Jennifer Tracey: You know, at a certain point, you just have to own your unique attributes and hopefully flaunt them in a way that gives you that sense of confidence as opposed to trying to cover stuff to fake other stuff.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the MILF Podcast. This is the show where we talk about motherhood and sexuality with amazing women with fascinating stories to share on the joys of being a MILF. Now, here's your host, the MILFiest MILF I know, Jennifer Tracey.
Jennifer Tracey: Hey, guys. Welcome back to the show. This is MILF Podcast, the show where we talk about motherhood, entrepreneurship, sexuality, and everything in-between. I'm Jennifer Tracey, your host. I really hope you guys enjoyed last week's episode with Joanna Astro. I know I did. I love her so much. It was so wonderful to have someone on the show who was not in my generation and get that perspective of some history. So, I want to start doing some more of that and getting more range in that regard.
Jennifer Tracey: Also, this month's give, January's give ... This is the last week of January, so our give this month is for Harvest Home LA, which is an organization in West LA that helps homeless women and children have a place to live. It offers them shelter, and it offers them a foundation and training to build their lives and support. It's a beautiful organization. You can find them at harvesthomela.org. I love what they're doing. For every iTunes review I get, I'm going to give $3, although I have to tell you guys that last month, I got three iTunes reviews, so obviously, I gave more than $9 to Every Mother Counts. I gave a substantial amount more. It's just really a way to raise awareness. It's not necessarily about my iTunes reviews.
Jennifer Tracey: I mean, yes, I would like to have iTunes reviews, and I really appreciate those of you that have taken the time to write them, but I also know that as people, as humans, as mothers, we're all super busy, and so it's really just this practice of doing this. Choosing a different organization every month, for me, is part of what is important to me, and it's important to my message of being of service and helping other moms and raising the voices of women and mothers to unite so that we don't feel so alone, and to also have a unity of the community of moms all over the world. So, different places. I'm not just going to focus on things in Los Angeles.
Jennifer Tracey: For example, Every Mother Counts is worldwide, and then next month's organization, which I will unveil next week, is also worldwide. so, anyway, I'm kind of rambling. But the point is, I just want to be a voice that raises awareness. It's not about me, or it's kind of just like, "Hey, if you guys do this thing that's involved in supporting the podcast, of supporting the voices of women, the stories of the women that come on to my show that may help another woman somewhere in the world, then I'm going also give this money to this other thing." It's kind of all in the same vain. I hope that makes sense, and I hope it doesn't sound soap-boxy, 'cause that's not at all the point. That's it.
Jennifer Tracey: So, Harvest Home LA, go check them out if you would like. HarvesthomeLA.org. It's really beautiful what they're doing. I wish we could have more of those all over the place. I think what they're doing for young moms ... Not that you have to be young, but most of the women there are young homeless women who have babies or are about to have babies. It provides a service that, unfortunately, at this time, in this country, we don't necessarily offer in many places. There might be one or two places, but we need a lot more of that.
Jennifer Tracey: Without further ado, this week's guest was such a treat. Oh, my gosh. So, April Uchitel is a bombshell, first of all. She is so stunningly gorgeous. She answered the door, and I kind of lost my breath. She's got this striking red hair. She's tall. She always wears a red lip, which we talk about in the show. She has flawless skin. She's whip smart. Whip smart. I mean, just ... I was on the edge of my seat the entire time that we had our conversation. I absolutely fell in love with her. I know you guys will too. Please enjoy my interview with April.
Jennifer Tracey: Thank you so much for having me in your beautiful home.
April: You are so welcome.
Jennifer Tracey: And for being on the show. I'm so excited. So I told Catherine ... I ask every mom I'd like to follow who's on the show if she has a recommendation, and she said, "I don't know," 'cause she knows so many-
April: Yeah. Amazing group of people.
Jennifer Tracey: ... amazing people, women, men, you know? But especially moms. She said, "Well, give me a list," and you were actually on my list?
April: Oh, really?
Jennifer Tracey: Yes.
April: Ah. So she gave me a thumbs up?
Jennifer Tracey: She was like, "Well I can do that," and so she connected us and I was super grateful. I had a big fan girl moment. But I wanna start cause I wanna know kind of a little bit about your background. Where are you from originally?
April: Sure. I was born in Boulder, Colorado.
Jennifer Tracey: Oh that's right, cause, right.
April: And I went to actually Longmont High School. So you know one of those people that say "I was born in New York City," but they were there for two hours and then they moved to Short Hills, New Jersey? So I'm always like, "Okay." Everyone's like, "You lived in Boulder?" I'm like, "I was born in Boulder." But then we moved to a suburb of Denver called Lakewood which was where the whole Columbine thing happened.
Jennifer Tracey: Yes.
April: And that was after I left. But, then Longmont which is a small suburb outside of Boulder which has changed tremendously, but very kind of middle-class. Not a lot of diversity I would say. I had one African American woman in the school, and she was the student body president. I didn't know what Jewish was until I moved to LA.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: So to give you a sense of kind of the climate, and those times of kind of isolated and a little bit of a bubble that's just very specific to small towns in kind of, not even Midwest, but ... And really just knew that that's not where I wanted to stay.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah. And you left after high school? You left for college?
April: I left after high school. I actually went to, my freshman year I went to Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona. I was gonna try and walk on and play volleyball. Did not happen. Once you get against those California girls, forget it. It really wasn't the right fit for me in terms of the demographic, and I also just really wanted to get out of Colorado so bad I kind of went anywhere I could get into as opposed to ...
April: In retrospect, I should have just stayed in Boulder and left later. So then I went back to Boulder, and I didn't ... my parents couldn't afford college and so I was working and going to school part time. I got a bunch of student loans. I went back to Boulder and I was working at the Benetton on Pearl Street.
Jennifer Tracey: Oh my gosh, yes! I probably went in there when you were there.
April: I'm a really good folder, and pattern mixer.
Jennifer Tracey: That's where it began.
April: Exactly. But I always had this fashion thing, and I would do retail as my part-time jobs before and during high school, and obviously then into college. And I ended up following my best friend, my sister, and my boyfriend at the time all from Colorado to California. They were all heading to different parts. Funny enough, I did not finish at CU, and I moved to California to finish. I applied to UCLA, and y'know there was 4,000 applicants for 200 out-of-state spots or something, and they said "Go to Santa Monica City College and then reapply."
April: And then I got to LA and I kind of got into the fashion business, and at that point I was making more at 20 than my dad made. And I didn't finish college. Probably one of my biggest regrets, and I tried to go online, I was like "I can do this together." It was really a financial thing for me, I couldn't really afford both. So something I would say, for awhile I said it was one of my biggest regrets. Now I don't really look at it that way at all because it obviously put me on a path, and that was my path. So I let that grudge go.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah. So when you were here, what was your first job in LA? What was your first fashion job?
April: My first job, I worked in the California Mart, and I actually worked for a clothing company called Karen Kane which is still around.
Jennifer Tracey: Yes.
April: Very bridge. I had run into a girlfriend one night. I got here and I was hostessing at Café Figaro. Everyone was assuming I was gonna, I'm an actress/model and so when you're hostessing at a restaurant in West Hollywood where a lot of people are coming in, everyday was like, "Are you a model? Are you an actress?" And I was like, "No." And they're like, "Why are you here?" And I'm like, "Well, it's, I don't know."
Jennifer Tracey: The sunshine?
April: Fashion. And you know fashion, this is in the early 90s, it's really about denim and it has been for a long time. And in those days it really, Esprit was the company I wanted to work at.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: So I'm 20, and there was this amazing Esprit store, I remember on Los Antica and Santa Monica, that gorgeous space.
Jennifer Tracey: Yes. Oh, of course, yeah.
April: So that was there, and that was the type of brand I wanted to work for. My friend told me about the California Mart, and there's this thing called "the green sheet" which is the help wanted. And so she would start to send me them, and I would just look everyday for Esprit.
April: And then she was actually working at Karen Kane, and she called me and she's like, "We're looking for a receptionist. If you don't wanna hostess, wanna try this?" Within a couple months I was in sales. Within a couple months I was kinda quickly taking on more and more, and traveling. I didn't get on an airplane until I was 16 so for me this life of going to New York, going to San Francisco, doing the shows in Vegas, doing all these different marts seemed pretty glamorous at that time. So I just kind of jumped in. It was less about the brand, or the product for me then. It was really just security.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: And a paycheck.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: And health insurance.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: And a 401K.
Jennifer Tracey: And also, you were probably learning an insane amount.
April: Yes. Completely. At that time, this is really gonna date me, I remember I was probably a couple weeks working there and the woman who ran the company, they'd just gotten a fax machine. And she's like, "Who would ever use this? I can just drive it to the factory. I can take the orders over there in my car. Why do we have to put the paper through the thing?" I'm not kidding. So things have changed a lot.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: And being from a small town, and not really even understanding the industry, I didn't realize someone sold to the buyers. I kind of thought I would go do the Bloomingdale's buying program, and get into fashion that way. And then all of a sudden you realize this whole other world exists on the other side. And then you start to get into the economics of that, and starting to see all the different connective ... from the people in production to design to merchandising, y'know the whole thing.
April: And so it was a great experience, and it was a very corporate experience. So as much as, from a brand perspective you had to wear the clothes and I would literally bring extra clothes and I would change in my car. I didn't want anyone to see me in the clothes when I was driving to go meet my friends for drinks. Y'know it was one of those. So it wasn't really like, "I work here because it's Prada," but it was a really strong foundation, understanding everything from gross margin analysis to just how to write an email and the hierarchy of how it works in the department stores from assistants all the way to GMs-
Jennifer Tracey: I mean, and that I just have to point out, is something you wouldn't have gotten continuing on at CU. You probably wouldn't have even gotten that at FITM, let's be real. You can't replace that real world experience. That's so wonderful.
April: No. And you know, no one has ever asked me about my college background. No one.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah, they don't care.
April: I mean, it clearly says on my resume "attended CU". And again, it was one of these things like you felt like I was kind of not really telling the truth. And then later when you're looking at resumes and you're looking at education background, and the way I would review someone, the first thing I went to was not "Where did they go to college?" Cause to me it wasn't a deciding factor for my skillset.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: As horrible as it sounds, remember when The Apprentice was out and it was the streets versus the suits or something? I don't know what it was.
Jennifer Tracey: Yes. Yes. Yeah, something like that, yeah.
April: And I just remember like, "Okay, I guess I'm on the streets smart side," cause I can't say Ivy league education. And you look at, there's a million examples of people that have become incredibly successful with little or no education, let alone-
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: It's just the way my life played out.
Jennifer Tracey: Well and you had moxie. I mean, the first thing I thought of was "Wow, you walked on in Arizona like 'I'm gonna walk on and get on the volleyball team.'" That takes some serious ovaries as I say on the show. That's awesome.
April: Or complete naivity, I don't know which one.
Jennifer Tracey: Maybe a mix of both. And then just, "Yep, I'm moving to LA." A lot of people wouldn't ever do either of those things.
April: Yeah. I mean, when I went back to my 20 year high school reunion I was pregnant with my daughter. I didn't have my first child until I was 38. So I was pregnant with my daughter, and I remember I walked in and people were like "Oh we thought you were gay. You're just having your first kid now." They have three kids by now, one in high school.
Jennifer Tracey: Sure.
April: And then they had an awards ceremony, and I won the award for "went the farthest away". So I'm like, "from Longmont to Los Angeles?" I was like "What?" And at that point I was already in New York. But I'm like, "Wait, no one went to London? No one?" But that'll give you a sense of the mentality when I was growing up. And i just remember always feeling like just kind of suffocated by sameness. For me it was, the thing growing up was being short, blonde, and voluptuous when I was in high school. And I was none of the above.
Jennifer Tracey: Oh God, for me too. I hated myself until probably after I graduated. I kept, I was like "Oh I'm too tall, I'm too tall, I'm too tall." And now it's like, oh my God, like why?
April: My daughter's doing that right now. She's 5'7" and 13, and she just confessed that she's been sleeping in the fetal position cause she's convinced that she won't grow anymore if she does that. The pediatrician set her straight, and so now she's stretching out in bed.
Jennifer Tracey: Good cause it's not gonna change it.
April: He's like, "It's not gonna happen. It's not gonna change. You can't stunt your growth by sleeping in the fetal position."
Jennifer Tracey: And she'll be so stoked at some point, as I finally was. But it took me until I was like 20 to finally just-
April: To appreciate that?
Jennifer Tracey: I don't know, yeah.
April: Yeah.
Jennifer Tracey: I think it was an acting teacher. Actually it was an acting teacher. It was Bill Howey. He was like, "Stand up straight. What are you doing? Be tall."
April: Yeah. So powerful.
Jennifer Tracey: It's so powerful, and it's an asset, and it's what makes you you.
April: Yep. No, I think just that sameness ... and I see it in my daughter, the sense of wanting to fit in and wanting to not stand out too much. Given the fact that I was this tall, skinny redhead with braces. Didn't really have any physical role models, people that, everybody says "I didn't see anyone who looked like me." And then I saw an old Ann Margaret movie, and I was like "Okay there's hope."
Jennifer Tracey: Yes!
April: I kind of, I could see where this could go.
Jennifer Tracey: She's such a goddess, yes. Oh yeah.
April: But it was really seeing someone like that to realize, at a certain point you just have to own your unique attributes. And hopefully flaunt them in a way that gives you that sense of confidence.
Jennifer Tracey: Yes.
April: As opposed to trying to cover stuff, to fake other stuff, you know.
Jennifer Tracey: Cause that's so much work. It's so exhausting. And it doesn't work.
April: It doesn't work.
Jennifer Tracey: It in fact has the opposite effect.
April: Yep. And now you look back and you just kick yourself for so much wasted insecurity. It sucks.
Jennifer Tracey: It's so true. It's so true. Okay so you're out here, Karen Kane. What was the next step for you?
April: So I, you know I really just climbed the ranks there. I tend to have a habit of overstaying my welcome, the comfort zone feels like, and security. When i grew up my dad was a, he did sales and it was anything from life insurance to oil and gas to real estate. It was very commission-based, and it was like we had no money and then we had a paycheck that came and paid all the bills and we still had no money. And I swore I would never do sales, and so I actually studied sociology and psychology. And then all of a sudden I'm the national sales manager and I'm like "Shit. How did that happen?"
April: But the security piece was rough for me, and things weren't moving at the pace that they are now. So you would wait, and you would have your annual review, and you would get a little bit of an increase, and you would wait to get the next promotion. And fashion specifically, and I'm sure many other industries, but it is so hierarchy driven. And there's this real "pay your dues" part of it that is really detrimental to personal growth. So people jump around. And I was very much like, stay and work really hard and someone's gonna recognize you. And I didn't get the fact that you have to kind of put your hand up and wave it around and say "I'm doing amazing."
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: Funny enough, the founder Lonny Kane, one day he called me into his office and he's like "It's time for you to go. There's really nothing else. You've gotta go do something else."
Jennifer Tracey: He was kicking you out of the nest.
April: Completely. And I was just, and it was literally done in the most fatherly way.
Jennifer Tracey: Ooh. What a gift.
April: It was really ... it's funny cause I think back and at the time I felt like he was disowning me in a way. But he was like, "You gotta go," and funny enough when I was at Spring and later he sent me an email and he's like "I'm so proud of you." It was really really sweet. But that idea of like, you need more experience, you need different experiences, you can't be 20 years at a company starting at 20 years old.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: Those days are over.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: So he did, and I ended up going over to BCBG. They were building a new division and I was kind of supporting a few different things. Funny enough, I met Diego. We'd known each other for a couple of years, but we actually had our first date in New York when I was there for work. The president of BCBG called me and she's like "I hear you've got a boyfriend there. You wanna move there?" So within a month and a half Diego and I had our first date, and then we moved cross-country and in together to New York.
Jennifer Tracey: Wow.
April: This synergistic reason of he had eyes on New York. We just kind of held hands and jumped. So BCBG really kind of gave me that opportunity, and I just felt like "I've already missed my New York window. I'm in my early thirties. That's when you go and pay your dues there. I don't really feel like living like that in New York." And it was great. And it obviously completely changed course for me too. And I was really kind of bored in LA. I was missing seasons. I was feeling groundhog day everyday. And when you're in fashion you're selling six months out.
Jennifer Tracey: Right.
April: So I'm like, "Is it August? Is it February?" It really starts to blur, and then five years are gone. So I was ready for a change, and lucky that I found someone and the timing just was perfect to kind of take that risk. It felt a little bit less scary.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: We both kinda felt like, even if we just get ourselves there together and we don't make it together, it was still worth it.
Jennifer Tracey: Gonna be okay.
April: Yeah.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah, and worth the risk, and work the experience.
April: Yeah.
Jennifer Tracey: So but you stayed there for-
April: Yeah, I did 19 years. When we moved there we were like, "We'll do New York for five years, and then we'll come back to LA." Once you start to put in roots, and then obviously build a family, it's much different. For him, he would have left a lot sooner. He would have left New York a lot sooner.
Jennifer Tracey: Interesting. Okay.
April: So I kinda held him hostage.
Jennifer Tracey: Well and you lived in such a great part of town. Were you always in Tribeca?
April: Yeah. We were for a minute in Chelsea. When we first landed there he had an apartment on 5th and 11th so we started in kind of University. And then we started renting in Tribeca, and then we bought in Chelsea and a place upstate, and we kind of did that migration. And we got really actually lucky with a lot of property flipping at the time.
Jennifer Tracey: Great.
April: So we kind of rode that wave and jumped around, and then we did kind of move into our weekend house as a sabbatical for a couple years. We tried to upstate life, and I dragged us back with an opportunity. At that point, when I'm dragging everyone back from the country, he gave me two years Manhattan and then he's like "then we're out."
Jennifer Tracey: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
April: Three and a half years later he finally gave me an ultimatum and said, "I cannot be here anymore. I'll go anywhere you want. Anywhere. I'll go to Boulder. I'll go to Millbrook. I'll go to LA." And so LA really checked the most boxes for both of our industries, and I have a sister here, and so we just came back.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: Full circle.
Jennifer Tracey: Wow. And you've been back here for a year now you said?
April: Yeah, a little over a year. It was a year last July.
Jennifer Tracey: So when you had your daughter, your first child, what were you doing work-wise then at that point?
April: I stayed in fashion for about 25 years. I did a chunk at BCBG and then I literally worked at Prada for three weeks and then went back to BCBG. It was definitely a wild month. Then I, funny enough, I think we all can kind of manifest to a certain degree and I remember sitting there thinking "Okay I don't wanna be in this company anymore, and there's only two companies I would wanna work for." And I literally said it out loud to my husband, "I would wanna work at Diane Von Furstenberg or Marc Jacobs." And I kid you not, the next week I got an email from the president of Diane Von Ferstenberg, and said "I would love to talk to you about an opportunity."
Jennifer Tracey: That is so amazing.
April: Yeah, it was really-
Jennifer Tracey: I love that.
April: I mean, I literally, I showed it to my husband he's like "Wait, what?" And so I did. I went there and I lasted nine years. This is again a little overstaying my welcome. I should have got out a year before I actually left. And I don't know what that says about me, but I think what I really realized was that I just did not wanna be a 50 year old garmento. I said that word the other day in the office and people were like, "What's a garmento?"
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah, what is a garmento? Tell us.
April: To me, obviously the garment business was built on the salesmen type mentality. Garmento women, and I'd watched so many in my career, are just women that kind of stay in a certain rut and they get really hardened. They get to a point when they're kind of aging out, and they're angry. There's just a ceiling, and it's more apparent now because of the way industry is changing so dramatically. Thinking along that hierarchy of just "I'll do this and I'll keep growing up the corporate ladder, and then I'll stay for ten years." Those days are just over.
April: At the same time, really looking at how the industry was changing, how everything was kind of broken in the model. Having done trade shows, and fought with department stores, and figured out the competition, and fighting to maintain a certain level of growth, my next step from a career would have been to go be the president of a brand. And I just knew that I did not have a fully fleshed out toolkit, especially as it related to digital marketing, what was happening with social media. Diane is amazing and she, I remember sitting around a table and she's like "We need a blogger," and we're all like, "What's a blogger?"
Jennifer Tracey: Wow.
April: And she's like, "Oh my God. I'm the oldest person at the table, and I'm the one telling you we need a blogger?" She of course had Berry Tiller and IAC and a lot of tech companies he was investing in. I remember we hired this blogger and I literally remember her sitting, giving us a cheat sheet of: what is twitter? What is Tumblr? What is ... We're like "Okay." I mean, again, it's not the fax machine but it was another kind of evolution, revolution.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: I just thought, "Okay that's where it's going, and I am gonna be stuck in this sales strategy piece. And I'm gonna lose the opportunity to learn that early where it makes sense and I can build it in as opposed to just having a high level understanding but not actually really knowing the nuts and bolts." For me, being able to kind of lead a team around something I don't quite understand is really hard. So I decided that it was time to go, and that I needed to figure out how to pivot, and how to pivot in a way that I could take all of those years and that skillset and relationships.
April: So I started consulting, and I started mentoring in the C[inaudible 00:26:04] incubator program which doesn't exist anymore sadly. But they would take a group of 10 designers, and they would give them a break on space, and then they would give them access to 40 mentors in the industry to help them grow their business.
Jennifer Tracey: Wow, what a great program.
April: It was amazing, and also the mentors benefit too because you're watching these small brands kind of navigate, and they're a little bit more nimble. Unfortunately they don't have a lot of cash to do a lot of the recommendations, and so it became a trickier situation, and frustrating on both sides. But yet I could kind of keep a foot in with fashion, see what was evolving with the seasonality and the department stores and fashion week and whatever.
April: At the same time I started to work with some digital boards. One of them was called Bon Fair and it was basically a mode operandi for accessories, and Moda acquired them. It put me on a board with Ava Chen who's now at Instagram, [inaudible 00:27:40] who was the founder of Beachman and became one of the co founders of Spring. Guys from [inaudible 00:27:09]. I started and I'm like "Okay, I have been one tunnel, one brand, one team, and I have to just blow it out laterally." So I just started meeting with as many people as possible, and kind of understanding this skillset that I have, where I really am nowhere, and how I could somehow parlay my experience, help somebody but learn along the way.
April: So Spring came along as one of our consulting opportunities through [inaudible 00:27:40] and it just was this perfect moment of "I'm gonna build something from scratch. I'm gonna leverage everything I know. And I think we can really create a platform based on all of my knowledge of what's broken in the industry and all of my understanding of where I think it's going, and create something that" ... I saw it as like the phoenix rising from the ashes of the whole industry exploding. And I just, a light went off in me of "This is really where I see this bridge."
April: Really painful. I took a massive pay cut. I worked for someone I was 20 years older than. I learned an entirely new language. And startup hustle is unlike anything, especially when you come from traditional hierarchy fashion where we kind of left at 6:30 and we kind of didn't take it all home all night long. And now I'm working until midnight every night, and there's not enough time in the day.
Jennifer Tracey: How old are your kids at this point?
April: Louella was in third grade, probably. We had moved upstate, and so I was coming into the city. We had rented our place in Tribeca, and we took a little crash pad in Soho, and put the kids in school upstate. I was coming back in to do the mentoring and to have some meetings, and then I would kind of work remotely. Once we got closer to starting to launch ... So my role was chief brand officer, and I was responsible for managing the brand side.
Jennifer Tracey: And for our listeners who don't know what Spring is, tell me what Spring is. [crosstalk 00:29:14] I just thought of it.
April: Spring is a marketplace, and it started off as a mobile only. And this is 2014, so we saw this app ecosystem happening. The idea of, every brand was like "Do I need to now build an app?" Creating one point of sale that would pretty much aggregate all of these brands eCommerce into one place, so you as a consumer could go and shop from Harry's or Warby or Smashbox or Gucci. But unlike when you go shop them at NetaPorte or Neimans, you're getting those buyers' edits. This would bring everything in the catalog because we're integrating directly. So you can navigate, if you wanna search for "flat black boots" you can get them across the board from everybody. But what was really great was the universal cart so it was one checkout. We offered free shipping, free returns, and it was basically ...
April: When we went live we got a ton of press. We were the number one app in the app store. We had Vogue call us the future of shopping. Huffington Post said we've uberized fashion. It was really exciting to be part of building something that was so sexy.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah. Groundbreaking, yeah.
April: But it was a lot of banging our heads on the door. And people later, there's a company called Orchard Mile. The founder was like, "We wouldn't be here if Spring didn't do all the groundbreaking." We were kind of that first in, in early talking about mobile, in early talking about a new platform. So coming from the brand side I knew all of their pain points, and I understood distribution challenges, and I understand those relationships where if you have a brand and you go to sell to a store you lose the power the minute they walk into the showroom. So it's how they merchandise it, and then how they display it, how they promote it, when they mark it down, and every step you lose control. But yet, at the end of the day you're accountable for profitability. And that's the fight with the stores.
April: So being able to take out that middle man ... I mean, our first blog post was gonna be Fuck The Department Store. And we are just gonna, all the brands are gonna go do it together. And it was really what I felt, and I really thought "We can do this." So I threw myself into it, and I don't think I've ever worked as hard and ever had that kind of fulfilling sense of like, "I'm building the future."
Jennifer Tracey: Wow.
April: It didn't quite pay out like I thought it would, but it was really incredible for me to feel strong in my convictions of like, "I'm changing my role here." I remember I went to one of the trade shows, and I saw all the girls from Bergdorfs, and they all kinda looked down their nose at me. They're like, "You're selling an app? Ugh." And then about six months later they're like, "Oh my God, how'd you know how to do that?" And I really had that, I mean my first conversations with a lot of people ... I would meet with people. I met with every CEO of Caring from Stella to whatever, and they're all looking at me like "Interesting, but I'm not sure, but you seem to know what you're talking about." You know what I mean?
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: So I was able, because of my authority and having been on their side, to cut right to the chase of the pain points. I get pitched stuff all the time, and you can tell when it's a 24 year old kid who's got a script selling some product, or selling a platform.
Jennifer Tracey: Right.
April: And I was able to kind of cut through that noise very differently. At the same time, because I really honestly believed that this was a win/win/win.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: And so it allowed me to completely learn a new language. I remember we were talking about the product one day, and they were talking about the app and I'm talking about the clothes in the app. So there's just all these different nuances, and a gazillion acronyms. I would be on conference calls frantically googling so I knew what the hell they were talking about. I'm like, "What's SEO? What's [inaudible 00:33:06]? What's CRM?" And I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, sure. You know." They're like, "So what's this?" I'm like, "Um." I remember sitting in front of the mirror and rehearsing so that I didn't ... if anybody were to call me out on something I didn't really have full clarity that I would have enough that I could bullshit my way through.
Jennifer Tracey: Right.
April: It was like going, I felt like I was going to business school.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: At the same time, I'm taking a bus from upstate New York at 6 am, putting on my lipstick in Port Authority, and then running down to the [inaudible 00:33:36] showroom or the Alexander Wang showroom or all of Este Lauder. It was just crazy. It was a crazy time.
Jennifer Tracey: And then coming home, and having two children and a husband, and having that piece.
April: Yeah. Yeah.
Jennifer Tracey: Was that like your sanctuary? I mean, you love your work obviously, that's evident. But just the balancing of that, that's a lot to balance.
April: The balancing was hard, and I think I am so grateful that I have a husband who was really there. And as a photographer you're freelance, you're not going to an office everyday, so he was able when he wasn't shooting to be fully present. And we were basically busing our nanny up from the city, and we would high five on the bus. I would literally stick my car keys under the mat, and I'd park it at the bus station. And then she would get off the bus, and go get my car and drive to the house.
Jennifer Tracey: That's awesome.
April: Logistically, I look back and I was like "We were nuts." But that really was about six months of this crazy back and forth, and then it just was uncle. So I had to decide. I either say "Okay guys. Good luck. Thanks," and Spring pat me on the back and keep going. Or I join.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: So that's when I dragged the family back to the city, and I took a full-time job. I was head [inaudible 00:34:49] consulting, and then it was even like game really on. So it was a good two years at Spring where I probably slept five hours a night.
Jennifer Tracey: Oh my gosh. How was your mental state during, just in general?
April: I was just so motivated. And I definitely ignored, and I still kind of ignore myself which is a whole other conversation. But really, the family took a backseat in that moment, and I've had many conversations with female founders and I wasn't even the founder, I was on the founding team but I didn't have that financial responsibility. I remember crying when I told my daughter's teacher upstate that we were going back to the city, and I burst into tears. She said, she was like "You are, the role model of what you're doing. You're showing your family that you're important, and that it's worth the whole family moving so that you can have an opportunity."
Jennifer Tracey: I just got chills.
April: But it was really tough. Luckily I had a husband who was like, "Ugh. Okay. We'll go back."
Jennifer Tracey: That's so beautiful because just, in general, as women we're not told that.
April: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jennifer Tracey: And that wasn't modeled for me with my mom. Everything was about my father's success. Everything was about his schedule, his comfort, his everything. And that was just that generation.
April: Yeah. Yep.
Jennifer Tracey: So I really admire that. And I can see how it fed you, and continues to feed you just in the way you're talking about it.
April: Yeah.
Jennifer Tracey: Your eyes light up when you talk about it.
April: Yeah. A girlfriend of mine, Erin, who was the designer at [inaudible 00:36:24]. She had a baby, and we talked after she was on maternity leave, and she's like, I go "How was it?" She's like, "It sucked. I hate maternity leave." And she's like, "You're like me. You value yourself based on your productivity." And when she said that I at first was like, "Oh. Mm." It's true. When there's days you feel really unproductive, you feel less in some way. And maternity leave does tend to give you that sense of, "The day was a blur and what did I do?"
Jennifer Tracey: Oh yeah.
April: So I think packing, the more busy the more I feel energized by being busy. That said, I do now start to, I'm feeling the repercussions of pushing it for so long and not really checking with myself. We moved to LA and I thought I was done with those startup hours. Not the case. This year for me is really prioritizing self-care, but it's really hard, it's so hard.
Jennifer Tracey: And what does that look like for you?
April: Not going to bed at midnight every night. Trying to do a better job with my nutrition. I'll literally text Katherine and I'm like, "I'm at Whole Foods. Do I get the bee pollen or the hemp hearts?" Y'know?
Jennifer Tracey: Totally.
April: And she's like "Get them both." For her that's so natural because that's what feeds her is being in that world. And I'm, my nutrition is terrible. I ate some carrots on the way over here. I was like, "I'm so hungry."
Jennifer Tracey: Oh my gosh, I'm so proud of you.
April: That's a big deal.
Jennifer Tracey: I know, I'm right there with you.
April: I think that's the first vegetable I've had in days.
Jennifer Tracey: Yep. I'm the same. And the problem is I'm teaching my kids that. And so I'm trying to do this smoothie challenge, and I do a smoothie every morning and my kids just roll their eyes at me.
April: Mine too. I'm like, Katherine's kids just-
Jennifer Tracey: I know, suck that down. They chew mushrooms in the kitchen.
April: They chew mushrooms in the kitchen and love it. And they're so happy.
Jennifer Tracey: I know.
April: Where am I going wrong?
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah, I think foundationally I messed up there.
April: Me too. Me too. I'm with you.
Jennifer Tracey: So okay, when did Violet Gray come about?
April: So Era Katts who was the co founder of Spring. She brought me Spring, and then she eventually brought Violet Gray back into my world. But I had actually known Cassandra, my husband and I had known her way before she became Cassandra Gray, when she was still living in New York. And we kept in touch, and I'd had her speak on a panel for me at Spring when I did a big event in LA. When Era heard I was moving back she was like, "You know, you should just check back in with Cassandra because they're making some changes. There's been a lot of transition over there. She's got some really big projects she's working on."
April: So April of '17 I was coming to LA for business, so I called her and we had a meeting. She kind of gave me this big picture of the stuff she wanted to do with the brand, and a lot of it is production. I'm like, "I don't do that at all. You live in LA. There's a gazillion people that would be way better qualified than me." But she knew me enough, and my work ethic and what I'd done at Spring. So we started talking, and then unfortunately her husband passed away in March, so we didn't talk for a couple months.
April: I landed here in July and I just kinda took July and August to settle the house and the kids, even though I had that gnawing "What am I gonna do next?" In retrospect I wish I could've just known those two months were gonna be fine on the other end and really enjoyed them. But she rang me back up in July, or in August, and said "Okay. I'm coming out of the darkness. I'd love to chat again." So we talked, and I told her my concerns about what I'd heard about the company, and how culture is the most important thing to me, and I've already done the startup thing once. And she was just really incredibly gracious, and was just like "I don't wanna be the CEO anymore. I just wanna make great art, and I wanna focus on creative." And she, in essence, handed me the keys.
April: And I was just so not at all thinking I'm gonna be the CEO of a company as my next step. I thought "I'll do some more consulting, and maybe I can consult with Violet Gray. And I'll work on this particular strategy with you." I actually called a friend of mine who was the CEO of a company. I called him and I said, "Okay, I'm kind of terrified. They basically called me and said 'will you be the interim CEO? We're fundraising?'" And I said, "Can I be the CEO?" And he goes, "Yes. It's just chief cheerleader. That's all it is. That's what a CEO is, you're just chief cheerleader." And I was like, "I can do that."
April: He put it in a way that I'm so grateful because he demystified it. Where I immediately was like, "I don't know. I've never done fundraising. I've never run a board. I've never gotten really deep into the P&L. I've always had a part of the P&L, I've never owned the whole P&L." So I immediately went to all the stuff I don't have expertise-
Jennifer Tracey: Imposter syndrome.
April: Completely. And he was just like, y'know. And it was really what I needed to hear. And then I kind of was like, "You know, I can do anything for six months. I can't fuck it up too bad in six months." And I went in with this like "Alright, just work really hard for six months. Learn as much as you can, and it's never gonna be a negative experience," is how I sold myself to get there. Once we got in there and I realized the state of the business and a lot of the work that needed to be done, I wasn't even gonna be able to do the stuff I'm really good at until I can fix a lot of other stuff. Just kind of jumped in, and then of course started connecting to the people and to the bigger opportunity, and I would ...
April: One of my first events I went, to I was probably at the brand for a month and a half and I went to a dinner that C Magazine hosted. I was put at a table with all these amazing female entrepreneurs, and April from Violet Gray, and literally people were like "Oh my God, I love ..." like I'm Bono. And I'm like, "Guys, I've only been here for a month. I have nothing to do with the brand yet." But just seeing that passion for the brand from the people that I think mattered in the way I looked at LA entrepreneurs, founders, across-
Jennifer Tracey: People you respected. That's the-
April: And their reaction to me just being there. I was like, "Okay there's something really special here."
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: It's been only a year, little over a year, and we've just done a lot of kind of rebuilding foundation stuff so far. But now, this year it's like the wheels are turning so I'm really excited. It gives me the ability to, I think, hopefully kind of stop with the 90, 100 hours a week.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: And really that's on me. I had drinks with girlfriends about six months after I was here, and I was doing my how we all bitch about our jobs, and I was like "And then this, and then that." And they're like, "Well they should know that you," and I'm like "No, no, they is me." They're like, "Well they should not make you." I'm like, "No, they is me." And they're both like, "Oh my God, that sucks."
Jennifer Tracey: That's great.
April: And when you realize that you're the "they", it was really slightly terrifying. Just the responsibility of employees and peoples' livelihoods, and creating an environment that you want them to be excited to come to. No environment is perfect, and nobody knows what they're doing everyday in general, especially when you're building something. We like to say we're paving the road while we're driving on it which some days is exhilarating and other days it's just beyond frustrating.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: So having the right team, and the right people that are on the same page with you for that, was my first focus. Because I just don't wanna have to keep apologizing or justifying to people that just think we should be in a much different place than we are, or should be executing at a much different level than we are at that particular time, until they really collectively understand where we're at and where we're going.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: In that regard, having come from a startup that was run by a 27 year old who didn't have any of the experience. And I was like, "Well if Allen can be a CEO, I could be a CEO."
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: The sense of, I watched him try and figure it out over four years. He had a CEO coach, and he, we had 150 employees. We got really big really fast. And a lot of those were in engineering and tech and what not. But watching how he tried to navigate every department growing, and trying to keep communication, and I saw the parts that I saw him really ignoring or really in my opinion failing at from a culture perspective, or giving lip service to but not actually doing. So I just continually refer back to the way I felt as an employee in that situation, and apply that to the way I act as a leader in that situation as best I can.
April: Because at the end of the day you really are a chief cheerleader. You have to make sure that everyone's on track, and you have the right people owning the right things. You're able to make decisions, but it's really empowering your team and it's really championing your team in a way, and getting them excited to work on this particular project or "I know this didn't quite go as we planned, and I know it was incredibly frustrating, but we've got this." It's funny, it really is a big part of the job.
Jennifer Tracey: Cheerleader, that makes so much sense. So I wanna go back to something you've mentioned a couple times is the importance of culture to you. I wanna know more what that means to you, and how you're executing it or implementing it, or how you see it in the world, in other companies. That's very interesting.
April: I really go back to saying I've never had a great culture. There were parts of times in many many years at DVF where it was just the funnest time of my life, and we were building, and Diane is very involved, and we were literally she lived in the same space that we worked in. So she would be in the top floor and she would yell down, and she would scream your name across the intercom system.
Jennifer Tracey: That's fabulous.
April: Her and Christian Loubotin are best friends, and when Christian was starting out he would literally come and show the shoes out of our showroom. He would scream up to us, and one of us would run down and be the foot model for the Saks appointment. So this is taking it back to that level of-
Jennifer Tracey: Wow. That's history in the making right there.
April: We were in the West Village before the West Village was Disneyland like it is now, and this is meatpacking. So this was literally meat hanging in the streets, and hogs and heifers, people dancing on the tabletops, amazing places like Florante that's gone.
Jennifer Tracey: That was ... I was there. That was like 90 ...
April: It was, we got there in 99, 2000. Yeah.
Jennifer Tracey: Okay, I wasn't there anymore. But I used to go to Gosees down there when I was modeling there for five seconds.
April: This was still like transvestite hookers.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: A club scene that's a little sketchy.
Jennifer Tracey: It was fabulous, yeah.
April: So we, and we all loved that. Diane loved that. So the buyers would come down to the ... it was just not, you're not going to 42nd street to go to the showroom. So we created a really unique environment. I remember we would be merchandising a line, and we would order in sushi, and Diane would be coming down, she'd be in her underwear almost all the time. She was getting ready to go to the Met Ball and she'd get dressed while we're merchandising. Then she's go out and come back, and we would still all be there.
Jennifer Tracey: Wow.
April: She would be back in her underwear, and we would be laughing. There was a girl on the team who did an amazing Celine Dion impersonation. We just, we had so much fun. To me, those were just the best times. I had talked to Diane not too long ago about those times and she was like, "Oh. They were just, that was so much fun." Pre-recession, before it got super competitive in the contemporary market, and we were just figuring it out and building it. And then she ran for CF Day president, and we made "Diane For President" t-shirts. She came home, and we just, we had so much fun. And that energy of that part of the culture which I love.
April: When I would think about what I love about it, and it was that camaraderie. Once the company starts to get bigger, and the teams start to get a little bit more fragmented, and things start to get a little more divisive, and the communication breaks down. I can watch it happen, watched it happen at Spring. So it's just really incredibly important to me that we had a transparent culture. There's definitely things that are not to be shared for many obvious reasons, but for the most part with where we were at with the business and what the economics were like, we had just finished some fundraising and there had been a lot of transition, and a lot of energy that I needed to try and shift.
April: So I just kinda opened the doors. And I made everybody make their calendars public. And I said, "My door is open." And I set up weekly meetings, staff meetings, where it's not just sitting everyone saying what we're working on but an opportunity for teams to ask other teams questions. I brought the all-hands format from tech. And I would have teams do presentations so you could really understand, not to prove themselves as worthy but to really let the other teams understand the parts that you don't know they're working on and things that they're excited about and skillset that you didn't know you had to have to be on the digital marketing team or whatever. And opened up dashboard meetings so anybody could come and listen to the business review. At the end of the day, literally started sharing our P&L with the whole company.
April: So something that to me, I'm like had someone done this for me when I was in my twenties and help me understand my part to the whole as opposed to just my ownership of a part. Because to me that's where the frustration kicks in is, when you're looking at another department get funded or get to hire someone that you weren't allowed to hire. You don't have any money to hire somebody else, but why does that guy have four people, y'know? When you start to look at it from that perspective, and the whole company understands "We've made this decision because of this."
April: Then I went a step further and I said, "Okay, we're gonna do a company survey, and this is anonymous, and I want you to be as brutally honest as possible, and I'm not gonna get offended. You could say 'you suck as a manager' but I wanna just have a baseline. And I want to understand how you're feeling about the company, the culture, your opportunities within it, cross-team. This that and the other." We built out the questions so that I could really try and get the answers, and then there was very open "add whatever else you'd like". When it came back in there wasn't a ton of surprises, but there was this very clear call out of like "Are you the boss, or is Cassandra the boss?" It really made Cassandra and I sit down and say, "Okay, collectively we operate very differently. We own different pieces." And we did that in front of the team. And we owned up on certain things that we were not doing well, and we talked about how we're gonna work on that. To me it was a way of showing them our, we're still, we're doing the best we can.
April: Again, everybody looks at the world and has lived in the world very differently, and that's what makes a startup incredible because that 24 year old can and should have as much a say as that 40 year old because they just live in the world, they consume content differently, they approach things differently, and it's not ... we don't have one target consumer we're trying to reach, and she's 49 and works at an art gallery, like how you used to look at fashion demographics. So we need to have all these voices. At the same time you obviously can't have everything be a committee decision.
April: So it's a juggle, but what I'm really proud of is the fact that we kind of opened the doors, and we had great feedback. And we had other people call us out on things we weren't doing great, or really just say "I love it here, and I'm so excited, and I can't wait to see what we do," or "I would like it more if ..." So we're really trying to build that into the way we do even just an employee review process which are also awful and archaic and dreaded. I'm like, "There's gotta be a better way to do that where it's something you look forward to." You should look forward to that review. You should look forward to that time of evaluation cause it's really where you get to say where you wanna go. And not expect to get graded which is just an awful thing.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. I totally get it now. I get the culture, and I think what an inspiration for other companies and other people who might hear this. Or just even implementing that in your daily life in your child's school, in your community, in your home with your children.
April: Yeah, no, completely.
Jennifer Tracey: I mean, that's a wonderful model for success.
April: Yeah.
Jennifer Tracey: Where everyone gets to feel successful and heard, and valued and respected.
April: Right. Right. I mean the worst thing is when something happens and you're like, "I had no idea we were doing that."
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: I mean, then you feel demoralized. You feel purposely left out. Why wasn't I made aware of something that actually does touch my part of the business? And that happens all the time, and many times for nothing other than the fact that you're moving so fast and it's an oversight. I've definitely done that where I'm like, "Why didn't I? She should have been in this meeting, and I just messed up." And the first thing I do is say like, "I'm so sorry. You should have been in that meeting." Because human nature is to immediately go back and say "What's happening? Am I getting, am I no longer, do they no longer care about my opinion?"
Jennifer Tracey: Sure.
April: Those little slights add up over time, and that's to me what creates a really negative culture.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: I've lived, I mean when I was at Spring I'd go spend an hour at a brand and you could feel it walking in.
Jennifer Tracey: Wow.
April: I would walk into some of these really big brands, and you almost wanna chew your arm off to get out of there as fast as you can. It's just, it's heavy and it's weighted. If you're gonna put so many hours a week into someplace, and leave your kids or your husband, or miss something else, that environment is a really big part of it.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah. Wow. That's amazing. I have a question for you that, I've been staring at your beautiful red lips, and I cannot seem to find the right ... I don't know if it's the right product, or if I'm not applying, if it's a user error, but every red lipstick I've tried, even liners, they bleed.
April: Yeah.
Jennifer Tracey: And I really love that look of a strong red lip.
April: Yeah.
Jennifer Tracey: So do you have a personal favorite?
April: I have a few personal favorites, and I've asked every brand I talk to I'm like, "Can you make the thing that stops the feathering? Like what is that thing?" But I love NARS Cruella is my kind of go-to color, and they have a great stick, and then they also have a liquid version. I've kind of gotten really now into these liquid versions. MAC has a really good one. FENTI has a really good one with a really cool applicator. But they go on wet, and they immediately dry matte.
Jennifer Tracey: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
April: I literally reapply a couple times a day. Honestly the way I got into it was because I was running around at Spring, and I would do five meetings in a day. You just, you can't walk in looking disheveled, and so you kind of get topped off with a red lip and it has to stay.
Jennifer Tracey: It's sharp. It just brings a certain-
April: Yeah. And it's also just my aging process. I've decided that the lips will stay red, the glasses will get bigger.
Jennifer Tracey: Oh yeah. I love it.
April: I was talking to the girls I spent the day with today who made a comment about the lips, and I said "You know those women who've had the same look forever, and then you look back and it's like were they 20? Were they 30? I don't know. How old are they?"
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: And then you know the women that have changed their hair every month or whatever. And all of a sudden you're like, you just, you start to really see the aging differently. So I'm like, if I'm gonna pick a look, stick with it from like my mid-forties on, no one will know when I'm 60.
Jennifer Tracey: Totally. Totally.
April: They'll think "She just looks the same."
Jennifer Tracey: "Here she is with a red lipstick that doesn't feather."
April: "And those glasses."
Jennifer Tracey: "And she's frozen at 42. That's amazing."
April: "She's frozen in time."
Jennifer Tracey: Exactly.
April: Oh no, Linda Rodan, I don't know if you know her, is really my aging role model. She started a company called Rodan Cosmetics, it was this face oil.
Jennifer Tracey: Oh, yes, of course.
April: And she's this stunning woman who just has crazy style, the leather leggings and the combat boots at 70. And when I would meet with her I'm like, "I'm just gonna follow whatever you do," because she carries that kind of hip and cool urban uniform with her, and then she does the glasses and the lip thing. I'm like, "I'm sold. I'm in. I'm doing that."
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah. It works. I mean, you opened the front gate and I was like, "Ah, oh my God she's so stunning."
April: No, it's like, they're like "Do you wear the lipstick to yoga?" I'm like, "Yes, I do."
Jennifer Tracey: Yes.
April: Because it's just so fun. All of a sudden you put ... and actually when it really started is when I moved upstate and I was afraid about being that woman in my pajamas in my house dropping my kids off, staying in my pajamas. And I'm like, "I'm putting lip on." It's that empowering thing.
Jennifer Tracey: It makes such a difference, just the red lip. But I've gotta find, so I'm gonna try NARS-
April: Yeah. I'll give you my links.
Jennifer Tracey: Okay. Because yeah, and I don't know if it's just my skin and my lips but everything I've tried it just feathers and bleeds and ...
April: Well the liquid matte ones are great cause they really stick for a long time.
Jennifer Tracey: Okay.
April: And they're hard to get off. You literally gotta scrub them off at the end of the day.
Jennifer Tracey: That's fine. That's fine. That's fine. I'll just leave it on there until I reapply in the morning.
April: Exactly.
Jennifer Tracey: Okay so now I'm gonna ask you the three questions I ask of every guest, and then we're gonna go into a fun lightning round of questions.
April: Okay.
Jennifer Tracey: What do you about when you hear the word "MILF"?
April: I mean, it's funny. Somebody, I was mentoring for a brand called Jonathan Simkai and I remember somebody told me that the president said she's a MILF. And I was like, "I don't know what that is." And then I googled it, and I was like "Wait, what?" So I was recently introduced to this in the last five years, so that's obviously what I think about.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah. And you're talking about our current president?
April: No, I'm talking about the president of a company that I was mentoring? Yeah, yeah, no, not that man. No.
Jennifer Tracey: Oh, I thought you meant the president of the United States. I was like, "Well that's probably a daily thing."
April: Yeah, no, no, no. No.
Jennifer Tracey: Got it. The president of the company that you were working-
April: Yes.
Jennifer Tracey: Okay. What's something you've changed your mind about recently?
April: I would say sleep. I'm changing my mind about sleep. I kind of would hear it and I'm like, "Blah blah, I'll sleep when we're dead. Diane gets six hours of sleep a night, she looks amazing, she's got her ginger tea, she hangs upside down." But I recently had an acupuncturist explain to me that our bodies detox between 10 pm and midnight, and that if I'm not going to bed until midnight every night I'm depriving my body of that. And he says it leads to inflammation, degenerative immune. He's like "Basically, dementia's coming your way." And I was like, "Okay, maybe I'll try and sleep some more." Oh my God, put the fear of God into me. My God.
Jennifer Tracey: Yes.
April: But my body, i kinda kick in at 10:00 at night, and he said it's gonna take a really long time. He's like "You gotta go to bed at 10 and wake up at 5," and the idea of that is not appealing in the least. But I'm gonna make an effort to at least shave off a half an hour, or add a half an hour I guess to my bedtime.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah. Just do a little bit.
April: Yeah. That was a big change.
Jennifer Tracey: Good for you. I'm a big, I love my sleep, probably a little too much. I need 9 hours at night.
April: Oh wow.
Jennifer Tracey: I know that's crazy, but I just feel so much better.
April: And you get it, most night?
Jennifer Tracey: I go, you're gonna laugh, I am in bed most nights by 8:30.
April: Oh wow. That's incredible.
Jennifer Tracey: And I wake up at 5.
April: See that's what I should be doing. You're living the dream.
Jennifer Tracey: I mean, it took my awhile to get that regulated, but now I do love it.
April: And your kids must go to bed at 8:30 too?
Jennifer Tracey: Oh yeah, my son goes to bed at 7:30 cause he's gotta get up at the crack of dawn to get the bus to get to Encino. But no, and he loves sleep too. He needs like 11 hours.
April: Wow.
Jennifer Tracey: He's a good sleeper.
April: That's another thing that I'm totally failing at on this end.
Jennifer Tracey: They like to stay up late too, yeah.
April: Yeah. My daughter goes to bed at 10, my son's at 9 which really means a half an hour after both those things by the time they're really down and out.
Jennifer Tracey: Right.
April: But I have to lead by example there too.
Jennifer Tracey: Yes. Yeah. See it might change, if you lead the pack. You're gonna be the CEO, the cheerleader of sleep. How do you define success?
April: I think, to me it's a level of fulfillment. I think it's less about monetary or material and title. It's that sense of accomplishment. I think success to me is, I had a really successful day with my daughter. I had a really successful, I went out and I talked to people and I got this feedback and I feel really great about some decisions, like that was a success. And I think it has to be in baby steps. If you put success as a longterm achievement, success for me is getting a smoothie in my kid in the morning.
Jennifer Tracey: No kidding. That's a huge success. Call me when you get it. Call me when you get there.
Jennifer Tracey: Okay, lightning round.
April: Okay.
Jennifer Tracey: Ocean or desert?
April: Ocean to look at, but I'm not a really ocean person, but I love the calming sense of that. So if I could be up high looking at an ocean, I'm so psyched.
Jennifer Tracey: Oh yeah, you don't have to get in it.
April: Yeah, totally.
Jennifer Tracey: Oh no. Nobody's getting in it. Not the Pacific Ocean anyway. Hell no. Favorite junk food?
April: Tootsie Rolls.
Jennifer Tracey: Oh yum!
April: Yeah.
Jennifer Tracey: Movie, well now, hold on, we need to just ... Because Tootsie Rolls when they're really soft, not like hot, not like melting in a car. But when they're really hard, either they've been really cold or they're stale, I gotta throw 'em out.
April: Yeah, no, no. They have to be soft for sure.
Jennifer Tracey: They've gotta be soft and fresh.
April: And when you get the really long one, then you pull of the little segmented pieces.
Jennifer Tracey: So good.
April: If you're on a road trip it's like the best thing to get those huge Tootsie Rolls.
Jennifer Tracey: Yes. It's heaven. Yes. It's like a little project.
April: Totally.
Jennifer Tracey: Movies or Broadway show?
April: Movies.
Jennifer Tracey: Daytime sex or nighttime sex?
April: Nighttime.
Jennifer Tracey: Texting or talking?
April: Texting, it's so sad, I'm on an emoji communication with my parents now. We're like, crazy face, thumbs up, heart, y'know. It's the shortcut, and I think it's very unfortunate. But don't you kind of freak out when your phone rings? You're like, "Who's actually calling me?"
Jennifer Tracey: Oh yeah, especially if it's an unknown number, I just won't answer it. And it's funny, someone called me, oh when I hit my face. So I came here and have a huge shiner, and I've written about this and it'll post the week that your episode comes up, but I have a huge shiner on my face because I hit my face into the pole. And at the class, all the women in the class were so sweet and concerned. And we've all been dancing together for years. But one of the women, I didn't know she had my number, she called me twice and my son was standing there in the kitchen. It was like unknown number and I said, "Uh, I'm not gonna answer it." She called back again a second time. He said, "Well mom, it must be important if she called back. Why don't you answer it?" And I just thought, "Oh my God, wisdom from the youth."
April: Oh yeah, no totally. I have missed nurses, school nurses, cause I'm like, "Ugh must be spam," and I just ignore it.
Jennifer Tracey: Totally.
April: I've missed some crazy stuff where I'm just like, "Okay, just answer your phone."
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: It's really a challenge. And the best is when you're in a meeting and you have your texts coming up on your laptop, and then the voicemail does the text of the voicemail so if someone does leave a voicemail then I get a text on my laptop that says "I'm calling from Wonderland School," and I'm like "Ah! I gotta go take that call."
Jennifer Tracey: Yes. Yes.
April: But yeah, it is really unfortunate. My daughter will not pick up the phone and call anybody. It's really crazy.
Jennifer Tracey: I know. My son, he doesn't have a phone yet, but he will FaceTime his friends.
April: Yes.
Jennifer Tracey: So that's cool.
April: Yeah.
Jennifer Tracey: He doesn't really text yet cause he's 9 1/2. Well he does text, he'll text me from his email.
April: Yeah.
Jennifer Tracey: But anyway, it's interesting. I don't know how we're all gonna survive this.
April: I know.
Jennifer Tracey: Cat person or dog person?
April: I'm not a pet person at all. Dog, for sure, over cat. We had a dog upstate which we left back in the country cause he had a really awesome life and acres and best friends.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah. Oh yeah.
April: But I remember driving my daughter to school one day, she must have been in second grade, and from the backseat she's like "Mom, everybody in the family wants a dog. Dad wants a dog. Sebastian wants a dog. I want a dog. And you're the only one who doesn't want a dog. So basically, you're stealing our joy."
Jennifer Tracey: From the mouths of babes.
April: So I said, "Well, I don't wanna be the joy stealer, but I'm gonna do 5%. So I'll say yes to that dog, but if it's about to die and no one else is around I'm gonna jump in. But other than that, I'm out."
Jennifer Tracey: You guys feed it, you scoop the poop.
April: Yes. And to the point when they'd, Tucker would come jump in my life and I'd pet him and they're like, "Oh mom's petting the dog! She really likes him." It just became a real running joke. And my family's vying to get a dog now, so we're-
Jennifer Tracey: Oh boy.
April: Yeah, I'm still 5%.
Jennifer Tracey: Got it. Smart woman. Have you ever worn a unitard?
April: Yes. I think I had a 90s aerobic moment maybe. I mean, jumpsuits 1000%, unitard I think yeah. I think I actually, I did, I was in a Nike commercial as an extra extra in the aerobics studio, and I think there was some of that happening.
Jennifer Tracey: Oh wow. Oh nice. Were there leg warmers?
April: Yes.
Jennifer Tracey: Oh yeah, that's good. I wish we had a picture of that. Shower or bathtub?
April: This is hard, love them both for different reasons. Naving in the beauty business, the rituals, I have products from a great scrub in the shower to an amazing bubble bath.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: So I would have to say I'm pretty 50/50.
Jennifer Tracey: I'm with you. I'm with you. Ice cream or chocolate?
April: Ice cream.
Jennifer Tracey: On a scale of 1-10, how good are you at ping pong?
April: I think I could surprise people. I think that if I jumped in my kids would be like, "Oh. You don't even know what you're doing." I could definitely, I could impress them.
Jennifer Tracey: Oh, nice.
April: It's been awhile though.
Jennifer Tracey: Untold talents. If you could push a button ... wait, hold on, I wanna make sure I ask you the right one. This one is just for you. If you could push a button and it would create 10 years of world peace, but it would also place 100 year ban on all beauty products, would you push it?
April: Oh my God, you have to push the button for peace. But that would be rough. My lipstick not for 10 years? I don't know, I might not push that button.
Jennifer Tracey: But you still have the glasses.
April: That's true.
Jennifer Tracey: Super power of choice; invisibility, ability to fly, or super strength?
April: I think that in LA, ability to fly for sure.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: I mean, don't you ever just wish you could jump in hover-
Jennifer Tracey: I mean the two weeks, I know you guys went out of town, but the two weeks where ... I'm always in town lately cause my parents moved close, thankfully, I'm very grateful. I'm in town over the holidays, and it's heaven because nobody's here. You can take Laurel Canyon and get over at 9 in the morning in 15 minutes.
April: Yeah, no.
Jennifer Tracey: It just really points up what, it's just insanity.
April: Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. So fly for sure.
Jennifer Tracey: So fly. Would you rather have a penis where your tailbone is or a third eye, a literal third eye?
April: I think I'd go for the third eye.
Jennifer Tracey: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
April: For sure. I think a, just thinking through the beauty side of that, thinking through the wisdom side of that, and the meditation when you do TM you basically close your eyes and you seek to give out your third eye. So I think I would go for that for sure.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah. Okay. I love that. Do you do TM?
April: You know, I did it. It really saved me in my twenties from a situation that was not going so great. It was just a lot of heartache at once, and I ended up getting recommended TM. Started doing it, and it really was a life changer. But I think like anything, once you feel fixed you stop doing something.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: I went to a TM refresher course my last year in New York with this idea of "I'm gonna move to LA. I'm just gonna take it all down. I'm gonna do meditation. I'm gonna hike everyday." Literally three minutes outside my front door is the top of the Fryman Canyon Hike which is amazing. You can do two hours in there.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: And I had this fantasy of how my LA life was gonna be, and it was gonna be me waking up and doing TM before my hike.
Jennifer Tracey: I love it.
April: Yeah, I really, I know it's there. And actually when you do TM you basically go through this process, you learn it and then you're given your mantra. And your mantra is a word that doesn't sound like any other word, so it doesn't sound like apple. You don't wanna have any kind of visual connotation when you say your mantra. And you're never ever ever allowed to say it out loud. So I've never ever said my mantra out loud. Many people have asked, you're not supposed to, you can't.
Jennifer Tracey: Right.
April: I have a really hard time keeping secrets so the fact that I've never said my mantra out loud is amazing. But when you're in a situation, whether it's stressful or you're sitting on a plane, it's funny, all the sudden your mantra just comes into your brain.
Jennifer Tracey: Wow.
April: I'll just start to say it, and breathe. So I don't do the practice practice, and I really should, and I'm sure that would actually help a lot with my sleep situation. I could still do the six hours, and do 20 minutes of TM, and I would probably benefit from that REM state.
Jennifer Tracey: Yeah.
April: But it does, it's always there.
Jennifer Tracey: It comes through. Yeah.
April: Yeah. It's really interesting.
Jennifer Tracey: It's in you cause you practiced it for so long.
April: Yep.
Jennifer Tracey: That's really cool.
April: Yep.
Jennifer Tracey: Okay. What was the name of your first pet?
April: Pepe.
Jennifer Tracey: What was the name of the street you grew up on?
April: You ready? Warren drive.
Jennifer Tracey: Pepe Warren.
April: Pepe Warren's a good one, right?
Jennifer Tracey: Oh that is a good one. I love it.
April: Not sure what nationality you are, but-
Jennifer Tracey: Pepe Warren. Is it a politician, or is it a ...? I don't know.
April: Right.
Jennifer Tracey: April, such a pleasure having you on the show.
April: That was super fun.
Jennifer Tracey: Thank you so much.
April: No, thanks for having me. It was a treat.
Jennifer Tracey: Thanks so much for listening, guys. I really hope you enjoyed my conversation with April.
Jennifer Tracey: Next week on the show we have Alissa Goodman who is the soup cleanse lady, the juice lady, the cancer hack lady. She's so badass, she's such a MILF, and I loved going to her home and sitting down and having a conversation with her about her life and her journey. And I'm really excited to share that conversation with you next week, and also to unveil some exciting things coming out in February in MILF land.
Jennifer Tracey: I really also wanna take a moment to thank my team, my amazing team that helps me put this together. I always wanna be very transparent that I do not do this alone. I actually don't do anything alone. I have tremendous support, and it has taken a lot for me to learn how to ask for help in various areas of my life, but not here. So I have an amazing producer, Sarah Candella is a rockstar. Thank you, Sarah. I love you. Derek is our beautiful editor who makes me sound way better on this show than I sound in person. And thank you, Derek, for all that you do, you're amazing. Liz is our right hand gal, and she does a lot of stuff behind the scenes. And also Kevin, our show notes writer who is brilliant. I really love you guys. I'm so grateful for our team. I'm so grateful to have this platform to help women, and to really help all of us feel just a little bit less alone and a little bit less crazy because Lord knows we need more of that.
Jennifer Tracey: And I wanna thank my listeners. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for being a part of this. And, as always, I encourage you to reach out. Reach out to me, reach out to us, tell me what you want more of on the show. Tell me something that you like. If you have a guest suggestion, I'm so open to that. My email is actually on my Instagram account. So if you go to MILF Podcast on Instagram you'll see my email there. You can just click on it and shoot me an email. You can also find me through the website milfpodcast.com. If you haven't yet, go ahead and grab your free copy of Seven Habits Of Baller MILFs, this little thing I wrote about all the MILFs that I've interviewed and what they have in common. But mostly, just thank you. Thank you so much for being a part of this. I really appreciate each and every one of you, and I feel so lucky that I get to do this, and meet and experience these incredible women week by week. It's such an honor and a privilege.
Jennifer Tracey: I hope you guys have a wonderful week until I speak to you next. Bye.