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Bobbi Brown Wants To Show The World ‘That Anything Is Possible' Through New YouTube Series ‘I Am Me': ‘It Was A Labor Of Love'

Bobbi Brown On its face, a partnership to launch a women's empowerment YouTube series between Jones Road Beauty and JPMorganChase might be surprising—but according to Jones Road founder Bobbi Brown, there is a throughline between the work she does with makeup and skincare and the work JPMorganChase does: confidence. When anyone—particularly a woman—is confident, be it through Jones Road's Miracle Balm or through financial education via JPMorganChase, they are their best selves. The two companies teamed up for the YouTube series 'I Am Me'—which has hosted such guests as Gloria Steinem, Brooke Shields, Joanna Coles, Dr. Becky Kennedy, Sabrina Elba and JPMorganChase's chief marketing officer Carla Hassan as part of its 10-episode season one. Brown pitched the idea to Hassan, telling me on Zoom that 'I don't know if I'm shameless, but I pitched it in the elevator.' Brown and Hassan 'It took me a long time to get her to say yes,' Brown continues, saying that after about eight months, 'I was going to walk away. I was done.' Finally, Hassan said yes, and the connective tissue became apparent between the two companies. 'Confidence and empowerment is not just about the way you look,' Brown says. 'It's about how much money you make, how you got there, how you feel comfortable asking for a raise, where you learned about money.' Brown herself admits she is 'not someone that's comfortable with money and investing. I know how to make it, I just don't know what to do with it after that.' Enter JPMorganChase. Hassan says that JPMorganChase supporting the I Am Me series 'was a natural fit for us' because the series reflects the company's aim to empower people to be their best selves. Of being interviewed by Brown, she adds, 'Bobbi has an incredible ability to make every person feel comfortable, and it felt like I was just sitting with her in her living room having a conversation. Her ability to do this made it natural for me to reflect on my journey and the lessons I've learned.' Coles—who has had a long career in media but is now chief creative and content officer at The Daily Beast—said that Brown 'is a deceptively charming interrogator—like a beam of light that scans your soul for cracks.' Coles and Brown 'She gets you talking before you realize she's gone three layers deep,' Coles says. 'Being interviewed by her is equal parts therapy and truth serum. I also love her take on beauty—at a certain age, less is more—and thank God for that.' Connecting empowerment (a la the I Am Me series) with beauty (what Brown is most known for, having launched not just one but two top-selling beauty brands), 'It's always been my platform of empowerment, confidence, self-esteem—my whole life,' Brown tells me. 'We wanted to really have it be behind Jones Road's message.' After a women of influence event Brown hosted for 31 women at her hotel in Montclair, New Jersey called The George—an event that was not for public consumption—Brown wanted to come up with a way to bring the inspiring conversations to a larger audience. 'So I am someone that, when I have an idea in my head, I obsess until I get it done,' Brown says. Then, as this idea was formulating, she enters the elevator at a conference and finds 'this nice woman with the happiest face,' Brown says. 'And I'm attracted to people like that. And I'm like, 'Hi, I'm Bobbi. Who are you?'' It was Hassan. Brown worked her contacts to come up with the first season's guests, and the Jones Road team 'pitched in on top of their other work,' she tells me. 'So it was a labor of love.' Shields and Brown Brown has hosted a few podcasts before, but is quick to say 'I'm not a journalist.' That said, she has the key to being a good journalist in spades: curiosity. 'And I like people and I want to understand who they are,' she says. 'So I ask questions.' The episodes are all around 10 minutes in length, a deliberate choice by Brown because 'I have no attention span,' she admits, adding that 'I would've done 'em shorter, even. But there was a lot of information, and it was also great for me.' Before her work with Jones Road, Brown had been a celebrity makeup artist—if not the celebrity makeup artist—for 30 years and had launched her eponymous brand, Bobbi Brown Cosmetics. Her proverbial Rolodex is massive. 'I'm really lucky because in my line of work, I get to meet all these great people,' she says, adding, 'I'm a connector.' The name I Am Me was chosen because 'I tried to be someone else many times and it didn't work, right?' Brown says. 'I've just learned that the more comfortable I am with who I am, the better I feel. That makes you feel more confidence. Confidence, to me, is really about being comfortable with who you are.' The goal, she adds, is for women and men watching the series to simultaneously want to be the best versions of themselves, while accepting themselves just as they are. Brown's I Am Me conversations are easy and off the cuff; she only prepares 'the morning of while I'm getting my hair done,' she tells me, looking at notes her executive producer has prepared—but not being too rehearsed. 'I'm someone that has learned by what I've seen, what I've experienced,' she says. Brown loves it when she hears women talk about the struggles of womanhood—how life can sometimes be a shitshow, in her words, especially if you're raising kids, too. 'I want people to understand that I'm not Miss Perfect,' she tells me. Bobbi Brown on April 18, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Roy Rochlin/FilmMagic) Shields, an actress and the CEO and founder of Commence, has known Brown for over 40 years. 'Being interviewed by her feels like chatting with an old friend,' she says. 'My personal takeaway was it's never too late to be a CEO or entrepreneur. There's high demand from women over 40 for brands like Commence, my care brand, and Jones Road, Bobbi's makeup line. Our once-overlooked community has incredible spending power and is showing up for both of our brands—it means everything to us, and that's who we recorded this episode for.' Steinem was I Am Me's very first guest—she's quick to share that the original concept of the series actually launched at a talking circle Brown was a part of in Steinem's living room in April of last year. Less than one year later, the debut episode of I Am Me was, poignantly, filmed—in a true full circle moment—in that same living room. 'Because I know Bobbi Brown and the ethical and inclusive business she has created, I was honored that the I Am Me concept would be launched in my living room,' Steinem says. 'I should put a plaque on the door—she created a historic event here!' Brown and Steinem As for a season two of the series? Brown is hopeful, but cognizant that 'we would certainly have to take it out of Jones Road and get a production company to really do the whole thing, because my team will kill me,' she says. 'I really did take them away from their regular work to do [this].' The YouTube series isn't the only new project on Brown's stacked docket this year. On September 23 her memoir, Still Bobbi, will hit shelves, which has left Brown feeling 'very exposed,' she tells me. 'I feel like I'm walking around in my underwear—not quite naked, but my underwear.' That said, 'it was very cathartic writing this book,' she adds. 'I learned a lot about myself.' This is Brown's tenth book—a feat, she tells me, because 'I don't know how to type'—and that 'the book is really—it's my story, but it's about resilience. It's about, yeah, these things happened personally and in business, but it doesn't define me. And it's okay to be upset and be sad and be angry, but then it's what you do with that.' Of I Am Me, Brown says that she had fun doing it, and that she hopes viewers see 'that anything is possible,' she says. 'And even in your own life, realize that things aren't perfect to anyone. Anyone out there. And you could still be successful and you could make some pivots, but anything's possible.'