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  • I knew that this idea had to be a book years ago, maybe three or four years ago, but it

  • felt like this little seed that was planted under the ground and little by little that

  • seed was growing into a little seedling until it finally popped out of the ground.

  • And I was like, now is the time.

  • It was clear to us that from the very beginning that Everything Is Figureoutable––that

  • was the title.

  • So then the question is, what should be on the cover of this book?

  • We have a very strong title.

  • Everything is Figureoutable is a phenomenal idea and that alone is electrifying.

  • But then you have Marie, who is this huge personality and, you know, she's recognized

  • around the world and she's such a force of nature.

  • The fight at the beginning of the process was do we lead with the title type because

  • that's such an important message or do we lead with Marie, a picture of Marie, because

  • she's so well known and loved?

  • I wanted the cover to be powerful and fresh and exciting and inviting and something that

  • you haven't seen before.

  • And I also wanted it to have a little bit of like a push and pull to it where it would

  • take a moment to kind of understand everything but from an emotional and energetic and design

  • perspective that you are actually drawn in and that's a pretty difficult thing to deliver

  • on when you have such a confined space.

  • In this process it was kind of strange because usually we do everything in-house and our

  • internal team is completely set up to help execute all of Marie's like great, crazy

  • ideas, but this was really different for us because we had to team up with an external

  • team with our publisher and we didn't know how that was going to go.

  • I brought in ideas from me and my team.

  • Marie brought in ideas from her and her team, so I thought I was just going to come in and

  • present to Marie and I come in and the table was all laid out with ideas from Marie's

  • amazing design team.

  • So I thought this could be really bad or really good, probably nowhere in between.

  • It's going to be one or the other.

  • It was all about having that trust between our teams that really led to us feeling like

  • we can hand over this incredible baby that Marie had been working on for two years at

  • that point to be like, all right, it's time to birth this thing.

  • Whenever you're throwing out ideas, you just have to put it all out there, even if it seems

  • crazy.

  • So I mean we had, we had a few things from the cover created out of like puzzle pieces

  • to make text out of like a maze.

  • I think Marie's arm coming out of like a giant pile of crumpled up paper.

  • It would...

  • We've, we went to some wild places.

  • The first time I saw rough sketches, I'm not gonna lie.

  • Basically my heart fell into my stomach cause I was like, oh no.

  • That was like the little fearful part of my brain talking.

  • But I had total faith that we will get there.

  • So once we got over the hump of sketches and first round designs, which did not feel like

  • us.

  • I went back and forth.

  • I had many conversations in my own head about whether or not I should be on the cover.

  • Rather than deciding in advance that we knew which direction was best, we gave ourselves

  • permission to go full steam ahead in both a text conceptual based cover and then a cover

  • that actually had me on it to see which one in practice was actually going to feel the

  • best.

  • And then we wound up going back one that we all collectively felt was the best.

  • It's her words, it's her brain, she's really magnetic and I wanted everyone to be drawn

  • in by what her message is and there was no way to separate Marie from the message.

  • At the end of the day, we could not have a cover that was just words.

  • Like it was Marie, it was her mantra, her message, her call to action.

  • She had brought in a mood board and one of the things on that mood board was a cover

  • from Vogue.

  • And it had Vogue, Vogue, Vogue repeated over a model, sort of twirling and dancing.

  • We really liked something about it.

  • To do something that is so unconventional but that's exactly who Marie is, what Marie

  • stands for and what she asks of all of us to stand up and do something that's unconventional

  • and I'm really taking a risk when it's needed because it speaks to your gut.

  • Everything is figureoutable.

  • This is an approach to life that can make you virtually unstoppable.

  • We rounded up a cover shoot in record time.

  • It was actually happening in the middle of our B-School launch.

  • We got this one day, we've got these number of outfits, and we need to nail the one shot,

  • which anyone who's ever take photographs knows you have to take hundreds, if not thousands

  • of images, in order to get that one where you know the body in the face and everything

  • is just emoting the exact type of vibe and feeling that you want to have on your cover

  • forever.

  • We went into fittings working with the great Elsa Isaac.

  • We wanted something totally different and so it was really cool to just experiment and

  • try these colors and pieces that we'd never tried before.

  • We started playing with colors and we started playing with jewelry and we started putting

  • those things together and we just let it all go at that point and started having a lot

  • of fun.

  • She'll put on something and you'll know.

  • Like you'll know like she's feeling this one and then she gives more to the camera.

  • So you kind of already know which one has the most chemistry out of the bunch.

  • You know when I got back to the office and was able to start looking through the photos

  • and it was a thousand plus amazing photographs.

  • This isn't even the design phase.

  • This is just culling the photos, which I was managed to cut down to only 300 amazing photos.

  • Before, you know, maybe we just need to go with a more conventional cover, this is just

  • maybe too challenging.

  • But this one kept coming back.

  • And then eventually after quite a lot of soul searching, Marie just put her foot down and

  • said, you know, this is really our cover and nobody here could really disagree with her

  • because well, when you look at it, you could see the power that it has.

  • Oh my goodness, when I finally saw the final cover, the one that we actually went with,

  • it was like, it was a full body YES.

  • I was like this is it, this is what this has to be.

  • It got me really pumped to take the book out to the world.

  • If you just wrote this down on a piece of paper, everything is figureoutable, that's

  • an incredible tool to answer.

  • It's about tenacity.

  • It's about creativity, it's about commitment.

  • How committed are you to making something happen?

  • It represents hope, right?

  • Because then you realize that, hey, okay this isn't the end.

  • And I think once you can tell your mind that it's not the end and that just opens up a

  • window and a life full of possibilities on how you can make it happen.

  • To me, it's a mindset and it's a way of going into this world knowing that you are capable

  • of anything you put your mind to, to creating a life that you want to have.

  • This is the one idea that I would want to leave behind because it has been so utterly

  • impactful in my life and in the lives of those I'd have an opportunity to share it with so

  • far.

  • You've got these awesome dreams in your heart that you want to see come to life and have

  • them live out to the world in a way that you're proud of.

  • You cannot rush the process.

  • It takes time.

  • It takes a team.

  • It takes lots of iterations.

  • It takes lots of kind of standing back and feeling things and then it takes kind of standing

  • up for your vision too and standing really confident in how you want to be perceived

  • and how you want your ideas and your messages to live out to the world and the impact you

  • want them to have.

  • So patience and also the power of your conviction for who you are and what you stand for.

  • I think those two things.

  • It's really important for every modern-day creative.

I knew that this idea had to be a book years ago, maybe three or four years ago, but it

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