YouSaid · the spoken record

Joan Barnes

lines on the record: 155
first: 2026-01-19
most recent: 2026-01-19
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

“Me and I love building that business until it was just over my head. But I really love the camaraderie of the team and the women I built it with. And I feel like what a privilege it was to be able to dream up something and have the right people at the right time and get the right investors to be able to make this a reality.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Both and absolutely the both and I think you have to definitely be on the right street corner at the right time when the bus comes by and know which one to get on and there were many of those moments but I also think that if I had given up where many people would have and probably I would have too if I was a little smarter different periods of time you know just walked away like oh god the franchise it doesn't work oh god the licensing has crumbled oh god hasbro's killed us you know what i mean just a million a million exits should have happened um but i was i was as i mentioned earlier i would fuse to let the damn business die i i'd let my marriage go i'd let my kids falter i mean i and i still don't know 25 years of therapy later i still do not know why i put that kind of effort into it wasn't like i had a lot of money into it at six thousand dollars you know i mean that was the total sum of my investment in this thing i mean i it's part of”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I'm proud of it. I mean, it's not my defining actually my recovery from cancer. I'm more proud of that and how I came through that”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I thought she meant like you don't expect to come back to your old self. You know what I mean? And I was like, okay, well, I'll deal with that when I deal with it. But I pretty much have. I mean, you know, I'm older, so I've got regular aging issues, but I'm pretty much myself.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had major ovarian cancer and it comes on very quickly. I figured it out quickly and they put me into surgery and it was heavy duty for a lot of years. But I think I'm a little bit naive guy, to be honest with you. I just never occurred to me that I would really die from this thing. So I just kept keeping on. And then I knew that because the oncologists kept telling me, you know, there's going to be life before cancer and there'll be life after.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I pretty much go to yoga every day, or maybe four times a week now. And I hike every day. And, well, it's not like I haven't had my fair share of things. I'm a cancer survivor. I mean, I've had my stuff too, but I just wonder.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. And there's still, I have friends that live in Oakland, and there's still a franchise on Oakland on Lakeshore Drive and kind of the kind of hot area over there. I mean, they're still around.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I liked the fact that I would tell my story pretty unvarnished, as I'm telling you about the whole eating disorder thing and women would come up to me afterwards and say, I've never told anybody, but I have an eating disorder too. It feels so good to know that someone like you who I looked up to and thought I wanted to live your life. And I always say, well, wait till you hear the story before you want to be me. You know what I mean? And so that felt good, but it was lonely. It was even more lonely to fly across the country and then lead a workshop and then fly home. I just didn't love it.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, Jim Marie now had a new chapter. And first of all, yoga works, I consulted to them for about a year and a half after they bought me. And then I decided that, while I had lost my privilege to be an entrepreneur, it didn't mean that I didn't love the whole idea of other women building their businesses. So I became a mentor slash consultant or whatever to other women who were running their businesses. And then I went on the speaking tour. I became a keynote speaker and was flown all over the place to speak to women's conferences.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. And here I had been selling my teachers all these years, and we're partners, so I would give them 50% of the revenue. That was never going to fly. And the truth is, I was not going to be able to make it work because unless I changed the way they got paid, which was too scary for me. I wasn't going to do it. So I sold it to Yoga Works.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The thing it's like restaurants. You go to a restaurant, it might be packed, but the margins are thin, and you go to a yoga studio and it might be packed, but it's just the capacity is limited. You can only fit a certain number of people in, and they're really hard businesses unless it's a super efficient model, a really hard business to make profitable.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was another jamboree franchise business. These service business, even though the classes are packed and everybody thinks it's super successful, it's just not.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had three locations, but they were really significant because they weren't like these old school places that were upstairs with purple walls. They were in real malls and we had like three studios and we had retail thing. And, you know, they were significant businesses.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I just don't. And I didn't want to have another breakdown. So I said, I'm going to sell the business, which I did, to Yoga Works, which was a national chain. They had at the time when they bought me, they had about 25 locations. They were in LA, but they'd buy other studios like me and change the branding. So now it went from the name I called it to Yoga Works.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm feeling completely obsessed with this business. I can't think about anything else. I don't want to see my kids. I don't want to talk to people. I just want to make this business work. I don't have that ubiquitous thing called balance. I don't know how to do that.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Open the one in Mill Valley where I lived, and I thought, gee, I want to be just like a little franchisee, I just want to have a little location, go home, have this thing, you know, blah, blah, blah. And then I opened one in another area of Marin County, Larkspur, and then I opened one in the city. And then I realized the same stuff is coming up for me again.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's what I thought. I can't do this nationally. I can't do a big rollout again. But maybe I could do a little Bay Area chain.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly that. That's what I would say to myself and say, Here you go because I start businesses for the phase of life I'm in and I still want to do like a senior living center because that's the stage of life I'm headed towards. But I'm not fully there yet. I don't want to go live in one of those places. But if I do, I want to start it”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“These were students in the class that I had known and people I had been fellow students with me or people I'd known from the community and stuff like that. And I thought, you know what? I guess I softened to the idea because I'm an entrepreneur. I love the idea of growing. I love service businesses. I love, you know, a business where you go in one way and an hour later you come out another way. And I thought. Okay, we'll do this.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Already done this, right? And I said, You know, I don't think I can do this again. I just kind of. And they said, Well, how about just a Bay Area chain”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That friend of mine that I was in the dance company with that, we shared the job at the Jewish Community Center. We stayed friends this whole time. And she called me and said, Come to a Go with class with me. And I said, I'm not a yogi, I'm a mountain biker. I'm a this, some of that. You know, that seems silly, but okay, friendship trumps, I'll go. And my first class, I fell in love. It just something cracked in me. I was able to access my emotions. It was just the way those poses were put together. I just loved it. And I became a yogi right from the get-go. And then people came up to me and said, oh, you're the Jimbarie lady. You should open up a chain of yoga studios.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And fitness was always part of your life anyway. Are a big fitness person and still are. And I guess. You were never really into yoga, but this is when you start to get exposed to yoga in the mid 90s.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, although some of us like to think that you're, you know. They're always doing push ups in the background, so you need to be vigilant. But I was really committed and I've been in full abstinence for 35 years. So I feel like it's behind me now.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I did not. I just was so focused guy on maintaining my recovery. That was the most important thing to me was that I could do that. But the company, I kept my stock because it was like, this was my baby. I can't sell this stuff. And the company went split a number of times. So it was kind of smart that I kept onto it. It was not smart knowingly, but it turned out well for me.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was not. Maybe I had signed something originally. I don't even remember that when I sold my shares to the investor, maybe I signed something that if there was ever an event that I would agree to, you know, I was sort of still out of it whenever that was happening. Did not know”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the Bay Area, this is in the South Bay. And I go to this restaurant and then I heard a bunch of entrepreneurial types, young sort of wannabe, Silicon Valley go-getters talking. And I heard them say, you know, a consumer company went public yesterday for quite a valuation. It's Jimboree. And I overhear this. And I thought, what? Jimboree went public? And I'm sort of half-ass interested, really interested, and I go up to where they're, you know, and I see a bunch of New York Times sitting on the little bench next to where you cash out. And I took a paper and I opened it up. And sure enough, in the financial section, I see one of those tombstone ads that Jimbury was going public.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Well, I mean, I left them when they were one was a freshman in college and one was in high school and I left and I never came back. I mean, they thought I was gone for 30 days and I was gone for almost three years. I mean, I came back periodically, but I wasn't living with them. You know, fortunately, their peer groups and their friends were much more important to them at that time than their mother. But I definitely needed to do some repair work. And we did.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You move back, and you, I guess, and now your daughters are grown up. I mean, I think they're close to my age, so they're in college. And you had come back to try and say this, you've written about this to kind of repair your relationship with them. There were some challenges”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he said, Joan, this is your business. You made this haul happen. I don't want you to ever think I took advantage of you and you were vulnerable. You go away. I will definitely buy you some of it or all of it, whatever you want, but I want you to really think about this. He was such a great guy. And I said, okay, I will. He paid me the whole time I was gone. I got my salary. And I called him halfway through that time and I said, Stuart, I need to sell. He said, how much do you want? How much would you be willing to sell? I said, Stuart, I don't like any other entrepreneur. I want a million dollars. And he said, okay, well, there is no public market for it. I'm going to leave you with 30% and I'll take 70%.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I told Stuart I was going, and then I called Stuart. And I called him because I thought my marriage wasn't going to make it either. And I told him that I wanted him if he would, because it wasn't public company or anything at that point. I wanted him to buy some of my stock or all of it because I wanted to have some financial security because I didn't think my marriage would make it.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not enough. They said you're going to need to go to long term because it's not like you plug the jug like an alcoholic. You have to create a whole new relationship with food because you need to eat. You just need to do it in a different way. But the thing that I really learned about it was that you cover because you're with like-minded people and that it's not the therapist thing. Quote colleagues that are also suffering from eating disorder are going to bust you, and eventually when I did get home, I went to that therapist. I said, if you ever have anybody like me in your office again, get them to treatment because that's where it happens.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Georgia. I was up in the Blue Hills of Georgia. It was one of the one and only eating disorder 30-day programs. There were millions of alcoholic programs, but this was for eating disorders.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was already hired somebody who's operational, but you know, from the press's point of view, I'm chairman of the board, you know what I mean? And I went away and they told me in the treatment center that I would never recover if I went home after 30 days and I needed to go to a long-term.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I told the investor that I was going away for 30 days and would he cover me? I had hired. I think by that time they'd already kicked me upstairs. I was chairman of the board.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so if one of my employees who became a friend took me to the hospital and they said, yeah, you're having a panic attack, you know, gave me whatever they give you for that stuff. And it just wouldn't go away. Then I decided to talk to somebody. Then I hired a therapist and I told them about my eating disorder. And they said, oh, we'll solve it here in the thing. And, you know, it's not solvable that way when it's as extreme as what I was doing. You know, I was, you know, I was a bulimic and I was an exercise addict and it was just not, and I was, you know, just I was not in a good place, let's just put it that way. And I decided I was going to go to a treatment center.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we had two kids, and we were both very much committed to our professional lives. And we were drifting apart because, you know, I didn't have the energy to hear him about his day-to-day shit and he didn't have the interest of mine. And, you know, so.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Presidential campaigns, or mayor or like Bradley in LA. He morphed into another business where he parlayed all his Is know how into that. So he was running his. And so neither one of us were manning the store. He was more involved than I was.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was a big time editor, but he morphed from that to running campaigns, running Bill Bradley's campaign and Jerry Brown's campaign. Oh.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I was basically hired someone to kind of raise my kids, except for the weekends. And the vacations, I was there. And my husband was, you know, he was now, you know, major. He's a big-time editor.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I had hired au pairs from the time my kids were little because I was working so much. And, you know, I would come home late and I'd be like, well, what's for dinner? You know, I mean, I just, you know, and.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At that point, I think I was still keeping it in. I was just embarrassed and I knew that I had all these franchisees that depending on me and I wanted to keep it together for them. And I said to the board or said to my main investor, I am going to let these people go as we both know they need to. Do you think maybe it's that you want to replace me to? Because I'd be down for this. No, the press love. Okay, I'll do my best.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did, and I managed it by building a gym in the Jimboree headquarters and making everybody comment lunchtime to a Roba's class so I could settle myself down. It was just not a good time for me. Everything looked great on the outside and on the inside I felt like I couldn't do this anymore.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, this is 1988 And again, from the outside, you are just one of the most successful female founders in America. You've got this incredible brand. It's expanding like crazy. All this money is coming in. The board wants 100 stores in the future. And you yourself are like crumbling inside. Like you are actually physically unhealthy. And also you've talked about this and written about it. You had an eating disorder that was serious.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They wanted me to do run a real business. I thought, you know what? I should go too. I'm over. Not only should the origin team be cut, I should be cut because I don't know what I'm doing either. We need somebody that really knows how to, who's done this before. It's one thing I'm a visionary. I could conceive what the store would look like. I can get it operating, but I'm not going to be the right person to replicate this up to hundreds of these things. I'm just not.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Start letting go of firing the people, the journalists that have been with you forever took the pay cuts, did everything, and I thought, I can't do this.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's go. Let's put down a business plan. I want 50 stores by year three or something. And now they're telling me I'm aware that I had what I call my origin team, the people who've been with me from the beginning, which we wore every hat. Okay, put your marketing in. Okay, put your this hat on because that's what you do when you're building, as you well know when you're building something. And now we needed the specialists. We needed someone who did this and someone who did that. And so my main investor said, Joan, and I knew too, it's time to let go of those people.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and because Stuart knew all these people, so he went to Harvard Endowment, Chemical Bank of New York, and they all came in.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was so ecstatic, and then you know, of course, the board, you know, just like all businesses, they saw it as a winner, and now that we were to go out and raise money. So within the next year, we raised $6 million.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was such a validation, and we did it all on our own. I didn't have to go to the board and I hired all the people. All of our staff went down and merchandised the stores. We opened up the boxes all damn night. And we greeted the customers the next day, and it was just a blowout.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were buying clothing. Yeah. And actually, I'm looking at my wall here. I'm looking at a picture of the first store because we were voted the best new design in 1986 or 1987, as well as doing the greatest dollars per square foot.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT