Victoria Jackson: Welcome back to she Pivots and I'm Victoria Jackson.
Emily Tisch Sussman: Welcome back to she Pivots, the podcast where we talk
Emily Tisch Sussman: with women who dare to pivot out of one career
Emily Tisch Sussman: and into something new and explore how their personal lives
Emily Tisch Sussman: impacts these decisions. I'm your host Emily Tish Sussman today.
Emily Tisch Sussman: I'm so excited to have on Victoria Jackson to talk
Emily Tisch Sussman: about her many pivots and plot twists. Victoria is someone
Emily Tisch Sussman: whose life embodies everything we talk about on she Pivots,
Emily Tisch Sussman: the way our personal stories shape our professional paths, and
Emily Tisch Sussman: how reinvention isn't a one time decision, it's a way
Emily Tisch Sussman: of living. She may be best known as the woman
Emily Tisch Sussman: who coined no Makeup makeup, the beauty pioneer who built
Emily Tisch Sussman: a billion dollar empire by championing natural confidence's first beauty
Emily Tisch Sussman: long before it was trending, but her story goes far
Emily Tisch Sussman: beyond the surface. She launched Victoria Jackson Cosmetics from her
Emily Tisch Sussman: garage in the nineteen eighties with a singular mission to
Emily Tisch Sussman: help women feel like the best version of themselves. She
Emily Tisch Sussman: was scrappy, bold, and entirely self taught, selling her products
Emily Tisch Sussman: on infomercials and later on QBC, becoming a household name
Emily Tisch Sussman: in the process. But in two thousand and eight, everything
Emily Tisch Sussman: changed when her daughter Ali was diagnosed with a rare,
Emily Tisch Sussman: life threatening disease called neuromya litis optica or NMO. Victoria
Emily Tisch Sussman: didn't hesitate. She walked away from the business she had
Emily Tisch Sussman: built and pivoted without question into a world she knew
Emily Tisch Sussman: nothing about medicine. She taught herself the language of molecular immunology,
Emily Tisch Sussman: founded the Guthy Jackson Charitable Foundation, and mobilized nearly eighty
Emily Tisch Sussman: million dollars for research that helped fund the first ever
Emily Tisch Sussman: ET approved treatments for the disease. She became an advocate,
Emily Tisch Sussman: a fundraiser, a force in a space that she had
Emily Tisch Sussman: never expected to enter. But never once did she doubt
Emily Tisch Sussman: her decision to put love, purpose, and motherhood first. Now,
Emily Tisch Sussman: at seventy years old, Victoria's pivoting again. She's returning to
Emily Tisch Sussman: where it all began, with a new generation of no
Emily Tisch Sussman: makeup makeup products, blending skin care and simplicity with the
Emily Tisch Sussman: same mission that started it all, helping people feel confident
Emily Tisch Sussman: in their own skin. She's not just reviving a brand,
Emily Tisch Sussman: She's reimagining beauty for women who like her are still evolving.
Emily Tisch Sussman: Victoria's story is raw, resilient, and deeply human. It's all
Emily Tisch Sussman: about surviving trauma, building success from scratch, and walking away
Emily Tisch Sussman: from an all for something even greater. And now, decades later,
Emily Tisch Sussman: it's about choosing joy and creativity again on her own
Emily Tisch Sussman: Termslet's get into.
Victoria Jackson: It, Victoria Jackson, and I do so many things. Philanthropist, entrepreneur, mother,
Victoria Jackson: makeup creator, really kind of an accentrist and alchemist, you
Victoria Jackson: name it. That's just sort of who I am.
Emily Tisch Sussman: Okay, we're rewinding, we're going all the way back. So
Emily Tisch Sussman: little Victoria, when you were growing up, what did you
Emily Tisch Sussman: think you wanted to be when you grew up?
Victoria Jackson: You know, I always say I was born prematurely. I
Victoria Jackson: was born in the six and a half month, so
Victoria Jackson: I think. And I was born I think early on
Victoria Jackson: I had that little worry gene and worried about everything.
Victoria Jackson: So probably I was just worried about the stability of
Victoria Jackson: my parents. And you know, how did I get into
Victoria Jackson: a situation where I never quite knew what was coming next?
Victoria Jackson: So I don't even know that. It was very much
Victoria Jackson: later in life that I started thinking about what I
Victoria Jackson: wanted to do and that question bothered me more than anything,
Victoria Jackson: not the way you've just asked it, but the way
Victoria Jackson: people in my life did at the time, which is
Victoria Jackson: probably for a lot of young people when they say, well,
Victoria Jackson: what do you want to do or what do you
Victoria Jackson: and I had no sense. I was always a person
Victoria Jackson: that was just trying to figure out who I was,
Victoria Jackson: let alone where I was going or you know, what
Victoria Jackson: my career might look like. Things seemed to evolve in
Victoria Jackson: a different way for me as I was always struggling
Victoria Jackson: and fighting and dealing with much bigger inner demons. You know,
Victoria Jackson: I was always in survival mode. Is one thing that
Victoria Jackson: I realized, having come from a childhood that was, you know,
Victoria Jackson: filled with a lot of uncertainty. And then you know,
Victoria Jackson: the episode that happened when we'll call it beyond an
Victoria Jackson: episode of what happened in my life, the incident with
Victoria Jackson: pillowcase rapist when I was seventeen. So I've always really
Victoria Jackson: struggled with trying to figure things out and not knowing
Victoria Jackson: where my place was, not coming from a family that,
Victoria Jackson: I said, a lot of instability, there wasn't a lot
Victoria Jackson: of money, just sort of you know, I wasn't great
Victoria Jackson: going to school. I was ditching school all the time.
Victoria Jackson: So yeah, it's just a lot. I was always dealing
Victoria Jackson: with a lot internally.
Emily Tisch Sussman: One of the first moments that forced Victoria to pivot
Emily Tisch Sussman: was once she just touched on one of the most
Emily Tisch Sussman: horrific moments of her life. When she was just seventeen,
Emily Tisch Sussman: she was the victim of a violent attack from a
Emily Tisch Sussman: man known as the Pillowcase rapist, and it changed her
Emily Tisch Sussman: life forever.
Victoria Jackson: You know, I always felt, I don't know if a
Victoria Jackson: lot of the people that are listening to this, they
Victoria Jackson: always feel like, you know, there's a sense of foreboding
Victoria Jackson: about maybe something in their life and then it happens.
Victoria Jackson: For me, it was always I felt like somebody was
Victoria Jackson: out to get me, and that was always, you know,
Victoria Jackson: and I would be teased about it in the family,
Victoria Jackson: like Who's going to get you? And to the point
Victoria Jackson: where one a night, my brother was, you know, always
Victoria Jackson: making jokes at a step brother. My mom remarried and
Victoria Jackson: I had a stepbrother who basically was a good guy,
Victoria Jackson: but he would play jokes on me. And so one
Victoria Jackson: night when I was home in my room alone, I
Victoria Jackson: saw behind me, you know, that awful scene in a
Victoria Jackson: horror movie where there's somebody standing behind you that I
Victoria Jackson: was looking in a mirror and someone was behind me
Victoria Jackson: and had on a ski mask and looked like a
Victoria Jackson: dish towel hanging over something and was all covered up
Victoria Jackson: with gloves and lots of clothes. And I thought it
Victoria Jackson: was my brother playing a joke, saying don't move, and
Victoria Jackson: it turned out it was not my brother. And you know,
Victoria Jackson: I don't really need to go into all the details
Victoria Jackson: of it, because I do talk about it in my book.
Victoria Jackson: We all worry, now what, but enough that I thought
Victoria Jackson: my whole family was, you know, had been killed and
Victoria Jackson: I was the last victim. And so that's all I
Victoria Jackson: kept thinking about. And really from that experience, which manifested
Victoria Jackson: in severe claustrophobia for me, and you know, he had
Victoria Jackson: a knife and I stabbed and brutally raped, and it
Victoria Jackson: was I learned about something called which I talk about
Victoria Jackson: in my book called zooming out. But for at the time,
Victoria Jackson: it was really disassociating from what was happening to my body,
Victoria Jackson: kind of you know, sort of floating above looking down
Victoria Jackson: and really being very cognizant of there was a reason
Victoria Jackson: that I was here. This wasn't going to be how
Victoria Jackson: I went out and was very clear that when I
Victoria Jackson: had a moment to scream and break free, that's what
Victoria Jackson: I did. And that was obviously another pivot point, for sure,
Victoria Jackson: you know, a brutal pivot, but a pivot to there's
Victoria Jackson: a reason I'm here, I've been spared, there's a reason
Victoria Jackson: I'm here, and what is that reason?
Emily Tisch Sussman: And from there you wrote that you never went back
Emily Tisch Sussman: home after that.
Victoria Jackson: Yeah, I never went back in my room. I was seventeen,
Victoria Jackson: I didn't graduate high school. I was in my final year,
Victoria Jackson: of my final months actually of graduating in the twelfth grade. Yeah,
Victoria Jackson: I just could never go back in the room. And
Victoria Jackson: then at eighteen, when I turned eighteen, I got married
Victoria Jackson: because you know, I had to be eighteen and just
Victoria Jackson: didn't want to be alone, basically, was it. So you know,
Victoria Jackson: I married sort of like almost like a high school
Victoria Jackson: friend and to not be by myself, and I was
Victoria Jackson: you know, I think we lasted about nine months, and
Victoria Jackson: because you know, his last name was Jackson, and I
Victoria Jackson: wanted to just sort of like, I think it raised
Victoria Jackson: so much of the past. And I'd had different names
Victoria Jackson: because I was born one name and then my stepfather
Victoria Jackson: adopted me and I had a different name. And then
Victoria Jackson: you know, I just thought, as in this pivot, I'm
Victoria Jackson: going to now be Victoria Jackson, and I decided to
Victoria Jackson: go to beauty school, which is because I am more
Victoria Jackson: of a creative and learn about doing makeup and hair
Victoria Jackson: and went to Marinello's School of Beauty. I was able
Victoria Jackson: to get a scholarship and did that. My marriage didn't
Victoria Jackson: survive that, but it really wasn't a marriage marriage. It
Victoria Jackson: was a friendship. And I think we've both figured out
Victoria Jackson: it was best to go our separate ways.
Emily Tisch Sussman: After everything that happened, Victoria leaned into beauty school, carving
Emily Tisch Sussman: out a new life for herself. She hustled, made connections,
Emily Tisch Sussman: and eventually, after spotting a gap in the market, she
Emily Tisch Sussman: decided to start her own makeup company out of her garage.
Victoria Jackson: I mean, while I was, you know, when I decided
Victoria Jackson: I wanted to be a makeup artist, and to be
Victoria Jackson: a makeup artist, a Hollywood makeup artist, you have to
Victoria Jackson: start building a portfolio. And at the time I started
Victoria Jackson: doing that by working. I'd look through which no longer exists,
Victoria Jackson: the phone book, and I would look to see different photographers.
Victoria Jackson: I'd look on magazines credits, you know, for photographers, I'd
Victoria Jackson: go see them and I had to ask if I
Victoria Jackson: could work for free to start building my portfolio. And
Victoria Jackson: I noticed as I was doing that, and that was
Victoria Jackson: after graduating from a beauty school sixteen hundred hours later,
Victoria Jackson: that makeup was really what I was excited about. I would,
Victoria Jackson: during the day work for in the makeup counters, you know,
Victoria Jackson: clinique or different department stores. I'd work in the makeup
Victoria Jackson: counters and be familiar with different brands and makeup, and
Victoria Jackson: I didn't find anything. As I was now working and
Victoria Jackson: testing and building my portfolio with photographers, a makeup that
Victoria Jackson: was more of a neutral base foundation. And so I
Victoria Jackson: decided that everything was like two pink and orange. This
Victoria Jackson: is going back aways before there was you know the
Victoria Jackson: companies now that have eight hundred shades of foundations. So
Victoria Jackson: I started to create in my garage my own makeup
Victoria Jackson: by mixing and matching different things so to create what
Victoria Jackson: was more of what I called at the time, it
Victoria Jackson: was Victoria Jackson Beauty Basics. That was my first line.
Victoria Jackson: And while I was doing that, I started I thought
Victoria Jackson: I would see if I could teach makeup class, and
Victoria Jackson: I was doing that at ACLA in an extension course,
Victoria Jackson: and I started to perfect and see what people were
Victoria Jackson: responding to with my makeup. But it was all really
Victoria Jackson: started in my garage.
Emily Tisch Sussman: So you really started it out of necessity looking for
Emily Tisch Sussman: the products that It wasn't like you were approaching this
Emily Tisch Sussman: as saying I'm going to be an entrepreneur, let me
Emily Tisch Sussman: find the product. It was really the tool that you
Emily Tisch Sussman: needed to make your business work.
Victoria Jackson: I always believe like if you build it, they will come.
Victoria Jackson: But yeah, I wasn't thinking I had no idea. Everything
Victoria Jackson: very organically came from that where I was in my
Victoria Jackson: class and a student in my UCLA class also said
Victoria Jackson: that she basically worked with a group of guys that
Victoria Jackson: were selling products on television, and I said, I had
Victoria Jackson: a great idea of how to sell cosmetics and TV,
Victoria Jackson: although I wasn't really sure that I had a great
Victoria Jackson: idea for how to do that. But I thought I
Victoria Jackson: would take what I'd been doing in my classes. I'd
Victoria Jackson: put together these color coordinated kits, and I took a
Victoria Jackson: lot of what I was teaching, which are now you
Victoria Jackson: see on TikTok all the time as these tutorials. I
Victoria Jackson: was doing a three hour class and lessons on you know,
Victoria Jackson: a ten over a ten week course of how to
Victoria Jackson: do your makeup. So I started to extract a lot
Victoria Jackson: of that and thought, how could I take all of
Victoria Jackson: what I do and bring it down to where, you know,
Victoria Jackson: I could sell this on television.
Emily Tisch Sussman: And here we are with Victoria, and.
Victoria Jackson: I'm going to take you through a complete makeover or
Victoria Jackson: I make someone up from the start to finish, and
Victoria Jackson: show you all the right techniques for a general makeup application.
Victoria Jackson: And now joining me is Victoria Jackson. Hi, Cathleen, So
Victoria Jackson: what are we going to do today?
Emily Tisch Sussman: What are we going to learn?
Victoria Jackson: And I got on the set and I did a
Victoria Jackson: million dollars a week in sales. From that point on,
Victoria Jackson: I did thirteen years of inpromercials, ten years of QVC.
Victoria Jackson: Where by the way, I just went back on QVC
Victoria Jackson: twenty five years later last week and it was amazing. So, yeah,
Victoria Jackson: I've talked about full circle.
Emily Tisch Sussman: Yeah I got yeah, Well when did you Maybe it
Emily Tisch Sussman: was now, But at this point, when did you know
Emily Tisch Sussman: that you'd made it in the cosmetics industry or even
Emily Tisch Sussman: just like made it professionally.
Victoria Jackson: I don't know that I ever thought about. It's so strange,
Victoria Jackson: but the making it. When you deal with low self
Victoria Jackson: esteem and insecurity, you're always sort of like did I
Victoria Jackson: make it? And I always saw I was just saying
Victoria Jackson: the next thing. You know, when you do things like
Victoria Jackson: QBC at the time, you know, I'm I'm very hard
Victoria Jackson: on myself, so I'm a perfectionist, so I never quite
Victoria Jackson: Only now I think as I'm this year about to
Victoria Jackson: turn seventy, and I thought, you know what, this year
Victoria Jackson: I'm starting to take you know what, I'm looking at
Victoria Jackson: my resume and I'm ticking over a lot of boxes off, going, oh,
Victoria Jackson: you've done a lot, so I think it's just catching
Victoria Jackson: up now to all that I've done.
Emily Tisch Sussman: By all accounts, Victoria had found success in her career.
Emily Tisch Sussman: She was doing millions in sales. I was bringing in
Emily Tisch Sussman: over twenty two thousand new customers a week in the
Emily Tisch Sussman: nineteen eighties. No less. When we come back, Victoria's life
Emily Tisch Sussman: takes an unexpected turn as we explore the more personal
Emily Tisch Sussman: side of her story. Stay tuned. Before the break, Victoria
Emily Tisch Sussman: was setting records and breaking glass ceilings at QBC, But
Emily Tisch Sussman: while she was growing Victoria Jackson Cosmetics, her personal life
Emily Tisch Sussman: grew as well.
Victoria Jackson: I was married for my first marriage, which was very
Victoria Jackson: short with the gentleman named last name Jackson. I remarried
Victoria Jackson: years later to you know, the love of my life,
Victoria Jackson: the first love of my life. I now have a
Victoria Jackson: new love of my life. I'm very lucky. And I
Victoria Jackson: was married and I had a son who is now
Victoria Jackson: forty years old. And you know, as our I was
Victoria Jackson: going up kind of in the world of infomercials. You know,
Victoria Jackson: we drifted a little bit apart, and again we split,
Victoria Jackson: you know, amicably, and have a beautiful son now as
Victoria Jackson: I say that we have together. And during that separation
Victoria Jackson: and as we were finalizing our divorce, I met my
Victoria Jackson: current husband, Bill Guthi of Gutty Ranker, and we have
Victoria Jackson: two children. So I have three beautiful children. And it
Victoria Jackson: was really during my time married with Bill, as we
Victoria Jackson: have a son and a daughter, that I was going
Victoria Jackson: along in my makeup world. And all things have been
Victoria Jackson: going well. And you know, I think Victoria Jackson enjoyed
Victoria Jackson: sales up to a billion dollars, thirteen years of infomercials,
Victoria Jackson: ten years of QVC. I created about six hundred beauty products,
Victoria Jackson: and just overnight my daughter said she had an eyeball headache,
Victoria Jackson: and so began this kind of nightmare of she was
Victoria Jackson: diagnosed with this rare auto immune disease called NMO used
Victoria Jackson: to be known as Devik's disease. And they told me,
Victoria Jackson: and by the way, it's not so rare, that she
Victoria Jackson: had four years to live. And then I basically said,
Victoria Jackson: I'm closing the door on makeup, and I'm opening the
Victoria Jackson: door on everything medicine. And you know, I never went
Victoria Jackson: to college, as I said, I didn't graduate high school.
Victoria Jackson: So now I was really going to have how do
Victoria Jackson: I learn to cure this autoimmune disease when I've been
Victoria Jackson: making like foundation and lib gloss for the last fifteen years.
Emily Tisch Sussman: Her daughter's diagnosis changed everything. Neuromyolite as optica or NMO,
Emily Tisch Sussman: is an autoimmune disease where your immune system, which usually
Emily Tisch Sussman: protects you, mistakenly attacks parts of your nervous system, usually
Emily Tisch Sussman: your optic nerves and the spinal cord. So without his
Emily Tisch Sussman: second thought, Victoria dropped everything to find a cure, not
Emily Tisch Sussman: once looking back, people react to these moments differently. I
Emily Tisch Sussman: think it probably just depends on you know, your life
Emily Tisch Sussman: experience and kind of your disposition. But for some people
Emily Tisch Sussman: they jump immediately into action. For some people they need
Emily Tisch Sussman: to have a down period, they need to evaluate. When
Emily Tisch Sussman: she got this diagnosis, can you talk us through, I
Emily Tisch Sussman: mean obviously devastating, but you know, what were your feelings,
Emily Tisch Sussman: what were your thoughts then, and what did you pull
Emily Tisch Sussman: from in your past to help you get on a
Emily Tisch Sussman: on an active track of figuring out trying to find
Emily Tisch Sussman: the diagnosis.
Victoria Jackson: Well, I knew that I had to work let's call it,
Victoria Jackson: at the speed of life, and so certainly I fell apart,
Victoria Jackson: you know, and I curled up in a ball, and
Victoria Jackson: you know, was like, couldn't move off my bathroom floor
Victoria Jackson: for a while. But it's the thing that separates, you know,
Victoria Jackson: people from like you can stay in that position or
Victoria Jackson: you can allow yourself that and then you get up
Victoria Jackson: and you start making a plan. I was so focused,
Victoria Jackson: you know, I literally have to remember, like I was
Victoria Jackson: picturing the hour glass of the sands of time running out,
Victoria Jackson: and I was on this like had to get something done.
Victoria Jackson: So sure it was upsetting, but I became so singularly
Victoria Jackson: focused because I knew without me driving that narrative and
Victoria Jackson: being the person who's doing it and the quote unquote
Victoria Jackson: mom on the mission, as they called me, there was
Victoria Jackson: no other choice. So I just knew that I was
Victoria Jackson: going to have to put together a group of really
Victoria Jackson: smart people, doctors, researchers, scientists, anybody that knew anything about this,
Victoria Jackson: and start I just started thinking through in business, what
Victoria Jackson: would you do to solve something. You'd start bringing in
Victoria Jackson: the people, You start building on the foundation, you start
Victoria Jackson: getting great minds together, you start about collaboration. All the
Victoria Jackson: fundamentals that I built in my beauty business, I just
Victoria Jackson: started to apply that here. So I started to seek
Victoria Jackson: out the experts and build this team. And I was
Victoria Jackson: just going to be as I've always been, just my
Victoria Jackson: authentic self telling the story. Because infomercials were telling a
Victoria Jackson: story for thirty minutes. I'm going to tell the story
Victoria Jackson: of my daughter where I am, what I'm trying to do,
Victoria Jackson: and I'm going to pay. I've spent eighty million dollars
Victoria Jackson: of my own money. But people are going to work
Victoria Jackson: the way I need them to work, which is they
Victoria Jackson: need to collaborate, share information. And I'm going to change
Victoria Jackson: the way in which medical research is done. So I
Victoria Jackson: set a big bar for myself and a big agenda.
Victoria Jackson: But I knew this was serious and I was going
Victoria Jackson: to save her life and the life of all the
Victoria Jackson: people that have this condition. I will say, in the
Victoria Jackson: midst of all of that I was diagnosed with cancer. So,
Victoria Jackson: but I always see things as a movie and I
Victoria Jackson: was sort of like, this can't be the part in
Victoria Jackson: the movie where the mom dies trying to save the daughter,
Victoria Jackson: you know, And so I was able to get through that.
Emily Tisch Sussman: It's unbelievable what you've done. Can you walk us through
Emily Tisch Sussman: a little bit of that, like how did you know
Emily Tisch Sussman: what barriers needed to be fixed? And it sounds like
Emily Tisch Sussman: you had some idea about how to solve them by
Emily Tisch Sussman: funding them and forcing them to work in a collaborative way,
Emily Tisch Sussman: But how did you even know that that was a problem?
Emily Tisch Sussman: And then how did you force it forward? You did
Emily Tisch Sussman: it very quickly.
Victoria Jackson: Yeah, I've done it very very quickly, because it became
Victoria Jackson: apparent to me early on and people let me know.
Victoria Jackson: And I have to give a lot of credit to
Victoria Jackson: the head of my scientific team, who is the head
Victoria Jackson: of molecular Medicine at an Infectious Disease at UCLA, doctor
Victoria Jackson: Michael Gaman, And it became clear to me. I was like, well,
Victoria Jackson: tell me what are the challenges of getting cures and
Victoria Jackson: getting things made? And the biggest one was collaboration, people
Victoria Jackson: not wanting to work together. And so immediately became clear
Victoria Jackson: to me, what I was going to need to do
Victoria Jackson: was sort of create new rules of the road for
Victoria Jackson: how I was going to if I was going to
Victoria Jackson: give money, how people were going to have to work
Victoria Jackson: together and share. And then I brought together a group
Victoria Jackson: of people where I said, help me build this, build
Victoria Jackson: it together. You tell me what you need and I'll
Victoria Jackson: go and get it. You know, you tell me if
Victoria Jackson: you need a certain specialist or research in a certain area.
Victoria Jackson: And I mean, I'm so simplifying what has been over
Victoria Jackson: seventeen years of problem solving, bringing people together, hundreds of
Victoria Jackson: people's together, forty plus countries together, over fifty short films
Victoria Jackson: that I've made, creating apps, building my own blood bank
Victoria Jackson: that has over one hundred thousand specimens, where I started
Victoria Jackson: with nothing because who knew that to you know, have research,
Victoria Jackson: they needed the material to work on. So I had
Victoria Jackson: to kind of go back in my old way of thinking.
Victoria Jackson: This is how creative you start thinking. I needed blood
Victoria Jackson: from people in the world that had this, and I
Victoria Jackson: was like, instance, it's mostly women that have autoimmune diseases.
Victoria Jackson: I was like, I'll give you blush if you give
Victoria Jackson: me some blood. Right, Like, I'm going back into my
Victoria Jackson: old makeup role. I'm thinking again that creative, which sounds
Victoria Jackson: kind of insane now, But I started with one nurse
Victoria Jackson: going across the country. She'd have extra blush in her bag,
Victoria Jackson: getting specimens, and that's how I started creating a blood bank.
Victoria Jackson: So anything that I saw was an obstacle. I tried
Victoria Jackson: to figure out the solution.
Emily Tisch Sussman: Wow, that is really extraordinary. How quickly did you feel
Emily Tisch Sussman: like you were making progress? Was it immediate or was
Emily Tisch Sussman: it very frustrating? No, it was very frustrating because to me,
Emily Tisch Sussman: progress was going to only look like, you know, again
Emily Tisch Sussman: a high bar of a cure or a therapy. So
Emily Tisch Sussman: it's taken me a while to be able to sit here,
Emily Tisch Sussman: Emily and say to you, and now I have four therapies.
Emily Tisch Sussman: But in real time, people said, nobody gets a drug made,
Emily Tisch Sussman: even one maid this quickly. They say, you have to
Emily Tisch Sussman: cross what they call, which is a not a great name,
Emily Tisch Sussman: the Valley of death, where a lot of ideas, research,
Emily Tisch Sussman: science just kind of goes into this chasm of like
Emily Tisch Sussman: nothing happens. And I crossed the Valley of death with
Emily Tisch Sussman: building bridges between a lot of people that had I
Emily Tisch Sussman: think a great sense of humanity, perseverance, amazing brain trusts
Emily Tisch Sussman: to help me build that bridge. You can't just have
Emily Tisch Sussman: the researchers, clinicians and scientists without the patients. And I
Emily Tisch Sussman: think you would see the pharmaceutical companies and it's why
Emily Tisch Sussman: I have four drugs made. They were engaged. I mean,
Emily Tisch Sussman: of course it's about money, but it's also about the
Emily Tisch Sussman: humanity of helping people. And that's what I had to
Emily Tisch Sussman: do was try to build that bridge and show both
Emily Tisch Sussman: sides we need to work together and here's how we
Emily Tisch Sussman: can do that. Remarkably, Victoria did it. She brought the
Emily Tisch Sussman: right people together to create an FDA approof treatment that
Emily Tisch Sussman: her daughter is still on now seventeen years later. Not
Emily Tisch Sussman: only did she help other NEMO patients to fight the odds,
Emily Tisch Sussman: she created a new model for bringing everyone together in
Emily Tisch Sussman: the room, hundreds of researchers and clinicians from thirty two countries,
Emily Tisch Sussman: plus pharmaceutical execs and tech teams at Google. She did
Emily Tisch Sussman: it all within a high school or college degree. But
Emily Tisch Sussman: Victoria isn't done yet. After the break, Victoria makes another pivot.
Emily Tisch Sussman: After spending years in the medical industry, Victoria was ready
Emily Tisch Sussman: to take on another challenge. At this time, something a
Emily Tisch Sussman: little more fun than familiar.
Victoria Jackson: And what I missed most. You know, in medicine, everything's
Victoria Jackson: black white gray through that. Really sixteen seventeen years I
Victoria Jackson: was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame by
Victoria Jackson: Glorious da which was unbelievable. I received an amazing acknowledgment
Victoria Jackson: from the Pope the Vatican. I was at the Vatican
Victoria Jackson: like for my work around the world. I mean, amazing
Victoria Jackson: things happened that if somebody would have told me as
Victoria Jackson: a high school dropout and not knowing what I was
Victoria Jackson: going to do have happened in my life, I would
Victoria Jackson: never have believed it. But medicine is black white gray.
Victoria Jackson: I've always sort of missed the color of getting back
Victoria Jackson: in making my cosmetics, and I still own my trademark
Victoria Jackson: no Makeup Makeup, and I decided, you know what, I'm
Victoria Jackson: not going to come back with a product until again.
Victoria Jackson: I feel like I have like the world's best foundation
Victoria Jackson: and I've been working over the last few years to
Victoria Jackson: create that. And when we actually came up with it,
Victoria Jackson: I was like, Okay, you know what, I'm ready to
Victoria Jackson: go back out there again with no makeup. Makeup.
Emily Tisch Sussman: A lot of people think.
Victoria Jackson: Makeup has changed so much over the years do to work.
Emily Tisch Sussman: With the cold great law reflection.
Victoria Jackson: To me, beauty has always been the same.
Emily Tisch Sussman: Here is one of the most successful business women in
Emily Tisch Sussman: all America.
Victoria Jackson: Her name was Victoria Jackson.
Emily Tisch Sussman: Victoria Jacks Victoria Jackson is a phenomenon in the world
Emily Tisch Sussman: of beauty.
Victoria Jackson: My whole philosophy is really based on a no makeup, makeup,
Victoria Jackson: no makeup, makeup, no makeup makeup, no makeup make up,
Victoria Jackson: introducing no makeup makeup.
Emily Tisch Sussman: So how do you think about dividing your time. You're
Emily Tisch Sussman: relaunching makeup, You're doing no makeup makeup? Why now? Why
Emily Tisch Sussman: make up again?
Victoria Jackson: Oh? I mean for me? Like I said, I wasn't
Victoria Jackson: coming back until I made what I felt was the
Victoria Jackson: most extraordinary product. And I'm you know, I love being
Victoria Jackson: in a lab and I love creating product. I just
Victoria Jackson: knew that it was. It's just something that I wanted
Victoria Jackson: to do, and I trademarked no makeup makeup early on.
Victoria Jackson: It's still my philosophy. I feel strongly about it. As
Victoria Jackson: I said, I'm turning seventy and I'm still talking about
Victoria Jackson: no makeup makeup. I just went back on QVC where
Victoria Jackson: I was looking at old footage of me when I
Victoria Jackson: was there in my little mini skirt like thirty five
Victoria Jackson: years ago or whatever it was, and I just went
Victoria Jackson: back and I had three fifteen minute segments and I
Victoria Jackson: was fortunate. I sold out and I did over a
Victoria Jackson: million dollars in sale. Thank you everybody. But more than that,
Victoria Jackson: it's a great product and I was really excited about it,
Victoria Jackson: just like I was when I did my infomercials. Like
Victoria Jackson: it's easy for me. I'm not just selling and pitching.
Victoria Jackson: It's more I know that I've got something great and
Victoria Jackson: I made it, and I'm really excited about it, and
Victoria Jackson: I want women to try it and always say, if
Victoria Jackson: you don't like it, send it back.
Emily Tisch Sussman: That's just me.
Victoria Jackson: So this is just a continuation of it, and it's
Victoria Jackson: it's fun and I'm enjoying doing it.
Emily Tisch Sussman: How is building the company coming back in entering again different?
Emily Tisch Sussman: I'm sure different in a million ways, But how is
Emily Tisch Sussman: it different this time around? Oh?
Victoria Jackson: I mean, it feels like I was asleep for seventeen years.
Victoria Jackson: I woke up and now I'm in the world of
Victoria Jackson: TikTok and there are no infomercials anymore. It's like wake up, Victoria,
Victoria Jackson: but there's no infomercials. Anymore. It's it's TikTok, and it's Instagram,
Victoria Jackson: and it's influencers and creators and tutorials. But I did
Victoria Jackson: all of that, so it's it's taking it now and
Victoria Jackson: as they say, making everything my messaging more snackable. But
Victoria Jackson: I was talking about a lot of the things that
Victoria Jackson: I was doing then I'm doing now. It's just in
Victoria Jackson: a new way. And there's things that I'll I listen
Victoria Jackson: to my team and they're going, Okay, you need to
Victoria Jackson: go in the bathroom and you need to like show
Victoria Jackson: people before and after. And I was, you know, like
Victoria Jackson: in only this time, you don't have thirty minutes to
Victoria Jackson: do it. You've got you know, thirty seconds. So it's
Victoria Jackson: been a learning I sound like a you know, old lady, like,
Victoria Jackson: what is this new era we're in? But it's kind
Victoria Jackson: of been like that for me. But you know what,
Victoria Jackson: I pioneered the infomercial world, and I'm sure I can
Victoria Jackson: navigate this and a lot of people, you know, interestingly,
Victoria Jackson: to a lot of people have been talking about no
Victoria Jackson: makeup makeup for a long time, not realizing that I
Victoria Jackson: originally am the one that kind of started that movement
Victoria Jackson: early on in trademarket so it's been nice. A lot
Victoria Jackson: of people now are going, wait a minute, I've heard
Victoria Jackson: it from so and so, but you're the one who
Victoria Jackson: did that, so it's kind of nice to do that.
Emily Tisch Sussman: And thinking about your metric for success, what are your
Emily Tisch Sussman: dreams for your relaunch of the makeup Like, is your
Emily Tisch Sussman: metric of success different this time around?
Victoria Jackson: I think ultimately will be since I kind of walked
Victoria Jackson: away from that, will be to sell this company when
Victoria Jackson: the time is right. That will be a metric. Like
Victoria Jackson: it'll sort of be like it was something that I
Victoria Jackson: was wanting to do then and they all will have
Victoria Jackson: recreated something that I can do now. So I think
Victoria Jackson: that will be a metric for me. But again, going
Victoria Jackson: back to already, I'm feeling pretty amazed because I can
Victoria Jackson: see how people are responding to it, and that's really
Victoria Jackson: there's no better metric than that than people just loving
Victoria Jackson: something that you've created.
Emily Tisch Sussman: Yeah, you know, I have a lot of conversations with
Emily Tisch Sussman: listeners where especially after they've had young kids, once they
Emily Tisch Sussman: have sort of medium aged kids and maybe they had
Emily Tisch Sussman: taken a step back from the workforce at that time
Emily Tisch Sussman: and then they think, oh, well, you know, I'm too
Emily Tisch Sussman: old to start something new. Ah, what would I start now?
Emily Tisch Sussman: I can't start again now. But you are starting a
Emily Tisch Sussman: new company at almost seventy So what is your message
Emily Tisch Sussman: to them?
Victoria Jackson: Oh? Just do it, just you know, don't even like
Victoria Jackson: seriously like I think it's harder the thought of not
Victoria Jackson: doing something. You're already failing. If you don't do it,
Victoria Jackson: you've already failed. So why not see if you can succeed?
Victoria Jackson: Because not doing it, to me is already a failure.
Victoria Jackson: So it's really like, you put yourself out there, you know,
Victoria Jackson: and do it if it's real for you, if you
Victoria Jackson: believe it. Don't do it just to do it. Do
Victoria Jackson: it because there's something in you that you want to
Victoria Jackson: do it and you feel passionate around that to me,
Victoria Jackson: is always makes it authentic and people can feel your authenticity,
Victoria Jackson: your excitement.
Emily Tisch Sussman: So I asked this question of all of my guests.
Emily Tisch Sussman: What is something that at one point you saw as
Emily Tisch Sussman: really a negative or a low point, and now you
Emily Tisch Sussman: see it as having really launched you into the path
Emily Tisch Sussman: that you are on now or the success that you
Emily Tisch Sussman: found now.
Victoria Jackson: I mean, I'd say so many, so many things, things
Victoria Jackson: like obviously my daughter's illness was clearly the lowest point,
Victoria Jackson: but I see out of that, and I certainly wouldn't
Victoria Jackson: wish that or say oh, but ultimately it was the
Victoria Jackson: best thing that happened. No, it wasn't the best thing
Victoria Jackson: that happened. But I see what I was able to
Victoria Jackson: make of it, and how I was able to you know,
Victoria Jackson: help thousands, hundreds of thousands of people and getting drugs made.
Victoria Jackson: That's pretty extraordinary. So something that was so low and
Victoria Jackson: I felt like I didn't even know where to begin,
Victoria Jackson: where to begin, and to see what it's turned into
Victoria Jackson: that's been extraordinary. And the same thing with the makeup,
Victoria Jackson: that you start from this tiny little seed. And you know,
Victoria Jackson: I always remember this, Jay Shetty had said it, and
Victoria Jackson: I remember it. You can water the seeds or the weeds,
Victoria Jackson: you know, And I always try to water the seeds
Victoria Jackson: and try to get rid of those weeds. And I've
Victoria Jackson: seen all those seeds now really grow into something pretty extraordinary,
Victoria Jackson: and I'm very, very proud of that.
Emily Tisch Sussman: Do you think you'll pivot again?
Victoria Jackson: Absolutely, I think I'll be pivoting, you know, I think
Victoria Jackson: I'll be like pivoting in my grave. I mean, i'd
Victoria Jackson: just be like, I think that's just who I am.
Victoria Jackson: But I pivot. But It's not like I pivot and
Victoria Jackson: then the other thing is shit. I just bring something
Victoria Jackson: new into my life and I keep them all going.
Victoria Jackson: They're all on burners, and you know, the heat is
Victoria Jackson: turned up a little more on one than the other.
Victoria Jackson: But I keep them all going. They're all cooking. So
Victoria Jackson: I think sometimes people can think pivot, like you know,
Victoria Jackson: you turn, and then are you turning your back on
Victoria Jackson: something or closing a door. I really try not to
Victoria Jackson: always do that to sort of now, Like I say,
Victoria Jackson: they're all on a burner, they're all cooking, and I
Victoria Jackson: know it's part of those ms, which one am I
Victoria Jackson: in and what am I giving a little bit more
Victoria Jackson: love or attention to today? But they all coexist in
Victoria Jackson: the world of Victoria Jackson.
Emily Tisch Sussman: Well, thank you so much, Thank.
Victoria Jackson: You so much. I appreciate it.
Emily Tisch Sussman: Victoria still has all her burners going, from publishing her
Emily Tisch Sussman: latest book, We All Worry Now What, to growing her
Emily Tisch Sussman: company no makeup Makeup, to running her bookstore, Godmother Books.
Emily Tisch Sussman: She doesn't slow down. You can keep up with Victoria
Emily Tisch Sussman: and her many pivots on Instagram at official Victoria Jackson
Emily Tisch Sussman: Talk to you next week. Thanks for listening to this
Emily Tisch Sussman: episode of She pivots. I hope you enjoyed it, and
Emily Tisch Sussman: if you did, leave us a rating and tell your
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Emily Tisch Sussman: the scenes content on our website at she pivots thepodcast
Emily Tisch Sussman: dot com. This episode was produced and edited by Emily Davelosk,
Emily Tisch Sussman: with sound editing and mixing from Nina Pollock, Audio production
Emily Tisch Sussman: and social media by Hannah Cousins, research by Christine Dickinson,
Emily Tisch Sussman: and logistics and planning by Emma Stopic and Kendall Krupkin.
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