In December 2019, Cassie Abel was having a moment. She was trying to run two small businesses and went into labor when her only employee, a part-timer, emailed saying she was taking a full-time job elsewhere.
ThenCOVIDhit. Her mother was hospitalized in the first wave, and her dad had a heart attack and was airlifted to a nearby hospital.
Her parents slowly recovered. Abel's businesses didn't rebound as quickly.
Clients at her PR marketing and consulting firm were paralyzed, not sure when the world would open up. Her women's outdoor apparel company,Wild Rye, was also facing uncertainty. "We had retailers emailing us, threatening that they were going to cancel major purchase orders because they didn't know what the future held," she says. But as people started escaping their homes and getting outside, they needed gear, and Wild Rye started to grow. Abel shuttered the consulting business and went all in. Now the Idaho-based CEO has 11 full-time employees and posted more than $4 million in sales last year, despite the impact of tariffs.
Hard work, vision, grit all got her there. And a little help from someone else.
'Negativity is noise'
In 2017, Tory Burch was in a sleek black-and-white ad campaign that included celebs likeReese Witherspoon, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jon Hamm andGwyneth Paltrow. They weren't modeling her juggernaut fashion fashion line, known for its "preppy boho" style, double-T logo, ballet flats and tunics. The campaign was titled#EmbraceAmbition.
It was a make-good of sorts. In an interview about her success, Burch was asked ("in a very rude way," she now says) if she described herself as ambitious.
Burch demurred. When the article came out, a friend gave some quick feedback: "Great article, but you really can't shy away from that word."
"The minute she said that, something switched in me. Of course we collectively need to own our ambition," Burch says on a video call from her sunny office, before an airport run for a flight to Paris.
Hillary Clinton had just lost the presidential election. There were questions about how ambitious women should or could be.
But Burch picked up the phone. When she called to ask people to participate in the campaign, "It was an overwhelming yes," she says, "Every person I called pretty much felt that this was kind of an unlock for them at the time."
When it came out, there were naysayers. "I've gotten so much flak, I mean, at every point in this company," she says. "My parents have this expression that has served me well: Negativity is noise."
Burch heard something else, too. "I can't even tell you how many people have said that [campaign] has really helped them think differently about their own life, their own journey, their own feelings about whatever they were doing or wanted to do."
Abel remembers it. "I love that motto," she says. "I grew up as an athlete. I was kind of a mega nerd at the same time. I felt like I got poked fun at because I was a try-hard and ambitious, and so that statement really resonated."
It's part of what inspired her to apply for theTory Burch Foundation Fellows Program, which at the time provided $5,000 grant funding, networking and other support to female founders. In the midst of the pandemic and her family's health crises and the business challenges she was facing, Abel had what she thought was another interview for the program. Then Burch came onscreen and told the group they had been selected as fellows.
"It was this moment of, all right, things are starting to turn around," Abel says, "Like this is exactly what I need, when I need it."
'Carry on and get it done'
Burch started her fashion line in 2004, and in the two decades since the industry has changed dramatically. Social media, fast fashion, e-commerce, supply chain disruptions, the onslaught of AI and other factors have made it more challenging — even as cultural phenomenons like"The Devil Wears Prada"and itshotly anticipated sequelmade fashion more accessible and mainstream.
But fashion, for Burch, was always a bit of a trojan horse. "My business plan was to build a global lifestyle brand so that I could start a foundation," Burch says. "I have no idea why I had such conviction around that idea, but I just instinctually did."
She said so in pitch after pitch. One investor shut her down quickly. "He basically looked at me and said, 'Never say that again.' He didn't put it as charity work, but he didn't have to," she recalls. Business and purpose, he made clear, did not go hand in hand.
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At the time they didn't. This was before Toms or Warby Parker promised to donate a pair of shoes or glasses for every pair purchased, before Dove's Self-Esteem Fund.
Burch held firm. She launched her fashion line, and five years later – before that "I didn't have the money quite honestly," she says – the Tory Burch Foundation.
In its early years, the foundation offered mentoring, coaching and low-interest small business loans. In 2015, it launched its fellowship program, quietly working with a small cohort of 10 entrepreneurs.
Now Burch is starting to see the scale of what she first envisioned. Yes, she has remained one of the few women at the top of a cutthroat industry that typically exalts men (she's been named to Forbes' Most Powerful Women list six times). The company she founded has an estimated value of$3.2 billion.
But she constantly wants to focus on other founders. This year the foundation will have 120 fellows. They've announced a goal to add$1 billion to the economythrough women entrepreneurs by 2030. Total so far: $342 million.
Ambitious? Without hesitation. In a world where less than 2% of VC funding goes to women-led businesses (a number that is declining even though women-led companies, on average, deliver higher rates of returndata shows), "we haven't made enough progress," Burch says. "We need to — what's the phrase? — carry on and get it done."
From fashion to empanadas?
Pilar Guzmán is the founder and CEO ofHalf Moon Empanadasin Miami. Empanadas are all they make. "It's one product, one brand, in airports," she says. She later adds, almost as an example of her training as a fellow in 2021, "We're also building something bigger: working to make the empanada an iconic part of the American food scene while opening doors and helping our team, our communities."
Fellows talk often about the community they find through the foundation: other women who understand what it is like to juggle a family and a start-up. Women who know how hard it is to fundraise. Women who can see how selling grab-and-go food that requires only one hand to customers rushing through an airport will make a successful business.
Guzmán had receipts: She'd built the business to $3 million in revenue. But growth stalled. "Very successful people would tell me, 'It's crazy to expand in airports, you're crazy Pilar,'" she says. This year, she's opening four new locations, including at Boston Logan and JFK, has 200 employees (whom she pays nearly $10 more per hour than industry average, she's proud to say) and is on track to hit $30 million in revenue this year.
"Most 'women's empowerment' positioning across the industry, especially in fashion, is a marketing smokescreen with an empowerment label," says Megan Mason, a branding strategist and founder ofthe Elle Collective. "Real economic impact requires comprehensive, intentional architecture."
The Tory Burch Foundation, she says, has "certainly" built that architecture. The fellowship is focused on early-stage businesses with a minimum annual revenue of $75,000. The 12-month intensive includes a financials bootcamp, pitch deck design, guidance on developing a target list of investors — and help landing those meetings — to help drive sustainable growth. To date, they have 500 fellows, with average annual revenue of more than $2 million, that's nearly 30 percent higher than the average women-owned businesses, based on data fromLendingTree. (Entrepreneurs remain fellows for life, gaining guidance at every stage of their company's growth.)
"Tory is playing to her strengths; as an entrepreneur she knows what it takes," says Jason Kelly, author of "The New Tycoons" and cohost ofThe Deal. "There’s also a very powerful fly-wheel effect because she is building this incredible network who have a vested interest in each other’s success, and that has a compounding effect. Having been given this opportunity, they'll pay it forward to another generation of entrepreneurs."
Beau Wangtrakuldee founded the Philadelphia-basedAmorSuiafter a chemical spill in the lab where she worked burned through her standard lab coat. Two years ago, she needed a $25,000 loan after landing a $1 million deal with the VA. She got an interest-free loan from the foundation helped her fulfill it — and led to another $5 million contract.
According to the foundation, entrepreneurs who participate in their programming grow faster, surpassing $1 million in annual revenue at 10 times the national average, and stay in business longer: 91% still in business after five years, compared to thenational average of 50%, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Only recently has Burch, now executive chairman and chief creative officer of the company, felt ready to be more open about how hard it all has been. So women like Cassie Abel and Pilar Guzmán and Beau Wangtrakuldee can know what's possible. "This has been a wonderful 20 years. It’s also been exhausting, challenging and at times brutal," she says.
Six or seven years ago, she called up the investor who told her to never mix purpose and business. "I'd just been at the Forbes event, and I said, 'You know what? They said purpose and business go hand in hand.' And he said, 'OK what do you want?' And I said, 'A check for the foundation, naturally.'"
He sent the check that year, and every year since.
Wendy Naugleis USA TODAY's Executive Editor of Entertainment. Follow her on Instagram @wendy_naugle.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Tory Burch told women to be ambitious. Then these women made millions
