Meghan Markle got some business advice from Oprah Winfrey.
On the April 29 episode of Confessions of a Female Founder, the Duchess of Sussex’s podcast with Lemonada Media, she welcomed her friend and co-founder of IT Cosmetics, Jamie Kern Lima. The conversation included Meghan talking about launching her lifestyle brand, As ever, thanks to some wise wisdom from friends.
Meghan explained, “At the beginning, I just liked making jam. All I liked to do was just make jam and preserves. And it went from, ‘Okay, I’m gonna share this jam with lots of friends and family,’ to ‘People really like it and it brings me joy. So maybe I can share it more broadly.’ ”
“But even then, I was in so much fear of failure or opinion, that I wasn’t thinking big enough at first…I thought, ‘I’ll just do small batch jam from home.’ And I had to step back and look at what I was doing and saying, ‘Am I playing small because I want to play small? Or am I setting in motion playing small because I’m scared?’ ”
It was Winfrey, who was a guest at Meghan and Prince Harry’s wedding in 2018, who gave her some advice to consider.
“Oprah, who I know as a mentor and friend to you, same for me, she was the one that said, ‘There are tons of things you could put your name on. But for you and how you like to show up for people, once you figure out how to encapsulate your essence, then you’ll know.’ ”
Raspberry spread was one of the first products that launched for As ever, which sold out its first release in under an hour earlier this month.
Kern Lima also offered advice to Meghan as she got As ever off the ground.
Meghan said, “For me, starting a company, it’s newer, [I am] surrounded by very savvy business women friends. You and I had just become friends, and I was talking to you about business. I remember you said to me, ‘Okay, so what’s the timeline?’ I said, ‘Oh, a couple months from now.’ You said, ‘That’s too soon.’ And I didn’t want to hear that, but you’re right.”
“You planted a seed that became a knowing for me, and it gave me the grace to have the space to take my time until it was right,” she continued. “To really not be concerned about someone else’s urgency, or the media’s urgency, or speculation’s urgency, somehow becoming my urgency — to wait until you’re ready. Even if I didn’t want to hear it, it was the thing that I needed to hear.”
Kern Lima added, “If all of a sudden our timelines are being pushed out or something, we think we did something wrong. We think, ‘Oh, everyone else sure looks like they have it together on social media or whatever, it must just be me.’ Because a lot of times when you look at companies or you look at businesses or anything online, you know, you see the outcome or the external.”
Meghan agreed: “Yes, they create the illusion of — here’s the finished product and look at how great it is. It’s just tied up with a bow and the bow is perfect as opposed to, the process is not perfect. The process can be painful and it can be riddled with things that don’t just make you question your business, they make you question yourself.”
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Kern Lima’s appearance on Confessions of a Female Founder came one day after Meghan did her first-ever podcast interview as a guest on The Jamie Kern Lima Show. They discussed Meghan’s relationship with Prince Harry, her secret emails to Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet and Meghan’s future ambitions, including if she has plans to go into politics or write a memoir.
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