Jen Gotch is OK don’t you know? She’s been a firm favourite here at CRAKD for some time now. Ever since we started tuning in to her Trash Dance a while back. Not to mention her Dad and his celery juicing escapades. All-round she’s a top gal. The kind you can imagine sitting next to in a bar downing shots of tequila with. You know the conversation would be without judgment and no doubt she’d chuck in a few nuggets of her own.
She’s an absolute powerhouse. A hippy-dippy creative type that tried her hand at a host of stuff including fashion styling and photography. Then she started the now million-dollar accessories company ban.do, with a friend. Ban.do is serious about fun. They sell a range of stationery, accessories with clothing the latest feather to the ban.do bow. It’s completely exploded in the last 3 years during which Gotch sold the company and joined as Creative Director. Genius.com. Start the company, sell it, make a wad of cash, have the corporates come in and do the boring stuff and stick to the stuff she’s brilliant at. This to me sums up what I’ve come to love about Gotch. She does what she wants when she wants it and she doesn’t apologize for anything, least of all for being herself.
She’s honest and open.
She’s at home in front of the camera but her ego doesn’t feature much, a nod to her selling a company she knew she didn’t have the skills to run. She is searingly honest about her journey with mental health. She’s been living with depression and bipolar disorder for decades and uses Instagram to share her journey and to give hope and some guidance to her droves of followers, some of which no doubt battle with their own mental health issues. She’s one of the few genuinely authentic people online today. Maybe it’s her age, maybe it’s the fact that she’s an unassuming CEO or maybe it’s just the fact that she says it as it is.
As Creative Director she continues to launch hit after hit with her ‘depression’ and ‘anxiety’ necklaces selling out no sooner than they launched. She has also teamed up with the ever real Sophia Amoruso to launch a weekly podcast ‘Jen Gotch is OK’ over on Girlboss. Instagram also tells me she’s writing a book at present, one that outlines her journey with mental health and how she has become one of the biggest accidental mental health advocates online today.
We love her. We want her to be our friend. To get her own show and trash dance all day and share updates about her zits, and her Pop and the butt she’ll never have. We love her because she’s warm, she’s funny, she’s sweet and sensitive, honest and caring (oh and she built a million-dollar company and has a drove of a-lister pals). But most of we love her because she’s real, she shares the good with the bad and everything in between.
