YouSaid · the spoken record

Jen Rubio

lines on the record: 89
first: 2019-03-18
most recent: 2019-03-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And I didn't want to do that, which is why I asked everyone. And then I found out that no one really had luggage that they loved. There was one girl who really loved hers and it was like $4,000.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This was 2015. At that point, I traveled hundreds of thousands of miles in my life with this one bag. And I was super annoyed. And I was just like, okay, I'm just going to buy a really nice bag that I love. And this won't happen again for a long time. So I ask a bunch of people and every single person is like, I don't know, or I have this, but don't get it. It's awful, or I would specifically ask a friend that I knew traveled a lot. And he or she would be like, oh, I don't actually know what brand I travel with. And I think Was so crazy to me that all of these people, including myself, who love to travel, who did it all the time, who packed a suitcase every time they traveled, really had no connection to this thing that they brought with them. On every single flight, on every single trip”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I get home and I go on Facebook and I tell everyone about this embarrassing story about my back breaking and I ask people if they have any recommendations.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's like no name, like black ballistic nylon bag. And it was super embarrassing. Like, I didn't realize it broke the zipper broke. So I'm leaving a trail of my underwear behind me as I'm running through the airport.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was waiting to figure it out. I always promised myself that I would only work on things that made me happy, especially after my dad passed away. It was like really important for me to spend my time doing things that I was really passionate about and I knew that had kind of dried up for me in this opportunity. And so I left All Saints and I was still living in London kind of for a finite amount of time because my visa was going to expire. So I started interviewing for jobs. I interviewed for like VP of marketing, like CMO jobs at companies of all different sizes. And during this, I was completely just on a tear around the world, splitting my time between interviewing and like going on vacation. So I'm in Zurich Airport. And my bag breaks, and it was this old bag that I'd had, like since college, I guess.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Basically, the new CEO At all saints, I think had just wanted someone from Worby Parker. But yeah, I mean, it was like great job, great title. I got to live in London. I didn't realize until after the fact that what was missing is that my entire career had revolved around the idea that there was a brand and that someone in the middle does something and then there's a customer at the other end who falls in love with it. And I built my entire career around like that middle part, like being the gap between the customer and the brand, like building the relationship, making people fall in love with the company. And because all of my projects at All Saints turned out to be internal facing and more of like internal innovation, I realized that was the part that I really missed. I wasn't wise enough to realize that at the time, but I think that's basically why it was so bored.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“26 or 27, and I had a seat at the table with all these very seasoned executives from, you know, from like. From selfridges and Herod's and Richemont.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, yeah, so when I joined Warby Parker, there were maybe 15 people there. By the time I left, there were a couple hundred. So it was still growing really quickly. But my father passed away while I was working at Warby Parker. And it kind of slowed down a little bit after that, and I started thinking a lot about what I wanted to be doing. And coincidentally, like this headhunter called me at the same time, I was kind of going through that. And moving to London seemed like one of the most exciting things I could do. And I was so drawn to the opportunity. The job was interesting, so it had really nothing to do with anything I'd ever done before. So I became the global director of innovation at All Saints, and this is when they were trying to turn the company around. They had new owners, a new CEO.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I never wanted to start my own business. I never wanted to be an entrepreneur. I think I was just so grateful to have found work into something that I really enjoyed. And for me, that was like social media and marketing. And eventually brand development, that because those opportunities seem so limitless and that I never felt like I could learn everything there was to know about what I was doing, that it never occurred to me to start my own thing.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then, like, our community would help them pick. And that was like a big thing on Tumblr and Facebook. We would basically crowdsource what frames people should buy. And we would just build this really loyal, really engaged community. And it just kept growing and growing. And I think it's always embarrassing to kind of look back at your work, especially in those early days. But I really was just like, I really could feel how social media was having an impact on how much people loved the brand. And that was really special to me.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I think I started thinking about like what a content strategy would look like. How do we take this amazing thing that we're building that's kind of weird, which is selling glasses online? All of my friends thought I was crazy for doing this. And like, how do we translate that experience into a social media community? And we would do things like Warby Parker had that like home try-on program where you could do try on. Pairs of glasses, and we would do it so that people would post their five, and we'd repost it to our tumbler and people would pick photos.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, it was still the Wild West. Like, so there was a Twitter account, and that was basically for customer service. And the guy who interviewed me, Brian, his whole job was replying to everyone on Twitter, which then became my job. Just, you know, spent like 10 hours a day Applying to people, even if people would be like, I love Warby Parker, I would reply, thanks, like hundreds of times a day. They're on Facebook, on Twitter. They're on Tumblr and Instagram launched right when I started. I was like, guys, there's this cool platform. I think we should go on it. And they're like, okay, cool, whatever.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I have Tumblr to thank for this one again. So, my friend Rich, who worked at Tumblr, was like, you should meet with these guys. They're starting this glasses company online. And they just want to talk to someone about social media. And I remember meeting this guy who worked at Warvie Parker, and we met at Union Square Park. And I remember realizing kind of halfway through our conversation that it was a job interview. I thought that I was just like coming in there to chat with them about the startup and they would like pick my brain and that was something I was like really open to and I left being like I think I just interviewed to be the social media manager Warby Parker. And that's how I got started in the startup world.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. There are no metrics. There are no analytics of any sort at this time. And I would just be like, look what I tweeted. Look at all these people that responded. Look at these people who showed up. And for me, it was, that was actually great because it wasn't reports. It was like real tangible stuff. It was like people showing up and saying something or doing something or spending money at the business. And that was really exciting for me.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I was a personal assistant to the wife of one of the heads of one of the very big studios in LA. And then she had asked me to help her with her blog and her social media and her website. And I started helping her with that. And then she told her husband, I was doing a great job. And all of a sudden, I find myself like driving up to the lot every day, like checking in with my ID and meeting with these film executives talking about how they could market their films like through social media.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was such amateur hour, but there was also nobody doing it, so I found myself in this situation where I am getting paid to do something. I don't know that much about it, but also at the same time everyone saw me as an expert. And it was one of the wildest years of my life because my first client was Buzz Coffee. And I don't even know if they paid me. Like I think they paid me in coffee. And then all of a sudden, I was doing it for a food truck and a restaurant. And then all of a sudden, like, they introduced me to someone and I was doing it for a new hotel that was opening. And then all of a sudden, I had realized I just spent a year being immersed in digital and social media and realizing how people could use that in a really powerful way. Like I also wasn't making a ton of money, but I was, so I was also doing like personal assistance stuff.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Honestly, so much of it is luck. It was really a lot of the right place, right time. I was living in LA. It was when food trucks were a big thing. I kind of just spread the word And my first client was the cafe on my street. It's not around anymore, but it was this little cafe on Beverly Boulevard. And I would literally sit in the cafe all day and tweet things like there's a password of the day. And if you say the password at the register, you get like a free espresso shot.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I don't know why, but it just blew my mind. I was like, you can just tweet where you are and like people will come. And that's that that was your business. Otherwise, like the truck would have just sat somewhere and you had to maybe drive by it. And it was like, this is marketing. Like this is how you get paid to do marketing and do social media. And these are all things I was interested in. And I was like, I got this. I'm figuring this out. So I started being like a freelance consultant for social media.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and it's so wild. It was literally Twitter and doing social media for a food truck meant like you would just tweet where the truck was going to be. Sounds so crazy now that that was someone's job, but I remember like following the Twitter account, finding out that the truck was going to be on the corner of these streets in LA, driving over there, and there would be hundreds of people there.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, Tumblr had, I guess, maybe just started, and I was like one of the early people on it. And it's what, you know, I would do in my spare time. I would like right on my Tumblr blog. And I had met a few people in LA on Tumblr. One of the guys I met did. Social media. And I was like, what do you mean you do social media as a job? Like, I had MySpace, I had Tumblr, I had Twitter, and I didn't know that you could do that and also that it was part of marketing. But he would do social media for some of the OG food trucks in LA”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I was like, I'm going to do marketing. I quit. And I didn't have a job. And I don't have a degree. And I didn't have that much money. But I had, do you know that platform Tumblr?”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And there wasn't, but now, like, this it had opened up this whole new world to me being able to work in marketing, which to me at the time meant that you could control how people found out about your products and how you could. Take everything that people were saying about it and maybe change the products, and I just thought it was so cool, and I knew I really wanted to do it. And that if I couldn't do it there, I would find somewhere else that would let me do it. So I quit.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I was working at Neutrogena, and one woman that I really admired, and that I had never spoken to her personally, but I just remember recalling like every time she sent an email, like everyone would open it and everyone would read her analysts' reports all the time and every time she spoke people would listen. And she ran marketing. And I was talking to kind of my mentor about her. And I was like, okay, how do I get a job in marketing? So this woman's like, oh, well, to work in marketing here, you need to get an MBA. And me being me, I didn't think to myself, oh, I should finish and get my undergrad degree so I can go get an MBA. I was like, there must be some way around that.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, technically a college dropout. Yeah, I think people are like, oh, cool, you're a college dropout. I'm like, no, I like dropped out of college so I could work in a cubicle.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I basically was just like the intern who never left. Was invited to walk at graduation, but I think I'm still three credits short”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I asked them to extend it for a summer internship. And then I asked them to extend it into another thing. I just begged to stay. I like couldn't. Fathom the thought of going back to school. And I don't know how I did it, but they let me stay and they made me, like, I promised that I would take the rest of my credits online and that I would finish and get my degree. And I never did.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I was just enamored with the whole thing. I like a cubicle and I got an ID badge and I had my own desk and my own phone number and my own email and an email signature and just the idea of work and being like a business lady was so exciting to me and I just never wanted to go back to school. But I had to. So it ended. I had to go back for a semester and I was just so miserable. I had felt like I knew what was out there. I knew what it was like to work. This whole like corporate world existed and it was like, it was thrilling to me and I wanted to be a part of it. So after a semester back at school, I got another co-op and this time I got placed at Neutrogena, which is also owned by Johnson& Johnson in LA.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they told us something mind blowing on the first day, like 140,000 people work here. And I just couldn't wrap my head around that number. I remember I kept trying to relate it back to like the Penn State football stadium and how many people could fit in there.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I was taking a bunch of classes in the business school, and they had at Penn State what's called a co-op program, which is you take a semester off and you work for six months at a company. I was hating school, and I was hating going to classes and taking the tests and actually having to apply myself. So I read about this program and I was like, cool, you get credits and you don't have to go to school. And I decided to do it. And I was placed at Johnson& Johnson in Skillman, New Jersey. And I remember getting there on the first day. You know, it's Johnson Johnson's a huge company and this was their headquarters.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was like TV college. It was like college in the movies. And there were football games, and there were tons of people, and everyone's wearing school colors, and there's like a quad. I know that's normal on every campus, but it was just like all of the college things you saw in movies. And I was like, this is amazing. I picked a major called supply chain. It was like in the orientation they had said, you know, they were one of a handful of schools in the US offering supply chain as a major. And I was like, cool, how exclusive. And I chose that to study.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and it's so valuable and it's so important. And I just spent the first 10 years being in the US and just like being embarrassed of being Filipino.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know totally the opposite I think I think there was like two different experiences of immigrant kids, and they're the ones who embrace it. And they're the ones like me who are just immensely embarrassed of the experience. And I think it had a lot to do with, you know, the other kids at school or like wanting to fit in. But, you know, I only spoke English. I would like get mad at my parents when they would cook Filipino food because it would make like my school jacket like smell like food. And I was just, I don't know, I was like, I was a kid and I was just so embarrassed of the whole thing. And you kind of don't come to terms with that until you're like your early 20s”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, we'd a great life in the Philippines as far as I remember. It was presented to us as a very exciting opportunity that not a lot of people got. We had a couple of aunts and uncles who already lived on the East Coast and we were going to join them. And we'd never even met these aunts and uncles. So we were super excited about it. Obviously looking back now, it was just for my parents to continue to grow and have more opportunities to develop their careers and give a better life to us.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Insisted. I told my mom we were like, it snows there. We read about it. And we land at Newark Airport in like September. It was sweltering. It was super hot. And I think that was the first time I'd ever really experienced true disappointment.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Remember when I was seven years old, my parents told me that me and my brother and my mom were moving to the US and we'd never been and we were so excited and they told us stories about how in the US it snows and we went to this giant mall in Manila and bought snowsuits. I had a pink one and my little brother had a blue one. And we wore them on the plane. So this was my first big, big flight with my mom. My dad stayed behind because he didn't have a visa yet. And we wore snowsuits. I remember just being very sweaty on the plane. And this was like, I don't know, late September”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They seemed boring and uninspired. She wanted something that would last a long time, and she wanted to create a bag that would be eye-catching, something you'd want to show off at the airport. And so Jen approached a friend named Steph Corey who worked with her at Warby Parker. And the result of that partnership is away. It's a line of sleek suitcases that come in tons of colors like rose gold or violet or sky blue. And with perks like a built-in phone charger, the kind of bag you'd want to Instagram while you travel the world. And Jen's own story of traveling the world? It started when she was a kid in the Philippines. Her mom was a dentist and her dad was a business professor there. Until one day, when Jen found out that their lives were about to change.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you know, when you're standing at the baggage carousel at the airport, waiting for your bag to come around, and there's a never-ending parade of black suitcases going by, and every now and then the person next to you rushes to grab one of those bags only to realize it's not actually hers. This is a pretty common scenario, because for a lot of people, a suitcase is just the thing you shove all your stuff into when you go on a trip. You might have bought it for fifty bucks at TJ Maxx or on Amazon, and most of the time you shove it into a closet or under your bed between trips. And it probably only lasts a few years before the zipper breaks or the handle falls off, and most of us have always accepted that. That's just the way it is, right? Well, Jen Rubio didn't think so. And back in twenty fifteen she had a hunch that other people might agree. She hated how mid range suitcases were designed.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the plan was launch before Christmas, get a lot of press, sell a lot of suitcases. But we found out when we placed our order that there was no way that our bag would be ready before Christmas, which I don't know why it was so surprising to us. We were like, what do you mean? Like, we have this timeline and this spreadsheet. And it said that if we ordered the bags by August, we would have them for the holidays. And it was as if someone had said we had to stop doing the company.”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, one of my favorite parts of traveling is getting a feel for a neighborhood, the way locals do. A few summers ago, I was in Rome and stayed in an apartment I booked on Airbnb. It was tucked in a quiet neighborhood just outside the Roman forum. Every morning I'd walk to the corner cafe, grab an espresso, and just watch the world go by outside. I even managed to chat with the owner about the neighborhood he lived in for nearly forty years. And he got me thinking about my own neighborhood. There are incredible hiking trails and great restaurants and, of course, the beach. And when I'm traveling this summer, listing my own place on Airbnb could be a really smart way to let someone else experience the area the way I do, like a local. Listing your home on Airbnb while you're traveling is a great way to make some extra money. You could put the money toward your next trip. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much”
2019-03-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Away: Jen Rubio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT