yeah and then after the like hey do you want to be a speaker or do you want to go on a tv show or do you want to go to dinner with this celebrity not even the dinners hey, do you want to be a speaker or do you want to go on a TV show? Or do you want to go to dinner with this celebrity? Or not even the dinners are like, do you want to be an investor? And he's like, no, the thing that you work so hard is there. But people don't realize is once you get to the thing, you have to work even harder to stay there. So true. And so he was saying like his big thing is like he's still every day.

He's just a writer. He sits down, writes all this stuff. And he has to be really disciplined with what he says no to. So I just want to touch on the clothing line or the product line in general and explain the strategy behind it. So what this industry as a whole is missing, I think collectively for all of us, is enterprise value. And so although cash flow is great in this business, especially as you scale audience and as you do your brand deals and whatever it is that you do. But the way I saw it was that what we're missing is we're missing enterprise value. We're missing the creation of a company that we

can then sell for multiple nine figures, hopefully more. And that was the premise behind it because that actually put us in an inferior cash flow position because although that was generating millions of dollars a year in product sales, it was taking away Valeria's attention and our attention as a whole. She would start spending 40% of her time figuring out how to work with the designers to make dresses that she liked or whatever the product was instead of doubling down on the content. are at the vulnerability of being basically replaced by other creators and also not being able to, to your point, sell or transact on a business that's reliant on them being part of that business all the time. Yeah. Absolutely. There's always, there's, look, I mean, yes, I agree with you, but there's also a lot of positives. Sure. Pros that come with being, you know, being a creator. We figured out how to generate that enterprise value.

We've almost farmed it out by essentially doing, you know, equity deals with various companies and whatnot. Yeah. How did you guys keep the focus? Well, I have a product line. Yeah, you do. But there's been lots of iterations to get here. And I think the product that I'm doing is like there's such a story behind it that like it's it's it's very niche to me and what is it what's the product it's I mean it started with an ice roller basically a lot of the

line is based around routine I'm really passionate about routines and I was just really I was perpetually swollen her thing is like she loves the content but she's always wanted to create her own versions of these products like that was her path I will tell you if I had to go to Portugal and pick, when you're telling me that, I'm like, you know, I weigh everything is what is worth being away from my kids. Yeah. Even like this, like let's take this podcast right now. Even like the guests we have on the podcast, it has to be to me like so worth it. And if it's not worth it, then to be blunt, I don't want to do it. I mean, when it comes to this, like when it comes to Dear Media in general, if you look, it's like, it's actually much simpler than maybe it seems on the surface, or maybe it seems simple

on the surface, but we started this show. We ended up partnering with platforms that we felt did not have an understanding of a lot of the things that we're talking about. We ended up partnering with platforms that we felt did not have an understanding of a lot of the things that we're talking about. We wanted it for ourselves. So we created an infrastructure for ourselves in the beginning, just similar to how it was to service our business. And then from an enterprise perspective, I realized that there was a lot of people in our same situation that wasn't being serviced well, that couldn't stand, like, you know, we'll invest in product lines or we'll help you create a TV show or we'll help you do like whatever it is. And what I realized is there's a lot of amazing creators and this is not to throw shade, but many of them don't come from

an operational background. So it's like, if you can give that to people that have a shitload of talent that want to do more that aren't being given those opportunities, like that was the, you know, it's just, but it's, it all stems from like the thing that's the passion, which is like, again, we're still sitting on a mic every single week having the same conversation. It's not like one day we're like, you know, we've been approached for all sorts of weird opportunities. Like it doesn't, that's not what we do. All right. My kids are in swim lessons right now. It is hot in Austin and I need something that is like SPF 50. I need something clear and water resistant, but I also need something that's efficient. And that is why I like sun bum kids. Okay. First of all, they have a spray that is so easy to apply that I can

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which are not approved nor verified for safety or effectiveness by the FDA. Prescription products require a provider consultation. Restrictions apply. Actual price to customer will depend on product and subscription plan purchase. I think why you guys are so interesting to me to interview together is you guys remind me

of Michael and I in a lot of ways. It seems, and again, you can speak more eloquently, it seems like you're more operational and you're more front-facing. Is that right? Yeah, I wish I was operational. Gary's not operational at all, actually. Gary is what he's good at.

He's a visionary. So he sees what and who needs to be placed where in order to create the right infrastructure. That's operational in a way. Yeah, it's creative. But what you're saying is you're not management. I don't know how you want to define it, but I try not to actually speak

with more than four people, meaning the CEO of our company, like I'll speak with her, I mean, don't get me wrong. I'll say hello to everybody else, but I'm saying operationally, like from an org chart perspective, I only want to talk to our CEO when it comes to that. And then, and she's incredibly talented. You don't want to be in the day to day running the guts. I can't be because it's, it's, it's, it's be because it's too much because it distracts me too much from like the actual execution. Yeah. And I'm very focused on the creative direction and the content

and the content opportunities. And when I tried to be the girl boss and have my hand everywhere, I got burnt out. I got depleted from inspiration. Like I couldn't really bring what I was supposed to bring to the business. So I really had to define my role and step back and do what I do best. So we kind of have now, we figured out the right place for everybody again. Yeah, exactly. And it's, it's been, it's been amazing. I would say that for me, it's, you know, you know, Valeria calls it visionary, but for me, a lot of it is data analysis. And I'm so in the weeds on the data.

Like I'll look at every piece of content. Like I'll be analyzing this thing afterwards. That's amazing. You know what I mean? Can you let me know? Well, you'd let me know. You want to see what's working, what's not. Like for example, like when you guys post the reels from this and you guys will tag us as collaborators.

I'm assuming that's what you guys will do. we'll accept that you know i'm gonna take it you'll accept it some people listen to all the other guests sometimes they don't accept it but so we'll so we'll accept that and then i'll look at i'll look at that data but then we're gonna do our own cut so then we have access to insights so we can look at you know the insights data that's not just the public facing stuff so we'll'll take a look at that and we'll get just a deeper understanding. So I'm really looking at that and then what I'll do is I'll then talk to

Rachel and to Valeria and then based on kind of what I believe is going on based on the data then we make moves from that. So it's a lot of it is data analysis. No, but I think that's so important and we've talked about it a lot. Lauren is not the most excited about data analysis.

I've never looked at data in my life. And I'm maybe not the best at it either. But we've brought on people over the years and listen, for anyone that...

But you need that. You need that. You need both. You need that. You need, and I think that's why... Play this clip back to her. You need that.

No, you do need that. You need both. But I don't want to do it. Yeah. I hope I get it. You need that. You're in a position where you don't have to. I don't want to do it yeah i get it good and you're in a position where you don't want to do it but you are but you're doing it anyways you are doing it because you know how you're doing maybe no no but you are doing it i'll tell you how you're doing it because when something happens and a piece of content go out goes out whether it's something

that you're creating for your personal brand like your like your instagram or whether it's something from the show you're looking at the view count it comes across your desk where holy shit that particular piece of content got you know 10 times more views than usual and now it's something from the show, you're looking at the view count. It comes across your desk where, holy shit, that particular piece of content got, you know, 10 times more views than usual. And now it's in the back of your mind. So you're still applying that data point to the fact that maybe like, you know, that certain thing happened and it worked.

I might do, you're conscious of it and you might do it again. You're right. Like it is, I do, I'll look at that. I'll give you that. I'll look at that. The word data gives me hives. Yeah. No, he goes so deep.

That's why you're lucky. You're so lucky. He goes so deep, it's scary. Accounting gives me hives. Every time our director of finance contacts me, I'm like, oh my God. I just like, you know, just give me the high level. Yeah. How's the money going?

Money's going good? Okay, good. What is you guys' day-to-day working together? Like how is it intertwining? Tell us the day-to-day working together? Like, how is it intertwining? Tell us the day-to-day from what time you wake up to what time you go to bed. And then we have to do a what's in my bag and I get to go do your podcast.

But tell us like your day. Our day. Honestly, we don't really see each other throughout the day because we have a studio. Yeah, I leave in the morning. I go to the studio. I shoot there. I have my meetings there.

I do my podcast there. And then I come home. And then we have dinner as a family. And that's it. He works from home. He has an office at home. But you said on a podcast that this reminded me of me so much that you have very strict boundaries around your phone. Yes, I do. Can you tell our audience about that? Yeah. I mean, I'm going through phases, phases obviously i'm very specific with i go on airplane mode at 7 p.m i'm still trying to model by example to do the same because i think nagging doesn't work anymore i tried i know i just get on my motorcycle. I make breaths. I go. It's hard.

It's hard. But you know what? Again, because we work together, I understand his passion and his the fact that it's hard for him to let go because he's working and there's so many exciting things. But it's not good in front of the kids all the time. It's not good. It's not good. But also Gary's big into like he tells the kids we're not equal. The fact that I'm on social media or I'm on the phone. Not you It's not good. It's not good. But also Gary's big into like, he tells the kids, we're not equal. The fact that I'm on social media, not you and me, not equal. He tells the kids because sometimes the kids are like, we want more time on TV or PlayStation. And he's like,

no, I said, but you're on the phone. We're not equal. We're not the same. We're not operating. I say we're not equal. Probably multiple, like multiple times a day. You said that you're, and you said that you're a little bit hands-off parenting but for on a podcast that i listened to to research this i heard that you said until they were seven maybe what did you say yeah when i say when i say hands off so until they were seven i was like really hands off because like all the like the boogers and the diapers and stuff it's just i can't add value he was there he was there in spirit i just can't add value i can't no but i like kiss them and hug them they're super cute like so i was there for that but when i say i'm when i say when i say when i say i'm hands off like if let's say for example every morning i'm

the one who drives them to school because that's kind of my time to hang out we play hip-hop we get them you know it's good like that's our time but let's say for example if we get a phone call from the school and your kid's sick and he needs to get picked up, I'll be like, yeah, I'm in meetings. I'll tell the nanny, go pick up the kid. Right. So when I say I'm hands off, it's like, it's not necessary. I love, I love the honesty because a lot of people trying to pretend like they're, they're perfect parents. It's exhausting. I appreciate the honesty so much. It, I think it takes the guilt out of it because I feel guilty that I'm working all the time. And when I hear you say that, I'm like,

you know what? I get it. Thank you. But I'll give you an example. I'll get a call from the school and your kid puked. So I'm like, why are you calling me? And they say, well, he wants to talk to you. So I get on the phone. I go, what happened? He goes, I vomited. I wasn't feeling well. I go, okay. I go, are you feeling better now? He goes, yeah. I go, okay, go back to you. So I get on the phone. I go, what happened? He goes, oh, I, you know, I vomited. I wasn't feeling well. I go, okay. I go, you feeling better now? He goes, yeah. I go, okay, go back to class. Then the teacher, the principal or whatever

comes back on the phone and she said, do you want me to send him home? I'm like, for what? Why would you send him home? That is Gary Bostick. You need to meet Gary Bostick. That's my dad. My whole life.

That is his father. Because we have the same first name. That's why. This is the son you're going to raise. One time. That's Gary. I like it. My nose was is the son you're going to raise one time that's scary I like it my nose was literally

on the other side of my face one time it got smashed like literally it was smashed yeah and I went to him and I'm like

hey man like this thing is broken like it's fucked up and he's like he's like nah that's just swollen

yeah he did that to me for two weeks dad and eventually I went on this trip with my buddy and his dad

and his dad was a doctor he took one look and he's like holy shit your nose is broken. I had to go and have the whole thing smashed. And like, that was my dad. But you're a handsome dude.

So obviously everything worked out. It worked out. He was trying to get a blowjob from me when I was 12 years old. I got caught in the closet by my dad. He called his dad and his dad. He's like, dad, I got caught in the closet. I said, I'm in real trouble. The first thing I hear is just laughter.

That's all. I just laughed. He goes, first thing he said to me, he goes goes why don't you jump off the balcony you remind me of his dad a lot the same is the same energy i i i can feel it and i'm so lucky that we have boys because when they turned i would say seven eight i was like okay babe your turn in joy how old were you when you had your son 40 son 41 40 similar to my dad's age you know like from a maybe this is i don't know if it's a nice fear to hear or not but from a perspective i was you know i saw kids they have their younger dads and i'm obviously i had my son younger but i think i got such a benefit of an older man who had already kind of worked out his demons and he

talks about this all the time and had he was so like consistent and stable and i never saw him lose his temper and he was patient on all these things and i don't think when you're young you know you're you don't have as many tools as as you age and i'm sure like you're right you've only gotten better as you you're making a case for me to go for a 40 so thank you but i'm saying like from a father to us like when i was thinking about my my dad relationship like i'm super close with them but i got so much from him because he was, he already experienced so much of life, if that makes sense. So I, it does.

And I appreciate that. And thank you. And the reason I'm thanking you is because I'm often self-conscious about the fact that I'm an older dad. I am. And it makes me feel like a little bit of like, not guilt, but like, I just, I'll tell you where it comes in. It comes in when I started doing the math about when I'm going to die.

And when I'm gonna die and when i'm gonna die they're still gonna be relatively young and i feel guilt because of that well think about it but you made me feel better yeah my dad's turning 80 i'm i'm almost 40 i have two kids so he's seen all that i get it now he's in a good we work together for a long time but the reason i say that to you because i know what it's like to have an older or what not so older but like older than what's normal yeah yeah for sure i appreciate that thank you and i think your your kids will get the benefit of your seasoned years and sometimes you like i know kids whose parent i mean your mom was young when she had you yeah sometimes it's funny we do this show and you know a lot of people have trauma from their parents we all do there's always

stuff but like if your parent has you at 19 or 20 21 and you're sitting there blaming them for the rest of their lives they don't know shit. But even there was a study where it showed that women that have kids later in life live longer. Women that have kids later in life live longer.

The woman lives longer. The woman loves. If you're an older mother, you live longer. I'm never going to die. But I think it's the same to the same point of stay around longer

to see your kids through. I have a question for you. Also the levels of stress and everything. I have a question for you. But I think it's the same to the same point of... The motivation to stay around longer to see your kids through. I have a question for you. Also the levels of stress and everything. I have a question for you. So your dad's 80, that puts your mom at 62. How are they doing?

Great. Amazing. It's interesting because it's like, do you want... I think my... Like, I think in their case, like they're going to... They got a...

She got to front load a lot of amazing things and live a lot of early. Yeah. I think they're going to have to contend with aging later. But they've had 40 years of marriage and three kids and now four grandkids. I mean, on all accounts, I feel like that's a... I always tell them both, that's a win. You guys will be great.

You guys will be great. Oh, yeah. I'm not worried about us. I was going to ask you what's in your bag. But first, I have to ask one more question. You're a big reader. Yeah. And when I first started following you I'm obsessed with reading I went and I like screenshotting all these books that you are reading and it's funny because you said on another podcast you

said that you're like one of your ways to like take a break from him is to read yeah a lot of similarities I totally understand what are you reading right now what do we need to read I'm gonna send you books that I think that you have we have to do like yes that's my love language so send me a lot everything that you have what am I reading right now right now I'm reading how do you say that words sovereign love by Danae Logan she's amazing she's a couples therapist and I have to say this is probably the best relationship book I've read in a long time. Is it nonfiction? It's nonfiction. It's a relationship book.

Yeah, she talks a lot about, she's bringing examples from therapy she had with other couples. But just like the understanding of masculine and feminine, but not in the way that we all talk about it now, like deeper. There are things where I was just like, oh my God, I'm learning so much. So that's book I'm about to finish. It's amazing. And then what are the book that I've read? Or a book that you've read in the past that everyone needs to read that you just love? I mean, a classic is A Man's Search for Meaning. I think I always go back to it to just bring it like back to essentials and, you know, find... If you read read that book you will have a very hard time feeling sorry for yourself well that's what i'm saying it gives you that media perspective

absolutely and i think we all need it especially these days another book that i love is nothing else that comes up for me right now well your whole highlight has so many books i have a lot yeah you have a lot of books i write a lot of great books but those two are like do you mostly read non-fiction or do you i do a of books. I write a lot of great books, but those two are like always at the top of my list. Do you mostly read nonfiction or do you? I do a combination because I get to a point where sometimes I get burnt out and I just need to escape to a different place. So I do fiction, but I love doing both. Can I do a shameless pitch? Yeah, of course.

So one of the things that we did is we recently launched and we're really proud of it is a community slash academy for creators it's called creator method that's cool yeah it's at creatormethod.com and it's essentially taking the last eight years and the sum of the knowledge of our i forget the number always like 16 or 17 full-time team members and we created 42 full-length videos from beginning to end on all aspects of content creation. It's so smart because you guys are practitioners. We are. We are.

That's the difference, right? That's the difference. Huge difference. When we looked into this market, first of all, online education is soon to become a $40 billion a year industry. But it's huge. And in addition to that, when we looked at people who were teaching creators just like the main not like the main but like the simple metric of follower count like these are people like 50 100 000 not to knock i mean that's an achievement but valeria's numbers are they're they're much higher so so we have like

live weekly calls valeria's on the calls they have video series from us and they're they have a private whatsapp group and the one thing that I'm so surprised that is the amount of interaction between themselves. We have our first 60 members. They pay an annual fee. We have our first 60 members that we let into the cohort. And they're just constantly, like if you go to the WhatsApp group, they're constantly in it all day long. That's cool. You guys have built a community,

truly. Absolutely. I think that's what we were looking for when he came up. Because first we started talking about the whole creating, how do you call it? What's a masterclass? We were just going to do a course just like a university type of thing but then i kept repeating that if i had a community because being a creator is very lonely right no one talks to each other no one knows what to charge you're being taking advantage of by all these brands and companies getting burnt out getting burnt out yeah and no one really understands what you're doing. So for me, I said, I think the most important aspect of this platform is to have the community

so they can talk and support each other and we can support them. So on our weekly calls, it's so fun. It's like one hour once a week and all these people are asking questions. They talk with each other, they collaborate together. It feels like what I needed when I started. Yeah. Yeah. No, I we're, we're, we're over the moon about this first group of people.

Well, maybe we can do a giveaway for our audience. With pleasure. Okay. We'll do one. I just have to ask you what's in your bag and then we'll do a giveaway. Let's do it. Okay. What is in your bag?

Okay. What's in my bag. I have a shirt because we're doing another podcast after so i brought a change of clothes i forgot my other shirt i brought two option bras so they're perfect because i'm a virgo and it has to be very specific she's so modest she put them away right away yeah you gotta show like dangle the bra like like like pirates of the caribbean the woman like yeah here's the flagpole here's a bra there's two of them there's a shirt you have an octobody on your phone i have an octobody on my phone i wish i invented this i know oh i have

my wallet i have a battery charger and all the things that get stuck to it what is that it's a hair tie yeah but it can also help with any wardrobe malfunctions. We have a hand cream. We have lip gloss. Hold on. You got to show us which lip. Yeah, you got to tell the audience which hand cream. I have the Dior lip oil.

Thank you. Essential. I have the Dior hand cream. They make a hand. Oh, wow. I have a light. It's gorgeous. Omnibiotics.

Love it. And I have my electrolytes element okay I have a lot of stuff actually it's not bad

it's like Mary Poppins no you guys don't understand yeah there's a whole lot keep going we want to know every detail

makeup okay I have a lip liner from Freck I have a little powder I have Westman Atelier a new one.

You don't know. Another lip liner because you don't know what, you know, they're actually looking like pillow talk to me. This is iconic nude. But you were close. OK. I have a little powder thingy. And that's it. Sunglasses.

I love it. Oh, and I actually use a cup, but I always carry one because you never know. Like, you know, there's always a girl. It's like, oh my God, you have a tampon. And I always want to be the girl to be like, I have one. You have a tampon. You have the room key. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, that's a good hotel. That's fun there. I like that one. You know what? It's really nice. It's a great hotel. It's amazing.

I went to the gym there this morning. Gym there's nice? Hey, you got to try the restaurant. Do you guys eat meat? Yeah. Okay. Go get the lamb and the hummus downstairs with a skinny margarita. And then go upstairs and go get the pineapple fajitas.

Oh, Mexican. But they have one of the best lunch ribeyes, I think, in Texas in that restaurant, in the Greek restaurant. Okay. So we don't have to leave our hotel. We went yesterday to an incredibly tasty but filthy place. I don't mean the place itself was dirty. I mean, the food was so unhealthy.

What is it called? What was it called, Celine? Oh, yeah. Terry Black. It was a staple. We love Terry Black. It was good, but I mean, that food. You gotta go to bed after.

No, no, no. You gotta go to bed. Yeah. If you eat that every day. You don't wanna have sex after that. No. Damn. But that is, like, if you're here, you gotta

hit Terry Black's. No, no. We went. We went. And I'm endorsing them. They're great. No, Terry Black's, like if you're here, you got to hit Terry Block's. No, no, we went. We went. And I'm endorsing them. They're great. No, Terry Block's amazing. You can't eat that shit.

Every time we bring somebody into town that's like the first time they're coming in, I'm like, you know, and it's, you know, some of the barbecue places get so crazy around here,

but that one's always consistent and good. Can we do a code? I didn't even ask you guys this. Do you want to do a code for your courses? Like a 20, 15% off? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No problem. Yeah, absolutely. You want to do 15% off Code Yeah, yeah, yeah. No problem. Yeah, absolutely. You want to do 15% off Code Skinny? Yes, you got it. Okay, you pimp out 15% off Code Skinny. What's the site where people can learn everything about content creation? It's creatormethod.com.

Okay. Just hit the apply now button, fill out a very short form, put in the code, and then we review each form submittal, and then we get back to you with an approval. And let's do a giveaway. Let's give someone the course.

Absolutely. Okay. Tell us your favorite part of this episode on my latest Instagram, at Lauren Bostic, and then follow. At Valeria Lipovetsky. And Gary Lipovetsky. I love it. Thank you both.

That's where we can find you guys, too, if they want to DM you and say hi. Absolutely. I will be on your podcast. Yes. Not alone. Yes. So go listen. I'm in the the hot seat we're switching seats yes i don't have a switch shirt i'll be in the same shirt but you do i can give you mine thank you guys thank you thank you guys thank you