Aspire with Emma Grede
Aspire with Karlie Kloss: How To Turn Principles Into Power Plays
Tue, 20 May 2025
Model, entrepreneur and media mogul Karlie Kloss sits down with Emma for a rare, wide-ranging conversation about the bold pivots, personal principles, and hard-won lessons that have shaped her journey from the runway to the boardroom. With baby number three on the way, Karlie opens up about the balancing act of motherhood and mogulhood, the trade-offs she makes, and the guilt she’s learned to manage. Emma and Karlie dive deep into her transition from fashion icon to tech and media entrepreneur, her mission to empower women in STEM through Kode with Klossy, and her bold foray into publishing with the relaunch of i-D. Karlie also shares what drives her as an investor, her evolving relationship with money, and how she navigates being underestimated in male-dominated rooms. Whether you’re multi-passionate, mid-pivot, or just need the push to take a leap, Karlie’s story is proof that reinvention is always within reach. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What pivotal changes is Karlie Kloss navigating in her life?
Today on the Aspire podcast, I'm sitting down with my friend Carly Kloss. And let me just say, this conversation is going to be so good. Carly's having baby number three. She's running companies, investing in brands she believes in, and she is shaking up the publishing world. And yet somehow she's doing it all with the most grounded, no BS energy you can imagine.
We talk money, mindset, and what to do when you're feeling underestimated. We also get into mum life, mum guilt, career pivots, making bold moves and what it really takes to go from being the face of a brand to building your own empire. Carly is thoughtful, honest and so much more than just a pretty face. So let's get into it.
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Carly, welcome to Aspire. I'm so happy to have you here today.
Thank you, Emma, for having me. I love you so much. I'm so in awe of all you've built and I'm so honored to be having this conversation with you.
Well, likewise, my darling, but first things first, you're having a little baby, number three.
Oh my gosh, I like barely fit in this chair. I'm like busting. I'm so excited. I'm so, it's only just starting to hit me. I'm like halfway through and I'm like, oh, I'm going to have three children. You're going to have three little children.
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Chapter 2: How does Karlie manage motherhood and her career?
Five, yeah. Oh my goodness.
Are you kidding me?
I'm so excited and I'm so tired, but most of all excited.
You should be so excited. So I kind of want to start there because, you know, you're about to have three children. I have four children and you're doing so much all the time. I'm really curious how you think about, you know, I really loathe the word balance when we start talking about motherhood, given everything that we do.
But I wonder, like, do you have, like, just how are you feeling about the whole thing? How are you feeling about doing everything that you do while, you know, trying to be here with three kids?
Well, I have lots to learn from you, mother of four and running your empires. I try just to do the best I can every single day. And I feel in a lot of ways, actually, having kids has sort of been a forcing function of prioritization. I've always been somebody who does a lot. I think that's just the way I'm wired. I started working at 15. I know you started really young as well. Pretty young.
So it's in my blood to sort of just like be busy and do things and be a productive person. But also having a child and, you know, I had my first son in the pandemic in 2021. And up until then, I really was a workaholic. I was on an airplane every two days, like genuinely. And even, you know, even through my relationship, like I was, work was always sort of my number one priority.
And sorry, Josh, but. We both, you know, we're both working all the time, but I think having a child and now being onto my third child, a lot of things have sort of just fallen into place. Like what matters most to me and what I'm willing to compromise for, compromise sleep for, and what I'm not.
Yeah. What gives for you? What are the, because I always talk about this idea of there just being inevitable trade-offs. And I agree with you because I think you are forced to prioritize. And for me, that makes actually your work, like you get really sharp, right? There's no time wasted, but I wonder for you, what are the trade-offs?
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Chapter 3: What trade-offs does Karlie make in her busy life?
But I am genuinely trying every single day to show up for the people that I love most in my life. And it's my children. That's my husband. That's my family. I'm very close with my sisters, my parents, and my friends. And again, I think a lot of that, candidly, until the pandemic, I didn't prioritize, I think, even my personal life, my friends. And your relationships.
So the last few years have been a real, I think, evolution of me as a person to actually kind of take care of myself a bit more. Even if that comes at a cost of work, it's worth it.
Yeah. I really love that you're so honest about that though, because I feel for so many people, like you imagine that there's this, you know, magical formula and you're going to have some perfect way of figuring this all out. But the idea that you say, I'm still working on it. I'm still figuring it out. I think that's really truthful and really real.
And I find it so amazing that with baby number three on the way that you are so ambitious and that you do have So many incredible things still. you know, going on because you have been doing this for like a long time. You've been in the limelight for a long time.
Well, I think we are both very lucky that we have very supportive partners who want that for us as well. You know, I think Josh really, my husband, we've been together since I was 19. Like we are, we have truly babies now having babies. And we, I feel like we've grown up together and he has always been my biggest champion of parenting.
I'm just going to make me emotional here but he's always been my biggest champion and I think especially in this sort of like adjustment into motherhood he has been somebody who's like Carly you you cannot lose yourself you will not be happy and then that our children will feel that and I think that's something I so appreciate that he has always been sort of my mirror in that way.
How important is that choice because I talk about this with my friends all the time like when you choose your person... I'm literally crying. No, I love that you're literally crying and that's a great place to start because I do... I talk about it so much that the person you decide to spend your life with and have children with...
when you are also trying to balance that with having a career, it ends up being a really big decision.
It's the biggest decision of my life.
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Chapter 4: How did Karlie's early career shape her future?
homework backstage and on airplanes I had my grandma my mom my teacher anyone sort of chaperoning me because I was under 18 and sort of living this jet set life and then coming back home to St.
Louis and being a normal lame teenager and then um yeah and then and then and then Victoria's Secret happened and then and then we can't we can't skirt over it because I think for the world yeah if we didn't already know you and I knew you because I was part of like you know just a fan of fashion yeah
But for the rest of everybody else, when you became, you know, Carly Kloss, supermodel Carly Kloss, it was that moment for Victoria's Secret. And you spent, what, a couple of years being a Victoria's Secret's angel.
I did. It's actually funny. I feel like I walked my first Victoria's Secret fashion show and I like pretty immediately they signed me on contract. And I, as a girl in Missouri, like the exposure I had to fashion was on Project Runway. Yeah.
Heidi Klum on Project Runway and the Victoria's Secret fashion show and like I'm one of four daughters so we would all pile around the TV and like that's that was the sort of like height of fashion in my eyes and so it was very full circle to then sort of sign with them and and be on the runway and actually it's funny I had just graduated high school and I think there was this feeling of like all those all like I know I could not get a date in high school I'm not exaggerating you're like I'll show them I'm like I'll show them like those boys that didn't want to like go on a date with
You're going to have to just back this up for me. Wait a minute.
You couldn't get a date in high school?
Like, what was happening?
No. Stop it. I was so tall and pale. And, like, I think they were like, where is this girl all the time?
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Chapter 5: Why did Karlie transition from modeling to tech and entrepreneurship?
I completely, first of all, I completely forgot about it. Maybe because when I got the product, it was completely irrelevant to me. It was like your whole body. I could have made two pairs of jeans out of the one pair. It's true.
I was a very niche audience.
But no, it was niche, but there was a need. right because all of a sudden it was like okay we all know you for being incredibly tall and that was a real moment like it was you were like the model doing that thing it was like your own collection you had clearly had a lot of input in this thing and it was like okay I'm going to I'm going to do my own product.
Well, thanks to Eric and Jens. And they really came to me and they were like, just starting frame. I remember it was sort of just kicking off. And I remember we got a coffee together in Paris. I don't, all the years run together. I want to say maybe it's 2013-ish. Yeah, that'll be about right. Yeah. And they were still running their creative agency.
And I was working with them on different photo shoots and campaigns through that. And so it was sort of this almost just like side project that was like, we're going to tag it on to the end of the day. We're going to shoot one extra image. It was like so bootstrapped. Everything was so bootstrapped. And I think that was like such a fun experimental phase, I think. And
in building anything, like I love that, that sort of startup era, um, where you sort of just, there's nothing to lose. It was sort of like, they had a great brand, they were making jeans and they were like, Carly, would you want to do like a tall girl jean? And I was like, a hundred percent, even just for me to have selfishly like a couple pair of jeans. Can you just make me 10 pairs? Yes, please.
And I was blown away by, even though it was niche, like hundreds of six foot two girls that I would run into everywhere that were like, Carly, this was the first time I ever was able to find jeans that fit me.
And again, a niche thing, but it was sort of the first time that I was like, okay, this is a lived experience for me of like hard to find jeans that fit that and use that to sort of build a small little business collab that was really authentic and fun. And so again, that was another little boost of confidence.
It was. And I remember it because it was really differentiated from what was happening like back then. We take these things for granted now, but it wasn't run of the mill at that time. I'm imagining that your agent would have done the deal for you. Did you have any part in that? Like thinking, I usually get paid a big fat, you know, upfront fee, but this, that was different, right?
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Chapter 6: What is Kode with Klossy and its mission?
appreciate the importance of financial freedom and the power of money because in 2007, around the exact same time that I started my career, my family had a really hard time in the recession and had made some investments in real estate, invested like our entire sort of family nest egg, and it all disappeared.
Oh, wow. That's hard.
And so as a freshman in high school, you know, my family was like trying to keep the roof over our head. And I, as a 15-year-old, you know, young model, was able to sort of help support my family and provide stability for my family.
And that was sort of, again, this motivating factor to— I didn't care about fashion, but it was a vehicle, a means to support my family and take care of my loved ones and create safety and stability. And I think that's where it's just like— I've been acutely aware of how important to me that that is to have for myself.
I love that. And I can see that how important that would have been because it's like when you come from that type of family that have raised you in that way that you feel so secure, you want to be able to help them, right? And to be in the position when you're 15, it's so extraordinary that you'd even be there.
Just to fast forward and thinking about your own family life, because I think about this all the time. I'm raising kids. in a very different way and in very different circumstances to how I was raised myself.
And I wonder how you think about your own children and your relationship to money these days when you've made a lot of money, you're incredibly successful, you married a very successful man and, you know, you're raising three children, not in a small town in Missouri anymore. Yeah.
Well, I am very intentional in the environment I'm raising them in though. I Above all, you know, listen, it's a new experience for me. It's a new experience. I'm trying to do the best I can as I go. But I am very intentional about the environment around them that I create around them. Like, I am their mom. I am extremely hands-on. I…
don't like to have a lot of people like… I want my kids to be able to like tie their own shoes and put on their own clothes. Same. That's the goal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's no like… No one picking the red M&Ms out for them.
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Chapter 7: How does Karlie view her relationship with money?
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Visit www.highbobby.com for more details. That's H-I-B-O-B-B-I-E.com. When I think about Code with Glossy, I really mean it. When you started that back in 2015, I was like, wow, like what a bold move. There's so few women in tech. We all know the kind of abysmal stats.
And as you start to think about AI and how few women are actually engaged in AI at the moment, what you're doing for me feels amazing. even more relevant. So where are you? Because you've been doing this for a really long time. We're talking about 10 years and that's such a commitment to the cause, but you've also probably had like some results I'm thinking by now. So I'd love you to share.
I am so proud of our scholars. You should be so proud of it. It's pretty surreal. I mean, Emma, I would have never imagined that it would grow into what it is today. And I didn't really think Think about it, I guess, all that much. How did you start it? Talk to me, like, from the beginning.
Again, sort of that period of when I was... Wanted to kind of, again, evolve my life and let go of some things. And I went back to school and I walked away from Victoria's Secret. And I was really kind of soul-searching of, like... What actually does feel meaningful to me? What is intellectually stimulating? And also, sort of a moment, and this is around 20… I guess at this point, 2014.
And I had, again, felt this sort of responsibility… an opportunity with so many young women following me on social media. And I felt like I needed to do more with that or I wanted to do more. It was an opportunity to actually be impactful. So I didn't want to fully walk away from my fashion career because that was part of the power that gave me that sort of influence.
Well, that was your enabler, right? Absolutely.
So it's like, how do I stay one foot in this world but use it in a more meaningful way, at least to me? And that's when... I went back to school. I went back to this coding boot camp called the Flatiron School. It was like a deep intensive in the sort of front end and back end of tech, both software, hardware.
Just give me an idea. What did you know at that point? Did you know beyond like using a phone and a laptop like the rest of us? Did you have like an engineering background? Did you know someone who was a coder? Not at all. No.
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Chapter 8: What lessons does Karlie want to pass on to her children?
Like actually.
Yes.
And then not only that, but like that one person is able to do that because they know this skill set. So what is this skill set? And why do more people not know it? And so I just started very simply with like, taking a, you know, three month course at the Flatiron School. And I was one of the only sort of women in the school. And there were a few, but definitely not enough.
And I was really blown away by sort of just the basic anatomy of like how a
computer works how it was almost like the anatomy of like the hard drive and the you know all of the sort of like machinery it was like it was like a body it's like you have the heart you have the brain you have the veins that connect everything so it sort of demystified the hardware and then the software component too of like front end and back end of how to build a website like Pretty basic.
But it was like very just sort of eye-opening of like, once you can get past the sort of bulky, awkward, or the abstract nature of like code and syntax. But it's like learning, I would imagine, Latin or another language. You know, I learned French. But like, it's like learning a language. And that was sort of, again, another, I think, moment of confidence boost that I was like, you know what?
If I can learn this, like anyone can learn this.
And was your idea at that point, like I'm going to start a business. I'm going to be like one of these founders that I'm meeting.
My idea at the point was, how do I get more girls to realize how powerful this is? Like right at the beginning, that's how you felt. That's how I felt at the beginning. It was a very clear like, oh shit, this is very powerful and it's not impossible to learn. This is the future and there aren't many women that are part of it.
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