Level Up: Capsule Wardrobes, Steve Jobs, and Happiness
Welcome to Level Up, a series where I hand-pick three pieces of worth while content and serve them to you on a silver platter. There is an overwhelming amount of content out there claiming to be your secret to leveling up. Luckily, I consume enough content for all of us and have parsed through the BS to bring you pieces that will help you live up to that lofty new year's resolution of “making this year, your year.” Consider this your friendly reminder that we have almost blown through two-whole-months of 2025, so we have some work to do.
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No. 1 — Create a Capsule Wardrobe with Karla Welch’s Masterclass on Building & Owning Your Personal Style
Click here to subscribe to Masterclass and get access to this class and many more.
Karla Welch is a celebrity stylist who works with A-listers like Justin Bieber, Olivia Wilde, and Sarah Paulson. Here is what I took away from her discussion of building your capsule wardrobe —
Reassess Your Closet
Go through what you already own. Pull out the pieces that you reach for often and even some forgotten items that you think could serve as foundational pieces for multiple looks.
Gather Your Capsule Classics
Your Capsule Classics are the foundational items you will base your looks around. Your favorite pair of jeans or your favorite little black dress are perfect examples of Capsule Classics. Karla’s Capsule Classics include a blazer, a well-fitting dress that you can style in different ways, a trench coat, a motorcycle jacket, blue jeans, and a white t-shirt. This list is just a guide. I made my own version that includes a slightly oversized blazer, a white cable-knit sweater, an overcoat, a black mini dress, jeans, black trousers, and a white t-shirt. You don’t have to get rid of your more trendy items, but these pieces should complement your Capsule Classics, not replace them.
Shop With Intention & Focus On Quality.
Once you’ve assessed what you already own, consider adding quality pieces to complete your Capsule Classics before buying anything else. Quality pieces are available at various price points, and it can be helpful to consider not just the price, but the material as well; choose linen, silk, wool, and hemp over synthetics like polyester.
This was not in Karla’s Masterclass but — I really like shopping at Quince for closet staples. Quince offers high-quality products at affordable prices because they work directly with manufacturers, cutting out traditional supply chain costs.
Classics from Quince
More Capsule Classics
No. 2 — Learn To Persuade Your Audience with Founders Podcast Episode #350 - How to Sell Like Steve Jobs
Click here to learn more about this episode and find ways to listen.
This episode discusses the book Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience by Carmine Gallo which argues that Steve Jobs was the best business storyteller of our era and explains how he used storytelling to market his products. Here are some main points from the episode…
Sell a solution, not a product.
Jobs aimed to sell solutions to people's problems instead of just convincing them to buy products. For example, one of the original iPod taglines was “1,000 songs in your pocket.” The iPod replaced CDs, which were hard to transport; you couldn’t easily take your entire CD collection in the car or while running. With the iPod, you could carry 1,000 songs anywhere.
Simple, clear messaging will engage your audience and specialized jargon will put them to sleep.
Jobs described his competitor’s products as “crumby” or “uuuuuugly.” He spoke as he did in everyday life, and he didn’t bore his audience with technological jargon. Jobs recognized that his audience didn’t care about the technology, they just wanted to know what the computer could do for them.
Show them the proof and make it memorable.
It is actually really hard for human beings to conceptualize numbers. We know what they sound like but we don’t really grasp how large or small a number is.
Jobs kept this in mind while speaking to his audience. He gave a presentation 200 days after the first iPhone launched telling his audience how in the first 200 days, 4 million iPhones were sold. He could have stopped there, but to help the audience grasp the magnitude of the iPhone’s success he continued on, explaining that dividing 4 million iPhones by 200 days means 20,000 iPhones sold each day.
I found this next example to be really interesting. It is meant to show just how much larger $1 billion is compared to $1 million, and how human beings cannot grasp the disparity by just hearing the numbers. If you took $1 million worth of $100-bills and stacked them on top of each other, it would be 16 INCHES high. If you took $1 billion worth of $100-bills and stacked them on top of each other, it would be TALLER THAN THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING.
All this to say, using metaphors and comparisons, rather than just examples, will help your audience understand, appreciate, and most importantly, remember, the point you are trying to make.
One final example from the episode to drive the point home — An investor asked why Apple’s market share of personal computers was so small (only 5%). Jobs’s explained that Apple’s market share of the personal computer industry was actually greater than that of BMW and Mercedes’s in the car industry.
Be passionate, it is infectious.
Jobs wholeheartedly believed in his products and their ability propel innovators to new heights and success. The impact of Apple products is undeniable, but was it the products themselves or Jobs’s infectious passion that led to a world where our iPhone became our wallet, our workspace, our camera, our television, and our radio? It is likely an inextricable combination of the two. The episode also mentions Phil Knight, the co-founder of Nike, who struggled to sell first encyclopedias and then mutual funds. Knight finally found success selling running shoes. His secret? He was not selling shoes. He was selling his belief that running a few miles a day could change people’s lives and in turn make the world a better place.
No. 3 — Get Happier with The Mel Robins Podcast Episode #261- How to Create the Life You Want: Lessons From the #1 Happiness Researcher
Click here to learn more about this episode and find ways to listen.
In this episode, Mel talks with Dr. Judith Joseph, a double-board-certified psychiatrist and founder of Manhattan Behavioral Medicine. Dr. Joseph presents her Five V’s, a research-based framework for achieving happiness. I think of this framework not as a linear, step-by-step guide, but rather something far more digestible— a bundle habits and tools accessible to all of us.
Below is my surface level summary of the Five V’s, but I recommend listening to the episode for a deeper dive into the research and its nuances.
Validation
Whether we are avoiding difficult conversations or just busy, we often ignore our feelings. Validation in this context is the act of acknowledging how we feel. Some people are really good at expressing how they feel while others are completely unable to put their feelings into words. Dr. Joseph goes into detail about our varying ability to name our emotions. But regardless of how you do it, pinpointing the emotion is the first step in overcoming it. Human beings do not like uncertainty. When we are upset, we feel the physical symptoms of stress. Those symptoms are heightened when we deprive ourselves of the cause of that physical discomfort. The science shows that naming the cause of our physical symptoms takes away the uncertainty, and our stress begins to decrease.
Venting
Once you validate how you feel, you have to let those feelings out. You have to vent. The key is to distinguish this from trauma dumping or rage texting. Dr. Joseph likes to tell her clients to do some kind of “self venting” before opening it up to other people. Maybe write it down, or just say it out loud. [This one resinated with me. Sometimes once I say something out-loud I realize how unhinged I sound.]
Values
When things just don’t spark joy anymore, we have to remind ourselves of what we really value in life. To do this, Dr. Joseph says to think about a time in your life when you felt your most fulfilled. Are you helping others? Being creative? Spending time with your family? Spending time in nature? [Try to stay away from shallow values like money and material items.]
Sometimes, Dr. Joseph says, we have to travel as far back as our childhood to figure out our deeper level values. In the episode’s example, Dr. Joseph talks about a client who recalled being her most happy on camping trips with her family. This doesn’t mean she had to start taking camping trips to be happy. The client started with small activities she could include into her regular routine like reading articles about hiking. From there, she could work her way toward incorporating nature into things like her vacation or weekend plans.
Vitals
This one is what Dr. Joseph calls the “boring V”. Take care of your body. Sleep well, eat well, eat foods that are good for your brain like blueberries, fish, spinach, etc. Dr. Joseph reminds us that loneliness is bad for our health, so take care of your relationships, too.
Vision
Take the time to plan your happiness and celebrate your wins, both big and small. Make an effort to plan the vacation, to make time for your hobbies, to visit your friends and family. Make time for things that spark joy and celebrate the fact that you are experiencing joy. Don’t force yourself to do something “fun” only to kick yourself afterward for not doing something more “productive.”
Resources:“How to Create the Life You Want: Lessons From the #1 Happiness Researcher." The Mel Robbins Podcast, episode 261. Accessed February 13, 2025."How to Sell Like Steve Jobs." Founders Podcast, episode 350. Accessed February 13, 2025. Adizon, A Jose. “A sales lesson from Phil Knight, founder of Nike.” Medium. Retrieved February 13, 2025.Karla Welch. "Teaches Building & Owning Your Personal Style." MasterClass. [Accessed February 13, 2025].
