#326 Anna Wintour

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/411647bbdf66e450

Okay, so I just have three things that I wanna talk to you about before we jump into this episode. First was
That I was invited to go speak at Notre Dame.
There's a class in Notre Dame called Art of Investing. It's run by these two guys named Rick and Paul. I become friends with Rick and Paul.
Through the podcast.
They're huge fans of founders, actually both.
uh Harvard MBAs and they say
outrageous things like they've learned more from founders.
Than they did when they got there.
uh MBA at Harvard. Just don't tell Harvard that.
Um, but anyways they they invited me to s come speak to their students.
And we actually recorded it and you can listen to the entire thing.
The conversation we had lasts about ninety minutes. So whatever you're listening to this, however you're listening to this right now, if you just search in your podcast player.
Art of Investing. It's a new podcast.
I'm episode I think number four. So search for Art of Investing.
And then David Sunro, you'll see it. I think it's episode number four, if you want to listen to the entire talk.
that I gave at Notre Dame.
I've heard from a lot of people that heard it so far. They said it's very, very inspiring. So that that's very encouraging. The second thing is
Wanna tell you about the first person I ever met.
uh that listen to founder. So my friend Mitchell Baldridge.
was listening to founders
Like years ago.
Five, six years ago, nobody was listening. You know, maybe a couple hundred people, maybe like a thousand, two thousand people were listening at the time.
When Mitchell sends me a message.
Saying he loved the podcast, he'd love to meet. Just so happens he was asking where I lived, and I was like, Oh, I live in Miami.
And he's like, Oh, I'm actually here for a conference. Do you want to meet for coffee the next morning? And so
That is the very first person I ever met in person.
through the podcast. And the the very first thing I meet Mitchell. He doesn't say, Hey, nice to meet you. Hey, I love your podcast.
He looks at me goes.
Why
Isn't your podcast more well known?
He's like the quality of the podcast and the fact that no one knows about it, like this doesn't make any sense to me. Like what's happening here.
And so we wanted becoming friends.
Mitchell is very well known.
Uh he got very well known as like an authority on he's a he's an accountant.
Uh he actually has
And still has.
uh a boutique
custom CPA practice that specializes with
ultra high net worth individual. So
Tens of millions of dollars to hundreds of millions of dollars in net worth individuals
That he does tax and accounting.
Four.
But you might have heard of him because he shared all of the knowledge that he has, especially around entrepreneurs and tax savings.
Uh for free.
on Twitter, he became a domain expert.
And so as a result, there's a bunch of founders that actually listen to this podcast that I'm friends with.
That actually
are clients of Mitchell's because of the teaching that he was doing on Twitter.
So why the reason I'm telling you all this is now
Is because he over the last
year he's been developing a product called Better Bookkeeping. And you can actually check it out by going to betterbookkeeping.com.
forward slash founders. And so what he wanted to do is apply all this information and knowledge that he has from servicing
These ultra high net worth.
uh entrepreneurs
and utilize and actually build a product that is more applicable to the millions and millions of small businesses out there. And I hate even calling them small businesses because that sounds like a pejorative the millions and millions of businesses that don't need their own
Essentially like their own custom tax planning. So these are the millions of businesses that need help with bookkeeping and saving as much money as possible legally.
on their tax bill. And that's exactly what Mitchell and his team have built.
at better bookkeeping dot com.
Forward slash.
Founders.
And one of the many things I love about Mitchell is the fact that he's obsessed.
He's obsessed with figuring out ways
to save entrepreneurs money on taxes. That is a main theme of the history of entrepreneurship. There's if I had to say the two most important lessons that you and I talk about over and over again, one is the importance of focus. It's the fact that these people that you and I study
are incredibly focused. They have superhum levels of focus compared to I feel the majority of people that are alive today.
And two
They are all obsessed.
with watching their expenses.
That's it they they build
unbelievable competitive advantages because they have a lower cost structure than almost anybody else.
in their industry, any of the other competitors that they have.
That is Mitchell's expertise. That is Mitchell's obsession. In fact, there's a funny line. I hope you go check out
uh better bookkeeping dot com for slash founders because it says
Uh it's like having a full time CFO and a super cheap grandpa sitting on your shoulder.
And so that was the second thing I wanted to talk to you about. I am gonna try to find deeper ways to integrate with Mitchell because I do
Trust him. I spent a lot of time with him and I know he's really good at what he does. The third and final thing before we jump into this incredible episode.
uh on Anna Winter which you'll see how much information I went over just to get you
What I feel is like a a really good understanding of how she built her business, but more importantly, wait till you get like thirty, forty minutes into this episode.
Like the way she thought about
Not only like sh not just building her personal brand.
Not just building Vogue, but building up her entire industry.
It's fascinating how she did this.
'Cause she's been the um editor in chief of Vogue.
since I think nineteen eighty eight. She's in her seventies and she's still going out and she's been accruing more and more
Power and influence.
Year by yes, I think it's fascinating.
And so the third and final thing I want to tell you about before we jump into the episode is Vesto. Vesto makes it easy for you to invest your business's idle cash. I've actually had a bunch of people reach out.
They couldn't understand what I was saying.
So I wanna spell it. It is Vesto V.
as in Victor, E as an egg, S as in Senra.
T is in Tom, O is an octopus, Vesto.com. Vesto helps all businesses of all sizes invest their cash in US treasuries. You want to do that because when your business owns treasuries,
then that cash is actually backed by the US government.
And it earns interest while it sits there.
And so this is another product that a bunch of founders listeners are using.
Um the most common use cases.
uh people raise a bunch of venture capital. They want to extend their runway. So they use Vesto as a way to extend their runway.
And then a bunch of bootstrap founders.
that actually have companies that have a bunch of excess cash, they use Vesto as a way to get a better rate of return than if that was that cash was just sitting
in a bank account. So if that sounds interesting to you.
highly recommend you go to Vesto dot com.
and check out what they have to offer.
I know the founder Ben
I've spent a bunch of time with him. I was hanging out with him after the live show we did in New York, had dinner with him.
uh actually saw him at a wedding the week before
If you schedule a demo.
So if you go to Vester.com and you schedule a demo, you actually speak directly to the founder, Ben. I think he's really, really impressive. And I think if you speak to him,
you'll be impressed too. Make sure
That you tell Ben
that David from Founders sent you.
And without any further delay, let's get into the incredible life and career of Anna Winter.
Anna started the day as usual.
She rose by five AM.
Exercised at five thirty.
Sat for thirty minutes
A professional hair and makeup.
And then was shofered to her office.
Where her three assistants were waiting for her.
Her requests for her assistance were constant, day and night.
Weekday and weekend.
And always delivered in emails
With no subject line.
Her schedule was meticulously planned.
When Anna called a meeting, if you didn't arrive early
You were late.
She has been the editor in chief of Vogue since nineteen eighty eight.
And is one of the most powerful figures in media.
If she wants a fashion designer to have more influence
She recommends them to lead a bigger label.
And she has this power because the owners of these labels seek and follow her advice. She advises them not only on their clothes.
But also how to run their businesses.
In turn, they are rewarded with coverage in the magazine and more importantly.
Anna's personal support and advice.
And she doesn't wait for the next generation of fashion designers to emerge.
She financially supports them through the Council of Fashion Designers of America.
Vogue Fashion Fund.
That support can be the difference between unimaginable success
And bankruptcy.
Editors of Vogue were powerful before Anna had that job.
But she's expanded that power remarkably.
Making herself a brand that powerful people want to be associated with.
How she speaks.
Hires, fires, eats, and shops are both topics of obsession.
And scrutiny.
When Anna asks for something, she usually wants it done immediately.
Despite the fact that her work emails to her staff
Go out at all hours.
It can be addicting working for her.
Other people that work with her praise her directness.
You always know where you stand with her, and that's better than working for someone who might want to know about your kid's birthday party, but can't make up their mind about a headline.
She has to be involved in everything.
Anna controls all that she can, right down to the ingredients in the food at the Met Gala.
And maybe most importantly of all, she knows the ecosystem in which she operates.
Better than anyone.
That was an excerpt from the book I'm gonna talk to you about today, which is Anna, The Biography, and it's written by Amy Odell. Before I jump back into the book.
I want to grab I have the my hands printed out.
I printed out this interview that
Anna did.
uh with the Financial Times. It was one of their lunch with the F T
series.
And I think it gives us a good overview of Anna the person and her
uh life and career.
before we jump back into the biography. And right here
from the title. So I read this
after I read the biography.
And the the title of the article
Uh it says Anna Winter.
I just have to make sure things are being done right.
If Anna had a personal tagline.
You had to describe her.
That is
Exactly how I would describe her. I have to make sure things are being done right.
And so this lunch happens at the Rits in London.
And just gives an overview.
Uh, it says uh winter has presided over the so called fashion bible of vogue for thirty five years. Her celebrity and influence.
Only increasing as the power of magazines and the Vogue brand have waned.
She's now global chief content officer of Conde Nast.
A role that has given her oversight of all
of Condagines. So there's thirty two different magazines that she's in control of.
Uh, the only one that she's not in control of is the New Yorker.
And then there's a line that becomes very apparent if you were to read the biography of Anna as well. There's a methos surrounding Anna that inspires deference akin to that given to royalty.
And so one thing that's mentioned in this interview is the fact that
She's been running Vogue for thirty five years.
You might think, Hey, you know, you do you want to retire, you wanna step down?
No.
There's no way this person is going to relinquish. And she says I love what I do and I'm con constantly challenged by it.
And as you'll see, she practices complete control regardless of what role she is.
She happens to be in. And so when she got this promotion in 2020 to be the chief content officer, the global chief content officer of all of the Condé Nas magazines.
She winds up firing and and replacing a bunch of high profile editors.
And she talks about why she did this and she says the idea
uh says Anna, is to make sure everyone felt that it was a different day.
So she did that in two thousand twenty, but she also did that many times.
As she was
Going from magazine to magazine before she got to become the editor in chief.
of Vogue, the person interviewing Anna for the Financial Times at one point interned for her.
at American Vogue in early two thousand eight and they talked about the difference before
Two thousand eight was essentially like the peak.
Of
the magazine industry. They had so much more resources and so much more money back then than they do now.
So says Condé Nas was then at the peak of its financial and reputational powers.
Editors were chauffeured into work.
In black town cars, even as an intern.
I had regular access to one.
A hush would descend through the headquarters when Winter stepped into the office.
On my first day.
This is so ridiculous.
On my first day, I was warned by a fellow intern never to make eye contact. So I have one of my favorite stories. I have a bunch of
you know, I I love Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan stories. I find them fascinating.
And especially when those two interacted.
And
This advice is first of all terrible.
the worst thing you could do with a really powerful person is be overly differential. So
Uh Kobe Bryant's the he's about to play Michael Jordan for the first time ever in the NBA.
And his teammate
goes and is like Hey do you want some advice?
He goes, Whatever you do, don't look him in the eye.
And Kobe was like, What?
Why would I not look him in the eye?
And he says that oh my teammate didn't understand that I'm that too.
You can't look me in the eye either, buddy.
At that point in his career, Jordan was used to people being afraid of him, and so people that actually stood up to him and fought back.
and show that they could not be intimidated, where actually gained Michael's respect. There's another great
I think Kobe's twenty one at the time.
Uh, Phil Jackson invites uh Michael Jordan down.
to like hang out and talk to Kobe at the Lakers practice.
and Ahmad Rashad is with Michael Jordan and he's interviewing Kobe Bryant later on after this happened.
And they talked about the fact that
You know, Michael was trash talking and was like, Oh, you can't guard me and then Kobe immediately says, Well, you can't guard me and they start going back and forth and then Kobe's like, Well, you know, you got shoes, like we can play if you like we can just solve this right now.
But even at twenty one
Kobe refused to back down and he idolized. He grew up watching videotapes of him, as you know, if you've listened to the multiple episodes I've done on Kobe.
But what happened and this was the fascinating part, and this is why I think this uh this idea where like you listen to this other intern, it's like, Oh, don't look at these people in these eye in the eyes, terrible advice.
So Michael leaves, Kobe's still a practice, right?
Michael leaves, he walks out with a mob Rashad and he goes, I love that dude.
That dude's a warrior.
And the fact that Kobe was not intimidated, the fact that Kobe was willing to push back and say, No, I like I have talent too, I have skill, I'm not afraid of you, that wound up being the foundation of this
big brother relationship that he had with Michael all the way up until he died.
And so when I got to this part in the article, I just wrote Kobe, don't defer.
shows strength. I don't I don't think you should be meek.
And act like you don't belong there. So anyways, back to this.
Uh winter came
of age in the late nineteen sixties in London. She says, I grew up at a time when women still left the dinner table so men could smoke their cigars.
And talk about the real issues of the day, she says.
She had a privileged childhood. Her mother was a film critic, and her father was the editor.
of the evening standard, her relationship with her father, something we're gonna talk a lot about today. It's it was maybe the most important relationship that she had.
Um he had a very exacting manner.
And he earned uh the nickname called Chili Charlie. So they call the people that worked with him, not his kids and his family. They thought he was actually warm and loving.
But at work they called him chili Charlie.
Obviously Anna's known for being like quote unquote the ice queen and very abrupt or whatever the case is.
Uh, I would hear lots of stories about what the strong presence he was in the office, she said, but we never saw that at home. He was very loving and kind and just wanted to m
Just wanted us to make our own way in life.
Yet it was her father who suggested that
that winter write editor of Vogue on a career form at school.
She says I don't think I would have thought about it without him being so specific and I think that happened
The the timing's a little hard for me to understand based on everything I've read about her, and I watched two documentaries
a bunch of interviews with her and then read this interview in the book as well. I think that happened somewhere around the ages sixteen to twenty.
Uh, and we'll talk about that later. The fact that her dad literally they
Gavers like you know, shoot for the very top.
Vogue was the very best. You're interested in fashion, you're interested in publishing, well
The very best, the pinnacle.
of that industry was vogue, so th of course you're gonna go for the top.
Uh, that seed might have been planted early, but Winter's journey to the top of the masthead was not a straight climb. She left school at sixteen. I wasn't very good at school, to be honest, she says, and I wanted to be independent and make my own way.
She took up jobs on the sales floor of Biba and then Harrods.
Uh, her father helped her land her first editorial job at the fashion title Harper and Queen. This is in London before she moves to New York.
Then in the mid twenties she moved to New York where she reveled in anonymity.
that she couldn't have had as the daughter of a famous newspaper editor in London.
And this is what she said about the time in New York. Nobody gives a damn where you come from or you where you went to school.
She starts working at the Harper Bazaar magazine and then she moved to New York magazine. This is really important because she was doing such good work that she caught the attention.
of this guy named Alexander Lieberman.
That's important because Alexander Limarin I was Condé Nas editorial director and he's actually the one that's gonna recruit her to Vogue.
In fact, Lieberman thought she was so talented, he made up a job for her that did not exist.
just to get her in the Condé Nass organization.
uh that role was creative director of Vogue, a job that did not previously exist, and much to the annoyance and alarm of then Vogue editor Grace Mirabella. This is going to be
Grace Mary Bella is the one who had the job before Anna uh displaces her.
And this is kind of crazy. Like think about being Grace, right? You're the editor in chief of Vogue magazine. They have this new person, they bring her into Vogue, they give her this title that doesn't exist, creator director, and they say, Hey, she doesn't report to you, but she reports to Lieberman, which is Grace's boss. That is not a good situation to be in.
Uh from Lieberman, uh Anna said she learned to keep meetings very short. He was very, very decisive.
And this is hilarious.
He had a desk with nothing on it except a buzzer underneath.
So that when he was done with you, which was in about five minutes, his assistant could come in and whisk you away. So imagine this guy's talking to you and you're like, Where's your hand, Lee Romini? He's pressing this button so his assistant can come in and get you out of here. Now there's this is
something I th I found fascinating. So I'll just tell you up front, I found uh
Anna to be
Hyper
competent and ruthlessly efficient.
So her meetings.
So Lieberman's meetings, right? He likes to keep them very, very short.
You know, five minutes at most.
Her meetings.
Are two minutes long.
The first sixty seconds are guaranteed the second minute is a courtesy.
And this is something that she does not hide. So you can go on YouTube and watch these
Vogue does a series with a lot of famous people called like seventy three questions.
And Anna's done it twice, and on the second one called Seventy Three More Questions with Anna.
What I found was fascinating is she was asked the question, What is the number one thing that you hope people learn from you?
And she said to be decisive and clear.
So before she takes over American Vogue, she actually is sent in nineteen eighty five.
by Lieberman and Condé Nas owner, Cy Newhouse. So Cy Newhouse was a major character in last week's
Episode. I love how all this connects.
He was a major character in the story of Larry Gagosian and a major client for Larry Gagosian.
He owned.
uh conde nast at this time.
They send her to London, right? So she's going to be the editor
of British folk. This is what does she do? She does exactly what they w they talked about in the opening
uh when she was promoted in two thousand twenty. She fired most of the staff.
And then
as a result of the way she fired them, this is where she starts getting this this reputation. I guess this nickname that continues with her to this day. They call her the Ice Queen.
So she's doing this job in London, but she does not want to be there because
She'd she was married at the time. Uh Anna's return to London was challenging in other ways. My husband was chief of child psychiatry.
at Columbia University and he and he did not want to give up his position.
So we commuted quite a bit.
I had my son Charlie and then I was pregnant with my daughter.
So I felt like was endlessly pregnant.
And eventually it seemed to me that staying in London long term wasn't going to be viable.
She comes back to New York to edit house and garden for a few months before New House offered her the job that her father had chosen.
All those years ago.
Mirabella. This is so ruthless.
Mirabella learnt on TV.
That she had been fired.
Lieberman and Newhouse leaked it to the press instead of telling her and she had worked
Grace Mirabella, if I'm not mistaken, had worked at Vogue for thirty seven years. That is a ruthless
Uh, Winter's position hasn't always been secure. In the wake of the nineteen ninety recession, Vogue's ad pages fell. Newhouse advised Winter.
Which who was sometimes resonant about
recitant about featuring advertisers' products in her pages to follow the money and she did.
Now fast forward to present day, it is probable that Condé Nas cannot afford to lose her.
Advertisers run ads in vogue not only because they think it will sell clothes but also to secure winter's favor and advice.
And this is kinda crazy. Vogue actually sells something called
The Vogue one hundred.
It is a private club whose members pay a hundred thousand dollars a year just for access.
To Anna.
Uh delegation is not among Anna's managerial talents. She is notorious for controlling every last detail.
God is in the details, she replies.
I am not a creative person. I cannot draw. I cannot sketch. I cannot make anything.
I just have to make sure things are done right.
Okay, so now I want to go back to the biography. I want to go right into her childhood and the influence that her father had.
Though she spoke often in interviews about her father as an inspiration, she almost never over the course of her entire career
Discussed her mother.
Despite how close they were.
Anna's professional ambition and ruthlessness seem to stem specifically from her father.
So one trait that she picked up from her father was the fact that her father was a voracious reader.
Anna was a voracious reader from a very young age. She still is to this day.
Also
Her father, whose name is Charles.
kept a very strict professional schedule. That comes up over and over again in anything that you read or watch.
uh about Anna, the fact that she's up at five AM, she's working out, she's working
He works twenty four hours a day.
Now she's talking about her childhood, uh looking back.
There wasn't any sense that he was an absent father. He taught us all he taught all of us, meaning all her siblings, what work ethic is and how important it is to love what you do in life.
She was able to witness his passion for his work firsthand.
When she visited his office, she thought.
The
office of a newspaper of a magazine, it was completely exciting that she knew she wanted to work in publishing.
And the way she reflects on this later on in life is she that she says that the gospel in our house
was the newspaper.
And so I'm gonna read a bunch of other descriptions about her father and it like father, like daughter. There's a lot of this sounds like Anna.
Charles was by no means easy to be around. In daily interactions he was quiet, cold, and exacting.
Charles had to make decisions constantly and therefore made decisions rapidly.
He was so frightening that people would bend over like a field of wheat under a wind as he went past. That is exactly the description of
Of when
uh being an intern in Vogue's office. How they would like
There's there's a ton of these stories where if you see
Anna in an uh elevator, people will literally run out of the elevator so they don't have to ride up with her.
That is not unique to her. There's a bunch of examples in this book that I've heard said
You could replace the word Anna Winter with Steve Jobs, and it's the exact same thing. People were afraid of uh being stuck in close proximity with Steve, too. He'd start asking you questions about what you're doing.
I think in some cases, I don't know if this was a like a myth.
But you know, supp supposedly he's like fired people for bad uh bad answers to his questions.
In an elevator ride.
But back to her father, staff were thrilled when he offered a single word of praise.
Excellent.
on the bottom of their copy.
He commanded respect and they were eager to please him. Same thing for Anna. He was fascinating.
And we were all enthralled by him. So again, that the all these words could be applied. This is exactly how people uh
That work with her.
uh describe her as well.
And the author makes that point here. His staff would later notice the same bulletproof discipline.
in his eldest daughter, Anna's mom, they called Noni.
And this is the traits that she got from her mom. Noni was bright, witty, and critical, with a sharp eye for the weaknesses of others.
But she was also great fun to be with as long as you weren't her target.
And his friends and colleagues would say the same thing about her.
Before I move on, I want to go back to this idea that he offers
Her father would just write like one word responses. Anna does the same thing on copy. This is something that
Uh the first time I discovered I I discovered this was actually when I was reading all these books on David Ogy.
David Ogie says something that I love. He says, Uh I believe in the dogmatism of brevity.
And he understood he actually worked way before he was an advertising agency founder.
He worked for this
Secret agent.
Right, during World War Two, this guy named Stevenson. Stevenson winds up being one of Ian Fleming's inspirations for the character James Bond.
And
what David Ogie was talking about in all the books that he wrote is that one thing he learned on how to run an organization that he learned from Stevenson
Is
That
uh to become a master of the terse memo. That's the exact word he used. Master of the terse memo.
When you'd send something to his boss, right? When you send something to Stevenson
You would get a reply back in one of three ways.
Yes.
No or speak. And if he wrote speak on whatever you handed to him, that means you gotta get up and go to his office and talk to him.
And the reason I bring that up is'cause when David Ogy says, Hey, I believe in the dogmatism of brevity, I think
And I would agree with that as well.
And there's many times when she was described just like this. Her manner of speaking was like her father's.
Clipped.
So she's gonna combine her fascination with publishing with her fascination with fashion.
Uh, so it says she stood and walked she's sixteen years old, uh what I'm describing to you.
She stood and walked like a model in a fashion spread.
She would exhibit a certain fashionable confidence.
For Anna, it wasn't just enough to look good. She wanted to be admired as the best dressed person in the room.
And her voracious reading is mentioned yet again.
Uh she kept up with everything by reading voraciously books, newspapers, magazines, literary journals, seventeen the magazine seventeen.
Was my dream, she confessed.
I couldn't wait for it to come every month.
You're gonna notice a lot of the things that I'm gonna pull out.
are very repetitive in the sense that they appear when she's a young woman
Sixteen.
And they still she's still this way in her seventies. She's very disciplined, she's very hard on herself.
And she wants to be special. She wants to be apart from the crowd.
So then it goes into Anna's lifelong adherents.
To very strict fitness.
And diet regimen.
Uh, this starts when she's a very young girl. This is in nineteen sixty four. She winds up reading
a book on dieting which has a one sentence regimen that she would follow.
Eat fewer than sixty grams of carbohydrates a day.
And so this avoidance of carbs, there's actually a there's actually a movie.
Uh that came out. I just watched it again'cause my wife and daughter love the movie. It's called The Devil Wears Prada.
And at first I was like, Oh no, I'm not gonna you know, I was doing a bunch of research on Anna, but I don't have to watch that movie. But then I get to the end of this book.
And her daughter, Anna's daughter, watches the preview with her. And I think the movie came out like two thousand nine or
Maybe even early two thousand six.
And Anna's daughter's like wow, they c they captured you perfectly, Mom.
And in the
And in the movie it's mentioned multiple times that like you're not supposed to eat carbs.
So anyways.
Uh she's very, very disciplined, not only in her personal like
fitness and diet, but also in her work. And I think that they feed on each other. So
It says Anna's judgments of others were ruthless, but she was hardest on herself.
She did not want to be part of a group that already existed. She wanted to be in her own rarefied air.
And what's amazing is how much discipline she had when she was a teenager. So she's in a teen she's a teenager. She's going out a night with one of her girlfriends.
They're going to these very like hip clubs.
And you're probably thinking, Oh, she's gonna go and party She's like nope.
Everything she does.
This is why I g like she's very easy to interface with.
I found like studying her very fascinating'cause she's very sh everything is in service of her mission. So her and her friend with the last name of Lasky.
were not trying to get drunk. They would actually not drink any alcohol. They'd drink a Shirley Temple or Coke
And they would leave an hour after coming to the club. So why are they going there?
For Anna going out was never about going wild. Visiting the clubs
Was more about reconnaissance than excess.
Amid a crow of the fashionable
She was studying.
She stops going to formal schooling when she's sixteen because she says I was desperate to get out into the world and get on with things. I wanted to work.
And she certainly knew she's like her
vague d direction was hey, I'm going to work in publishing.
And I would love to be able to
to combine publishing and fashion. And this is where she's filling out like this career form. And this is where she's having the conversation with her dad that changes
Her life forever.
At the bottom of it, she she's telling the story now, okay? These are her words. At the bottom of it, it said career objectives. And I said
What shall I do? How do I fill this out?
And he said, Well, you write that you want to be the editor of Vogue, of course.
And that was it.
It was decided.
And so the entire time I'm reading this book, Anna has such founder mentality that I forget
that she's technically an employee, right? She didn't start conning ass.
Connie Ness I didn't even know it was still a private company.
founded like over a hundred years ago.
And but you'll see from the very get go, she thinks like an entrepreneur.
So her dad hooks her up with this woman named Barbara Griggs who works for her dad. She's the fashion edit editor.
Uh
the evening standard, which is what Charles is running, right? He says, Hey, I need a favor.
Can you I'd be very grateful, will you take my daughter Anna out to lunch?
I think she's very set on fashion career.
And you know, can you give her a little guidance?
And this is what I mean about the fact that she's just very consistent from the time she's a very young person to all the way up until the present day.
Griggs took Anna to lunch and was immediately impressed. This girl was just a child, but she had an adult poise.
А сенс оперпис.
All she wanted from me was some information. This is like the most founder mentality thing ever, right?
All she wanted from me was some information. What she didn't want at all was any guidance or tips on how to manage her career.
that she was perfectly willing and able to figure out on her own.
So she's gonna start working at this magazine called Harpers and Queen. She is still
in London. She's gonna wind up working
at this magazine for five years and this is what she talks about at this time, the fact that she was learning on the job.
I learned how to go into the market and choose clothes. I learned how to choose talent.
I learned how to collaborate. I learned how to do a layout.
I learned how to write a caption.
I was thrown into my career, frankly, with ignorance.
I knew nothing.
You had to learn everything, and you had to do everything.
Remember what I said at the beginning, if she had a tagline, it would be I have to make sure. I have
I have to make sure.
the things
Are done right. She was like this when she was young. Anna was a perfectionist, not the type to forget a dress or lose some jewelry. So in fashion.
It attracted a lot of kinda like lazy
It just attracts like a lot of lazy, dumb people. And you have this
Unbelievable iron discipline whip smart.
crazy fierce work ethic.
And of course she's gonna go she's gonna dominate these people.
And it talks about the fact that
Sh people would would follow her and they don't even understand why they would follow her. She just said, Hey, you know, I started this magazine, I didn't really know anything. I was kind of thrusted.
into this career.
in like a sea of ignorance. And this is why I always say belief comes before ability.
Because even though she didn't know what she was doing, she just believed that she could figure it out, she did not second guess herself.
So people were not left wondering what to do. She immediately everywhere she goes, you drop this
her into w any kind of environment and she's going to immediately take control and start leading.
And because she presents herself as so confident
To the outside world.
People like, Okay, well, I guess I'll just follow her?
And so page after page after page you'll see a note where I just say perfectionists
confident in her taste and judgment. She does this over and over again. She showed enormous respect for the fashion pieces
That were loan to the magazine.
Everything they borrowed had to be sent back in the precise condition it arrived in.
down to the tissue paper wrapping.
And his assistant. This was not normal, right? If you're if the magazine gets lent something, it has to go back in that pristine condition.
Uh, Anna's own style and grooming was attended to as if she were constantly starring in the fashion editorial.
She was meticulous about everything.
She had the power to get people to do what she wanted with a look or a sentence.
She was attractive and interesting and conveyed an air of mystery.
More about her discipline, her ambition, the fact that she believes quality
Of work over feelings. Anna's power in those days lay in her silence. You knew there was a lot going on in her head, but she was not sharing it.
Uh, there was a lot of drinking back then, said Anna.
Who never liked alcohol.
But I was always the first person to leave. I had to get up and go to work in the morning. So it talks about the fact that
just like Gagosian when we talked last week, the the like the social aspect of your job looks like, oh, you might be hanging out, you might be going to parties or clubs or events.
for people like Gocian and for people like Anna Winter, those are just marketing
and sales showcases in disguise. They are working when they're doing that.
Anna did not bother with niceties if a photographer came in with a portfolio she didn't like.
There was no pretending that she would think about it to spare someone's feelings.
Anna was frank about her ambition.
Even as a lowly junior fashion editor, which is what she is now.
American Vogue.
was the job that she really, really wanted.
Anna quickly tired of doing photo shoots. She recognized early that she did not want to be the person out in the field creating the content.
But the person in the office
making decisions just like her father. I want to be the one in charge.
She also did something very smart at a young age. She realized that
The physical location she is in should match her ambition levels. She thought she was
that the fashion industry in London was like the backwater.
And I need to get to New York because she thought that New York
was the center of the universe. And so she's gonna work in New York for a long time.
Then she's gonna go sent back to London, but
Anytime she's sent back to London, she knows it's temporary. I have to be in New York because New York is the center of the universe and it fuels her ambition even greater.
Even more.
And this is one of the things I respect about her most. She just had
A singular purpose.
And she knew what her mission was and she put all of her energy
into
accomplishing that mission mission.
all her energy into what the direction that she was going, how she felt about Vogue is how I feel about founders, right?
Anna had one concern when she was on the job, and it wasn't adopt friendly American manners. Her focus was singular. She was very clear-minded about wanting to do work.
That she thought was the best.
Over and over again.
They're gonna talk about people that interact with her like they c they're they can't believe.
Her work ethic.
They were in awe of Anna's work ethic. She really had no qualms about being completely focused. She was just on her path.
to what she needed to do. Period. The end.
In an office, people kind of clown around, they take breaks, they gossip. She never did any of that.
She wasn't in it for the fun and games.
She was in it for the work.
And I think she's twenty six.
When they're describing resistance.
You know what it made me think of? She uh well, let me finish the sentence, I'll tell you what it made me think of. She knew damn well
That she wanted to run Vogue.
And so I r I read uh two biographies on Coco Chanel. I wind up reading all the biographies I could find, and surprisingly
There's not that many of them.
But the the biography on Coco Chanel I read all the way back for episode one ninety nine. If you haven't listened to that episode, you really should.
She said something.
In that
Book.
That is made me think of a twenty six year old
Anna.
And she goes, I am not here to have fun or to spend money like water.
I am here to make a fortune.
And Anna really does have a founder's soul. She just does not like taking orders.
She's gonna wind up getting fired multiple times, actually. And this is why I said like she should have been a founder.
I mean, obviously d things worked out well for her.
So she winds up getting fired by the editor in chief. And what's fascinating is I'm gonna skip over that story, but I wanna talk about.
what she took away from that. She's looking back when she was young and, you know, kind of
Not even uncontrollable, you know, she's just
She anytime she's in a room, she's just gonna immediately take charge.
And
She she looking back
through the eyes of experience. And I thought this was fascinating. So I just want to read
Uh it's about
Two paragraphs to you. I think it's uh you'll find this interesting.
I was fi this is Anna speaking.
I was fired by the editor in chief who told me
That I was too European.
At the time I didn't know what he meant.
But in retrospect, I think it meant that I was obstinate.
That I wouldn't take direction.
And that I totally ignored my editor's need for credit.
Thinking about that chapter in my life, what I find most interesting is to realize how little things have changed.
Talented.
But totally self absorbed young English girls.
Now come to see me with some regularity.
And with some regularity they tend
Not unlike myself way back.
To have an almost total disriгар.
For readers.
With a bit of regret, I also realize.
That I have moved closer to the position of the editor who fired me.
That is a sign of maturity. That is a sign of learning from experience. Just want to bring out another sentence here.
About the fact that
New York and and matched.
The city matched her intensity and her ambition.
Anna felt like New York made her even more ambitious.
Audiences were bigger.
More money was at stake.
Editors took everything more seriously.
It was a better work environment for Anna.
Who was intense.
Now again, let's go back to the fact that she
Jumps she has a bunch of different jobs. Sometimes they're in London, sometimes they're in New York, but the way she's described.
It's this is what I love about her.
It's just so remarkably consistent.
She was always her own person. She didn't really listen to any structure because whether she was or not, she was the boss.
And so even at another job, we all knew that she wanted to be fashion editor vogue, that she was looking on to bigger things.
Oh, this isn't this is fantastic. The fact that she just l loves to move at a rapid pace and make very fast decisions.
Anna would move through the fitting with the same rapid pace of an assembly line.
She had all the looks planned out in advance, and
And was ready for try ons. Fittings were quick because Anna was decisive.
She never said that looks great or got excited.
She would look at them and then say, Okay.
Because Anna had planned almost everything in advance, she often didn't even have to show up to shoots.
She would send her assistant instead.
She was also insanely talented from a young age and was obvious to other people.
And so she's working at this magazine called Viva. Viva's actually gonna go out of business.
But the important reason
The reason I want to bring this up is because it was the work the high quality work she was doing there.
got the attention. This is the first time people are
people that were very important to her future future career plan. So this is Alexander Lieberman.
Who's again the editorial director of Connie Nast.
He actually's talking to the people that own Viva and he's like, Well
This is fascinating. I noticed that
Uh, I love what you're doing with Viva, first of all, and I noticed you have an English woman on the mast head.
And so what that job actually did for Anna
was doing exactly what she needed.
And that was making her name
to very important and influential people.
That was happening in nineteen seventy eight, so Anna would have been twenty nine at the time.
And so she winds up working at New York magazine and she is so prepared and goes over the top compared to like the rest of the people.
Uh that they could have hired for the job.
that I just want to pull out one line that's that's hilarious. And they uh they were describing
Anna says, Ed, this woman is amazing. We're all gonna be working for her some day.
She wore high heels every day, which didn't bot she's also funny.
And you're gonna see that right here.
She wore high heels every day, which didn't bother her because she said it's not that far from the front door to the limo.
On her first day at work, she brought in her own big white table
Instead of working at the same crappy desks.

She said I have
I prefer to have a large white surface with which to view clothes accessories against
She was singularly driven by professional advancement.
And even at New York magazine, which was not known for fashion by any stretch of the imagination, it's gonna be high standards and quality.
over everything. There's a great line from Steve Jobs that I thought of when I got to the section. He said, be a yardstick of quality. Some people are not used to an environment.
Where excellence is expected.
When the photos came back, Anna killed the story without explanation. It didn't matter that this was her assistant's first shoot or they had cast someone notable as the model.
This was something she would do again and again over the course of her career.
And once she decided
There was usually no way to get her to change her mind.
She knew that killing stories was necessary.
To let people know that you had standards.
She has standards and unlimited confidence. She's actually introduced. So a lot of people are impressed.
with her work that she's doing at New York magazine.
And so they connect her to have a meeting
With Grace Mirabella. Remember, Grace Mirabella is the editor in chief of Vogue at the time. She has the job.
That Anna wants
So they go to this meeting.
If you're expecting any kind of deference from Anna, that's just not gonna happen.
Impressed with Anna's work in New York, she arranged a meeting with Mirabella. Mirabe Mirabella asked Anna.
What job she would like at Vogue.
And Anna replied, Yurs.
That ended the meeting.
And so imagine you're Mirabella,'cause now we're gonna fast forward. This is where Lieberman is gonna give her
The the job that didn't exist, right? He offered Anna the title.

Uh director.
Which had never been used before, right?
And so imagine like you just had a meeting with her, so Yeah, I want your job.
And then you have this person coming in who is not
Supposedly you're like second in command.
But is not reporting to you and reports to your boss. Like, come on, man. That's that's not a good situation to be in.
And then who is the kind of person
that is in this number two role. It says she was being offered the number two position at f Vogue
But Anna wasn't a number two sort of person.
And this is one of the most fascinating parts of the book for me because we really see what she wanted to do and how she was different from her predecessor. Now, she's gonna work underneath her for a a little bit, then she's gonna be sent to Britain. So it's gonna I think it's like a three or four year period, something like that, before she actually gets her job.
But it is fascinating.
Creative director, she worked right under Mirabella.
Mirabella's management style, on the other hand, was antithetical to Anna's.
The meetings where clothing was selected when Mirabella was in charge could last eight to ten hours.
It was a belabored conversation.
Mirabella wanted to analyze. She didn't just look at something and say yes or no.
One of her favorite comments was this needs more, I need more.
What more meant was often anyone's guess.
Mirabella analyzed the looks to death.
Meanwhile her boss
is much more like Anna. Lieberman had a lot more in common with Anna.
He liked quick decisions, encouraged editors to trust their first instinct and
And didn't dilly dally over anything.
And so when I got to this section, Anna starts reminding me of Steve Jobs again. There's one this is excellent book.
I've read it three times, I'll probably read it, you know, another five.
uh throughout my life. It's uh the last time I covered, I think was episode two eighty one. I think the title of the episode's working with Steve Jobs. The title of the book
Is called creative selection inside Apple's design process during the golden age of Steve Jobs.
And really
I love this idea of like the importance of being decisive and concise and being easy to understand for your d for your employees, right?
And
The guy writing the book, his name is Ken Cosienda. He worked and demoed directly to Steve.
And this is what he talked about. It's exactly what's taking place in this book.
Steve was at the center of all circles. He made all the important product decisions. From my standpoint as an individual programmer, demoing to Steve,
was like visiting the Oracle of Delphi.
The demo was my question and Steve's response was the answer.
While the pronouncements from the Greek oracle often came in the form of confusing riddles.
This was not true with Стів.
He was always easy to understand.
He would either approve a demo
Or he would request to see something different.
Next time.
You are not gonna find an example where Steve is in a meeting for eight to ten hours.
And he's saying, Give me more, give me more and no one knows what the hell more is.
So Mirabella writes an autobiography.
Later on.
And she's talking about
this p this period of her career. I want to pull out just two paragraphs from her autobiography.
And she's talking about Anna.
Who obviously is obsessed with control.
She'd sit in on editorial board meetings, shaking her head, obviously disagreeing with everything I said or did, and biting her lip to keep from saying so.
Then she'd go behind my back and redo layouts, bring in new art.
circumvent me and my fashion editors, and take charge of planning fashion sittings with photographers. When she couldn't bypass my editors, she'd harass and criticize them.
And so Mirabella's actually gonna get a slight reprieve because the
Fashion, the editor in chief of British Fogue, who was in that position for twenty-one years, actually steps down, and so they decide nineteen eighty five they're gonna move Anna.
And let her
Be editor in chief of British.
Uh Vogue and so she's sent across the pond.
to Britain. Now this is when
I already mentioned this earlier.
The fact that
She gets there and she proceeds to
Fire everyone at British Vogue who
Uh pre dated her.
Obviously she wants complete control.
And she didn't think they were they she thought a lot of them were lazy and she wanted to to drastically
uh increase the quality of the magazine. But this is when she gets this brand that I think she still has to this day.
that she is they call th these are the words. These are these are not my words, obviously, they're in the book.
They brand Anna as fashion's indominable and bitchy new ice queen. A character characterization that for better or worse
would stick.
So
There's nothing.
In this book.
That is gonna be new to you or I.
If you've listened to founders.
A bunch.
And if you read biographies.
of these super type A
highly driven entrepreneurs. There's no there's no behavior that she's doing that we haven't seen before.
the difference lays in how they would be described.
So you know, there's a lot of people that describe like a Steve Jobs like, you know, tyrannical, rude, control obsessed.
The same behavior by Anne is just being described.
as indominable
and Ice Queen and Bitchy and all these other characterizations, but it is the same behavior. I don't think it is unique to her at all.
And everything that Anna does, just like everything Steve Jobs did, just spoke to the fact that they were constantly trying to up
the quality of the products that they're making. And we see that here. Anna ran the magazine with iron fisted discipline. She wanted the staff to be on time, work hard, and run everything by her for approval.
A stark departure from her predecessor who allowed photographers
to come into the office and select their photos and improve their layouts.
Now this is hilarious. She also doesn't give a shit who you are.
So there's a guy named Lord Snowden, he was a photographer who married Princess Margaret.
And it says Anna came in and reduced a shoot of his to a photo the size of a postage stamp.
Somebody on her staff told Anna you cannot do that because it is Snowden.
And then is
This was Anna's response.
And she just ignored me.
Anna started her own work day shockingly early to the previous administration.
uh they felt much greater pressure to work in as hyper efficient style
But Anna also got her staff.
raises. They paid her more, something that was nearly impossible to do.
under the previous administration.
And you could also see why she wanted to replace much of the staff. They just it was a staff full of bad habits.
And so even the idea is like, okay, before you go out and shoot, like I want to see all the looks. And people are like, What are you talking about? Like, why would you do that? Like, we'll just shoot it and then afterwards we'll show you.
what the result is and then you pick the best. And it's like there's no way in how we're doing that.
The sheer fact that they had to wheel, close, into her office before any shoots was wildly different and unheard of.
Anim reviewed every photo from every shoot herself.
Which also stunned the staff.
Sh and she also demanded
Endless reshooting.
If it did not involve editing Vogue, she did not address it. She had no time for small talk.
So as Anna was saying earlier, the fact that she felt
Her time in London was untenable.
They had two young kids, her husband is is in New York, she wants to get back to New York.
Eventually she goes back to New York.
She spends a little bit of time in another Condent Nas publication, but I wanna skip forward to the part where she actually gets
what she's wanted all her life, and this is happening in nineteen eighty eight.
So Anna's around thirty nine years old when this happens.
And so it says Grace Mirabella was sitting in her office when she got a call from her husband.
Uh, Grace, this is ludicrous. What is this all about?
And so he's telling her about the fact that there was like this gossip like th there was like uh rumor or gossip around the fact that
Grace Maribella has been fired from Vogue.
And Mirabella told her husband, She don't know what you're talking about.
So I gotta call you back. She goes upstairs. She's like, Okay, I guess I gotta go to Lieberman's office.
And she found Lieberman sitting there. I guess he's just there with his desk, member's empty desk and that button that uh makes you go away.
And he says
Grace, I'm afraid it's true.
And so there was just some things that Grace was doing that there's just no way that Anna would do.
So the Lieberman's assistant is getting interviewed and it says uh the pages
of the issue w in this room, we actually see this in the documentary. It's called uh the September issue.
Where all the pictures are what's about to go on the issue, right? They're all put up on a board.
Usually in order.
And then they also have this thing called the book where like they print out
Looks like almost like a like a homemade copy of the the issue they're working on and it's delivered to Anna's house.
Every night.
And then she like leaves notes on it and brings it back the next day. It's in
uh the movie The Devil Wears Prada too. But anyways
They they have this board in Vogue where like you put everything up.
And
there's often times where like there's something going in the magazine and it says Mirabella didn't know the names of some of the people
In the artists featured in an own magazine.
And you have people saying, I was shocked at what Grace didn't know. That there's no way
That's gonna happen.
uh with Anna Winter.
And again, one thing that Grace didn't understand is that relationships run the world.
Uh, Mirabella had another problem that Anna did not.
A nearly non-existent relationship with Cy Newhouse, the owner of the company, the ultimate decision maker, and you're not making a relationship with him. That is a
Massive mistake.
Uh, she never grew comfortable with him.
and intentionally avoided him.
And if Mirabella wasn't inside Newhouse's ear as a singular voice and authority on Vogue.
Who would be?
That was Anna Winter. And so Anna immediately takes over, starts making changes. Remember, go back to the fact that when she's giving that interview on 73 more questions.
What does she want? She wants you to be decisive and clear.
The infamous hours long run throughs were now over in minutes. Remember they were taking eight to ten
hours on this. This is how Anna does it.
And it would just go, yes, nope.
Nope.
Yes.
Yes, no.
Goodbye.
Under Mirabella every request had to be written down, but Anna complained of drowning in paper.
She didn't want you to write anything down.
Come to the office, ask your question, and then get out.
With Anna
You get two minutes.
The second minute is a courtesy.
And so I'm thinking about the sectional line. I was like, Okay, well, she wants you to be con decisive and concise. What's the opposite of
Being decisive and concise. It's fluff.
Well, there's no fluff if you only have sixty seconds.
This time constraint forces you to get to the essence of the issue. It reminds me of
Churchill did this later on when they were fighting the Nazis in World War Two.
For Pete's sake.
Cut your memos in half.
And he has this great line on why this is so important.
It's interesting that all these people are British, Ogee, Churchill, and and they love the dogmatism of brevity. Maybe there's something there.
But uh
Churchill says something that's fantastic. He says it is slothful.
Not to compress your thoughts.
And so Churchill would even do that where he's like, You cannot write more than a page on this. Absolutely not.
And I love this idea of whether it's constrained by
Document length or time.
Because the constraints force you to get to the essence.
Let's go back to her expanding her power.
Again, she is not just a magazine editor.
Editor in chief of Vogue was her goal. She's so much bigger than that now.
Anna viewed her social life as part of her work. No matter what the what
Or who the party was for.
Anna controlled the guessless.
By focusing so much on the social side. This is her in my argument, maybe
I'm not even it it's not maybe. It is.
This is her most important idea.
Even people who knew Vogue.
was powerful before she became editor in chief.
underestimated how powerful it was.
Anna did not underestimate how powerful that position is. And then she didn't stop there. She extended that power beyond a magazine, which is why she's so much bigger. People would say she's bigger than Vogue is today.
So check this out. By focusing so much on the social side, Anna was asserting herself as more than a magazine editor.
By virtue of editing Vogue, she was necessarily a leader in the fashion industry.
But she also seemed intent on using her position to become
The leader
of the fashion industry, not a leader.
The leader.
of the fashion industry.
And so I want to pause there. I want to go all the way back to the very beginning of the book, the w the intro of this podcast, right? Where it's like, Hey
She'd been the editor of Vogue since nineteen eighty eight. She's one of the most powerful figures.
And it talked about
So they're talking about the power she has.
But then the intro was also about how she wields it.
And she wields it in adds.
Advice
And money the fact that if she wants a
Young designer to have more influence.
She will go and call up
The heads, the people that make those decisions, the people owning the fashion labels, the people that actually listen to her and seek her advice because she has a relationship, not just because she's a magazine.
Editor.
And then if you're on her team, if you're in her good grace, she puts you in the magazine. So everybody, all the uh editors before Anna had the same had a very similar asset, right? She expands that asset because yeah, of course I could pitch you in the magazine. What's that gonna make? It's gonna, you know, people are gonna buy your stuff. It's gonna literally drive sales and gonna change the directory of your business.
But how she goes and says, Hey, that's not enough. Like I have a lot of power, I can
Either you know, they said something like
build m build your brand or or maybe help push you into bankruptcy or whatever the case is.
So it's like okay.
I'm I'm more than just distribution, though.
Because now she goes out and intentionally builds all these relationships with the most powerful people in the industry.
Then they seek her advice.
Then she says, Hey
I got a bunch of young people.
And why don't we start this other fund? That's the fund I mentioned earlier, the Council of Fashion Designers of America.
Vogue fashion fund.
So you usually get if you win that award, you get a couple hundred grand.
I try to figure this out. I don't think they get any equity in return for that. I thought it was like oh, it's just like kinda like a Y Combinator model.
It's like, oh, let's identify, you know, like is this like a seed investment for fashioners? It looks like the money is just you get money and mentorship. I did not see that.
Vogue or Anna gets equity in the actual company.
But the reason that was also smart is because as the years go by, now you have all these well known designers that
credit Anna with giving essentially breaking them into the industry.
And so every year you might have a dozen, half a dozen more people that become more and more loyal to her.
They go out, they have fantastic careers, they build relationships, and this this cycle just keeps building upon itself.
But I love this idea that she just saw This is the the the way I'm gonna
Phrases like she saw
the industry, the potential for the industry.
And how she she can expand
the power and the influence that her
individually and then Vogue as a brand
Has
by just combining all these people that are already in the ecosystem and then intentionally putting them together in a way in which
When they work together it becomes stronger.
And as a result, the the what she created, the whole
Is greater than the sum of its parts.
And this becomes obvious the more the deeper you get into this book if you choose to read it, but also is obvious if you watch the September issue.
And you will see the influence, and literally like in fashion designers will change their entire line.
If they get
a negative feedback or if Anna doesn't buy in. So the the power she has.
cannot be understated. The way in which she accumulated the power was fascinating. She aligned everybody's interests with her at the center. So
And as also
one in my opinion, one of the greatest examples of this idea that
You can build a great
career.
on a handful of principles that you just repeat over a long period of time.
Repetition is the foundation of clarity of thought, and we see that here.
So she's in complete control of Vogue.
Uh, she's doing all these photo shoots. It says photo shoots could cost six figures, and Anna did not feel that she had to publish the result just because they were expensive.
She killed entire chutes to drive home the understanding.
that editors and photographers who wanted to have their work in her magazine had to do an extraordinary job.
She knew that reshooting would be difficult and stressful.
But this was exactly how Anna built up Vogue by insisting on getting what she judged.
As excellent.
And making sure no one who worked for her ever got lazy.
She expected as much from her team
As she expected from herself.
And so I mentioned earlier the fact that at Apple, Steve Jobs with the center of all circles, it's the same thing.
A vogue.
To the point where
It has its own acronym.
A walk.
The final mark of approval on stories.
Which
Had to be delivered before it would get in the magazine.
Were her initials
Plus
Okay.
A W
Okay.
A walk.
Would become a verb in the офис.
As in
Is it awoked?
And then another thing that she had in common with Steve Jobs is she respected people that gave a damn.
Passion is universally respected.
If you were passionate about something, she would respect that. The thing that she couldn't stand was that if you didn't give a crap.
This was explicitly stated in Ed Catmell, Ed Catmell's
the co-founder of Pixar, the person I work with Steve Jobs the longest consecutive time. I think they worked together for like twenty six consecutive years or something like that.
I just reread Ed's book and and did another podcast on it. It was episode three seventeen and he talked about this.
He says Steve, never questioned me.
For all his insistence, he respected passion.
If I believed in something that strongly, he seemed to feel it couldn't be all wrong.
Literally same words that are in this book. If you were passionate about something, she respected that.
And so she trains her entire staff to like live up to the rapid pace that she works at.
The ruthless
Quality standards.
And so a lot of people, uh, the person that wrote the Devil Devil Wears Prada was actually one of her assistants and then she wind up quitting'cause it was such an intense
Work environment.
And you know, a lot of people can't handle that. And that's the good thing about being an adult. Like you can
self select into the m the kind of work environment that you want to like be a part of.
And you know, she's Anna's like, Well, these are my standards, this is what I expect of you, and if you can survive, then that's great. But if not, like she will ruthlessly cut these people out.
And a lot of it is just because like there isn't a lot of
You know, kind of American culture is like, Hey, how you doing? And like there's like this
There's like
like an introduction before we get to the actual point.
Anna skips over all that. She just goes right to the point.
talked about earlier and how the fact that she sends constant emails to her assistants all day long.
And you can tell that she wants to get to the point because they don't even have a subject line. But what's fascinating is like she walks into the office.
As soon as she goes into the office, she just starts speaking. It's not like hey, good morning, anything like that. They are expected to have like a blank word document up because as soon as she walks in the door, they have to start furiously typing everything she says as soon as she walks in.
Because as soon as she arrives
She just starts talking.
and issuing to dos without periods or pauses.
And you s this also.
in the movie The Devil Wears Prada.
And so a large part of this book also is, you know, saying that
They're trying to tell you the other side of this. Like this is how Anna does things, this is her perspective, and then this is the people that either like it.
Or in many cases the people that kinda criticize her for this and
I can't tell you why.
But what popped into my mind when I got to this section reading about the people that you know obviously
Don't like that.
is a conversation that
Johnny I was being interviewed, I think, by F Vanity Fair, uh a few years after Steve Jobs died.
He talked about some of the most important lessons that s he learned.
uh with Steve and the first one was like this ruthless focus. It just, you know, Steve was the most remarkably focused person that Johnny ever met in his life.
And you know, th there was you just realized all there's levels to focus and Steve's on a different level.
But the second thing he said was very interesting.
Actually
Steve calls Johnny vain.
And I thought that was a very like fascinating choice of words, and this is the story that Johnny tells.
And Johnny says, I remember asking Steve about this.
It could be perceived that his in his critique of a piece of work that he was a little harsh.
And we had just been putting our heart and soul into this. I asked him, this is after
So what happened before this conversation is they had a meeting
Meeting did not go well.
Steve was understandably upset.
And Johnny's gonna ask, Hey, you know, can you moderate the way you deliver this message?
Let's go back to this.
I remember asking Steve about this. It could be perceived that in his critique of a piece of work he was a little harsh.
And we had been putting our heart and soul into this. And I asked him, could we not moderate the things that we said a little?
And he said, Why?
And Johnny said.
Because I care about the team.
And Steve said this brutally brilliant insightful thing.
He said no, Johnny.
You're just really vain.
You just want people to like you.
I'm surprised at you, Johnny.
I thought you held the work up.
as the most important.
Not how you believed.
You were perceived
By other people.
And then Johnny says, and I was terribly cross because I knew he was right. And so in my notebook, I have that.
th this I I transcribe this this exchange.
And I the only part that's bolted.
is I thought you held up the work as the most important.
It's obvious when you study the careers of Steve Jobs or Anna Winter.
They hold up the work as most important. Now
This is not I don't think being you know direct or even like really harsh or you know
uh a dictator is a prerequisite to doing great work. I'm not saying you everybody should do this. Look what Steve Jobs did. You're an adult. You gotta figure out how you wanna manage your own company, right? No one should tell you that no one should make that decision for yourself.
It's definitely not prerequisite like
John D. Rockefeller. Arguably
you know, Charlie Munger would tell you he created the greatest company of all time.
he was ruthless to his competitors, but inside of his office, the people work for him, his partners.
His employees would say he never said a cross word, he never raised his voice, he was never rude.
So it's clearly not a prerequisite.
To building the right company.
But
The the main point here is like
putting up the work, right? The founder's the guardian of the company so
And you're w what you're one of the things you're a guardian of is to make sure that the work the the quality of the work is most important.
And Anna definitely did that even if
She could be harsh or said complaining to Anna was pointless because Anna would just say, This is not a girls' boarding school. Deal with it yourself.
And this always on very fast pace.
very decisive
work environment is clearly the one that she wanted to operate and work in.
It says Anna was the rare exception who didn't seem to need such an escape to deal with the pressure of her work. And so I read that sentence and I immediately came to mind.
The podcast I just did on Herb Kellerher.
who's the genius founder of South West Airlines. That's episode three twenty two, if you haven't listened to it.
And one of my favorite things that I ever read about Herb, I loved Herb. He was a character. Just like incredible. And it's pretty incredible that he's like the greatest, undoubtedly the greatest airline founder of all time.
But
he was asked like you undergrow undergo a lot of stress all the time. How do you handle it?
He says, I don't handle it. I like it.
Yeah.
And I feel that uh
And is the same way. Like obviously she's in a high stress position.
But she chose to be in that position.
And I think she likes it.
Okay, so we always talk about the fact that the story of the father is usually embedded in the son, right? This comes up over and over again in every biography. What's
Interesting is like there was a a weird strain there's a lot more detail in the book.
Uh I skipped over a lot of that, but like
Her dad was s like a serial cheater. He was like constantly
cheating on and not being not faithful to Anna's mom.
They wind up getting divorced later on, I think after like thirty something years, but then th this caused Anna a lot of trouble'cause like she discovered some of her father's affairs when she was still like a teenager.
And obviously you can that cause a lot of pain and trouble in their family, what is
Interesting is that Anna repeats that same mistake. So she is married.
uh to the father of her two children. They're married for like nineteen years.
She winds up meeting this guy
uh named Shelby.
Who's also married.
Uh they wind up I think the two married couples like wind up sitting uh next to each other at like a
uh like some vogue event and then Shelby invites Anna out to lunch.
And they like I think almost like immediately
Start.
An affair.
Winds up.
Destroying her marriage. I'll get to what her husband says.
In a little bit that might
Uh like shine some light on this. But
Her and Shelby went up being together thing for like fifteen years. They never get married.
They don't even live together. So you can clearly see that Anna like put her
career was like her her top her top priority.
But he was a very successful and powerful entrepreneur.
And
She was attracted to power not only in when I being her lover.
But in fr in like
Her friends are like the top people that got to the top of the profession.
In whatever field they're in.
And there was just some interesting
Uh paragraph about this.

And so it says looks didn't seem to be what Anna primarily admired in men. After a lunch with Bill Gates.
When Microsoft was on the rise.
She came back to the office.
And talked about how атрактив.
She thought he was
And the person she's saying to this, her last name is Jones.
And she goes, Jones just thought, God.
She's attracted to people
Who are powerful.
Anna knew from her own father how painful
having a cheating parent was.
Yet here she was inflicting the same pain on her kids.
And so her ex husband, his name's David Schaefer, he's the psychiatrist.
He's been on record. He says that uh a lot of people debate like does Anna have the ability to empathize with other people?
And he says very clear that Anna is not capable of empathy.
And so I want to go back to this idea that she constantly expanded the power
And what vote could be. And so something she helped create is this Met Gala, which I I had heard the name. I knew people got like
Kind of kinda like fancy costumes, I guess, is like my understanding of this.
I guess they would call fashion look like costumes to me. But
I I didn't even know Vogue
Owned it.
And it turns out like when you when you start reading about it's like oh it it hit you right away. It's like oh the Met Gala
is an asset.
It's the way to expand her power and
In this very
Valuable industry.
the reason it's an asset is because it's invite only. So the guest list is completely
One hundred percent controlled.
By Anna.
And so this is her her push to be much larger larger than just a magazine. And so they sell tables to
people that are approved. You can only
Not only does the person buying the table, usually a company,
Have to be approved by Anna.
But then even after you buy the table, if you say, Hey, I wanna bring five guests
Anna has to approve all the guests that you bring even after you bought the table.
And then
She also a pr uh has to approve of where the people sit.
And this is why I was like, Oh, this is like a business conference.
This is what she's doing.
It's a fashion business conference. You just dress up and we call and it gets covered in the media, but that's exactly what it is.
Anna wanted to mix everyone up so that business deals could happen. Anna wanted people to meet other people.
And that's where a lot of business came from.
It's part of building
the industry. Then it really clicked for me when I got to the sentence like that is what she's doing.
She's not just building up
A personal brand. She's not just building up Vogue. She's building up the entire industry.
And so she adds yet another asset. Starts out with the asset of Vogue, adds them at Gala, then you do this fund, the CFDA Vogue Fashion Fund I've been telling you about, and funding new designers. She's describing why.
I really started to understand more fully how hand to mouth
These businesses are for young designers.
It's always been tough. There isn't anything new about that, but when they have to compete in a marketplace with so many big companies, these smaller designers often don't have the same resources.
And are probably the last ones in line when it comes to factory and fabrics.
So they that's when she s they start this
Vogue fashion fun, ten finalists be car become part of what they call the quote Vogue family.
They build their relationship.
With the magazine.
And over ten years, that's a hundred designers who become loyal to Vogue.
And so she mentors these people that wind up being finalists and wind up winning and she gives them excellent advice. And one thing that she gives them is one, quality's the best strategy. She's obviously, you know, a living proof of that. You could see that by examining her career.
But she talks about that the fact that relationships are going to last a lot longer than money. Relationships last longer than money.
And so she would there there's all these people interviewed in the book.
They're talking about the mentoring that they got from Anna. She said, resist any cheapening of the brand, however popular and lucrative it might be in the short term.
And he says, even the two hundred thousand dollars that I got from winning the the award, right? The money kinda came and went.
Бо вот стайдвоз ви га менторшип.
With the CEO of Burberry.
This was a relationship that lasted for years and years. It lasted much, much longer than the money last.
And so she then makes her network
Your network.
And so with every act, she's actually acting in service of others.
And then this winds up strengthening her own position. And there's a m a bunch of examples like this, but this is I think the first time I mentioned this, the fact that investors will then call Anna.
And say hey
Which labels should I invest in?
Why? Because she's got a bird's eye view of all the young upc upcoming
fashion designers, some of which
she's actually given money to, right? So so they could survive. Some of which she's giving mentoring to, some of which she's giving both of them to.
And there's a great line describing what's taking place. She does so much.
For so many people.
Then when she asks something of you, you do it.
Really, this is how everything works together.
She funds nascent designers. She then puts their clothes vogue.
This makes selling way easier.
She then gives them good advice.
Because she has so much experience in this industry, right?
And then
Some of the some of the people ignore their advice, her advice and go out of business.
So this is an example of
This brand called
Band of outsiders.
They wind up winning
The
C F DA Vogue fashion fund and the two hundred thousand dollar price.
Along with the money comes the validation of magazines like Vogue, the closer in Vogue, right?
People like Anna, her huge influence.
Now his business model, the guy that owns Band of Outsiders, his business model was selling wholesale. So he would sell clothes to stores like Saks Fifth Avenue.
Anna is the industry's chief allocator of buzz.
So if Anna says hey, I love band of outsiders, if you see band of outsiders
in Vogue magazine, it makes those sales flow a lot easier.
And so he describes this and says, Hey, you know, if I have all these photo shoots, if my clothes are in Vogue sh photo shoots, they're appearing in Vogue magazine.
Everything just gets a lot easier. He says it's a one stop shop for relevancy.
And then she also gives really smart advice. She told him
Don't spend any time and money building out a band of outsider's store in New York.
Just roll racks into the unfinished space and
And start selling clothes.
It's not very different to the advice that she got from C Newhouse back in nineteen ninety one.
Where she's like, stay close to the money.
follow the money. This guy, this young designer thinks, okay
I'm hot right now.
Everybody wants my stuff.
What's the best thing I could do?
Let me not sell anything for eight months and design this beautiful retail establishment. And Anna's like, that is a terrible idea.
You're hot right now, people will pull the product out of you.
Get an unfinished space.
Put your clothes on racks and start ringing the cash register.
He does not do that.
She told him not to spend any time or money building out a band of outsider store in New York.
Just roll racks into the unfinished space and start selling clothes.
She was one hundred percent right. We lost eight months of sales and momentum.
Building out the perfect store.
That was one of the death knell of my brand. In other words
Not taking her advice.
was one of the death nails, one of the things that caused his brand to die.
And then the last thing I want to talk to you about is the effect that the Devil Wears Prada movie had.
Ah, the fact that it just made her bigger and even more powerful.
And so they're at a private showing of it. She's with her daughter. Her daughter's name is B.
And it says at one point B turned to her and said, Mom, they really got you.
The impact the movie had on her image was incalculable.
She finished off the year as one of Barbara Walters' most fascinating people.
Became a mainstream
Celebrity.
Meryl Street played her in a movie, for God's sake.
This was never her goal, though. She s's it as part of her job.
She's very conscious that this is a persona that is exciting at the moment because she has that job.
And the minute she doesn't have that job.
She knows it's going to be different.
She has now become big Anna.
And with her star power now transcending fashion and media.
It would be terribly hard.
For Condi Nast.
Ever to let her go.
And the reason I wanted to end there is because if you think about it, she started with the goal.
To be in charge of Vogue.
And now she is
Bigger.
Then Vogue.
And that is where I'll leave it for the full story. Highly recommend buying the book. I will leave a link down below. If you buy the book using that link, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time.
Because books are made out of books, if you want to read another
Biography.
of Anna. I will also link down that down below.
Uh it's actually in the bibliography in the author's note in this book.
It is uh the book by this guy named Jerry Oppenheimer. It's called Front Row and a Winter, what lies beneath the chic exterior of Vogue's editor in chief.
Um, the author of this book, Amy Odell, said that that book was an an enormously useful blueprint.
For this book.
So those uh both links to both books will be down below.
Uh highly recommend if you want to watch a documentary on Anna and the process. It's called the September Issue.
The devil wears Prada is the movie.
And then also
If you want to see her being interviewed in vogue.
Uh you can go to YouTube and watch seventy three questions with Anna Winter and seventy three more questions with Anna Winter.
That is three hundred and twenty six books down one thousand to go.
And I'll talk to you again soon.