Ivanka Trump on Building an Authentic Life

1. 0:00 – 2:02

   Knowing What Excites You

   1. DSDavid Senra0:00

      [typewriter clacking] Right now in your life today, what is the most exciting part of your work life?

   2. ITIvanka Trump0:08

      My work life specifically, hmm. I think I have gotten to a place where I know myself, I know what I love, I know what I'm good at, I know what excites me, and where I can sustain excitement over a long period of time, which is, which is critical because I've really lived so many different lives. So now everything I apply myself to, I, I, I can do it with a lot of vigor, but also a lot of confidence that this is something I'm passionate about. So the things I'm doing right now that I really love and, and, and that I spring out of bed each morning to do are super mission-driven. So whether it's incubating companies from for-profit to, to non-for-profit businesses, um, investing in companies and, and founders that are really right at the edge of, of transformation, whether that be AI, biotech, neurotech, robotics, uh, even space. Really things that I think satisfy huge curiosity for me and enable me to, to learn and grow and expand, and founders that are taking on meaningful problems. What inspires me is, is people really swinging for things. I, I love individuals with huge imaginations and huge ideas. The ability to learn from them, um, to spend time with them, to be expanded by them is, I think, super interesting. And then I've also gone back to my real estate roots, which has been a lot of fun, and I'm working on an incredible project with my husband in the Mediterranean. It's, it's massive in scale.

   3. DSDavid Senra1:55

      I think that's an understatement. Can you explain?

   4. ITIvanka Trump1:57

      Yes, it is, it is very-

   5. DSDavid Senra1:58

      There's no power on this island.

   6. ITIvanka Trump2:00

      Yeah.

   7. DSDavid Senra2:00

      You're building, you're building everything from scratch,

2. 2:02 – 7:18

   The Sazan Island Project

   1. DSDavid Senra2:02

      correct?

   2. ITIvanka Trump2:02

      Well, it's an unbelievable, beautiful 1,400-hectare private island in the middle of the Mediterranean. We were on a friend's boat, and we stopped for a swim. Effectively, that's how we found it. We swam to the island. We went on a hike, barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were just captivated, and it stayed with us ever since. And over the course of, of many years, we developed the opportunity to help realize its potential and, and transform it, but with a lot of restraint and care because the land is so beautiful that really the architecture has to be fully integrated into it, almost rise from it. You know, it's not even a business for me, despite the scale of it. We-- not only the island, but we have five miles of beachfront directly across from the island, this beautiful peninsula with a lagoon on one side, the ocean on the other, um, beautiful white sand beaches. For me, this is... it feels more like a challenge than anything else. The, the culmination of all of my experience in real estate, all of my travel, a lot of reflection on how I want to live, how I think people increasingly are wanting to live and trying to really build something that's a tangible manifestation of that. That requires a lot of vision, um, the collaboration of some of the greatest masters that exist. So I was just, um... I was just there walking the lands, um, really just trying to sort of be with it and experience it alongside some of the greatest living architects of our time, like true masters of their craft, people with integrity so absolute, like there will be no compromise. And that's something we want to create there. So we're very excited.

   3. DSDavid Senra3:55

      What does that mean? People with integrity so complete there's no compromise in their vision? Is that what you mean?

   4. ITIvanka Trump4:01

      When you work with real artists, regardless of their medium, whether it's a canvas or real estate, a, a home, music, they don't compromise. Their integrity is precise and absolute, and they'll push themselves. They'll push everyone around them. And-

   5. DSDavid Senra4:20

      Are you guys hearing this?

   6. ITIvanka Trump4:21

      [laughs]

   7. DSDavid Senra4:22

      There's like six people off, off camera that I badger every day.

   8. ITIvanka Trump4:26

      That you drive absolutely crazy. But actually, that's where you get to something, you know? And, and part of it there is a push and pull. When you're working with an architect, you know, unless they're building a monument, right? It's... they're building a space that people have to interact with, not just observe like a canvas. They have to live in it. They have to get married in it. If it's a hotel, it's their home. So there's certain functional elements, like there's nothing uglier than a beautiful non-functional space.

   9. DSDavid Senra4:54

      Mm-hmm.

   10. ITIvanka Trump4:55

       Like, that's, to me, that's not a masterpiece because it wasn't fully thought through. So when you com-combine something that is architecturally incredibly meaningful and beautiful and intentional with a highly functional space, and one of the things I love about real estate is it's... well, first, it's tangible in a world where increasingly everything is not. Um, you see the result of years of work, and really to bring a project to life, it's years, sometimes a decade plus.

   11. DSDavid Senra5:32

       It also must feel good because many of the buildings that you've been involved in, this new project, you know it's gonna outlive you.

   12. ITIvanka Trump5:38

       Oh, yeah.

   13. DSDavid Senra5:39

       Like, to build something that you know lasts longer than your own lifetime.

   14. ITIvanka Trump5:43

       One of the things that I love so much, and I've worked on a lot of, um, incredible projects. The Old Post Office in Washington, D.C. was, um, was my baby. We acquired this incredible building built in the 1890s and-

   15. DSDavid Senra6:00

       Wow

   16. ITIvanka Trump6:00

       ... lovingly restored it and made it useful in its modern life. It was effectively a dilapidated post office and now is a, a thriving urban hotel. So that was an amazing project that took a very longUm, period of time to, to, to bring to life and, and, and just one example. But I think the thing I love the most, not only seeing it, because that's great, and experiencing it, and remember every decision you took through the design and development process, but also that people will stop me and tell me the story of a child's christening in one of the ballrooms.

   17. DSDavid Senra6:37

       Mm.

   18. ITIvanka Trump6:37

       Their daughter's wedding, they... Some, some experience they had that was a milestone life moment that somebody chose to have that happen in a space that I conceived alongside many other, um, talented people. So that to me is something really beautiful. That's something very, very unique and special about being a builder. You're building the stage for, um, people's lives and, um, and the realization of, of their dreams. So, and that's what we're gonna do with this project, Sazan. [laughs]

   19. DSDavid Senra7:16

       Yeah. How do, how do I say it?

   20. ITIvanka Trump7:17

       Sazan.

3. 7:18 – 13:06

   Knowing Who You Are

   1. DSDavid Senra7:18

      Sazan. Okay. I wanna go back to something you said that's very interesting. It's one of my favorite things about you. You said, "I know who I am."

   2. ITIvanka Trump7:23

      Mm.

   3. DSDavid Senra7:23

      So you were very kind. I was chasing Dana White to get him on the show forever, and he wasn't responding, and I text you, and you're very kind, and, like, you set that up immediately. But Dana has this thing. There's just, like, a simple genius to the way he operates his life, in my opinion, and his business, and the piece of advice that he would give to, like, young entrepreneurs is, like, if you know who you are, which is very difficult to do and takes a long time-

   4. ITIvanka Trump7:46

      Yeah

   5. DSDavid Senra7:46

      ... if you know who you are and what you wanna do, it's like the rest of your life is easy. You just, you already know who you are, you know what you wanna do. You just wake up, and you get after that goal. You started companies early. You're, how old were you when you fir- first started your first company?

   6. ITIvanka Trump8:00

      I was 22.

   7. DSDavid Senra8:03

      You didn't know who you were at 22-

   8. ITIvanka Trump8:05

      Yeah

   9. DSDavid Senra8:05

      ... correct? So can you talk about the process that you went through to now say truthfully that you know who you are?

   10. ITIvanka Trump8:12

       Well, I think if you don't know who you are, the world will tell you, [laughs] and it may not be an answer you want, right? So the world is noisy, especially when you have a certain level of visibility. It projects onto you as, uh, as much as it receives you. So I think you have to do the work, um, of, of really getting to know yourself and what feels right. Some of the hardest decisions I've taken, and sometimes it's really about saying no and setting boundaries or, um, changing course, when those decisions, regardless of how hard they are, align with your values, it always feels good. Like, it's hard. It can be difficult, but you never question it. You never second-guess, and you don't look back and wonder what if. It's the decisions you take that don't fully feel right, that don't align with, with your true self, with that, those core values that you hold, those are the things that I think you always regret. Oftentimes, people get there because they sort of forum shop decisions. They'll ask people about their life, "What should I do? What should I do?" And they, they almost make it like a process to make tough choices, and there's something very important about, you know, speaking to people who are knowledgeable and getting perspective and feedback. But ultimately, like, you can't outsource decision-making as it pertains to major decisions in your personal or professional life. You really have to, like, sit with it. Actually, you know, Dana, um, I think is, is a great example of somebody who he knows himself so well. He's so authentically who he is. Like, he would be wildly uncomfortable, like, wearing a mask and performing as, in some other role. I think Rick Rubin, I think so many great people. Dolly Parton.

   11. DSDavid Senra10:06

       Mm-hmm.

   12. ITIvanka Trump10:06

       I love her. She, like, is who she is, and she's always been the same, and, and she really owns it. And I think we're drawn as people, if you look at sort of pop culture, I think we're naturally drawn to people who are extremely authentic, especially over time, I think, if somebody's in the public eye for a long period of time. And yet so many people I know are really afraid to be themselves. The reality is you're gonna get criticized either way. You might as well be the best version of you possible.

   13. DSDavid Senra10:40

       I want to tell you about the presenting sponsor of this podcast, Ramp. I have been reading a lot about SpaceX lately. SpaceX is one of the most valuable private businesses in the world, and one of the main themes in the history of SpaceX is constantly attacking and questioning your cost. Ramp helps many of the most innovative businesses in the world do exactly that. The median company running on Ramp cuts their expenses by 5%. And one thing SpaceX has demonstrated is that a religious dedication to controlling costs can help actually increase revenue because you can pursue opportunities you couldn't otherwise, and we see that in the Ramp data too. The median company running on Ramp also grows their revenue by 16%. So when you're running your business on Ramp and your competitors are not, you have a massive competitive advantage that compounds over time. Ramp is the only platform designed to make your finance team faster and happier. Many of the top founders and CEOs I know run their business on Ramp. I run my business on Ramp, and you should too. Go to ramp.com to learn how they can help your business save time, save money, and grow revenue. That is ramp.com. How did you get to the point where, you know, you're 22 when you start your first company.

   14. ITIvanka Trump11:48

       Yeah.

   15. DSDavid Senra11:48

       You didn't know yourself. Now, several years later, you do. How did you do this?

   16. ITIvanka Trump11:54

       Well, I think, you know, it's, people will say trust your instinct, but I think instinct has to be developed. [laughs]

   17. DSDavid Senra11:59

       Mm-hmm.

   18. ITIvanka Trump11:59

       So my instinct when I was 22 is different from my instinct today because I think instinct is honed and refined over time. I think f- first and foremost, you have to get started, so you have to try things, and those micro wins that felt as big as the massive ones today, you start to develop reps and patterns and confidence, which is so important. It's really hard to, like, trust yourself or trust your gut if you're deeply insecure and you haven't developedA rhythm or you haven't had some successes, and this could be in entry-level beginning positions.

   19. DSDavid Senra12:34

       Mm-hmm.

   20. ITIvanka Trump12:35

       You know, I started out in real estate working for a developer in Brooklyn developing shopping malls. But those little, like, wins I had, um, with the construction teams or, you know, times when I felt like I rose to the occasion, they set the foundation for my instincts and, and, and for the confidence that, that would come later. I also think, and, and I think this is increasingly true, especially the more demands there are on you and your time, and all of us have this to some degree with social media and, um,

4. 13:06 – 16:30

   Creating Stillness

   1. ITIvanka Trump13:06

      and text messages and emails and, like, the access the world has into, like, the private sanctuary of our homes and our lives just through the devices that we, we carry with us. I think it requires a tremendous amount of discipline to create stillness. I have to be much more intentional about creating a contemplative routine than I did maybe twenty years ago. There's just a lot more coming at me, so I have to create a lot of boundaries for myself and my day. You know, I wake up, I cook the kids breakfast. Jared and I cook the kids breakfast. They prefer it when he does. [laughs]

   2. DSDavid Senra13:44

      [laughs]

   3. ITIvanka Trump13:44

      In which case, I'm the one pushing them out the door. They like his pancakes better. Your team, by the way, witnessed us running, as always, roughly two minutes late for the bus. We always get there on time.

   4. DSDavid Senra13:55

      [laughs]

   5. ITIvanka Trump13:55

      But we leave two minutes later than we're supposed to.

   6. DSDavid Senra13:57

      This is great. [laughs]

   7. ITIvanka Trump13:58

      So we're currently in a moment where each of the three-- each of my three children like completely different breakfasts.

   8. DSDavid Senra14:05

      Oh, no.

   9. ITIvanka Trump14:05

      So I'm, like, basically a short-order chef.

   10. DSDavid Senra14:07

       [laughs]

   11. ITIvanka Trump14:07

       And I've tried to find, like, that one thing that they will all eat, unsuccessfully so far. It used to be easier.

   12. DSDavid Senra14:14

       Yeah.

   13. ITIvanka Trump14:14

       I make breakfast, drop them off at the bus. They go to school quite early, so I normally have the ability right after drop-off to sit by the ocean, I live here in Miami, and meditate as the sun rises. And I'll pray, I'll reflect, I'll, I'll thank. I keep that beautiful moment in my day as sort of an anchor to, to both offer sort of thanks and gratitude to God and, and the universe, but also to reflect on what my priorities are for the day ahead, and I found that to be incredibly important and grounding. I come back to the house, I work out, and I do all of that in, you know, it's like an hour-and-a-half time span, a two-hour time span. But to me, that routine in the morning sets me up for success through the course of the day in terms of less reactivity, um, more, being much more proactive in, um, in terms of clear definition around what I want to accomplish that day. And then what everyone else wants me to learn about or accomplish will be secondary, as long as I sort of create clarity for myself around, around my goals. So, and then I have some version of that in the evening. A little more challenged, because the kids are all home and every night is a different adventure. But, um, but really trying to sort of find stillness so I can, I can sort of hear what the universe is, is telling me. Rick Rubin talks about this in, in his book The, The Creative Act, that the creator ultimately is just super attuned with what the universe is saying, and that the deeper you listen, the more you hear. And part of listening is listening to oneself. And if you don't create space and time for that, then I find that it's very easy to just be on the hamster wheel and be a lot less creative in your pursuits. It's funny, I, I listen to so many people and they have these eureka moments in the shower, which I do too.

   14. DSDavid Senra16:16

       Mm-hmm.

   15. ITIvanka Trump16:16

       But I think part of the reason that happens is because they don't have their cell phone in the shower.

   16. DSDavid Senra16:20

       No. [laughs]

   17. ITIvanka Trump16:21

       Like, they liter- whether it's five minutes or twenty minutes, they're there alone with their thoughts.

   18. DSDavid Senra16:25

       Yeah.

   19. ITIvanka Trump16:26

       And suddenly, um, the ideas start to come in.

5. 16:30 – 17:04

   Finding Mentors In Books

   1. DSDavid Senra16:30

      You mentioned The Creative Act. One thing that you and I have bonded over the last several years is that we're both voracious readers. You've given me a ton of books. We talk about books all the time. The last three people I've recorded with before you, uh, Rick Rubin, Dana White, and Ed Catmull, founder of Pixar. And, uh, I was on the phone with you yesterday, and what I realized that all four of you have in common, even though you work in vastly different industries in different ways, is you, you're essentially taking a lot of time to know yourself. And then once you did that, you're just building your business for you first.

6. 17:04 – 21:05

   Avoid Competition Through Authenticity

   1. ITIvanka Trump17:04

      A hundred percent. I-- Naval, who is a friend of mine and, and of Jared's, he always says, "Escape competition through authenticity." If you're competing, it's because you're copying. You know, build something that fully comes from you and that will feel most right, and it's also the thing that's least replicable. I love the idea of just escaping competition through authenticity, but you have to do the hard work of knowing who you are. You can't be authentically somebody else, right? I think part of the reason I like to read so much is, you know, we all wrestle with the same series of hard questions that all of humanity-

   2. DSDavid Senra17:46

      Yeah

   3. ITIvanka Trump17:46

      ... has wrestled with, right?

   4. DSDavid Senra17:47

      For thousands of years.

   5. ITIvanka Trump17:47

      It's-- and there are not that many of them, you know? There's humanity, like, all of, um, who we are, it just, um, like, echoes over time with, with these same questions. So I love to look at books, and, and the reading I like to do tends to be things that take on those hard questions. You know, what are the things worth sacrificing for? What are the gems of wisdom and insight that can be extracted f-from some of the most brilliant minds across so many fields? I love philosophy because they grapple with some of these tougher questions. AndFrom each of these amazing thinkers, you know, if I extract a few pieces of wisdom, that's just, like, a gem I put on, um, the chain with everything else. So I, you know, to me, that's very, very interesting. And then I think if you look at, in business, you have some of these people, and obviously you've, your life's work is trying to understand them and know them, whether they be living or dead. But you will have somebody who will distill sometimes 80 years of a life into a 300-page book-

   6. DSDavid Senra18:56

      Mm-hmm

   7. ITIvanka Trump18:57

      ... that you can buy for $30, and they'll tell you everything they've learned, everything they've experienced. I think there's just so much value in opening that book and listening to them.

   8. DSDavid Senra19:07

      It- it's silly not to.

   9. ITIvanka Trump19:08

      Yeah.

   10. DSDavid Senra19:08

       Yeah, I think, I- I really do think it's, like, irresponsible not to. You're- you're close to some of the Walton, uh, Walton-

   11. ITIvanka Trump19:13

       Yeah

   12. DSDavid Senra19:14

       ... family members.

   13. ITIvanka Trump19:14

       Yeah.

   14. DSDavid Senra19:15

       And I was just with one, uh, Sam's grandson, Sam Walton's grandson, at an event yesterday.

   15. ITIvanka Trump19:20

       Who's that?

   16. DSDavid Senra19:20

       Uh, Stuart.

   17. ITIvanka Trump19:21

       Oh, yeah.

   18. DSDavid Senra19:22

       Yeah.

   19. ITIvanka Trump19:22

       I know Stuart.

   20. DSDavid Senra19:22

       Yeah.

   21. ITIvanka Trump19:23

       He's great.

   22. DSDavid Senra19:23

       Yeah. And we were talking about that because there's actually some, like, I don't, I don't even know if I should say this publicly, but we'll, we'll see. [laughs] There's, uh, there's some writing of the co-author that Sam had on his, uh, autobiography-

   23. ITIvanka Trump19:37

       Yeah

   24. DSDavid Senra19:37

       ... 'cause Stuart listens to my podcast Founders, my other podcast Founders, and he's like, "I'm gonna try to get this to you just for y- I can't use it for, like, public consumption-

   25. ITIvanka Trump19:43

       Yeah

   26. DSDavid Senra19:43

       ... but just 'cause you... I'm really obsessed with Sam Walton, and I admire him greatly."

   27. ITIvanka Trump19:47

       Yeah.

   28. DSDavid Senra19:47

       And he's like, "Just to kinda, like, round out some things that you didn't know about him," which I- I was-

   29. ITIvanka Trump19:50

       And that's one of the best business books ever. Like, talk about a person who had a vision and just meticulously executed it over time.

   30. DSDavid Senra20:01

       But it's also an act of service because what's so remarkable about that book is he was writing it when he knew he was dying.
7. 21:05 – 21:29

   Reading As An X-Ray Of The Soul

   1. DSDavid Senra21:05

      her.

   2. ITIvanka Trump21:05

      It's a really hard thing to do. I mean, it's like an X-ray of the soul.

   3. DSDavid Senra21:09

      Yeah.

   4. ITIvanka Trump21:10

      What do I reveal? I mean, uh, great books, if you're not exposing, um, vulnerability, if you're not, like, really telling truth, they're not great books.

   5. DSDavid Senra21:19

      Yeah.

   6. ITIvanka Trump21:20

      So you have to be comfortable revealing yourself, the good and the bad. And obviously there's... You see it in books.

   7. DSDavid Senra21:27

      Yeah.

   8. ITIvanka Trump21:27

      There's a little, there's a little revisionist history

8. 21:29 – 24:55

   Phil Knight's Shoe Dog

   1. ITIvanka Trump21:29

      and a little-

   2. DSDavid Senra21:29

      Yeah

   3. ITIvanka Trump21:29

      ... shaping and smoothing of the edges, but if it's really gonna be great, um, actually Shoe Dog is a great one, another, like, amazing book-

   4. DSDavid Senra21:37

      You just read my mind

   5. ITIvanka Trump21:38

      ... by, by Phil Knight. Then you're really putting it out there and leaving it out there. And, and I know some incredibly successful people who have built enormous businesses, and then at 80, 85 they write a book, and they are petrified for the launch of that book.

   6. DSDavid Senra21:53

      Yeah.

   7. ITIvanka Trump21:53

      Like, more nervous than in acquiring a major company or so-

   8. DSDavid Senra21:58

      Yeah

   9. ITIvanka Trump21:58

      ... you know, it, because there's something, um, so vulnerable about doing it. Plus, it takes a tremendous amount of discipline to distill the wisdom, um, accumulated in a life into an understandable, relatable way, really, like, pull out the principles. You ask a great musician how they do it, like sometimes the great musicians can't teach you to play the guitar, right?

   10. DSDavid Senra22:22

       Yeah.

   11. ITIvanka Trump22:22

       Like, it's, it's like they don't know. They just do it.

   12. DSDavid Senra22:24

       Yeah.

   13. ITIvanka Trump22:25

       So I think for a lot of people, it's, like, an interesting exercise in even at a late stage in their journey kind of discovering, like, why what they've done has been so effective. What are the patterns over time? So some people recognize it while they're in it. Other people, it's just sort of, like, second nature.

   14. DSDavid Senra22:43

       I'm obsessed, as you know, with people that do things for a long period of time. Everybody thinks I have a fetish for old people. It's not that I have a fetish for old people.

   15. ITIvanka Trump22:48

       [laughs]

   16. DSDavid Senra22:49

       It's just, like, if I sit down with a 70-year-old entrepreneur that's been building his business for 50 years, there's stuff that he, like exactly what you said, he can't explain it, but it comes out in conversations, and you kinda piece it together. You read my mind with Shoe Dog 'cause I just, uh, finished reading it for the third or fourth time.

   17. ITIvanka Trump23:03

       Yeah.

   18. DSDavid Senra23:03

       And I just recorded another episode on it. It'll be out soon.

   19. ITIvanka Trump23:05

       That's one of, like, the great opening lines. What's the opening line? It was something about, you know, the pioneers and-

   20. DSDavid Senra23:11

       Okay, so he's, he's-

   21. ITIvanka Trump23:12

       "And then there was us."

   22. DSDavid Senra23:13

       He's in, he's in-

   23. ITIvanka Trump23:13

       Like, "Some died along the... Some made it, some died along, and then there were us."

   24. DSDavid Senra23:17

       Yeah, so he's in Oregon in the 1960s, and he's like, you know, he thought people from Oregon, they didn't think big. So no one around him, everybody's... In fact, everybody around him, including his father, is saying, "Don't do this weird, crazy idea that you have." But he says his track coach, his teacher, same person, and his co-founder of Nike, Bill Bowerman-

   25. ITIvanka Trump23:34

       Mm-hmm

   26. DSDavid Senra23:34

       ... took great pride in the fact that they were from Oregon because the Oregon Trail.

   27. ITIvanka Trump23:37

       Mm.

   28. DSDavid Senra23:37

       And they said that, uh, the, the, the cowards never started. The weak died along the way.

   29. ITIvanka Trump23:43

       And that leaves us.

   30. DSDavid Senra23:44

       That leaves us.
9. 24:55 – 29:39

   Meaning Redeemed By Hardship

   1. ITIvanka Trump24:55

      that I recently reread, and, um, it's interesting. I'm, I'm at a point now, and I'm, I'm, I'm reading a lot of new stuff, but I'm spending a lot more time revisiting things that had a profound impact on me. Because the act of rereading something at a different point in your life, you, you experience it a totally different way. So like with everything else, including you're asking me some of the things that I'm working on, for me, it's less and better. Less things, more focus, more intentionality, and, and, and the same is true of books. And it's been so beautiful at, at this point in my life to reread some of these great books. And one of my favorites is Man's Search for Meaning-

   2. DSDavid Senra25:35

      Mm

   3. ITIvanka Trump25:35

      ... by Viktor Frankl. And, you know, I was thinking about it when you were talking about just, like, hardship and struggle, and he certainly does not romanticize struggle. I mean, he endured the most difficult of, of human experiences, and he tells his story, um, Viktor Frankl, of having survived the Nazi concentration camps. But the idea that meaning can often be redeemed by the struggle. You don't find meaning when things are easy. You find meaning when things are difficult. And when things are extremely difficult, it's often that same meaning that helps you endure, and there's something so incredible about that. And, and, and I just think about it, and I'm, I've been talking to my, my children a lot about this book. I just gave it to my daughter, who's as voracious a reader as I am.

   4. DSDavid Senra26:25

      Mm.

   5. ITIvanka Trump26:25

      It's amazing. I l- I love it. She, like, blows me away.

   6. DSDavid Senra26:28

      That's a gift.

   7. ITIvanka Trump26:29

      Um, she goes to the bookstore probably once a week, um, to, to pick up something new, and she'll come back. She just came back with War and Peace under her arm. You know, the book is like-

   8. DSDavid Senra26:38

      Oh, my God

   9. ITIvanka Trump26:39

      ... it's like this. You know, it's like a doorstop.

   10. DSDavid Senra26:40

       We should say she's 14.

   11. ITIvanka Trump26:41

       She's 14.

   12. DSDavid Senra26:42

       [laughs]

   13. ITIvanka Trump26:42

       She's amazing. So she's got a, a tremendous curiosity and thirst to learn, and, and she also loves reading. But, but we were talking about this book recently. I had just given her Man's Search for Meaning, and this idea is so empowering that everything can be taken from you, and, you know, the people in, and Viktor Frankl himself in the concentration camp, really it feels like everything's been stripped from you, your family, everything. And yet there is a sliver of sovereignty that is how you experience that, how you react to that, how, you know, your ability to show up, your attitude in the face of enormous struggle and, and challenge. And I think that's so empowering because that's such an extreme example. But he has this beautiful quote I just emailed to her, and this will be a paraphrase, that, "Between stimulus and response, there's a space. In that space lies the freedom to respond and react. And in that reaction is your freedom and growth." So it's like finding that space between stimulus and, and response. So he encapsulates the idea of our ability to, to show up in great times-

   14. DSDavid Senra28:03

       Mm

   15. ITIvanka Trump28:03

       ... and also in the hardest of times, and the ability to, to really control our own mindset, which is extremely powerful.

   16. DSDavid Senra28:13

       I found one of my all-time favorite quotes when I was reading the book Zero to One. The quote says, "The single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas." That is exactly what AppLovin has done with their advertising platform, Axon. Axon connects you with over a billion potential new customers inside mobile games. Axon allows you to capture undivided attention. Axon ads are full-screen video ads that are watched for an average of 35 seconds. That is retention that blows other ad platforms out of the water. You can launch on Axon in minutes. You set the goal, and Axon achieves it. There's no complex setup, no expertise needed, and Axon scales quickly. They can put your ads in front of over a billion potential customers. Other businesses have seen immediate results, have scaled to hundreds of thousands of dollars of spend per day, and increased their revenue by millions. So you wanna get started quickly before all your competitors are on Axon, and you can do that by going to axon.ai/senra. That is axon.ai/senra. What was the most difficult period of your life professionally, when you were going through the most struggle or pain or indecision?

   17. ITIvanka Trump29:37

       I think

10. 29:39 – 31:16

    The Call To Government

    1. ITIvanka Trump29:39

       probably when I made the choice to go into government. It was incredibly challenging because I hadn't been planning to, and I was finally at that place where it was like a hockey stick.

    2. DSDavid Senra29:53

       You had a thriving business.

    3. ITIvanka Trump29:54

       Things were going-

    4. DSDavid Senra29:54

       Yeah

    5. ITIvanka Trump29:54

       ... so well, and I feel like you spend your 20s, like, really setting the foundation.

    6. DSDavid Senra30:00

       Mm-hmm.

    7. ITIvanka Trump30:00

       And then it was going. My fashion brand, we were doing over 800 million in sales annually. I was running all real estate, uh, acquisitions and development for the Trump Organization, so I was building the Old Post Office, um, at the same time as I was building Trump Doral, which is 800 acres here in Miami. I had three young children, very young in one case. Um, my son, Theo, was literally, like, on my hip.

    8. DSDavid Senra30:25

       Mm-hmm.

    9. ITIvanka Trump30:25

       He was six months old. And then my father won the presidency, and he said, "I need you." He'd never spent a night in Washington.Until his first night in the White House, and he didn't know anyone.

    10. DSDavid Senra30:38

        Yeah.

    11. ITIvanka Trump30:38

        You know, I mean, we lived in New York City. Half the politicians we knew, they were Democrats, who would come annually, [laughs]

    12. DSDavid Senra30:44

        [laughs]

    13. ITIvanka Trump30:44

        Uh, to, to fundraise and, um, introduce themselves. So he really knew no one. He was going to a new city, and he trusted my ability and Jared's ability. He trusted our judgment. He trusted our instincts. He trusted our intentions, the fact that we would be honest and truthful with him, and he asked us to go. Um, this was after he had won, uh, around a week and a half after. And so the complete change in trajectory of our whole lives-

    14. DSDavid Senra31:15

        It's like a 180

11. 31:16 – 41:42

    Handing Back The Keys

    1. ITIvanka Trump31:16

       ... it was, there was nothing. Normally, when people run for office, they sort of like set themselves up for it. They contemplated for 20 years. You know, they take on-

    2. DSDavid Senra31:25

       [laughs]

    3. ITIvanka Trump31:25

       ... smaller challenges, state and local races. You know, my father started with the presidency, won the presidency, and then said, "Hey, I need you." And I think both Jared and I in that moment, we looked at each other and we said, "You know, we can stick our head in the sand and, like, continue on as we had planned in developing our own lives and businesses," but would the 80-year-old version of ourself look back and be proud of that choice, proud of the decision to, to not go in? And I think we both knew, like, he's asking us for help. He's giving us an enormous opportunity to give back to a country we love so much. And even if it's, like, decades ahead of schedule, we should be so honored to do it. You know, I'm pretty intense, and I was, like, on a path, and now that path was, like, bearing unbelievable fruit and I was feeling I had those reps and doing things and achieving things was just easier than it had been when I was 22, and I completely changed the trajectory of my life. So that was, like, an adjustment, but an unbelievable period of growth for me. I think another period of growth for me was actually when I left government, and you kinda like hand back the keys. You know, there's no... You don't have like a foot in the door and a foot out the door. So you go through transition, you hand back the keys, and you're done. But now we're in a new city. We had left our old lives, and suddenly I'm at this point in my life where I have a lot of lived experience, like a crazy amount of lived experience when you think about it in the private sector and, um, in government service, but the slate is completely clean for me. And so that was an experience that was both frightening, because I wasn't used to it. From when I was a little kid, I actually have recently looked back. I saw a video somewhere that somebody had sent me, and it was me at 17 looking out over the New York City skyline, and I'm talking about, like, how I'm going to impact this unbelievably iconic cityscape, and there was no humility about it.

    4. DSDavid Senra33:28

       Yeah.

    5. ITIvanka Trump33:28

       Just like the, the confidence that you can only have when you're 17, you know?

    6. DSDavid Senra33:32

       Yeah.

    7. ITIvanka Trump33:32

       It's like before you actually start working and realize, "Hey, this is pretty hard." But I just knew, and I was so sure my whole life that I would be a builder, that I would build incredible projects, towers, hotels, resorts, and, um, alongside these great masters, and I was so, so confident in that. So I always knew what I wanted to do, and then it took me different ways. I also started, you know, my fashion brand, and I had a bunch of tech ventures, so it took me in a lot of unexpected places, but I felt like I had a clear path. When you leave, everything's all of a sudden, like, wiped clean, so you have to then... You talk about, like, knowing yourself. The best thing I did was not just, like, reconnect old wires and do the things I'd done before because that's what I knew. So I actually made the choice not to go back to our family business, not to restart my fashion brand because I wanted a new adventure and a new experience, and I was a different person. I had been so expanded by, by those years. So that was frightening and incredibly exciting to really say, "Okay, well, now I'm building for the next portion of my life. What did I enjoy? What was I great at? What did I feel uniquely capable at?" Um, but really, like, what do I love and how do I want to, to spend my time? And that's where I've been ever since, really, like, having, setting an incredibly high bar for, um, the places I'll commit my energy and time. Also, because now it's like the opportunity cost is so real. I have three kids who need me very much. I have a, a 14-year-old daughter who I mentioned, a 12-year-old son, and a 10-year-old son, and they all need me in different ways.

    8. DSDavid Senra35:20

       And it's gonna go by like that.

    9. ITIvanka Trump35:21

       Yeah. It's, I mean, with my 14-year-old, in four years-

    10. DSDavid Senra35:24

        Four years

    11. ITIvanka Trump35:25

        ... she'll be out of the house. And I think about, like, what does she need from me right now? You know, she's obviously, like, at that age as a teenage girl where me being home with her upstairs and the door closed is as important as when she was a baby, me like, you know, rocking her to sleep every night. It's just being here, watching [laughs] listening, being available.

    12. DSDavid Senra35:49

        Yeah.

    13. ITIvanka Trump35:49

        You know, a friend of mine, um, said to me recently, "When teenage girls start talking, drop everything you're doing. It doesn't matter what you're doing. Drop everything you're doing and listen, because they don't talk that often." You know, they talk a little bit less as they get older.

    14. DSDavid Senra36:01

        Yeah.

    15. ITIvanka Trump36:02

        And so that's what I want to make sure I'm here to do, so when she feels like telling me what's on her mind, when she feels like talking, I have the capacity to really listen. I think the me right now that's taking different challenges on, and they're no less ambitious, but I think the professional part of myself, that, like, drive, that, um, that hunger, that ambition, it's much more fully integrated into me as a human being than it was when I was 20.

    16. DSDavid Senra36:30

        Was it all work when you were 20?

    17. ITIvanka Trump36:32

        You know, I really, like, identified with achievement and success, and I got a lot of motivation from having these wins. So I wouldn't necessarily say that because I was always very family-oriented. I got married pretty young, started having children relatively young. I really had a lot of working woman energy.

    18. DSDavid Senra36:53

        Yeah.

    19. ITIvanka Trump36:53

        And now that energy, like, I'm still as driven, um, but I feel like I'm much more aligned within myself. The need to achieve does not drive me in any meaningful way. Everything I'm doing is because it's something that is like soul project. [laughs] You know, something that I'm deeply inspired by.

    20. DSDavid Senra37:14

        Mission-driven, something that gives you energy, something that you can put your soul into.

    21. ITIvanka Trump37:17

        For sure.

    22. DSDavid Senra37:18

        What-

    23. ITIvanka Trump37:18

        I mean, Alan Watts, another one of my... He says, and I think about this all the time, um, because I'm always thinking about, like, how to grow, um, how to, um, become a better version of myself, and he says that you are under no obligation to be who you were two minutes ago.

    24. DSDavid Senra37:34

        Yeah.

    25. ITIvanka Trump37:34

        And I think about that in the context that if you're not kind of a little bit embarrassed about who you were five years ago, you're not growing enough. So, like, I look back at me, like, 10 years ago, like, oh, you know, that cringe, but there was nothing wrong. I was just, like, in that developmental stage and, and I hope that in, you know, 10 years I look back and I view the me sitting and talking to you as not evolved to the place that I am at that point in time. And maybe that's why also interviewing, like, the 80-year-old, as you were saying. They've just, they've been through it, you know? And, and hopefully they've-

    26. DSDavid Senra38:12

        They're just further down the path, like

    27. ITIvanka Trump38:13

        ... emerged with perspective and context.

    28. DSDavid Senra38:15

        Yeah.

    29. ITIvanka Trump38:16

        Yeah.

    30. DSDavid Senra38:16

        There's just a lot of wisdom that, you know, you, you accumulate for six or seven decades of surviving, and in many cases they were successful.
12. 41:42 – 46:25

    The Reset In Miami

    1. ITIvanka Trump41:42

       just gravitate towards the playbook I knew. I actually wanted to really, like, sit with it. So I took around six months where I really was, I was extremely proactive in saying no to old partners, people had ideas.

    2. DSDavid Senra41:57

       Mm-hmm.

    3. ITIvanka Trump41:57

       And I really wanted to just, like, be in the moment. I wanted to, um, create and build a new life for my family here in Miami, which meant developing new routines and, um, new habits, finding, um, after-school activities that interested them, really connecting with them and connecting with our new environment. And that was one of the greatest things I did because it allowed me to set up my life here really intentionally and build somethingBuild a reality that I love living every single day. My brother-in-law always says, "The most happy people are happy to go to work, and they're happy to come home from work."

    4. DSDavid Senra42:36

       Oh, Josh?

    5. ITIvanka Trump42:37

       Yeah.

    6. DSDavid Senra42:37

       I've seen this.

    7. ITIvanka Trump42:38

       And I think that's 100% right, and you're as happy as your least happy child. So making sure my family was set up, and then I think I started to become curious, and, and part of my process is to read, to study. Part of the reason I love investing-

    8. DSDavid Senra42:56

       I was gonna go here next

    9. ITIvanka Trump42:57

       ... is I have a insane curiosity for what's out there, like what could be, what is, what people are doing, what people are building. I love being surrounded by, first and foremost, like, kind, good people, driven people, but also people with huge ambitions and wild imaginations and who see what the world can be, um, and, and have their finger on the pulse of that. So I think really spending time in a lot of different ecosystems that wouldn't have been necessarily natural to me coming out of a real estate and fashion background to really immerse myself in, in technology and robotics and, um, and biotech and, and even, you know, health tech. Um, I think there are some amazing things that are happening now where we can really, like, leverage information to catalyze our changes in our own behavior. You see all the wearables like Whoop and other companies like that. So I really wanted to spend a lot of time just with these people, learning from them and helping accelerate the businesses that I most believed in. And, and that put me on a, a beautiful path, and in some cases, that took me back to the beginning, like in, in the case with Sazan and, and, and what we're building there. I sort of came full circle, and s- and that project will ultimately be the culmination of all of my experience prior in, in real estate and, and with travel.

    10. DSDavid Senra44:22

        So this is one thing that I would love for you to explain your thinking on. When you shut down your business-

    11. ITIvanka Trump44:27

        Yeah

    12. DSDavid Senra44:27

        ... you went into government. You resigned from, like, 350 things.

    13. ITIvanka Trump44:30

        Yeah.

    14. DSDavid Senra44:31

        Now you have this-

    15. ITIvanka Trump44:32

        You literally sit with the Office of Government Ethics, and they review your whole life, and they tell you if anything could potentially be a conflict of interest. You either have to divest of it, you have to put it into trust. So they go through everything, and they're, they just determine it, and they tell you what to do, and then you go back. You've done it. You show it to them, and then they have to stamp it. It was like a wild untethering from the life you were building, you know, in, like, super small ways and then much larger, you know, selling businesses and selling assets, in some cases, buildings. So it was a very unique experience, but then you're really, like, in it and free of, of all you had been doing in the past.

    16. DSDavid Senra45:16

        But I can't help but think in this, like, new reset, this new, like, rebuilding of your life post-White House down in Miami, you wouldn't even be involved in 350 things today. Am I wrong about that? 'Cause, like, I feel the conversations we have, you're, you have th- these reoccurring themes. It's like fewer, deeper, fewer, better.

    17. ITIvanka Trump45:33

        For sure.

    18. DSDavid Senra45:33

        Can you explain the change of decision-making there?

    19. ITIvanka Trump45:37

        You think about moments in your life, and I think that moment was an inflection for me in, in, in so many ways. I emerged a very different person, but I think one of the things that also happened is that at a time when I was, like, really running and really happy with the trajectory my life was headed on, the treadmill stopped. I completely pivoted, and that afforded me the opportunity later to decide, like, which races I was [laughs] gonna compete in versus, versus not. So there's something that doesn't typically happen to somebody when they're in their early 30s. You know, that's when you're, like, very tethered to the path that you've charted for yourself. So I think in the end, it was a great blessing. Like, do I, A, think my life would have turned out great? Uh, y- sure, right? Um,

13. 46:25 – 50:13

    Less And Better

    1. ITIvanka Trump46:25

       but it did give me a lot of perspective, and it gave me the ability to really, like, mark things in my mind to, to market, create a lot more simplicity for myself, really only commit to building things that I would be passionate about over the long term. You know, some of the things I was working on were legacies of, like, my early 20s where I was just getting started, and, and I think part of what you should be doing when you're young is, like, throwing a bunch of stuff against the wall and, and seeing what fires you up, seeing... You have to have experience, and sometimes the best experiences are the horrible ones because you know that's not, like, the right path for you. Some of the best bosses are the worst ones because you learn from them how not to treat people, right? So I think it's, it's all, it's all good, but I think the whole experience of, like, detaching from everything that I had built up to that point, and then as, like, a more fully formed adult, um, coming back and, and being super intentional was very clarifying. You know, Jared loves the book Essentialism, and we talk about it all the time because for him, like, simplicity is king. He loves distilling complex things and ideas and systems into the most simple version, and I think you can find a lot of peace in your life when, when you're able to do that, and it's, it's hard. It's a very hard thing. You know, there's, like, the famous line, "I wrote a long letter because I didn't have time to write a short one." Like, I think about that. It's, like, much harder to write something precise and to drill down why it's so challenging to write a book because you're distilling complicated ideas, a complicated life story into 300 pages with clear takeaways.

    2. DSDavid Senra48:09

       Deel is how the best founders turn the world into their talent pool. I've been studying how history's greatest founders operate for a decade, and one thing they all have in common is they understand that recruiting and hiring the very best talent is your most important priority. A players recognize other A players, which is why top companies like Ramp, Shopify, Eleven Labs, Uber, and DoorDash all use Deel. Many of the top founders I know have personally invested in Deel after using their product, and what they discovered is that Deel is the best company in the world at building infrastructure for global hiring. Deel will help your business hire, pay, and manage any worker anywhere in the world so you can retain the best talent anywhere and spend the rest of your time focusing on what you do best, delivering value to your customers. The founder of Eleven Labs has a great description of the value Deel can give your company. He said, "We built Eleven Labs to break down language and communication barriers. With Deel enabling us to hire and support exceptional talent anywhere, we can accelerate our innovation and bring more voices, stories, and ideas to every corner of the world." Deel is trusted by over forty thousand businesses. Learn how they can help your business today by going to deel.com/senra. That is deel.com/senra. Jared keeps hounding me to do an episode of Founders on the book Essentialism.

    3. ITIvanka Trump49:24

       Yeah.

    4. DSDavid Senra49:24

       And the more I talk to him about it, the more I think it's related to why he's so good at doing deals, because he's searching for the most important thing, the, the essential thing.

    5. ITIvanka Trump49:33

       Yep.

    6. DSDavid Senra49:33

       And once you identify that... Um, I got to have lunch with Sam Zell before he died.

    7. ITIvanka Trump49:36

       Yeah.

    8. DSDavid Senra49:36

       Because our mutual friend Rick Gerson is the one that set up that lunch, and one thing that I talked to Rick about is, like, he was mentored by Sam for twenty-five years.

    9. ITIvanka Trump49:43

       Hmm.

    10. DSDavid Senra49:44

        And he's just like, "I would-- I didn't know anything. I, I, I was in my early twenties when I met him, and I'd bring him a deal and I'd be like, 'You know, there's like ten things we have to take care of.' And Sam would, Sam Zell would look at it, he's like, 'There's one.'"

    11. ITIvanka Trump49:54

        Yeah.

    12. DSDavid Senra49:54

        "If we take care of point number five, then everything else will work itself out." And I asked Sam about that, and he's like, "I learned that from Jay Prisker."

    13. ITIvanka Trump50:02

        Yeah.

    14. DSDavid Senra50:02

        Which is some people consider the best deal guy of all time. And he's like, "I would, used to bring him deals when I was in my early twenties." Like this whole thing is replaying, and I'm like, "Look at all these things we have to do." And Jay's like, "No, you only have to do one. You have one problem here to solve, and the rest..."

14. 50:13 – 55:54

    Finding The One Thread

    1. ITIvanka Trump50:13

       The best leaders, the best entrepreneurs, they can see clearly. They can find the signal and the noise. I think about it almost like the golden thread. There's one thread you can pull and the sweater unravels, or you can do a thousand different things. So really honing in on what are the variables that matter most, and that's not just true of business, that's true in life. Like, what are the times that really matter that you need to be there for your kids? And are you showing up in those moments for, for your spouse, for, for your friends? And I think being able to see clearly, that's everything. So you think about these great founders, and they're solving meaningful problems oftentimes simply, right? Like they're removing a lot of friction, um, to people's lived experiences with products or services. And then they're distributing it aggressively, right? So it's not just the idea. The idea is, is becoming known and being distributed to the consumer, and then they're enduring over the hardships that will inevitably come as they build a big, meaningful business. So that ability to then do that, but do it over time, um, with the same level of commitment, stamina, passion, and, like, fundamentally, that's what entrepreneurship is.

    2. DSDavid Senra51:37

       I'm kind of obsessed now about this idea of this reset that you got to have, you know, uh, because it happened after probably a great deal of pain-

    3. ITIvanka Trump51:46

       Mm.

    4. DSDavid Senra51:46

       I would imagine.

    5. ITIvanka Trump51:47

       Not pain, just challenge, right? Like i-intensity, um, growth. These were amazing life lessons. Like we went to DC completely green, including my father. We put a lot of lead on the board, and we left that experience really proud of what we had accomplished, but we were drinking water through a fire hose. We were learning everything real time. What we could get done in the third year versus the first or the fourth year versus the second was a different game.

    6. DSDavid Senra52:21

       What was the feeling when it ended? Relief?

    7. ITIvanka Trump52:26

       For me, this had not been my life plan.

    8. DSDavid Senra52:28

       Yeah.

    9. ITIvanka Trump52:28

       But I think I, I responded in a way that I'm proud of to, to the moment. You know, I look at a lot of people, they call it Potomac Fever. You know, they can't help... They-- Once you're close to that level of action and power, you even see it with business leaders, they just, like, gravitate towards it.

    10. DSDavid Senra52:44

        Mm-hmm.

    11. ITIvanka Trump52:45

        It's very hard, and you see them, they hang around the hoop, they go into the private sector for around two weeks until they cycle back in at, like, a slightly higher position. But for me, it was always about being asked to serve, being honored by that request, and feeling a great privilege in being able to do it, feeling really good about the body of work we were able to accomplish. Like I, you know, I personally was entrusted to work on issues like workforce development, vocational education, apprenticeship expansion, all things that are incredibly and increasingly meaningful in light of the disruptions that are coming with AI. Doubling the child tax credit, forty million Americans benefited on average twenty-five hundred dollars a family by the expansion of the child tax credit. That is incredibly meaningful work. Um, paid family leave, the first ever national plan, um, federal employees having access to paid leave for the first time. So, you know, human trafficking, nine pieces of legislation I championed that were passed into law to combat child exploitation and human trafficking. Um, environmental stewardship with the Great American Outdoors Act, which was the largest piece of environmental legislation passed since the creation of the national parks by Teddy Roosevelt.

    12. DSDavid Senra54:08

        Teddy Roosevelt.

    13. ITIvanka Trump54:09

        So it was this, uh, unbelievable piece of legislation to help protect and be good stewards ofOur incredible, um, national park system and on and on in, in areas that I found to be deeply important and, and meaningful. But now I'm in a new section of my life, and, and I know for me that, you know, the first time around, I could theoretically... I could imagine it would be intense, and I would know sort of the sacrifice my children would have to bear. I would imagine it. But, you know, now I know how intense it is. I, I know that you can't dabble, and, um, and I know that my children really need me there for them, and I'm not willing to make them bear the sacrifice of, of, of, of serving again. And, and I'm extraordinarily inspired by the ability to impact positive change in the private sector. So most of the things I'm building, whether it's a company like Planet Harvest, which, um, I co-founded with my good friend Melissa Ackerman, that's helping find use for the forty percent of fruits and vegetables we grow in this country every single year that don't even make it out of the field, that get plowed under because they don't meet a cosmetic specification that relates to size and shape. So perfectly nutritious food that we literally plow into the ground, that's zero revenue for the farmer after they've spent all the money to bring it to the point where it's about to be picked, that's not going into communities that, that need this healthy and nutritious produce, and that has tons of environmental externalities associated with that amount of waste.

15. 55:54 – 1:03:38

    Turning Waste Into An Asset

    1. ITIvanka Trump55:54

       And-

    2. DSDavid Senra55:54

       So how do you take something that was a waste product and turn it into an asset or something that's actually usable? How does Planet Harvest do that?

    3. ITIvanka Trump56:00

       Simply, it, it had been done that way because it had always been done that way, and there was no secondary market for any fruit or vegetable that didn't meet an exact specification in terms of size and color sometimes, even though the taste and the quality were in no way compromised. So there was just no market for it. So we said, "Well, that makes no sense at all, and let's stimulate the demand side and create demand so that we could support these small and medium-sized farmers." And this is, you know, going back to just, like, listening. I started listening during the COVID pandemic to the challenges of farmers, small and medium-sized farmers, and that was an extreme situation because the supply chain just completely shut, right? So if you had a farm and you had a perishable product like a strawberry, suddenly all the restaurants are closed. Unless you had an account with Walmart, you had nowhere to sell your produce into, and so you'd till it into the ground. As part of COVID and as part of the CARES Act, I created something called the Farmers to Family Food Box program, where we created grants to buy this great product and surge it into communities in need, keeping these small and medium-sized farms alive and thriving during this incredibly difficult time, saving the job of the distributors who would transport, um, between communities and, and the farms and, and obviously feeding a lot of people who were in need. But at that time, I started looking at the business more generally and realizing, like, why isn't there a secondary market? Like, why aren't these great strawberries, um, going to a juicer if they can't be displayed in the fresh aisle at Walmart because they don't meet cosmetic specification that's really exact? You know, it's like everything is so uniform in size. It's very different in other areas of the world. In Europe, it's, like, organic.

    4. DSDavid Senra57:53

       Yeah.

    5. ITIvanka Trump57:53

       Things are slightly bigger or smaller. So we sought, me and my partner, to, uh, start to stimulate demand by working with large consumers and sharing with them the issue and getting offtake for these small and medium-sized farmers that's meaningful. So companies from Chobani, now all of the fruit that we find in their beautiful yogurt products and smoothies-

    6. DSDavid Senra58:16

       Oh, yeah. These-

    7. ITIvanka Trump58:17

       ... is all sourced by Planet Harvest-

    8. DSDavid Senra58:19

       You just mentioned it

    9. ITIvanka Trump58:19

       ... from small and medium farmers. That would've been a hundred percent waste. It would've been tilled under. So, you know, it's an amazing thing that in America we don't have a lack of produce being grown. We have an enormous amount of produce being wasted, four hundred million pounds in strawberry alone, um-

    10. DSDavid Senra58:40

        Jesus

    11. ITIvanka Trump58:40

        ... that's being tilled into the earth as opposed to going into yogurt or ice cream.

    12. DSDavid Senra58:45

        Why do they put it back into the earth?

    13. ITIvanka Trump58:47

        Well, because they can't even afford to give it away. That would mean somebody would have to pick it-

    14. DSDavid Senra58:51

        Oh

    15. ITIvanka Trump58:51

        ... and they would have to package it, and then they would have to ship it.

    16. DSDavid Senra58:54

        Okay.

    17. ITIvanka Trump58:54

        And so there's no incentive to do anything other than to look at its size and then throw it into a ditch, which also means more fertilizer. Oftentimes, the crops have to be sprayed more because of the, um, the flies will be attracted to the waste that's left in the field. My partner today is with Fresh Express in Salinas, California, and it looks like you go after a lettuce harvest and you look at the field, it looks like the field is full of lettuce. But how little of what's being grown is actually being taken and served to communities and how much of it is being wasted is horrific. And once you start to educate people on the problem, they wanna be part of the solution. So we're now partners with Chiquita Banana. We're partners with Chobani. We're working with large-scale restaurants and grocers and everyone who wants to be part of the solution of how do we get this into, um, pre-made food, into food service, into grocery stores in a way that's sustainable for and, and super beneficial for, for these farmers who have a very tough job to begin with. So the incremental revenue to them is, is, is deeply meaningful, and oftentimes it's the difference between a third-generation farm becoming a fourth-generation farm or, or not. So that's work I'm really passionate about, and that's the type of problem that... Jared says something, um, that I think about all the time, that he loves being contrarian by being obviousAnd, like, this is such an obvious waste, and there should be a market for this beautiful produce, and yet it's being discarded. So I love solving problems that are obvious. I love talking with people like Hamdi from Chobani and saying, "Did you know this was happening? Forty percent of produce grown in America doesn't leave the field," and him saying, "How can I help?" So that's a really, like, mission-driven business that, that I'm, I'm deeply passionate about but I think will scale on a very, very meaningful way while, while doing a lot of good. You know, on the other side, I'm working on incubating a bunch of non-for-profits, so something that I'm really excited about came from a conversation I had with a great friend, um, the technology investor who you know, Elad Gil.

    18. DSDavid Senra1:01:15

        Yeah.

    19. ITIvanka Trump1:01:16

        Um, and we were talking... This was years ago, and we were talking about what are some of the positive use cases for AI. Like, what is the, the light in the force, if you will, and that isn't being, um, executed upon currently. And we started talking about how so much of history's great works of information and literature are not accessible to so many people around the globe due to lack of access. Maybe they don't have a library in close proximity. Maybe they can't afford to buy a $30 book from Simon & Schuster on the Stoics and/or Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. Maybe they live in a country where there's no translation for that work in, in their native tongue. So we started thinking about how AI, specifically now that generative, um, AI has gotten so good, that we could create high-fidelity translations of these incredible literary works that are in the public domain anyway. So you think about Dostoevsky. You think about Bronte. You think about Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus. All of these works are available in the public domain, so how can we use AI to translate them into all the world's commonly spoken languages and make them accessible for free, um, to everyone in either text form or as an audiobook? So we're working with a lot of the, um, large language labs to do exactly that, to both do the translations, um, in a really great high-fidelity way in most of the world's spoken languages to make it accessible for free to everyone who has internet access and to also have audio translations. You can actually even query into the text, um, and, and ask questions as, as you read along. So there's no reason, whether it's a high school student in Philadelphia who can't afford to buy Jane Eyre for their eighth-grade class, like, there's no reason, if that's in the public domain, they shouldn't be able to have access to it in a beautiful, accessible way. And some of the stuff you can find online, but it's, it's-

    20. DSDavid Senra1:03:30

        I, I go to-

    21. ITIvanka Trump1:03:30

        ... not for consumption.

    22. DSDavid Senra1:03:31

        No, I go to these websites.

    23. ITIvanka Trump1:03:32

        Right?

    24. DSDavid Senra1:03:32

        Obviously, I'm obsessed. I read more Norma Stabler, so, so I go to these websites, too, and the format's terrible. This is-

16. 1:03:38 – 1:12:07

    Democratizing The World's Great Books

    1. ITIvanka Trump1:03:38

       They'll scan pages of a book in-

    2. DSDavid Senra1:03:39

       But-

    3. ITIvanka Trump1:03:39

       ... and upload it into the universe, but this is, like, a product that's meant for a consumer. We're calling it... We haven't launched yet, but we're, we're about to launch with the first 1,000 works, and we're gonna learn a lot, and people will give us feedback, um, on each of the translations. But imagine now Meditations will be translated into most of the world's spoken languages, so we're covering, like, 95% of all languages spoken, and available for free if you have internet access. So we're democratizing access to this incredible knowledge. We're calling it, uh, Alexandria. But that's just a really fun project, and, and that came, uh, out of a conversation that I had with Elad where I'm like, "What are you most excited about that's not being done?"

    4. DSDavid Senra1:04:20

       Mm-hmm.

    5. ITIvanka Trump1:04:21

       And he told me, he's like, "There are so many unbelievable works by the greatest thinkers humanity's ever produced that just still aren't accessible, and that doesn't need to be true." So I've been helping him realize, uh, this dream of, of making it available.

    6. DSDavid Senra1:04:36

       Yeah, any, anything I can do to help on that project, obviously you know it's, like, close to my heart. I would definitely, you know, volunteer if you need any help. I've been translating using AI for the last few years trying to translate books that are not in English to make episodes of Founders on them.

    7. ITIvanka Trump1:04:49

       Mm.

    8. DSDavid Senra1:04:50

       And the translations are getting so much better, so I think you guys are perfectly timed.

    9. ITIvanka Trump1:04:53

       Yeah.

    10. DSDavid Senra1:04:53

        Because I was doing this a few years ago, and I remember I translated one, I think it was from German. I remember the one line was supposed to be like, "This happened 15 years ago," and the translation was so bad, it was like, "This happened three five-year periods ago." [laughs]

    11. ITIvanka Trump1:05:06

        Yeah.

    12. DSDavid Senra1:05:07

        Like, that's a funny way to say 15.

    13. ITIvanka Trump1:05:09

        Five years ago, we couldn't have done this well.

    14. DSDavid Senra1:05:10

        Yeah.

    15. ITIvanka Trump1:05:11

        But now, um, the large language models are so good, um, and generative AI is really allowing us to do it-

    16. DSDavid Senra1:05:19

        And-

    17. ITIvanka Trump1:05:19

        ... affordably-

    18. DSDavid Senra1:05:20

        The voices-

    19. ITIvanka Trump1:05:20

        ... do it with high fidelity. The voices are amazing, so ElevenLabs is, is helping-

    20. DSDavid Senra1:05:25

        I was gonna say, have you, have you-

    21. ITIvanka Trump1:05:26

        Yeah

    22. DSDavid Senra1:05:26

        ... have you spent time with Maddie?

    23. ITIvanka Trump1:05:27

        I have, yeah.

    24. DSDavid Senra1:05:28

        Okay.

    25. ITIvanka Trump1:05:28

        He's amazing.

    26. DSDavid Senra1:05:28

        Yeah.

    27. ITIvanka Trump1:05:29

        So he's helping us with the audio-

    28. DSDavid Senra1:05:31

        Oh, perfect

    29. ITIvanka Trump1:05:31

        ... um, books that will accompany-

    30. DSDavid Senra1:05:33

        Yeah
17. 1:12:07 – 1:12:47

    Marry The Right Person

    1. DSDavid Senra1:12:07

       you guys-

    2. ITIvanka Trump1:12:07

       By the way, key to life, right? Marry the right person.

    3. DSDavid Senra1:12:09

       Yeah, for sure.

    4. ITIvanka Trump1:12:10

       Marry someone who sees you as s- puts you up on a pedestal and sees you as-

    5. DSDavid Senra1:12:16

       I don't think I've ever heard-

    6. ITIvanka Trump1:12:17

       ... in a way that I, he sees me in a way that, like, I aspire to see myself.

    7. DSDavid Senra1:12:22

       This is very rare what you two have. I, like, w- this is actually really beautiful what you just said about him 'cause I was sitting here thinking as you were speaking, uh, it's like very few people would describe, you know, their spouse as, you know, almost perfect in their eyes, for lack of a better word. Like, that's actually incredible. So there's two things that we mentioned that I wanna come back to, I think are, are super important and I'm super curious about. So we mentioned, you mentioned essentialism.

    8. ITIvanka Trump1:12:45

       Yeah.

    9. DSDavid Senra1:12:45

       And you mentioned opportunity cost.

    10. ITIvanka Trump1:12:46

        Mm.

18. 1:12:47 – 1:16:23

    Deciding What To Build

    1. DSDavid Senra1:12:47

       You have essentially in front of you unlimited opportunities on who you can spend time with and what you work on. How do you make this decision? Is this intuition? Is this just energy? Is this vibes?

    2. ITIvanka Trump1:12:59

       Mm-hmm.

    3. DSDavid Senra1:12:59

       Like, when you're deciding, "Hey, I wanna meet this founder, I may invest in, in, with them"

    4. ITIvanka Trump1:13:02

       Mm-hmm

    5. DSDavid Senra1:13:03

       ... or, "I may wanna partner with somebody on this project, like Planet Harvest in the profit domain or nonprofit domain," like you did with Elad.

    6. ITIvanka Trump1:13:10

       Yeah.

    7. DSDavid Senra1:13:10

       How are you making this decision?

    8. ITIvanka Trump1:13:12

       Well, I think first you have to be receptive to the inputs all around you. I, I joke with my partner, I'm like, "I've- I'm a farmer." Like, who would've thought, right?

    9. DSDavid Senra1:13:23

       [laughs]

    10. ITIvanka Trump1:13:23

        Like, and you know, I [laughs] and I'm investing in tech companies and helping build these amazing businesses that are so beyond what I would've ever imagined myself doing. Even, even the scope and scale and ambition of Sazan, this incredible project, will have hotels and resorts and wellness, all of it, is-

    11. DSDavid Senra1:13:45

        And a-

    12. ITIvanka Trump1:13:45

        It's almost daunting in its size

    13. DSDavid Senra1:13:46

        ... and an apartment for me.

    14. ITIvanka Trump1:13:48

        Obviously. Well, community is, like, at the heart of, I think, how people wanna live, right? Um, so I'm, I'm thinking a lot about how to create great community for families, for connection, because I think that's, like, the currency, like, attention, like, getting somebody's attention and keeping it and creating an enabling environment for exactly that. But anyway, um, but I think for me it's, it's... I always just try to be receptive to conversations with others and, like, what sparks something in me, and then I go deep. So my daughter will joke with me, I mean, I have, like, 100 ideas a week, and I start to go into them. And she's like, "What, you didn't do that, and I got all excited about it. And what about this, and what about that?" I'm like, "No, no, no, that's my process." I explore a lot of things, and then I go deeper and deeper. I do a tremendous amount of reading, so any challenge I'm about to take on, I become like a PhD in that subject. [laughs]

    15. DSDavid Senra1:14:45

        Mm-hmm.

    16. ITIvanka Trump1:14:45

        Um, so with the, with the Sazan project, I'm reading all the best Albanian writers, and I'm trying to understand the country through their eyes. Um-

    17. DSDavid Senra1:14:55

        Oh, that's smart

    18. ITIvanka Trump1:14:55

        ... and fiction, nonfiction, all of it, and you immerse yourself in sort of the experience, the lived experience of, um, these great observers of, of the truth, and then you get closer to it, right? Um, you can't just, like, impose yourself upon a country or culture. You have to understand it, um, first to do it, um, in a beautiful and delicate and, and, and meaningful way. But that's, that's the approach I take to everything. So I, I listen to a lot of people. I try to surround myself with people that help facilitate growth in, in different areas. I ask them a lot of questions. I actually tell my kids, um, they, they laugh at me, in addition to what we were saying before about reading all the time and, and, like, being interested in the world around you, I always tell them that only boring people get bored.

    19. DSDavid Senra1:15:49

        Yeah.

    20. ITIvanka Trump1:15:49

        Like, there's too much to learn. But I also tell them in the context of, uh, of this all the time that you never learn anything while you're talking. You only learn when you're listening and when you're observing. So I really try to surround myself with people who are gonna sort of open channels for me, um, and help me grow. Um, and, and sometimes that's in a very intimate way, people who are really, like, just in touch with themselves and who can help me be a better mother, a better wife, better human being.

    21. DSDavid Senra1:16:17

        But how do you-

    22. ITIvanka Trump1:16:17

        And other times it's great business leaders.

    23. DSDavid Senra1:16:19

        But how do you decide who to let in? Like, what is... What kind of person do they have

19. 1:16:23 – 1:19:08

    No Contract Protects A Bad Partner

    1. DSDavid Senra1:16:23

       to be?

    2. ITIvanka Trump1:16:23

       First and foremost, like, a kind person. Like, life's too short. Like, there are a lot of successful assholes, but I'm just not interested. Like, the worst thing in the world is when you partner with somebody who's not a good person. There is no contract in the world that will protect you from a bad partner. [laughs]

    3. DSDavid Senra1:16:41

       That's a Buffett and Munger. They say it over and over.

    4. ITIvanka Trump1:16:43

       No contract.

    5. DSDavid Senra1:16:44

       Yeah.

    6. ITIvanka Trump1:16:44

       But I would do a handshake with a good person over, like, the most ironclad, um, you know, white shoe law firm created contract any day of the week. So I'm just at a point in my life where I wanna do good, important things. I wanna be an additive force in the world. I wanna be surrounded by people who are, like, kind, good people who I admire and who I can learn from, and there are so many of them. So the choice will never be for me to partner with sort of the opposite of that. So I try and find good people. I try and find people who can help me grow, who I can learn from. Then I dive deep into the subject matter, um, through reading, through podcasts. Like, I listen to a po- ton of podcasts, yours being my favorite, obviously, obviously-

    7. DSDavid Senra1:17:29

       Thank you

    8. ITIvanka Trump1:17:30

       ... on, on a vari- variety of, of different people and subjects, and then you have to get going. Like, a, a mistake a lot of people make is they get so excited about the idea, they keep on, like, ruminating on the idea. They keep on pitching the idea. They don't get to the point of actually, like, doing it, and you learn a lot just in the early phases of bringing something to market. Like, that motion can completely reorient your business, right? Because you receive feedback around... Like, for example, Planet Harvest, we were creating demand for something that there was no demand for. I mean, even the farmers weren't even taking this produce out of the field because there was no market for it, so we had to create a market. So we had to speak with the consumers and find out what would they pay for it, and what would they get from it. They'd get the story of the small farmers they were supporting. They would get a diversified supply chain in terms of what was going into their product. They'd get the same caliber of product. But we had to go and explain to them, and then we had to hear from them, like, what was that worth to them?

    9. DSDavid Senra1:18:35

       I think it's really important to get that message out there. There's, there's one of my favorite books. Um, it's called, uh, The Banana King, I think Sam Zamuri, or no, The Fish Ate the Whale.

    10. ITIvanka Trump1:18:44

        I heard your episode on that.

    11. DSDavid Senra1:18:45

        Yeah. Sam Zamuri.I forgot the subtitle, but it's about-- it's a biography of Sam Zamore

    12. ITIvanka Trump1:18:49

        We're working with Chiquita Banana now, um, which is, like, the large-

    13. DSDavid Senra1:18:52

        Which is fun

    14. ITIvanka Trump1:18:52

        ... and, and helping them think about their excess and, and utilizing it.

    15. DSDavid Senra1:18:56

        But-

    16. ITIvanka Trump1:18:56

        And I shared that episode

    17. DSDavid Senra1:18:57

        ... well, he did something very similar where there's a line in the book where, you know, they were-- they-- he started in bananas, obviously. Uh, and they were just throwing them away because they would rot in, like, two days-

    18. ITIvanka Trump1:19:07

        Yeah

20. 1:19:08 – 1:21:34

    Opportunity Where Others See Nothing

    1. DSDavid Senra1:19:08

       ... and they couldn't sell them in the next two days. E-- and so he basically, there's a line in the book that I'm-- that I thought of when I hear you talk about Planet Harvest. Like, he saw opportunity where others saw nothing.

    2. ITIvanka Trump1:19:18

       Yeah.

    3. DSDavid Senra1:19:18

       And I think just being perceptive of the world around you. There's unlimited opportunity around us that people are just jumping, skipping over or, or ignoring.

    4. ITIvanka Trump1:19:26

       Yeah.

    5. DSDavid Senra1:19:26

       In, in your case, you said that, you know, they just did it this way because it's the way it's always been done. So if you just go into a new situation with fresh eyes, and you're like, "Why? Why?" Just keep asking why. You'll eventually get to, you know, "Well, that's just 'cause how it's always been done."

    6. ITIvanka Trump1:19:38

       A hundred percent. And, like, that's the best answer in the world because that means, like, there's ready for disruption.

    7. DSDavid Senra1:19:43

       There's innovation that you can do there.

    8. ITIvanka Trump1:19:44

       And, and I think that's what's so cool about, um, doing the, the early-stage investing that I'm doing. Like, obviously, um, Affinity does later-stage investing, but some of the earlier stage, it's really about you have to be a good listener. You sit down with a founder, and they don't have the track record. In some cases, they haven't even begun to execute their business plan, right? They haven't commercialized it. In some cases, they have. In some cases, they haven't. Either way, they're in the earliest innings of their company. So you're listening. What's the idea, and what's the jockey like? Like, you're, you're trying to understand, does the person have what it takes to build this thing, this concept, this product? Will they be, uh, in it for the long run? Do they have the, um, flexibility, the mentality, the perseverance, the grit, the vision, the leadership skills, all of these traits, um, that you have to have or have the humility to know you don't have and supplement by hiring the right people, right? So it's an assessment of the human being sitting across from you and also of the idea that hasn't yet been proven. And in some cases, the more audacious, the better, because I'm not interested really investing in, like, boring things. I like investing in things that have the ability to be transformational, so these often tend to be big ideas, um, often tend to be unproven ideas. And you have to be a good listener because you don't have a lot of data to support what they're doing yet. And so I, I think especially in the venture space, you have to have a lot of humility, and you have to be, um, very interested in, in people and ideas.

21. 1:21:34 – 1:23:31

    Backing Fragile New Ideas

    1. DSDavid Senra1:21:34

       And I think you're perfectly suited as your personality to be a champion for these new but fragile ideas. The reoccurring theme in all these biographies that I've read, the four hundred plus biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs I've read, it's just like s- uh, new ideas are so fragile.

    2. ITIvanka Trump1:21:47

       Yeah.

    3. DSDavid Senra1:21:47

       And it's so easy to kill an idea prematurely and to not let it grow, and you just have to give it room a- and time for it to grow, just like a human being, just like, uh, I think Jeff Bezos uses the idea-- uh, the analogy of, like, an acorn turning into an oak tree.

    4. ITIvanka Trump1:22:01

       Yeah.

    5. DSDavid Senra1:22:01

       That does not happen in a week. It does not happen in a year. It's going to be a m- multiple-year pro- uh, process that we have to understand that going into it.

    6. ITIvanka Trump1:22:08

       And you may end up at a place that's very different from where you started. You mentioned Jeff. Like, he was selling books, right? [laughs]

    7. DSDavid Senra1:22:15

       Yeah.

    8. ITIvanka Trump1:22:15

       So that's where it becomes it's the idea, and then it's the founder. And what will that idea morph into? Very rarely is it a straight path. Most often, it's something completely beyond the original aspiration. Toby, I heard him on your show.

    9. DSDavid Senra1:22:36

       Yeah.

    10. ITIvanka Trump1:22:36

        But, you know, these-- Uh, so there's a certain sort of neurological flexibility- [laughs]

    11. DSDavid Senra1:22:42

        Mm-hmm

    12. ITIvanka Trump1:22:42

        ... you know, that, that these founders have that they can be so passionate about something, yet pivot it into something else they're equally passionate about that becomes the ultimate manifestation of that original acorn.

    13. DSDavid Senra1:22:57

        And I think your life, what you've shared with us so far in this conversation, is the perfect example of that because you've done that in your second act as well. I'm honored to call you a friend. Thank you very much, Ivanka, for taking the time. This was absolutely perfect.

    14. ITIvanka Trump1:23:08

        Thank you.

    15. DSDavid Senra1:23:08

        Thank you. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review. And make sure you listen to my other podcast, Founders. For almost a decade, I've obsessively read over four hundred biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, searching for ideas that you can use in your work. Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through Founders. [electronic sound]

Episode duration: 1:23:32