Shay Mitchell has filled her post-Pretty Little Liars career with a few acting roles and a lot of businesses (and hilarious TikTok content). Shortly after the series ended, she founded a luggage, bag, and accessories line called Béis, which has made more than $120 million in profitable gross revenue. More recently, she also co-founded a tequila-seltzer brand called Onda. Shay spoke to The Cut for their “How I Get It Done” series, in which women talk about managing their careers and lives. Some highlights:
On working out: I love working out and look forward to the gym. Since having kids, I’ve started getting into weights. It’s invigorating to lift heavier than before. I’m an Aries — we’re very competitive with ourselves and other people. These days, I love doing anything for the bum. On TikTok, I’m seeing all these girls with the little scrunch pants, and I bought a pair for myself and … it didn’t do anything. That’s how I knew it was still time to build a bum.
On her work perspective: If I don’t understand something, I’ll ask questions. I never need to be the smartest person in the room. I just have to be the most passionate and eager. I didn’t go to school for marketing, design, or any of that. I still do all of my drawings on paper with a pen. I don’t even know how to do that on a laptop or iPad. For me, it’s about embracing the fact that I don’t necessarily know everything and enjoying that. I once heard, “You want to hire people that are smarter than you,” and it’s true. My team crushes it, and I get to learn from them every single day. That’s the best form of education for me. I’ve had experiences when I didn’t have everything in order, didn’t check the material, or the zippers didn’t match, and I was like, “I can’t put this out there,” and we had to delay everything. My problems aren’t crazy at the end of the day, but it’s still a learning curve. Having kids shows me that making mistakes is really the only way to learn.
On receiving feedback: Criticism is something I take with the same grain of salt as I do compliments. If you take things to heart too much, that’s such a roller coaster of emotions to be putting in other people’s hands. And I just can’t do that. Now listen, if I get a bad review on something or somebody’s like, “Hey, this happened in my bag” or “Could you improve this?” — I love that. That’s a very different thing. If you’re just being negative to be negative, that never has any effect on me, because I know that those people are hurting themselves. I had that experience being in high school. I’ve been bullied. I’ve gone through that, and I’ve had enough therapists to tell me it has nothing to do with me. So at this point, being in my mid-30s, anything just negative to be negative will never affect me. I can promise you that.
On how she balances her home and work life: My partner, of course. My parents live in Vancouver, but I have family an hour away — a couple of close aunts and cousins I can count on if Matte and I go out of town or something. We also have an incredible nanny. The girls love her. The hardest thing to find is somebody you can entrust with your kids. Once you do, treat them like gold. She’s like family now. I feel so fortunate that I have somebody I can leave the kids with and feel good about it.
Reading the full article, my impression was that Shay is good at giving credit where credit is due — to her work team, her glam team, and her home team. She doesn’t pretend she just rolls out of bed looking like that, but says it’s down to her glam team. And Shay also talks about her routines with her two kids, but readily talks about her nanny. She’s so busy and has two kids under 5 — of course she has a nanny and I’m glad she’s shouting her out. What else? I completely agree with Shay about weights and it does feel good to lift heavier. (And I also don’t have enough of an ass for those pants she mentioned). She seems like she has a really healthy perspective toward her businesses. It sounds like she’s very involved and not just slapping her name on it, particularly Béis, but I appreciate that she’s not pretending to be the expert and know everything herself. Same goes with her stance on feedback, both positive and negative. The way Shay differentiates between real feedback and negativity just for the sake of negativity, and letting the latter roll off our back, is something we could all stand to implement in our work and personal lives.
photos credit: Image Press Agency/Avalon, Olivier Sanchez/Avalon and via Instagram
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