Ivanka Trump: She was extraordinary. Um, my mother taught me a lot about just like bringing intention to what you do. And being the child of accomplished parents. Most people thought that I would lack the ambition, the preparedness, but my mother taught me that being underestimated is not a bad thing. It's very powerful thing actually and it almost always worked to the detriment of the person who underestimated me.

Host: From real estate to her own multi-million dollar fashion line, Ivanka Trump continues to carve her own path into the business world, succeeding at every turn.

Host: And then you learn 2 weeks before he announces your father decides he wants to be president of the United States. Did you have any sense that this was at all on the horizon?

Ivanka Trump: Not really. And then when he pulled the trigger, it was full steam. Well, most people wouldn't give up an $800 million annual business to go into government. Why did you? He asked us for help. He's like, "But I have to warn you. They're going to come at you hard. They're probably going to hate you." But one of the things I've learned in moments of tremendous pressure and scrutiny where any slip up is completely weaponized against you is to find the signal in the noise. I just don't get distracted by the outside noise. That's probably the thing that has been most helpful to me in terms of performance and success because you have a choice only in how you respond.

Host: Ivanka, you um you don't do many interviews, do you?

Ivanka Trump: Not really. No.

Host: Why don't you do much media stuff or podcasting or interviews?

Ivanka Trump: I actually don't know. I think I'm I get sort of really locked in and heads down on what I'm working on that I tend to kind of put on blinders and just go, but I like to have conversations in longer form with people that I admire.

Host: And you've lived an extraordinary life. you've lived an extraordinary atypical life that I mean it's safe to say almost nobody on planet earth has has ever experienced and so I think I asked that question just to be completely honest at the top because the life you've lived that we'll get into is is one that would have shaped you in a number of ways and one of them is I think from what I read things that you had said and different experiences you had as a child is just like trusting people.

Ivanka Trump: You know it's interesting I I grew up the child of wealthy and accomplished parents. And so I do think there's like um a natural barrier that goes up. You're you're worried about people, especially when you're a kid, um liking you for the wrong reasons. I see this now with my son. You know, he wants to be loved by his friends, and I appreciate that. That's that's good for who he is, not for who we are, and certainly not for what we have. So I do think being the child of of of famous um parents and living such a privileged life, I had this guard and um that guard served me really well for a long time. Like I I didn't have any friends despite the really tumultuous life that I've had, ups and downs, who really disappointed me. meaning close close close friends who who didn't show up for me or or who changed because of my circumstances or what was happening around me and I've learned for me I mean you were saying the purpose of life for me it's you know the expansion and not contraction of the heart and that's hard as you get older you know how do you live a life of of service and rooted in and love and connection and I've learned more and more that those walls they don't serve you and the only way to have connection which is so fundamental to the human experience is to um is to build it and that requires trust. So I have to trust people. Now I have a good radar. I'm not foolish. I'm I think I'm a very good read of people and I think it's one of um my strengths and I think it's why I haven't been surprised by a lot of people. Um, so I read pretty quickly, but I also have had to teach myself rather than grow sort of cynical as one tends to as they get older. I've really actually taught myself to be more trusting. And to the extent that means periodically I'll be burned like that's I'm okay with that trade-off because I think it will lead to more meaningful connections in my life.

Host: At what age did you realize that life for you was slightly different from the average person? Like when does a child realize that?

Ivanka Trump: I think there was always a lot of media attention and scrutiny. You see it, you experience it very early on. And I think my parents did a really good job trying to shelter us from it. And it was different then without social media. You know, not everyone I think the experience our children have where anywhere they go people have a recording device in their hands, their iPhone um and can take pictures of them and you know it's so um you're so exposed during um during your formative years and thankfully I did not have that growing up but there were times I felt it. I remember I wanted to be a dancer, a ballet dancer. And I was dancing at Giuliard, the school of American Ballet here in New York. I was in the Nutcracker and I remember I was probably eight and I was, you know, like some small role in the Nutcracker. And, um, Michael Jackson had just moved into Trump Tower and was literally our neighbor in Trump Tower. And my father sees him one day, you know, passing in the lobby. I'm with him. I said, 'You know, my daughter's in the Nutcracker. You should come. You should come see a performance. So, he comes to the Nutcracker with my father at the height of his fame to watch me dance. And now this in retrospect could be like, wow, what a cool experience. But I was horrified. I'm like, this is I was so embarrassed. I thought we had ruined the Nutcracker. Everyone was dancing with one glove. people who produced the show were, you know, hysterical that everyone was dancing with one glove. I thought it was all my fault and this was like just a wild childhood experience. I had things like that happen that were so far from normal that it's actually like comical in retrospect, but I think the the dayto-day was like really grounded. My grandmother and uh and grandfather before he passed on my mother's side really raised us. My grandmother cooked every meal we ate for, you know, most of my childhood.

Host: And uh Bubby... Bubby.

Ivanka Trump: She taught me um a type of unconditional love and tenderness and um I think more than anything she was just this unbelievably nurturing. I'd come home from school and, you know, before I'd be out of the shower, she would have laundered my clothes and folded them and put them back on my bed. She's 98 years old and um you know her health has suffered... it's been a little bit of a difficult time for her but I I feel so strongly for for me and my children to have the experience to be there for her in just like a small fraction of the way that she was there for me is such an extraordinary privilege. and for them to grow up with her at our table every single meal um each night and her telling her stories and stories of my mother who they sadly didn't get to know.

Host: I can see she means the world to you.

Ivanka Trump: No, I'm Yes, I'm great. I I have a lot of um I have a lot of love for this woman. So, This doesn't happen to me often. she taught me so much just about love and we were talking before about connection. Um, and uh, you know, it's it's been hard to see her now as she as she struggles, but um, but she's uh, it's a blessing to have her in our home and living with us and very special person.

Host: You know, your mother was an incredible trailblazer.

Ivanka Trump: You know, my mother was an incredible trailblazer. Um an amazing example for me of strength and resilience and glamour and um determination and ambition. And she was a great mother, too. But she would also say like she couldn't do it alone and she wasn't pretending she could. So she surrounded us with people who loved us. We had um two amazing nannies. One of them worked for my mother until the day she died. So she showed me a lot at a time when you know not many women were doing what my mother was doing um inside the boardroom and on the construction sites all the time by the way with 5-in heels and like perfectly caught hair. So she made it look incredibly easy, but it was and continues to be very challenging to balance work and life like that, especially at a time where what she was doing was so singular. So she she really and my mother served as an unbelievable role model for me for what is possible.

Host: 9 years old, your mother and father split up, divorced. It was quite well publicized.

Ivanka Trump: Quite remarkably reporters were waiting outside of your school to take photos of you and ask questions about your your father's affair. And the quote that I read in GQ said... If I didn't have that lesson, I don't know that I'd be tough. It taught me not to trust anybody. You can never let your guard down. And I never really have since that time. So that's probably the 25year-old version of me as as you know there's a lot of truth in it and I think certain defense mechanisms we create for ourselves are actually healthy. There was a level of aggression that like even today wouldn't exist with the paparazzi then, like to be shouting things and like reading um quotes from from tabloids to me as I'm leaving school. To put this in context, this divorce apparently garnered more headlines than the OJ Simpson trial. So, that was a lot. The difference is that once I stepped into my home, it was a safe place.

Host: This was the first time that I saw the Trump family during the apprentice.

Ivanka Trump: It was the biggest show in the world at one point. He said exactly what he was thinking, which could be polarizing at times, but it's part of what people loved about him. I think the thing about my father and my mother is they're like deeply authentic. I'm really proud of the fact that, you know, I've lived through some incredibly intense times where people are taking cheap shots and swinging and I don't punch back because I don't believe in sort of spending my time and focus like being combative like jumping into that particular arena and like the nasty swirl of social media. We were talking um earlier about stoicism. I think like Marcus Aurelius's meditations is so informative on so many levels. He once wrote that the soul becomes dyed the color of its thoughts and I think about that all the time. The cost to me of living in a way that's inconsistent and not aligned with what feels right... It's too expensive for for my soul, so I won't do it. Thoreau has another great quote... the cost of anything is the amount of your life you're willing to exchange for it.

Ivanka Trump: I was actually reading uh recently uh about the crow and I thought it was like a great metaphor for life. A crow is like a highly intelligent animal, but it can get aggressive and it's one of the only animals that will actually attack an eagle. And the eagle's response isn't to like twist and turn and knock the crow off or defend itself and then go on the offense. It's just to fly up. And it flies up while the crow continues to like just peck at its back. It flies up and up. And the crow is not built for high altitude flight. So at a certain point, the crow just falls off. It can't sustain the altitude. I kind of love that analogy for life because you have a choice. You just have to be yourself and you have to fly up, let the crows fall off and um and that's it. That's all you can do.

Host: You were doing 800 million in sales annually when you shut it down. Why did you shut it down?

Ivanka Trump: I went into government and you always have to sort of be moving forward. It would be easier to end on a high note than to allow the business to sort of stagnate. I'm incredibly proud of what I was able to accomplish in those four years. But my kids are a different age now... I'm not willing to let them pay that price. Politics is a pretty dark world. There's a lot of darkness, a lot of negativity, and it's just really at odds with what feels good to me as a human being. On the business side, I co-founded Planet Harvest. We decided to utilize this excess and create demand for it and get it into the ecosystem supporting these great American farmers. 400 million pounds of strawberries every year get left in the fields because they don't meet a really rigid cosmetic specification.

Host: If your oldest child came to you and said they wanted to follow in your footsteps, what are the three pieces of advice you would give them?

Ivanka Trump: I think first and foremost, you have to love it. The amount of work and dedication and grind... it's enormous. Number two is you can't imitate anyone. You have to be yourself. When you're copying you're losing. And I would tell my daughter, you're going to have to believe in yourself before the world believes in you. Like, you can't wait for the world to believe in you because if you haven't believed in yourself, you'll never get there.