Excuse me, ma'am. Is this your car?

Excuse me, ma'am. Is this your car? Yes, this is my car. How did you get rich? I'm a shoe designer. Tell me about that. My brand is called Jessica Rich. So, I'm actually part of Hard Knocks Women. I would actually love to just chat with you for 60 seconds about your business, that okay? For sure, let's do it. What's the most amount of money you've made in a single year? $5 million. Why did you choose a shoe designer? Honestly, I started in jewelry at first and I decided to pivot into shoes because at that time there was no affordable luxury shoe. Did you have connections when you were starting out? I built my brand solely on influencers, celebrities, and just people who could move the needle. Fast forward, came to LA, networked my butt off, and I just met everyone I could possibly meet. What do a lot of people romanticize about building a clothing brand that is actually really brutal for you? Oh my god, Jess, you have a great brand, it's so worldwide, like people know you. I'm like, yeah, but people also don't know me. I have to put so much more work in to really become one of these huge household names like Valentino or something like that. So the work hours, the constant no's you hear, the consistency that you have to tell yourself every day that your stuff is cool. I think it's easier to build a brand versus maintain it, to be honest. Have you failed? Definitely, I failed. Oh my god, I think I lost $1 million last year. And what that came to was just basically not having enough stock in stock and me not realizing it until it's too late. Do you believe that women should trust the part that they want to be? I agree with the fake it till you make it. First impressions are everything. Take the extra 10 minutes and just put yourself together because you never know who you're going to meet. What's the biggest tip you can give to someone right now who's starting a fashion brand in 2026 and wants to hit that million dollar mark? I would say utilize Instagram. I built my brand off of Instagram. If you build the right product and you give it to the right people and they love the founders, at first I was nervous to tell people that I was actually African-American because I felt like I wouldn't take consider as a luxury brand. Use your presence, use your voice, let them know about your brand and why you stand for it and why you made it, because your voice is going to get you further than anyone else is going to ever promote you.