When you’re faced with a new opportunity in your career, do you evaluate that opportunity based on the potential for growth it provides? My guest this week has used this measure throughout her career, and as a result, she takes career opportunities where she learns, grows, and adds value.

Elise Loehnen Fissmer is the Chief Content Officer of goop, the lifestyle and e-commerce company established by Gwyneth Paltrow in 2008. Prior to joining goop, Elise worked for Condé Nast and Shopzilla, where she adopted a mindset that helped her design a career and life aligned to her purpose.

In this interview, Elise tells us of her career progression from recent Yale graduate freelancing at Lucky Magazine, to the opportunity at Shopzilla she pursued because of the tremendous learning potential that came with it. She discusses her early days at goop, when she found herself more hands-on with the team. Recognizing her own comfort with staying behind-the-scenes, Elise now challenges herself to grow by taking on external facing opportunities to contribute. In this episode, you’ll learn about the importance of prototyping ideas you want to try, and Elise shares the questions to ask when considering how new career opportunities align with your purpose.

Show Notes

- Get a glimpse of Elise’s childhood: horses, making jewelry, and attending hippy school.
- Comforting her inner child and speaking to her anxieties around money and security.
- Hear about Elise’s middle school years as a competitive athlete, mathlete, an artist.
- The period of desperation after graduating from Yale during a time of job market uncertainty.
- How landing a freelance job at Lucky Magazine became her doorway to the media industry.
- Find out what Elise did in the period between working for Lucky and getting hired by goop.
- Why you should work for the company that will teach you what you want to know.
- Learning early on that waiting to be scouted, discovered, and invited was unrealistic.
- How goop started as a newsletter in 2008 and the organic way that Gwyneth scaled it.
- Goop’s approach to business: prototyping, experimenting, playing, collaborating.
- Beginner’s resistance and imposter syndrome and why women excel at conquering them.
- How Elise’s role has transitioned from managing to being an individual contributor.
- Learn what the Netflix series the goop lab is all about and the edgy topics they cover.
- The cycle of backlash that ensues every time goop does something expansive.
- Thoughts about why people tend to defend the status quo and how it relates to authority.
- The creative dream of writing a book instead of only ever co-authoring.

References

Elise Loehnen - http://www.eliseloehnen.com
Elise Loehnen on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/elise-loehnen-b867523
Elise Loehnen on Twitter - https://twitter.com/eloehnen
Yale - https://www.yale.edu
Shopzilla - http://www.shopzilla.com
goop - https://goop.com
Condé Nast - https://www.condenast.com
Gwyneth Paltrow on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/gwynethpaltrow
Who’s Afraid of Gwyneth Paltrow and goop? - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/opinion/goop-gwyneth-paltrow-netflix.html
the goop lab - https://www.netflix.com/za/title/80244690
Break the Good Girl Myth - https://www.amazon.com/Break-Good-Girl-Myth-Purposeful-ebook/dp/B081NH1KJC
Majo Molfino - https://majomolfino.com
HEROINE (Podcast) - https://majomolfino.com/podcast