YouSaid · the spoken record
Joan Barnes
- lines on the record
- 155
- first
- 2026-01-19
- most recent
- 2026-01-19
- sittings or episodes
- 1
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- 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
“None of that stuff existed. None of it existed. And so I was in a dance company because I was still into dance and a woman there, she had been offered a job at the local Jewish community center to run the children's programming. And she was scared because she had two kids. And I said, why don't we share it? This was long before job shares were even... Even there weren't job shares that we were really kind of revolutionary. So we did. We shared our big $10,000 a year job and each made $5,000.”
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
“Hundred percent lonely and isolated nineteen seventy three was the lowest birth year since forever. And the media had dubbed the families or the people who were living in that era as dinks, double income, no kids. So having kids was against the grain. And so I was looking for comrades. I was looking for people who'd made the same choice. My family was a gazillion miles away. His family was in New York. My family was in Chicago. And yeah, lonely and isolated. So I wanted to meet some people who had made a similar choice.”
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 pregnant, and we didn't really plan it, but we knew we would want to have a family someday, and we've been married four years, so we decided, okay, we'll go for it. And I said I'd like to just pick up and go. The East Coast was dreary and I just couldn't get over the weather. So we just, you know, packed up everything and just kind of see our merica tour and went across the country and thought, well, what about here? And what about here? And was like, okay, well, let's try the next stop until we landed in San Francisco.”
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
“Business. From the outside, it looked like a runaway success, but inside there were serious problems. The business wasn't making enough money to pay back investors. The pressure was relentless, and the stress began to take a devastating toll on Joan's personal life and her mental health. Eventually, she was forced to make some incredibly hard decisions about the company and about herself. But before any of that, Joan grew up in a suburb of Chicago. She studied dance and English in college where she met a journalist named Bill Barnes. They got married and after a few years living on the east coast, they decided to move.”
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 go to New York to sign the deal. One of the investors is on the plane, the lawyer, you know, whatever. They're all coming for this big celebration. I get a call that afternoon I'm sitting in the hotel room and she says hello my name is Carol Anderson I'm the senior vice president of something and I said oh hi Carol I'll probably meet you tomorrow she says actually you won't the deal is off we're not coming That's what I thought. What?”
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