Speaker 1: Welcome back to she Pivots. I'm Julia Hart.
Speaker 2: Welcome to she Pivots, the podcast where we talk with
Speaker 2: women who dared to pivot out of one career and
Speaker 2: into something new and explore how their personal lives impacted
Speaker 2: these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. Welcome back
Speaker 2: to she Pivots. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. You
Speaker 2: know when you meet someone and you're immediately enthralled by
Speaker 2: their energy. That was me with Julia Hart when I
Speaker 2: watched her reality show My Unorthodox Life, I honestly wasn't
Speaker 2: really sure what she would be like in real life,
Speaker 2: and it turns out she is exactly the same. She
Speaker 2: is undoubtedly herself, and as someone who has struggled to
Speaker 2: feel like my serious energy is welcome in a world
Speaker 2: demanding us to be more serious, I can't help but
Speaker 2: feel inspired by her, especially since Julia hasn't always been
Speaker 2: a snappy, fashionable, bold woman. Julia was born into an
Speaker 2: ultra Orthodox Jewish community, but after having her daughters, she
Speaker 2: became increasingly uncomfortable with how they were treated and how
Speaker 2: the community made women conform. In search of a life
Speaker 2: of more freedom for both herself and her daughters she left.
Speaker 2: She used what skill she had as a former teacher
Speaker 2: to go on to make a series of incredible pivots,
Speaker 2: from starting her own shoe line, to become a creative
Speaker 2: director of La Perla and Italian luxury lingerie line, to
Speaker 2: becoming CEO and co owner of Elite World Group, to
Speaker 2: landing her own reality series on Netflix. The two seasons
Speaker 2: of the show feature the contrast between the glitz and
Speaker 2: the glamor of their lives now in the fashion industry,
Speaker 2: and their decision to leave behind their former religious lives,
Speaker 2: from a life and a community that barely allowed or
Speaker 2: to express herself or to dream of a bigger life.
Speaker 2: Julia has embraced this new phase of her life with vivacity.
Speaker 2: Here's a woman who has been through so much but
Speaker 2: has truly come out on the other side, determined to
Speaker 2: make a life that is truly and uniquely her own.
Speaker 1: Enjoy. My name is Julia Hart. I am the executive
Speaker 1: producer and star of My Unorthodox Life. I'm the author
Speaker 1: of a best selling novel, Brazen, and i am the
Speaker 1: CEO of my new shaper brand Body by Julia Hart.
Speaker 2: So lay the groundwork for us a little bit to
Speaker 2: understand a little bit more about the community that you
Speaker 2: grew up in, married and raised your children in for
Speaker 2: most of their lives. Tell us more so you know,
Speaker 2: my community is again a very very small part of
Speaker 2: the Jewish people. It's a very extremist sect, right, And
Speaker 2: I raised to be a.
Speaker 1: Wife and a mother. That was my purpose in life.
Speaker 1: My high school education was just a joke, a complete
Speaker 1: cham and we were taught that our purpose in life
Speaker 1: was all the same. So I guess the simplest way
Speaker 1: to explain it is your biology to find your destiny.
Speaker 1: You're born a woman, your purpose is to be a
Speaker 1: wife and a mother. You're born a man. Your purpose
Speaker 1: is to become a great rabbi and become a Torus scholar.
Speaker 1: Every morning in my world they say thank you Gud
Speaker 1: for not making me a woman, right, And when you
Speaker 1: ask why, they say, oh, because men have more positive commandments.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: They're supposed to go to synagogue, they're supposed to learn
Speaker 1: Torah and women aren't. But then when you ask the
Speaker 1: question of why aren't women allowed to do that? And
Speaker 1: then the answer you get is because if a man
Speaker 1: her husband, who is her master and commander on this
Speaker 1: earth tells her to make dinner, and at the same
Speaker 1: time God is telling her to go pray. Who's she
Speaker 1: supposed to listen to? Which master comes first? So therefore
Speaker 1: she doesn't have to go to synagogue. So she only
Speaker 1: has one master and commander, and that is her husband. Okay,
Speaker 1: So that is that's the world I grew up in.
Speaker 1: And you know right now as you see, you know
Speaker 1: everything that's happening to the Jewish communities all over the world.
Speaker 1: And people ask me all the time, how can you
Speaker 1: yell about this and then stand for here? And I
Speaker 1: to me, I honestly, I never I don't understand the
Speaker 1: question because I love my community. I always say there's
Speaker 1: no villains in my story. There are only victims. But
Speaker 1: the laws have to change.
Speaker 2: Julia lived in Atlanta at the time, and on top
Speaker 2: of raising her kids and caring for her family, she
Speaker 2: was also required to work.
Speaker 1: So I always worked. I was teaching pretty much every
Speaker 1: Judaic subject there is. I was teaching Clumbish, which is
Speaker 1: Bible navim, which are the prophets, hysteria, Jewish history, Parsha
Speaker 1: which is like the weekly toer reading, plumation, Gillows, which
Speaker 1: was oh gosh, how do I translate some of these things?
Speaker 1: I don't know, but like the Book of Esther, stuff
Speaker 1: like that. I taught pretty much every Jewish subject you
Speaker 1: could get your hands on, except for the Hebrew language.
Speaker 1: I never taught Hebrew as a course. And so you know,
Speaker 1: I taught in two schools, and I had to do
Speaker 1: all the preparation. And again there's no workbook, there's no
Speaker 1: you were literally sitting there and compiling classes. It would
Speaker 1: take me like four to five hours to create a
Speaker 1: class because I didn't want any of my students ever
Speaker 1: looking at their watches. I always wanted to end on
Speaker 1: a cliffhanger. I'm a perfectionist. I'm gonna do something. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do something. So usually from ten to like two
Speaker 1: in the morning is when I prepared the next day's things,
Speaker 1: and i'd be up at seven. I'd make breakfast for
Speaker 1: my husband when I had kids, who was change diapers,
Speaker 1: Get everybody off to school, Go teach in one school,
Speaker 1: find a time to eat at some point while you're
Speaker 1: going from one school to the next school, come home,
Speaker 1: make dinner, get ready for you know, I always had
Speaker 1: guests all over the house, so make sure everybody's in
Speaker 1: a room and they have food, and then when everyone
Speaker 1: put everyone to bed, and then when all the kids
Speaker 1: are asleep, start all over again at ten o'clock at night,
Speaker 1: start marking papers and preparing for the next year. How
Speaker 1: did you manage child's care? So when I was teaching,
Speaker 1: we had this very lovely woman who it was the
Speaker 1: mother of one of my best friends, and so she
Speaker 1: was there nanny. So when I was teaching, she babe.
Speaker 2: Us at the community she lived in has been described
Speaker 2: as ultra orthodox. They keep a stark divide between men
Speaker 2: and women, Like Julia said, the main job of women
Speaker 2: was to have and raise children, and oftentimes women and
Speaker 2: their mothers had kids simultaneously, so much so that Julia
Speaker 2: even nursed her own brother.
Speaker 1: I mean I was a cow like to them, I'm
Speaker 1: just a body. It doesn't matter, Like I'm just a
Speaker 1: feeding machine. I could have fed thirty other people. Because
Speaker 1: if your biology defines you, your destiny, who you are
Speaker 1: as an individual is irrelevant.
Speaker 2: How did you did you start to test boundary? He's like,
Speaker 2: what sparked for you to think, oh, maybe there's something
Speaker 2: outside of this life?
Speaker 1: My daughter Miriam, so my entire life there From the
Speaker 1: day that we moved in until the day I walked
Speaker 1: out the door, I was fighting this internal battle, this
Speaker 1: unsolvable dichotomy between who I am intrinsically as a human being.
Speaker 1: I'm not try I'm not quiet. I love to study
Speaker 1: and learn. I am very entrepreneurial. I you know, I'm
Speaker 1: good at organizing things, like I had so much here
Speaker 1: on one hand and the other hand, being told Julia,
Speaker 1: stop talking, stop reading. What's wrong with you? Why can't
Speaker 1: you be like other women? If I tell you how
Speaker 1: many times I got called into the raba's office and
Speaker 1: just say, Julia, why can't you behave? Behave? And what
Speaker 1: do they mean behave? It's not like I was wearing
Speaker 1: miniskirts there because I wasn't. I was covered head to
Speaker 1: toe behavian. Stop arguing with men. Stop reading books you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to read. That was my misbehaving, right, educating myself,
Speaker 1: that was a problem. So there was this constant dichotomy
Speaker 1: between who I am intrinsically as a person and who
Speaker 1: I was told I had to be to be loved
Speaker 1: by God. But I thought that that was my fault,
Speaker 1: like something was inherently wrong in me. I was somehow
Speaker 1: flawed because all the other women around me were happy,
Speaker 1: Like what was Why wasn't child rearing enough? Like why
Speaker 1: did I need more? And so I blamed myself. And
Speaker 1: then my daughter Miriam comes around, and first of all,
Speaker 1: she's a newdist This kid I could not keep clothes
Speaker 1: on her body for love or money. Literally, I'll never forget.
Speaker 1: I was in Alanta and I'm walking with my stroller
Speaker 1: and NeiMa Marcus, and I've got, you know, the bugaboo,
Speaker 1: like the fancy stroller, and I'm feeling good. I've got
Speaker 1: my nice wig on, and everybody's looking at the stroller
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh, my daughter is just so beautiful.
Speaker 1: Everybody's staring at her. At some point I go around
Speaker 1: to pick something, a clothing like up and she was
Speaker 1: stark naked between somehow between the door of Neem and Marcus,
Speaker 1: And when I got into the middle of the store,
Speaker 1: she had literally slowly taken off all her clothes. She
Speaker 1: was two, so but it was very embarrassing. So here
Speaker 1: was this little independent spirit who wouldn't be confined in
Speaker 1: any way, shape or form now in my clothes. And
Speaker 1: then when she was a little bit older, she wanted
Speaker 1: to play soccer, and my husband told her, you can't,
Speaker 1: and she asked why. He said, well, if you play soccer,
Speaker 1: you're playing in a skirt, right, because when I WoT
Speaker 1: to wear pants, if you play soccer in a skirt,
Speaker 1: a man could be walking by the field and he
Speaker 1: may see your knees and get turned on and have
Speaker 1: inappropriate thoughts, and that will be your fault. So you
Speaker 1: can't play soccer. And I'll never forget Miriam. She was
Speaker 1: five or six years old. I mean, let's not talk
Speaker 1: about the kind of man that gets turned on by
Speaker 1: women's knees, but a five year old's needs. But okay,
Speaker 1: let's leave that alone for a minute. She looks at
Speaker 1: my husband and she says, okay, Well, if he's responsible,
Speaker 1: if I'm responsible for his sins, is he responsible for mine?
Speaker 1: And that was all it took. Hearing that from the
Speaker 1: mouth of a five year old. They had convinced me
Speaker 1: that I was somehow flawed for not being okay with it.
Speaker 1: Hearing the just sound reasonable logic coming out of the
Speaker 1: mouth of literally a five or six year old, that
Speaker 1: changed it for me because I realized it wasn't me,
Speaker 1: it was these laws, these rules.
Speaker 2: So after Miriam, did you make a plan at that
Speaker 2: moment to say I have to leave because you did
Speaker 2: have another child afterwards?
Speaker 1: That was when the beginning and the first eight It
Speaker 1: took me eight years between when I decided I wanted
Speaker 1: to leave and when I walked out the door and
Speaker 1: I became a voracious reader. I was completely ignorant. I
Speaker 1: didn't know anything, so books saved my life. Whenever people said, like,
Speaker 1: what if you could pinpoint one thing, I always say books.
Speaker 1: I just read, read and read Euripides, Voltaire, Descartes, Spinoza, Pantheism,
Speaker 1: you name it, I've read it. And that's how I
Speaker 1: educated myself. That's how I changed my vocabulary and learned grammar,
Speaker 1: all through reading books. That's all I had. And then
Speaker 1: I found a way to make some money so I
Speaker 1: could have because I wasn't leading without my children. And
Speaker 1: then eight years later I got up and I packed
Speaker 1: my blankety blank, and I walked out the door. Not
Speaker 1: a single human being knew what I was doing, nobody,
Speaker 1: because I was so afraid that if someone knew, they
Speaker 1: would tell on me. And again not out of a
Speaker 1: sense of cruelty, out of a sense of responsibility, because
Speaker 1: in their mind, I'm taking my children away from the
Speaker 1: source of holiness and beauty, right, so in their mind
Speaker 1: it would be their duty to tell on me. So
Speaker 1: I just didn't tell anybody, not a single soulnu, not
Speaker 1: one of my friends, nobody, not my siblings, nobody knew.
Speaker 2: So where did you go? Like, what did you tell
Speaker 2: your children when you were walking out? And where did
Speaker 2: you literally go? So I didn't tell my children anything.
Speaker 1: My daughter was already married and in Israel, my son
Speaker 1: was in yeshiva in Israel, so it's just Miriam and
Speaker 1: our own and Miriam I was like, let's go on vacation,
Speaker 1: and then it was really just you're going to make
Speaker 1: a fun of me here. So I'd never slept in
Speaker 1: a hotel by myself ever, right forty two years old,
Speaker 1: I'd never rented a hotel room and slept her alone
Speaker 1: like that just had never happened. I get in a can.
Speaker 1: I have no idea where we're going. It's the day
Speaker 1: that we left was not planned. The day we left
Speaker 1: was because again Miriam, the night before she got accused
Speaker 1: of cheating because her essay was too good to have
Speaker 1: been written by a woman. She must have gotten help
Speaker 1: from somebody, and she was devastated. She's like, I worked hard,
Speaker 1: it's so good that I'm all like what. And that
Speaker 1: was it. That was the last straw. I literally packed
Speaker 1: our stuff and we walked out the door. So it
Speaker 1: was not planned, completely not planned. I got in the
Speaker 1: car and I look, Okay, where are we going. I
Speaker 1: have no idea where we're going. And we drive into
Speaker 1: the city and I was more comfortable in like the
Speaker 1: forty seventh Street area, because that's where the diamonds are,
Speaker 1: That's where a lot of Jews are. That's like the
Speaker 1: place I would go when I would come into Manhattan.
Speaker 1: And so I'm driving by forty second and I see
Speaker 1: this big w and I'm like, oh my gosh. That
Speaker 1: hotel is called Welcome. This is amazing. And so I
Speaker 1: drove into the Double Hotel because it felt like New
Speaker 1: York was welcoming me. And so that's where I stayed.
Speaker 1: The first night was at the w Hotel.
Speaker 2: We're going to take a short break for some ads.
Speaker 2: Now back to the show. Barely knowing how to navigate
Speaker 2: the quote real world, Julius stayed in hotels for the
Speaker 2: next four years.
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to rent a place I was
Speaker 1: too in Mayar's task. I was so new to world,
Speaker 1: like to the world. I didn't know, and I didn't
Speaker 1: understand how anything worked. I really didn't. I had no
Speaker 1: idea how anything worked. Obviously, it is not economical to
Speaker 1: stay at a hotel for four years, no to self.
Speaker 1: But at the time, it just seemed like a really
Speaker 1: simple solution, you know, And we were living out of
Speaker 1: our suitcases anyway for so many years, because you know,
Speaker 1: we basically went to Mars eleven years ago, that's what
Speaker 1: it felt like. It felt like journeying to Mars. So
Speaker 1: you started the shoe company pretty within weeks. Yeah, how
Speaker 1: did you know how to start a business? Like know
Speaker 1: how to start a shoe company? And where did you
Speaker 1: know that you had such a flair for fashion? Well,
Speaker 1: the religious communities are not known for their fashion. That's
Speaker 1: a mild understated. I remember I once wore this yellow
Speaker 1: suit to school completely covered. I mean we're talking about
Speaker 1: the collar bone, below the elbows, below the knees. They
Speaker 1: get called into the rabbi's office. He's like, Julia, Julia,
Speaker 1: what is this? What is this? And I said, what's
Speaker 1: wrong with it? I'm covered head to toe and He's like, yes,
Speaker 1: but it's yellow, and I'm like, okay, wearing the toe
Speaker 1: doesn't say you can't wear colors. And he says to me,
Speaker 1: it's too noticeable. You're attracting attention. And I responded and
Speaker 1: I said, look, the day that God stopped making colors
Speaker 1: in flowers and in the rest of the world, you
Speaker 1: can tell me black and gray until then, you're not
Speaker 1: going to convince me that God hates color. So I'm
Speaker 1: going to continue wearing color. But I got in trouble
Speaker 1: all the time. So in terms of fashion sense, I
Speaker 1: was drawing clothing and shoes since I was like five,
Speaker 1: just hiding them. I just didn't have a knee training,
Speaker 1: and I would hide them in my underwear drawer where
Speaker 1: I knew my husband would never look. But I'd been
Speaker 1: drawing really since I was five years old, Like, I
Speaker 1: taught myself how to sew and how to make patterns,
Speaker 1: and I started making my own clothing there. So basically
Speaker 1: what I did is I followed the letter of the law,
Speaker 1: but not the spirit of the law, because yes, I
Speaker 1: was covered head to toe, but by the time I
Speaker 1: was out, I was covered head to toe, but the
Speaker 1: clothes I was wearing were so tight, like you could
Speaker 1: see every you know, curve over there. So I figured
Speaker 1: out a way how to be fashionable, which I got
Speaker 1: in trouble for all the time in my world.
Speaker 2: So did you think about trying to get a job
Speaker 2: in fashion after you are now living in Times Square
Speaker 2: in the w hotel, like or was it always like, No,
Speaker 2: I have a vision I'm going to create, Like, how
Speaker 2: did you take that first step to create a shoe company?
Speaker 1: Honestly, I never thought about working for someone because I
Speaker 1: did everything by myself. You know, I left the community
Speaker 1: without help. I'd never heard of Footsteps, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: a program that helps women leave my community. I'd never
Speaker 1: even heard of it. It didn't occur to me to
Speaker 1: ask for help. And so to me, it was kind
Speaker 1: of the same thing if I was going to start
Speaker 1: a shoe company, if I was going to create shoes,
Speaker 1: because I had this idea to make comfortable shoes that
Speaker 1: you shouldn't have to choose between fashion and comfort, and
Speaker 1: I knew that if I wanted it done, I had
Speaker 1: to do it myself.
Speaker 2: In twenty thirteen, she launched her footwear brand, and in
Speaker 2: true Julia fashion, she started her shoe line as a
Speaker 2: way to redefine the idea that beauty and comfort can't
Speaker 2: go together. Her signature platform pumps that she wears to
Speaker 2: any and every occasion put her on the map, opening
Speaker 2: her career to even bigger opportunities. So one of the
Speaker 2: things that I like to think about when talking with
Speaker 2: women who have gone through something and then are making
Speaker 2: a pivot, is how all of the skills of the
Speaker 2: thing we did before actually set us up a.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent one hundred percent I mean, think about it.
Speaker 1: I was teaching two jobs, multiple classes, doing all the
Speaker 1: prep work while cooking and cleaning and taking care of babies.
Speaker 1: I learned a had a multitask be how to utilize
Speaker 1: every minute of my day optimally and see how to
Speaker 1: keep my cool under extreme circumstances. And there's no question
Speaker 1: that those skills have kept me through.
Speaker 2: Those are all through like the executive management kind of category.
Speaker 2: Do you think there were actually like particular skills that
Speaker 2: ended up transferring into either creating shoes or then I
Speaker 2: mean from there you went to lapurla and then to
Speaker 2: elite world management.
Speaker 1: I think it's not actually a skill, it's I see
Speaker 1: the spaces in between people see what is I see?
Speaker 1: What isn't? I am fascinated by the unknown. Because every
Speaker 1: industry I go into that, what do I do? I
Speaker 1: literally turn it upside down. Right when I went into
Speaker 1: the shoes, I made the first comfortable high heeled shoe.
Speaker 1: It was beautiful, it was elegant. It was so comfortable
Speaker 1: that at a certain point, I think we were going
Speaker 1: to be carried in the four seasons in Hong Kong
Speaker 1: in their spat even though it's a high heel, because
Speaker 1: it was just so ergonomically designed. Then with Lapurla, I
Speaker 1: made clothing with bras and all this stuff built inside.
Speaker 1: No one had ever done that before.
Speaker 2: She went on to become the creative director at La Perla,
Speaker 2: again challenging the status quo by creating a new line
Speaker 2: that made lingerie more wearable.
Speaker 1: An article recently came out that the only period that
Speaker 1: they actually increased in sales was when I was creative director. So,
Speaker 1: like everywhere I go, I turned things around. You know,
Speaker 1: the management company EWG, it was a modeling agency, was
Speaker 1: an excellent modeling agency, and I turned it into a
Speaker 1: media congomerate by recognizing that the talent, they're the new media.
Speaker 1: They have the audience and treating them as such and
Speaker 1: giving them autonomy in their careers and longevity in their
Speaker 1: careers by making them into brand names on social media.
Speaker 1: So I think you know the one. I would say
Speaker 1: there are two uniting threads in everything I do. One
Speaker 1: is it has to help women somehow. I don't do
Speaker 1: things that aren't female related. I just don't. It's not
Speaker 1: where my head goes. Also, I don't know men. You know,
Speaker 1: like you guys grew up together. I started talking to
Speaker 1: guys at forty two. I'm super clueless when it comes
Speaker 1: to men. Women. They're my people. I understand them, I
Speaker 1: love them. I want to make their world better, and
Speaker 1: that's where it comes from. It didn't come from anger
Speaker 1: my community. To the contrary, it comes from this massive love.
Speaker 1: I want the women in my world. I want women
Speaker 1: in every world, in Iran and Saudi Arabia. I want
Speaker 1: every woman to have self determination and autonomy. The point
Speaker 1: is everything I do is related and directed and geared
Speaker 1: towards women. My followers are ninety two percent female. I
Speaker 1: think the men who watched my show were either husbands
Speaker 1: of boyfriends of sons of and their mom or their
Speaker 1: girlfriend or their sister. Said, you have to watch the show.
Speaker 1: So that's one continuous thread through everything I do, and
Speaker 1: then the other one is finding something that's missing, thinking
Speaker 1: how could I do something better, and then organizing it,
Speaker 1: streamlining it, and creating a system where it moves automatically.
Speaker 1: That's been my sweet spot. And I think the biggest
Speaker 1: part of that is I don't think I know everything.
Speaker 1: I'm an eternal student. I'm always learning. I love the unknown.
Speaker 1: I'm obsessed with what isn't and I think most people
Speaker 1: are afraid of the unknown.
Speaker 2: I'm so happy that you're putting language to this because
Speaker 2: I feel like the big pivot points in my life
Speaker 2: have come from realizing that things that I didn't think
Speaker 2: were skilled were just sort of like personality traits I
Speaker 2: think were then realizing that they were skills. Like I
Speaker 2: was not a good student, I did not excel in school,
Speaker 2: and then I worked on a political campaign and I
Speaker 2: killed it.
Speaker 1: That's success right there.
Speaker 2: I've never been able to put language to it, So
Speaker 2: I'm so happy that you just did.
Speaker 1: Thank you for doing that.
Speaker 2: I'm like, my brain is running at all these different yes.
Speaker 1: But that's why you're so incredibly successful. You focused on
Speaker 1: what wasn't right, the things, the spaces in between that
Speaker 1: people just don't want to go to. They're just afraid.
Speaker 1: People are afraid of the unknown. They like the none
Speaker 1: is comfortable, right. I hate being comfortable. I'm comfortable. I'm
Speaker 1: doing something wrong.
Speaker 2: We're going to take a short break for some ads.
Speaker 2: Now back to the show. Julia has been able to
Speaker 2: find enormous success in her career after pivoting from her
Speaker 2: life in the ultra Orthodox community, but with fame comes
Speaker 2: public scrutiny, which happened after she announced her divorce in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3: Listen, we're starting off our show today with a guest
Speaker 3: who has been the focus of tabloid headlines for the
Speaker 3: past ten months. I cannot imagine waking up every single
Speaker 3: day and seeing my name in a headline with people
Speaker 3: speculating about my life. Millions of people first came to
Speaker 3: know Julia Hart, the woman who was a part of
Speaker 3: those headlines.
Speaker 1: Just last year, during Julia Heart was fired from a
Speaker 1: position ant a strange husband, Sylvia Scoglia.
Speaker 2: Hart's company in the midst of the couple split employees.
Speaker 2: Since you left, the community became public. We're on a
Speaker 2: TV show, so quickly. You know, there's been a variety
Speaker 2: of different scandals that have come up, and it's all public.
Speaker 2: You went from totally unknown, thinking that you had no
Speaker 2: rights basically and no individual personality, to being out debating
Speaker 2: pieces about your public professional private light out in public.
Speaker 2: How do you deal with that?
Speaker 1: Oh? So hard, it's so odd. Anyway, who told you
Speaker 1: it's not hard? They're lying? It's very difficult. Obviously, there's
Speaker 1: I don't think I you know, before the whistleblower came
Speaker 1: out and the truth started coming out, I got accused
Speaker 1: of the craziest things. I got accused of being a liar,
Speaker 1: a thief, a con artist, to seduct I think the
Speaker 1: only accusation that wasn't thrown at me was whitch. But
Speaker 1: you know, it was very difficult because it was a
Speaker 1: man again coming and taking everything I had built and
Speaker 1: worked and created, and how easy it was, and how
Speaker 1: many people believed it even though there was no proof
Speaker 1: for it because it didn't actually happen. There was an
Speaker 1: article that said I stole a car, and now, of
Speaker 1: course they have the proof that I paid for it
Speaker 1: and we have the documentation. But there were months before
Speaker 1: that all came out, months of time where people genuinely
Speaker 1: thought I was a thief and a liar, and it
Speaker 1: almost killed me. I'm gonna be honest. There were days
Speaker 1: I didn't walk out in my bedroom. They were very
Speaker 1: difficult days. I dropped probably twelve pounds, and I can't
Speaker 1: really afford to drop twelve pounds. I stopped eating, I
Speaker 1: stopped sleeping. It was very, very rough, very rough, and
Speaker 1: three things got me through. This is so it's like
Speaker 1: the serendipity here was just through the roof. So the
Speaker 1: day that I went that, I found out that I
Speaker 1: lost in Delaware, which it just again makes absolute no sense.
Speaker 1: I have so many documents that say fifty to fifty,
Speaker 1: but we're almost there. We're a getting one step at
Speaker 1: a time. I'm not given up until I get truth
Speaker 1: in justice. But when that came down, I was just destroyed.
Speaker 1: I was so devastated, and I'm sitting on the floor
Speaker 1: or in my office hysterically crying, and I get a
Speaker 1: phone call from this woman Ellen Gavin, who is basically
Speaker 1: like my political guru person. I became involved in politics
Speaker 1: once they repealed Roe versus Wade for the first time
Speaker 1: in my life, and I didn't know what I was
Speaker 1: doing I'd never really been politically active. So she calls
Speaker 1: me she has no idea what happened because it hasn't
Speaker 1: hit the press yet. This is five minutes after I
Speaker 1: find out myself, and she says to me, Julia, do
Speaker 1: you want tickets to an off Broadway show about the
Speaker 1: Suffragettes called Seffs? And I'm thinking to myself, do you
Speaker 1: have any idea what just happen in my life? I
Speaker 1: Am like completely broken. I am sitting here on my
Speaker 1: floor crying my eyes out at the injustice of what's
Speaker 1: been done to me. I'm going to a Broadway show.
Speaker 1: I'm like, this is ridiculous. And then I said to myself, no,
Speaker 1: if you sit here on the floor and you cry,
Speaker 1: he wins. Every man that has ever pushed a woman
Speaker 1: down and used his power to destroy they went not
Speaker 1: going to do it. So I said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm going to this fucking excuse my language, this off
Speaker 1: Fraudway show. I get to this show, and what is
Speaker 1: it about women demanding rights and what happens to them.
Speaker 1: They're not just called bad people in the press or
Speaker 1: liars or thieves. They're actually stuck into jail. They are
Speaker 1: force fed, they are put in a dungeon for what
Speaker 1: for demanding freedom? And while they're in that dungeon, they're
Speaker 1: still fighting. And I watched that and I walked out
Speaker 1: of that show and I said, I am not going
Speaker 1: to cry. I am not going to be destroyed. I'm
Speaker 1: not hiding in my room anymore. I am going to
Speaker 1: fight back. And it totally shifted my mental space, I
Speaker 1: would say. And then once I made that decision, the
Speaker 1: next step was, Okay, how do I deal with all
Speaker 1: the pain and crazy that's going on? Because it is
Speaker 1: a lot to get constantly attacked knowing that you're innocent.
Speaker 1: It's an awful feeling. It sucks. And I started meditating.
Speaker 1: I took a lot of courses, and I learned how
Speaker 1: to calm myself down and to go to a happier place.
Speaker 1: And I go into a dark room, I close the door,
Speaker 1: I meditate and it just calms everything and then I
Speaker 1: can face whatever it is and move forward. So that's
Speaker 1: number two. And then number three is my children. My kids.
Speaker 1: I should have probably put them first. I mean with
Speaker 1: me through thick and thin, stood by my side, moved
Speaker 1: into the apartment to be with me and hold me
Speaker 1: and support me. And have done everything everything to shower
Speaker 1: we with love to kind of countact all the garbage
Speaker 1: I got two years ago.
Speaker 2: But when you were thinking about writing your book, you
Speaker 2: said that you wanted to write it for women to
Speaker 2: be a model, and that's why you wanted to talk
Speaker 2: through the really hard parts. And honestly, that's a big
Speaker 2: part of why I do this podcast. And sometimes I
Speaker 2: feel about the fact that I'm asking women to really
Speaker 2: talk through the hardest part. But if it wasn't the
Speaker 2: hardest part, it wouldn't have prompted a change.
Speaker 1: There you go. I think in a way, the nights
Speaker 1: before the book came out were more frightening than when
Speaker 1: the show came out. Why because I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've read the book, but the book is extremely Someone
Speaker 1: called it radical honesty. I mean, I share all the
Speaker 1: bumps and the bruises and the mistakes and everything, because
Speaker 1: I thought, if the purpose of writing this book is
Speaker 1: to help other women realize their potential, realize that it's
Speaker 1: never too late to change their lives, if I leave
Speaker 1: out all the bumpy parts, if I make it look easy,
Speaker 1: then the first time they have an impediment, they'll stop
Speaker 1: and say, oh, I'm not meant to do this. Julia
Speaker 1: Fats was so easy she went from this to this success. No,
Speaker 1: that's not how it worked. It was a very very
Speaker 1: difficult road. I've worked twenty hour days for the last
Speaker 1: eleven years. You know, I'm a warrior. I fight for
Speaker 1: what I believe in, and it's been a very difficult road.
Speaker 1: And I thought it was important to share that the
Speaker 1: road being difficult, that's okay, making mistakes, that's part of it.
Speaker 1: Like we cannot be afraid of messing up. We can't,
Speaker 1: you know. And I think a lot of it has
Speaker 1: to do with the fact which this is. My daughter
Speaker 1: came up with this, and I thought it was genius.
Speaker 1: Guys from the time they're young learn how to deal
Speaker 1: with rejection. Why because they're the ones asking girls out. Right,
Speaker 1: even in our culture, a feminist modern culture, predominantly, it's
Speaker 1: still guys asking girls out. Now, you would say that's
Speaker 1: a bad thing. Poor guy, it's all on him. No,
Speaker 1: But what it teaches him is that it's not so
Speaker 1: bad rejection. Five women rejects him, but one woman says yes.
Speaker 1: He just keeps going through it. So by the time
Speaker 1: a young man becomes an adult, he has learned how
Speaker 1: to to deal with rejection. He has learned to ignore
Speaker 1: it and just move forward. Women, however, we have been
Speaker 1: taught to be polite and sweet and kind and this
Speaker 1: and that, and we're always being judged right, you're too loud,
Speaker 1: you're too flashy, you're to this, you're to that, you're
Speaker 1: not enough, you're If you think about all the things
Speaker 1: that women get accused of on a daily basis, all
Speaker 1: the voices that they're hearing are negative voices telling them
Speaker 1: what they can't be doing, and once they hit a roadblock,
Speaker 1: very often they think all these people were right, I
Speaker 1: shouldn't have started this right. We don't deal with rejection
Speaker 1: as well because we're not as trained in it. I
Speaker 1: want people to know losing sometimes is okay because then
Speaker 1: you win more. You just got to keep going through it.
Speaker 1: You can't ever give up.
Speaker 2: Looking back at all of these different situations, is there
Speaker 2: something that really stands out for you that at the
Speaker 2: time you thought was such a low point that you
Speaker 2: thought you really wouldn't get out of it, And now
Speaker 2: in retrospect, you look back and you feel like it's
Speaker 2: really launched you to where you are now.
Speaker 1: Well, I'd love to say that after my divorce is over,
Speaker 1: that'll be great. You know, I would say the two
Speaker 1: most difficult moments in my life, or the day that
Speaker 1: I left my community and then you know, the time
Speaker 1: after I filed for divorce. Those those have been the
Speaker 1: most traumatic experiences of my life. One was literally moving
Speaker 1: to Mars being a complete unknown, and the other was
Speaker 1: watching all my work and building a billion dollar business
Speaker 1: being snatched for me. That was painful. So will I
Speaker 1: say I've learned from it? Not until it's over and
Speaker 1: I've won and justice has been served. I want justice,
Speaker 1: I really do. I want justice. It's funny. I have
Speaker 1: no anger or anything like that. I just I want
Speaker 1: truth to matter. I just want justice. You know. I
Speaker 1: think I'd rather wait until it's over. Then I can say, yes,
Speaker 1: I learned so much from it. But I'm not ready
Speaker 1: to say that yet. But of course I learned a
Speaker 1: lot from leaving my community, because that's why I started
Speaker 1: my shoe brand. Because I figured if I could time travel,
Speaker 1: I could do anything. And that moment of understanding that
Speaker 1: I'm much stronger than I thought I was, and I
Speaker 1: have capabilities I'm yet unaware of. I figured, if I
Speaker 1: could survive time travel. Of course I could build a
Speaker 1: shoe company. Of course I could create laingry like. It
Speaker 1: just didn't occur to me that I couldn't. So I did.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for joining us, Julia.
Speaker 1: I had such an incredible time. You're an extraordinary woman.
Speaker 1: You are really such a wow just wow. Really, I'm
Speaker 1: impressed and I'm appreciative that we got to spend time together.
Speaker 1: I hope more and more people continue to listen to
Speaker 1: your podcast, because I think you're doing something truly valuable
Speaker 1: for humanity.
Speaker 2: Julia continues to be her fabulous self, living in New
Speaker 2: York City, now uses her platform to uplift and support women,
Speaker 2: involving herself in politics and empower other women and their ventures.
Speaker 2: She also just started her own shapewear line called Plus Body,
Speaker 2: and she is also the author of a best selling book.
Speaker 2: You can follow Julia on Instagram at Julia Heart to
Speaker 2: stay up to date on all her latest pivots. Thanks
Speaker 2: for listening to this episode of She Pivots. If you
Speaker 2: made it this far, you're a true pivoter, So thanks
Speaker 2: for being part of this community. I hope you enjoyed
Speaker 2: this episode, and if you did, leave us a rating
Speaker 2: Please be nice tell your friends about us. To learn
Speaker 2: more about our guests, follow us on Instagram at she
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Speaker 2: you can get exclusive behind the scenes content, or on
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Speaker 2: Special thanks to the she pivots team, Executive producer Emily
Speaker 2: eda Velosik, Associate producer and social media connoisseur Hannah Cousins,
Speaker 2: Research director Christine Dickinson, Events and Logistics coordinator Madeline Snovac,
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