Meet Your Career Coach: Tory Burch

Ten years, 130-plus boutiques, 2,551 employees, and a brand-new book later, Tory Burch tells Glamour's Cindi Leive the real key to her "overnight success"--and yours!

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She launched her now famous company with the modest goal of opening just three stores. Ten years, 130-plus boutiques, 2,551 employees, and a brand-new book later, Tory Burch tells Glamour's Cindi Leive the real key to her "overnight success"—and yours!

Tory Burch, at left, in her New York City office, with Leive

I admire Tory Burch the designer for the same reasons you do: Her clothes—starting with those bright tunics back in 2004—are irresistible and don't require you to take out a mortgage on your home. But I admire Tory Burch the human for another reason: She's a girl's girl, mentoring other women both on and off the job; her foundation, designed to support female entrepreneurs, is one of the leading organizations of its type. If Madeleine Albright is right that there's a special place in hell for women who don't help other women, then my friend Tory, 48—a 2011 Glamour Woman of the Year—is heavenly. Read her career advice here.

CINDI LEIVE: Thank you for having us in your beautiful office. I want to move in!

TORY BURCH: There's so much going on here all the time that it's nice to come into an environment that really makes you relaxed.

CL: Ten years ago this fall, you launched your company. You didn't go to business school.... What made it work?

TB: It was thinking about what I, personally, was missing—beautiful clothes that didn't cost a fortune. It was a simple idea, [but] it didn't exist. There were designer clothes, [then] everything below. There was an opening at a certain price point.

CL: But you've said you didn't have a grand, five-year plan.

TB: The five-year plan was to open three stores, and then the plan just became something very different. We have over 130 stores globally—the first five years we opened 17. But we worked around my kitchen table for two years, so it wasn't an overnight success by any means.

CL: An important lesson: Things that look like an overnight success usually aren't.

TB: They never are! There's no such thing.

CL: I know you were not a big fashion lover as a kid. You've said you were a tomboy in tennis whites. So how did this happen?

TB: I had very fashionable parents. My mom loved fashion. I was more interested in playing tennis and riding horses.

Burch at age six with her mother, Reva, for whom the iconic Reva flat is named

CL: Your father lined his suits with Hermès ties—is that true?

TB: Well, Hermès scarves. And he designed all of his clothing. I often say he should have been a designer. We traveled a lot, and seeing [my parents'] pictures was really the inspiration for this company.

CL: You went to a girls' school. Did that have an impact on how you thought about yourself as a leader?

TB: It really instilled confidence. And I think that it also made me a girl's girl. It's about supporting women and not being jealous. Having an environment that is supportive is really important for success.

CL: After college you worked at Ralph Lauren and Vera Wang. What did you learn from these titans?

TB: I learned so much from each place. At Vera I learned a lot about taking a designer and helping her build her business. At Ralph I was a copywriter—it wasn't that glamorous! I was exposed to every category, though, from start to finish.

CL: One thing people don't know about you is that there was a moment when you decided to step back from your career.

Burch's sons, in 2003, from left: Henry, Sawyer, and Nicholas

TB: I found out I was pregnant with my third son, and it was a very hard decision. I was offered a job at Loewe, when Narciso Rodriguez was designing, as president of the U.S. [division]. It was tough...but I knew that being a mom came first and I wouldn't be able to do both effectively.

CL: Were you torn? That is a big job.

TB: I was really torn. A big career was important to me, and I knew that I'd be back in the workforce at some point.

CL: And then came that moment—your stepdaughters stayed up with you all night to help you get ready for the launch.

TB: That moment took years of planning. And from when I decided to start the company, it was eight intense months of travel, of putting the boys to bed at night and getting on the phone with Asia until four in the morning. We opened in February 2004, during Fashion Week—we worked through the night. The doors hadn't even arrived for the store! But my family all helped.

CL: One year in you had an Oprah moment.

TB: After 10 months we got a call...saying, "We want to have you on our show." One of her producers had given Oprah a tunic for Christmas. I thought one of my brothers was playing a joke on me!

CL: You literally thought it was a prank call?

TB: Yes! My brothers and I always do that to each other. [Before the show, Oprah's producers] warned us to back up our site. We had e-commerce, and they said our sitewould have some hits. The next day we had 8 million hits. We had a lot of back orders.

CL: Several years after that you won a really big award in the fashion industry, the CFDA [Council of Fashion Designers of America] award for Accessory Designer of the Year. Why was that significant?

TB: It's an award you win based on the votes of your peers—a huge honor. To be [in the] running alongside designers I've admired my whole life and then all of a sudden win... it was out of left field for me.

CL: One person watching that win was your son Sawyer, and he wrote you a note: "Congratulations, Mom. I hope you feel good. I am surprised you won first prize. I'm happy you won, but I'm surprised you won against Marc Jacobs and Michael Kors. I love you, Mom." Your son knows his designers!

A congratulatory note from Burch's "happy" but "suprised" [sic] son, Sawyer

TB: He was not as surprised as I was, but he was surprised nonetheless.

CL: You now oversee 2,551 employees, and almost 80 percent are women. Do women work differently from men?

TB: One of the reasons I wanted to start a company is because I wanted an environment that I wanted to work in. I wanted people to be able to have a life—for it to be OK to leave for a lacrosse game or a doctor's appointment. So I think women do work differently; it's important to have both men and women. They offer different things.

CL: What's your number-one employee pet peeve?

TB: I guess it's being catty. When I started this company, I said, "I don't want to have a bitchy fashion environment." I like being straightforward. We can deal with anything as long as it's on the table.

CL: So bitchy fashion people need not apply?

TB: No. No room here.

CL: Tell me what the Tory Burch Foundation [a nonprofit founded in 2009 to help female entrepreneurs] does.

TB: We support women with getting access to low-cost capital, entrepreneurial education, networking, and mentorship. Women are the backbone of our society, and the women that we're working with are often single mothers, they're holding down two jobs, and the money they're making is going back into their families and communities. We want to instill confidence in women.... We joined with Bank of America in January and started Elizabeth Street Capital [a joint initiative named for the street where her first store opened]. They've agreed to a start of $10 million to give to women across the U.S.

CL: Hello, readers! If you have a great idea for a company, Tory Burch has $10 million to give you! How does a woman know if she should apply?

TB: They can look at our website [toryburchfoundation.org]. One of the issues is that women—and people—don't know what a CDFI [community development financial institution] is: a local lending company. They're going straight to banks, and banks don't want to give a loan the size they're coming in for. They're missing the chance to go to these local CDFIs, and that's [who] we're trying to partner with.

CL: What are some of the other obstacles women entrepreneurs face?

TB: I think they have a lack of confidence. They often apologize; I was guilty of that too. When people have said, "Oh, look at your success," I would downplay it.

CL: How'd you overcome that?

TB: A great friend read my first article on the company, in the New York Times, and said, "It was a great article, but you shied away from the word ambition." And it struck a chord. I thought about it a lot. I grew up with three brothers—I didn't know there was a difference [between] men [and] women in the workforce until I entered the workforce! So "embrace ambition" is something that I did and I want to get other women to do.

CL: So that's your message: "Embrace ambition."

TB: Embrace ambition!

Burch after winning the 2008 CFDA award for Accessory Designer of the Year

Tory's Work Dos & Don'ts

Exactly what this maverick thinks you should and shouldn't do to get ahead

__Q: DRINKING AT THE COMPANY HOLIDAY PARTY: GLAMOUR DO OR GLAMOUR DON'T?

A:__ Absolutely. You're there to celebrate! I would say don't get drunk, but definitely have a cocktail or two.

__Q: CHECKING WORK EMAIL WHILE ON VACATION: DO OR DON'T?

A:__ I'd like to say don't, but realistically I do.... Running a company, you have to.

__Q: EXAGGERATING YOUR WORK EXPERIENCE ON A RESUME: DO OR DON'T?

A:__ Make your résumé great and creative, but not in a way that exaggerates. Lying is a Don't!