When she made her first appearance on on Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County, a popular MTV reality show in the mid-2000s, Kristin Cavallari was only a teenager. Over the course of the decade that followed, she appeared on a few other reality TV shows, authored an autobiography and a trio of cookbooks (all of which are bestselling), married an NFL quarterback and had three children.
In 2017, with three toddlers under the age of 5, Cavallari founded Uncommon James, a lifestyle brand that offers jewelry, skin care line called Uncommon Beauty, apparel, accessories and home decor. It has four brick-and-mortar boutiques in Nashville, Dallas, Chicago and Charleston. This summer she also introduced Hard Feelings, the first fragrance under the Uncommon James umbrella. An entire slate of new skin care products is on tap as well.
In addition to being the founder, CEO and creative director of Uncommon James, Cavallari hosts Let’s Be Honest With Kristin Cavallari. This podcast highlights everything from dating and relationships to health and wellness and what’s really going on behind the headlines. New episodes drop every Tuesday.
Learning to trust her instincts
“I didn’t have a business plan. I didn’t think about the company in a year or five years,” Cavallari says of launching Uncommon James. “I’ve always been someone who runs off of gut, and I just go. I get an idea, and it’s like, ‘Boom, let’s just make it happen.’
“I’ve always taken the stance that if you’re passionate about something, if you have a great work ethic, a lot of drive—that can’t be taught,“ she continues. “If you have those things, you can accomplish anything, no matter what…. When we overthink things, we let fear creep in, or we start to second-guess ourselves. Just starting is half the battle.”
We asked Cavallari how she creates a work-life balance that works for her with a family, a thriving business and a successful podcast. “It was really difficult,” she responds without hesitation. “There was a period where I had just launched Uncommon James, was working on my second cookbook and filming Very Cavallari, my reality show that I had on E!, while raising three little kids, and my marriage was falling apart. I think I was doing all of the things to try to distract from [this].”
During this time, she was also traveling to Los Angeles to host E! red carpet pre-shows. “I was completely maxed out, and I knew that that wasn’t sustainable,” she recalls. “I think COVID really… put things in perspective for me. Like everyone else, it forced me to slow down.”
During the divorce process, she and her now ex-husband split custody of their kids 50-50. She considers this a positive outcome.
“It actually forced this perfect work-life balance on me,” Cavallari says. “The weeks that I didn’t have my kids is when I would work. And the weeks I had my kids, I was a mom—that was it. I wasn’t working…. I really enjoyed that life—instead of… feeling like I was always spread thin and I was never 100% present with whatever I was doing.”
Balancing family and work
Though the custody arrangement has since changed and her kids are with her more, they are now all in school. This affords Cavallari the time she needs to maintain her work-life balance. She prioritizes her time and the things she needs to finish while her kids are at school.
“My day ends when my kids get home from school,” she says. “I don’t want to be working when my kids are home…. I want to be there making dinner and doing all the things. My kids are always my priority.“
“I know when I look back in 30 years of my life, being at every football game for my boys and picking my daughter up from horseback riding camp is what’s going to matter,“ she adds.
On the career side of things, Cavallari records and edits her Let’s Be Honest podcast in her dining room, and she can work on her designs for Uncommon James from anywhere. “I’ve been lucky enough to sort of be able to curate my career to be able to do it from my house,“ she says. “I feel very lucky that I’ve been able to get to this point.“
Another move that she made to create more of a work-life balance is hiring a C-suite to help her lead Uncommon James. Getting to that point did not come easily, though. She was always under the impression that if she wanted something, she was going to have to do it herself.
“It was really hard for me to delegate,” Cavallari explains. “When I hired my COO, CMO and CFO… I had to just trust and let go. And it’s been the best thing that I’ve ever done. My C-suite team is incredible. “They’re running the ship, and they tell me what I need to know, and they don’t bother me with the things that I don’t need to know anymore.
“I went from having a hand in every facet of the company and quite literally doing everything at one point to [being] the sole designer,“ she adds. “I have a hand in marketing, and I’m just really doing the creative part that I love, and [it] feels really good to be able to get to this place.“
She’s carried the idea of asking for help into her personal life too. When her assistant of a few years moved away in December, Cavallari took back the responsibilities she’d delegated. “I’m the kind of person who[’s] like, ‘I’ll do everything myself. It’s fine, it’s fine—I’ll just do it,’” she says. “And I’m realizing I can’t do it all.”
She later hired a new assistant to manage her time and ensure that she’s on top of everything so she doesn’t become overwhelmed. “We have to be able to lean on other people and ask for help,” she says. “It doesn’t make you less of a person to ask for help.”
Prioritizing self-care
When asked what she would recommend to others with busy lives to achieve work-life balance, her tip is really quite simple. “I just started doing this a couple months ago, but… I’ve started putting [into my Google calendar] on certain days, ‘Keep Empty,’” Cavallari says. “It’s always a day when I actually have the house to myself. Maybe I’m going to work out, maybe I’m going to go to the grocery store—whatever. But [I do something] so that I feel like I can take care of me.
“I think prioritizing yourself is actually really important so that you don’t get burnt out, especially as a mom,“ she adds. “Because if you have nothing to give, or, you know, if your tank is empty, you’ve got nothing to give your kids. So I do believe… [that] making yourself the priority is the best thing you can do for the kids, for your husband, your boyfriend, whatever it is. I have found that just scheduling those days periodically for myself makes a huge difference.”
Photo by Dennis Leupold
This article originally appeared in the November issue of SUCCESS+ digital magazine.
