Gwyneth, Allyson Felix, Amy Griffin, and Cameron Diaz on Redefining Power

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2:09When you are pioneering anything or introducing new ideas to the culture, you get criticized. You do? Yeah. Did you hear about that? I didn't find the one. I found someone I respected and we made it the one. In a sort of longing kind of view of love, people understand each other as if by magic. Nothing in itself is addictive on the one hand. On the other hand, everything could be addictive if there's an emptiness in that person that needs to be filled. I now know that nobody changes until they change their energy. And when you change your energy, you change your life. I'm Gwyneth Paltrow. This is the Goop Podcast.

2:47Bringing together thought leaders, culture changers, creatives, founders and CEOs, scientists, doctors, healers and seekers. Here to start conversations. because simply asking questions and listening has the power to change the way we see the world. Here we go. A few weeks ago, we had our 10th Ingoop Health Wellness Summit in Los Angeles. This one in particular felt like a big homecoming for us. Part of what made it so special was that Gwyneth got to sit down with three brilliant women, Allison Felix, Amy Griffin, and Cameron Diaz. All three of these women are redefining what it means to be powerful.

3:27Allison is the most decorated Olympic track and field athlete of all time. She started her own footwear company after not feeling supported by her previous sponsor during her pregnancy. Amy is a huge champion and investor of women who pivoted back into her career after having children. And Cameron forged a new path for herself and co-founded Avaline and Organic Wine Company. During their panel conversation, they each shared the stories behind their life changes. And now we're glad you can listen in.

4:01Okay, so just for context, Allison here, she is the most decorated American track and field athlete of all time.

4:16She has 11 Olympic and 20 World Championship medals. Wow.

4:26And she's made history in lots of other ways too. Now on the end there is Amy Griffin, who's an amazing person, an investor. She is one of the biggest champions of women out there in the whole world. An incredible investor, mostly in female founders and just an extraordinary friend. And then you've got this lady over here, who's one of my best friends in the whole world. And you've really achieved an incredible career. Not only, she's still the biggest movie star ever, even after not working for 10 years. And of all my friends, probably the most curious and the most voracious learner. And she is a founder herself now, Aveline Wine, a better for you wine.

5:20How much do we love Avaline?

5:25So thank you for helping me welcome these amazing women. Okay. So let's get to it. I guess I would like to ask each of you, really, how for yourselves, how do you define power? Well, first I'll say the definition of power is something that I've always thought was, you think it's external and you think it's something as the way that someone sees you and that makes you powerful because of the way they talk to you and they look up to you and they see you on Instagram. But I think really what I've recognized both in my career and with GP as a friend, and I would say this with her in the room in front of you, both GP and Cameron have both been friends who you see in front of you and they do have the power, but I can say that why they are powerful is not because of what they do in front of all of you.

6:11It's because of what they do behind the scenes. And I can promise you that I've seen them not just with me, but with hundreds of women like today. But I think that's where power really comes from. So I think we have that power inverse backwards. Yeah. I mean, that really resonates with me as well. I think the ability to navigate life's storms, the adversity, you know, that we all face and the courage, the bravery that it takes to me, that's really at the core of what power is. And I think we all experience it in different ways and it evolves in us at different times. But yeah, manifesting that.

6:49I'm going to have to go with the same theme. I think it's power comes from within. It's not how others view you, as Amy said. And it's also with, you know, experience and how you weather the storms. Resilience is something I think is highly, we don't look at resilience as a, how it becomes tangible in our life. We think about like, okay, I'm going to make it through this, and on the other side, I'm just going to be happier, things are going to be easier. But you always carry the weight of that experience and lesson with you, and that becomes, that gains to your power. It's why it's so great getting older, actually.

7:32It's why you don't want to, nobody, for me, I'm in my 50s, I don't ever want to be in my 25. She's barely. I'm nearly 52. She does this all the time. But so are you. You barely. She turned 51 in August. I'm on my way to 52, baby. I get there before you. I'll let you know how it goes. But I think that we take that, as we get older, that all of that information and our ability to be more resilient and vulnerable at the same time, which doesn't sound like they go to hand in hand. But they're actually, like, they're the same as, you know, happiness and sadness. They touch each other. at all times you can't have one without the other.

8:12And so, you know, I think resilience and vulnerability is true power. How do you cultivate that resilience? Like, is it in how you don't react to something? Are you creating space between like an event and how you respond? I think it has to do with surrender because it's sort of anything that's rigid breaks. anything that can be fluid will go with the flow and there's so much information in the flow that's where all all the data is that's where all the information is in our bodies when we hold rigid whether it's in our beliefs or in our body or in our emotions we miss the opportunity to be taken with the information and that's where you know we're like humans are sponges we can't help it Like you look at children who are, you know, two, three years old and, you know, from birth to five, that, that, that growth is so insane because what, what are they doing with that growth?

9:15How are they getting there so rapidly? That's the most exponential, like, you know, growth there is in our, in our whole lifetime. It's because they're just soaking everything up and, you know, they're doing it, whether it's good for them or bad for them, whatever their environment is, they're soaking that up. and they're taking that and they're applying it every second of the day. So that sort of, I think, of rigidity is something that really stops us from being able to become resilient. It's really, and again, it's that thing that's like resilience and vulnerability. Being able to go with the flow and against something really powerful is, I think, also sort of one in the same.

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10:41And for our Goop listeners, mention Goop to receive up to$500 off your next meeting or event reservation rental fee. This promotion is valid for all new clients on select spaces, booked and actualized prior to December 30, 2025. and subject to availability. Convene for the moments that move your business. How do you guys cultivate your power? Do you have a practice around it? How do you relate to your power? I think a lot's changed for me in the last few years. Maybe it is getting older, maybe it's becoming wiser, maybe it's being a mother. But I think for me, a lot of it is leaning into the femininity, leaning into my feminine side.

11:21I think especially in the business world, even growing up in a family business where my father ran the business, I thought I had to, everything had to be masculine. So every time I walked into a room, I put a guard up. And every time I walked into a room, there was something I can't, there were things I couldn't even necessarily describe as to why they were masculine. But I think that there's something really powerful about flipping the switch about femininity and saying, no, no, no, I'm going to walk in the boardroom. I'm going to talk about my skirt and that it's cute. I'm going to talk about what the other women in the room and I'm going to say, look how cute she looks.

11:51And wow, you look beautiful today. And I'm going to lift another woman up and I'm not going to do what has been the traditional when I walk in a boardroom. And so just flipping that on its head was hard and kind of scary and kind of scary, but it's taken women like you to do that. And I think, well, I could go into this all day. Next question, but I think lifting each other up, we just got to keep pushing each other along. Yeah. I think for me, it's really taken time to come into my power. I think as an athlete for so long I've had to be hyper focused on just the performance I mean for us it's every four years I get an opportunity that's if I do it right 21 seconds long and so it's a lot and I think you know I was so focused on that for such a long time I didn't realize that I had power that I could speak that I could use my voice in different capacities and I think it took experience and really discovering it.

12:47And I think a lot of it was around motherhood and coming into that strength. But I think it's okay if it's a journey to get there. It's about discovering it. What spurred you to create your own brand? I know you really built it around this idea of female empowerment. And I think something might have happened when you were pregnant that you reacted to. Yes, it did. Thank you very much. Yes. When I was pregnant, I had been with Nike for almost a decade and I wasn't fully supported through my pregnancy. Basically what happened was maternal protections weren't offered. So in track and field, the contracts are performance based and you go to the Olympics, you go to a world championships, you get a bonus.

13:30You don't, you get a reduction. If you have a baby, there's nothing in place to protect you. And so I had a huge fight over asking for maternal protections, asking for time to be able to recover and get back to top form after having a baby. And so I actually did part ways with them over that. They eventually changed their policy when I wrote a New York Times op-ed about it. It was a great op-ed, by the way. Amazing.

14:01And then I had a beautiful, natural partnership with Athleta and everything changed. I had a true seat at the table. And I became empowered. I started to see how business can be done different, how women having a seat at the table really truly looks. And then I naturally went into starting my own footwear company. I learned that shoes haven't been made for women. The majority of shoes are made off of a last sneakers, a last, which is just a mold of a foot. And it's been a man's foot used to make women's sneakers. And so, yeah, I thought I was creating shoes that I could wear in the Olympics and I was like, okay, I'll have to do this myself.

14:40But once I learned that I was like, women deserve better. And I feel so passionate that I get to wake up and do that every day and just build community and say that we deserve more. Can I just say one thing about that? Yeah. In hearing that you designed a shoe for women, I think there's an incredible book, if you haven't read it called Invisible Women that talks about all the different sectors of how women have been left out of the conversation. And in it, one of the things that really struck me was that when the drug Ambien was first invented, that they actually never had women tested. Women were not included in the study, so women were wandering into hospitals like, ugh, because they weren't given the right amount of Ambien.

15:14So to think in every field, which is how bad medication is done, all medication is done, is dosed for a man's body. Tested on men, yeah. It's crazy. So I would love to talk to you each a little bit about motherhood, because I do think that, you know, we're all involved in business. We're all mothers. And, you know, having had a career before you became a mother, like, let's start, and you as well. I feel like you were a mother first, and then you really found your career afterwards. So how has being a mother changed your relationship to your professional life? I think that it's, you know, for me, it just became my priority.

16:02My work was always my priority, and my life sort of revolved around whatever film I was doing, and it was kind of like this excuse to not do anything else because I was just, I'm working, you know, and it was very fruitful. I mean, that kind of focus will get you places, but it wasn't, you know, after a while, it just wasn't fulfilling any longer because I knew what it was to make a movie. I've done it, I don't know how many times, but I've done a lot of them. So I, you know, kind of felt like it was time, you know, to explore other aspects of life. I met my husband who basically informed me and as you had prior that I was a mother and that I had to be a mother, which was her rally cry to me every time I walk into the room.

16:50You are a mother. You're going to be a mother. I was like, okay, relax. Do you have water in here? Is there already, I smell pasta, but my husband had the same idea. And so you guys won. And so, you know, being a mom now, it really is. It's just now it's everything. It's another aspect. It's been so healing. It's been the most healing experience of my life. And I'm so great I'm grateful that I did it actually when I did and not when I was young, because I would have children who hated me right now. They wouldn't be talking to me. But I have one, I hope that when I'm, you know, 75, she's going off the couch.

17:39When she's in sixth grade, she'll still want to talk to me. but I don't know was that a satisfying question I'm satisfied are you guys satisfied Allison how about you because you in the midst of this unbelievable career which is so physical such a different set of challenges you know than for someone like the two of us who are doing movies and then have a baby and it's like wow okay well how am I going to work this around my schedule in life but like this is your body, like your work is your body, and you created a human in your body. So how did you reconcile those things? It was challenging, but motherhood really just gave me a whole different outlook and perspective.

18:33I think I had always just felt like my purpose was medals. It was like medals, world records, that's what it's about. And having my daughter just shifted all of that, and it changed my purpose. and the way that I looked at success from only seeing it as a gold medal to how can I have impact and how can I show my daughter and teach her these different things through sport. And so it just, it motivated me even more and made me want to do more, just fired me up. And I love that it really just centered me and gave me a whole new outlook on how I approach sport and business as well. It just, it really pushed me in that direction.

19:13By the way, I love your Olympic necklace, like a very casual flex. Amy, so I think your journey is so interesting and so relevant to women here as well, because you got married on the younger side, you had four kids, and then you started to contemplate, okay, like, what would it mean for me to be more than just a mother? Can I give myself permission to do that. And you had this incredible passion for helping founders. So will you talk a little bit about that transition that you went through? Yeah, I was thinking about that. And I was thinking about how if there's one thing I can say outside of having my children or my marriage that I'm the most proud of is not a certain investment in one company.

19:59Although I do get really excited when I see a woman build something and I get to be part of it, having been an athlete, not like you, but an athlete. But that transition of me saying, I'm really going to do this and I'm going to be taken seriously because I'm going to take myself seriously was a really big moment in my life because I'd sat on, had the opportunity. My husband had a big career and I thought, well, that was just, that's my lot in life that I'm, I'm very Southern. I'm very rooted and making sure the children are taken care of. And I did every single PTA meeting. I ran them like you could not believe I ran, I ran the best PTA meeting on the planet to the point where the preschool head said to me at one point in time, my goodness, you could run a small to medium sized country.

20:42I said to her, why not a large country? But I had a friend that said to me at one point, she said, so I spoke at a conference once and she sat with me and she came running up to me and she said afterwards, don't tell people that you took a break. And I said, what do you mean? I mean, I did, I took a break. And so I did have this moment when I stopped, I was in marketing. I I worked at Sports Illustrated. I traveled the world, not as an athlete, wish I had, probably saw you run, but then took this break to raise my children. And I would say that the thing I'd say about that was I'm super proud that I had the ability to say, I'm not gonna be shameful of not knowing what I'm doing.

21:16I'm just gonna jump in and do what my skillset, what I'm good at, and I'm just gonna keep helping and trying and not gonna have any shame around it. The second thing I was gonna say about that though, that pause was that my husband also transitioned such that he now takes the kids the orthodontist. So I have that partnership. otherwise with four kids in New York City, I wouldn't be able to do that. So you can't have it all at one time. I think that is a myth. But did you feel at all like, oh boy, you know, everyone sees me as like the lady who runs PTA and now I'm stepping. That's why I'm so proud.

21:49I also didn't want to be known as my husband's wife. I didn't want to be known as his wife. And I think one of the things I say all the time is I had to really sit with myself and say, okay, you know, I want to make my own name for myself. And I can remember I was sitting in a meeting a few years ago in LA in a booth. And someone said, wait, oh, that's your husband. Oh, I had no idea. And I was like, yes, yes. And, and Alison, I just want to ask you again about, well, a little bit more about the shoes, because is it true that you're the first athlete to ever wear her own shoe brand in an event?

22:23Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. So thank you. yeah and for me you know being able to compete my last olympics was in tokyo and that was my my fifth and it was just a full circle moment and just the highlight of my career i had overcome so many so much adversity and all of that whole ordeal and making it back to the olympics when i really felt like i wasn't believed in and all of that and for me standing on that line was a moment where it was much bigger than sport. It was about being a representation to women and to mothers and to my own daughter. And then to be wearing, say, shoes that my company built was just, it was an incredible moment.

23:10That's amazing. 20 years of training. That's incredible. Right? 25? Wait, 5? 2020, yeah. Wow. Yeah. Long time. I want to ask you about your entrepreneurial journey. And, you know, here you were sort of, I don't know, because you went into this kind of beautiful hibernation from movies, and you really just, like, allowed yourself, like, you went into a chrysalis, and you met your husband, and you had your beautiful girl. And sort of towards the end of that, I think, is when you started incubating the idea for Avaline. Tell me a little bit about why you started that company, a wine company. What were you inspired by and why that instead of going back to do a movie?

24:01Well, I was kind of, you know, Catherine Power, my partner, who you all know Catherine Power. I'm sure she started Who, What, Where, Merit, Color, Makeup, and Versed Skin Care. And she's my partner in Avaline. she's just a phenomenal entrepreneur. I mean, she's just, it's like a masterclass with her. She really just knows how to do it. She understands not just how to, you know, the, the ins and outs of like the actual building of a business, but how to really find, like build a brand. And I think the brand is so important, you know, and Catherine and I were, you know, we're friends through my sister-in-law, Nicole Richie.

24:40And so whenever we were together, which was often at gatherings, we were just having a glass of wine. We'd find each other and we'd kind of sit off to the side. We're both kind of like, you know, home bodies and don't really like to go out. And we kind of, the quiet ones in the, yes, the quiet ones in the, in the, in the, in the crew. And we, one day we're just like at my house sitting, having, having a glass of wine on the porch and we're just going, I can't have another glass of I've had one, that's enough. And then it's like, why? You know, I used to be able to slam that shit.

25:17That wasn't actually what we said. Okay. But, but it was like, really, how does that, like, how does, you know, it's because we're in our, I'm in my forties, she's in her thirties, whatever. So we realized, you know, if we turned around the bottle to look at the back where we're so we're used to finding information you know ingredient lists nutritional values there was none of that there and that was the first time I'd ever questioned it and we both thought is this you know we worked so hard to like put clean beauty you know on our face and eat organic food and clean our houses with you know safe solutions and all these things and yet we'd never questioned our wine.

26:03And so we sort of took a deep dive into the winemaking process. And we didn't have to take that deep of a dive at first because it was once we found out that there was, you know, over 70 ingredients that could be added to the winemaking process without any oversight. What were they? Things we could not, you know, pronounce basically. And they were used for all different reasons, But the basics, which we found really, really shocking, was colors, sugars, and concentrates. Which in anything that you eat, like anytime I turn something over and it says color, sugar, or concentrate, I just don't consume it.