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If You're Not Messing Up or Leading a Truly Female-First Company, You're Not Trying Hard Enough At age 27, entrepreneur, founder and shoe designer Tamara Mellon left her post at British Vogue to co-found Jimmy Choo.

By Kathleen Griffith

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Tamara Mellon is the entrepreneur, founder and shoe designer, who launched the iconic brand Jimmy Choo at 27 years old. We spoke at length about what it was like to build Jimmy Choo then and what it's been like launching her eponymous shoe brand Tamara Mellon now.

You'll be surprised to learn that the woman who launched mega-success brands still wrestles with imposter syndrome. She took me through how she works through that in the video above. She also shared the inside scoop on how she took multiple risks with Tamara Mellon to get her vision right and come back bigger and better than ever.

"Life is messy," Mellon shared with me. "Everything we do is messy. You're always messing something up." Her ability to lean into the messiness of it all using tools like meditation have helped her to launch two incredible, female-first brands.

We also discussed how she advocates for women in business by keeping women front-of-mind in her majority-female company as well as why she only works with companies that have more than one woman on the board.

Watch the video above, in which Tamara Mellon shares how she leads with just as much style as a pair of her namesake shoes.

This video was produced by Kari Jones.

Kathleen Griffith

Founder, Build Like a Woman; Founder/CEO of Grayce & Co

Kathleen Griffith is founder of Build Like a Woman, and CEO of Grayce & Co, a marketing and media consultancy for Fortune 100 brands and media companies. Grayce aims to help those brands reach and engage the female consumer. Griffith is committed to advancing women through Grayce & Co Ventures, Cannes Lions SIBI and Build Like A Woman.

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