*By Carlo Versano* Gwyneth Paltrow didn't mean to start a wellness empire. "It was quite accidental," Paltrow told Cheddar's Alyssa Julya Smith in an interview from the Los Angeles Goop Lab, her company's first brick-and-mortar store. Ten years after embarking on a journey to better understand "all aspects of wellness" in the wake of her late father's cancer diagnosis, Paltrow's Goop is now a multi-faceted wellness and lifestyle brand, with a hand in retail, digital media, publishing, events and, soon, a presence on Netflix. "The future of contextual commerce," as she refers to it. In that way, Goop is a tech company rather than just a commerce business. "The future of amplifying a content business is going to be leveraging technology in order to do that with any degree of precision," she said. The company is in the process of redesigning its flagship website to better spotlight its original content (which, in turn, would help drive business to the e-commerce platform). That's a strategy other media brands are trying as they look to cultivate ーand then monetize ー a loyal audience. Glamour recently told Cheddar it was also experimenting with using content to drive online shopping on its own site. Netflix recently ordered a Goop docuseries, which will extend the Goop brand into hundreds of millions of homes across the country who might not have otherwise known of it. "They're not afraid to move culture forward," Paltrow said of Netflix ($NFLX). Goop has also cultivated a C-suite that is nearly entirely female, and a culture that is explicitly feminine (the company's CTO, Juan Paul Ramirez, the singular top executive, is a "brave man," Paltrow said). Paltrow said she particularly enjoys working with mothers, who bring a specific kind of "efficiency ... urgency, and precision" to "kill it at work" while still carving out time with their children. And she credits what she calls the inherently feminine qualities of start-up culture ー creativity, collaboration, emotion ー in helping the company grow. Businesses grow from resembling families, to villages, to cities, Paltrow said. Right now, Goop is a village. As the CEO of a growing business, Paltrow said it's critical that the values of the company be articulated early and often. When a company is small and just starting, those values are obvious ー but when it expands, they need to be made clear. "Everybody has to be responsible for upholding the values," she said. For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/gwyneth-paltrow-looks-back-on-10-years-of-goop).
