Job Q&A
by Charlie Drozdyk
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Interested in starting your own business? That's what Julie Stern did with two of her sorority sisters from Cornell. It's called Malia Mills Swim Wear and they're the suit of choice for the supermodels right now. Want proof? Their suit was worn on the cover of the 1996 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue - the highest honor for a swimwear manufacturer.

Monster.com: What was your first job out of school?

Julie Stern: It was with a small catering company that recruited me. I was a glorified order taker. I had to fight for health insurance. It was kind of a joke. My first day they fired the manager and threw the keys in my hand and said "congratulations, you're the manager." They literally threw the keys in my hand.

Mc: How long did you stay?

JS: I did this for 7 months, but I really hated it.

Mc: Then what?

JS: I decided I wanted to go into magazines so I started temping at Time Warner for Life magazine, Time, Sports Illustrated and Entertainment Weekly. My first temp assignment was to xerox every single Time article that had been written about the Olympics, and I think the first Time came out in 1920. It took me 2 straight weeks.

This is where Julie got her break working as a temp for the head of the Swimsuit Issue, Jule Campbell.

Mc: How did you get this?

JS: One assistant was getting married and couldn't go on the shoot and the other one got the measles so Jule looked at me and said, "how would you like to go to the French West Indies for 3 weeks?"

Mc: How come she asked you?

JS: She wouldn't have asked me if she hadn't seen that I was a hard worker. I was working around the clock. Plus, she was desperate.

Mc: Give me one memory of working for the Swimsuit Issue.

JS: Cleaning the models' bikinis. We're in a hotel and they're sitting there talking to their rock star boyfriends and I'm there scrubbing their bikini bottoms on my hands and knees in the hotel bathtub. It was so humiliating.

After 3 years at Sports Ill., Julie teamed up with 2 college friends and started their own swimsuit line. Now they are in 110 stores and, as mentioned, got the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1996 and also get tons of press.

ON RISK: "I think a big part of my story is pushing myself to the edge. Having no money and risking everything in a way."
WORK = LIFE: "I'm someone who finds a lot of my identity through my career; it's a big part of what makes me happy or unhappy. I just never wanted to settle."
THE AGONY: "I can sit here and tell you all these wonderful things like getting the cover of Sports Ill. and such, but the last two years have been the hardest two years of my life in every way. We stay up 24 hours a day, five days in a row when we need to."
LOWEST POINT: "Hand-dying two thousand yards of satin in a teeny pot on my teeny stove in my teeny kitchen in my one bedroom apartment with the fan going and no air conditioning and not enough light to really see what we we're doing."
THE SACRIFICE: "We didn't take a salary for the first 2 years while working from 9 in the morning until 11 or 12 at night."
- "You have to go into overdrive and put blinders on and do nothing else for a certain amount of time."
- "I took a loan from my parents, cashed in my 401 k from Time Warner and also presently work a part time job for extra cash."
KEEPING A HAPPY FACE: "It's definitely an emotional burden sometimes. Every time I go out to dinner, every time I meet somebody, you never know if they're friends' brother owns a contracting plant or has a lot of money and wants to invest. I can't tell anyone that I had a really crappy day. I always have to be on."
WHY DO IT: "We want to be rich. We want to be able to get out of a meeting, hop in a cab, go to the nearest travel agency, grab a ticket and just go somewhere."
A TURNING POINT: "Getting a call from the head buyer at Bloomingdales asking "how would you feel about being in our Christmas windows?" After that, things started to catch on."
DRAWBACKS:"You don't have an employee cafeteria or a softball team. You're not on a floor with thirty people."
- "Now you can't try and fill in the hours talking on the phone or reading a magazine or say you're going to have a business meeting when you're not."
ON CONNECTIONS: "You really have to use and abuse connections to make a business work."
- "Networking is definitely important, and if you don't enjoy it, you shouldn't have your own business."
MOTTO: "You are responsible for the things that happen."