Jordyn Woods has built a career as a model and entrepreneur, establishing her lifestyle brand, Woods by Jordyn, all while navigating the pressures of growing up in the public eye. But for Woods, understanding her value has been less about getting everything right and more about learning from the moments when things go wrong.
“Every time I failed, I gained confidence,” Woods told Know Your Value founder and “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski during a conversation at Forbes and Brzezinski’s 30/50 Summit in New York City on Friday. “I would say every time I didn’t do something right, every time something didn’t go the way I wanted it to, I developed confidence because I knew OK, now I’m one step closer to knowing the right thing to do.”
Woods continued: “I’ve never gotten better through everything working out. It was through every mishap or mistake that I got more confident because I knew what to not do.”
It’s a lesson that has extended well beyond business. At 19, Woods experienced the sudden loss of her father, who died of pancreatic cancer after going from being extremely healthy to passing away within a month. The experience fundamentally changed her perspective and helped set her on a path toward prioritizing fitness and mental health.
“I’ve just chosen to look at things that happened to me in a way of it happened for me rather than to me, and always just tried to be the most optimistic in in that journey,” Woods said.
Nearly a decade later, she sees how much that experience shaped the person she has become. But grief has also reminded her that life’s biggest milestones can bring complicated emotions. When she married her husband, NBA star Karl-Anthony Towns, this year, she felt the absence of her father acutely.
“It wasn’t, oh my gosh, I’m getting married. It’s oh my gosh, my dad isn’t here to do this with me,” Woods said. Her older brother walked her down the aisle.
For Woods, knowing her value also means recognizing that personal worth cannot be measured solely by professional accomplishments.
“We put our value in what we accomplish, we put our value in being able to sit on this stage today,” she told Brzezinski. “But if I wasn’t sitting on the stage, I still do know my value.”
Still, she acknowledged that maintaining that confidence isn’t always easy.
“Right now, I mean, I’m on such a high right now after this year that I feel like it’s easy to know my value, but it’s hard to know your value when things aren’t going your way.”
Woods said she is learning to celebrate her successes without losing sight of what’s next. Even amid an exciting year, she finds herself pushing forward rather than pausing to appreciate how far she has come.
“I’m in the middle of celebrating my wins, but also pushing forward,” she said. “I feel like I don’t celebrate my wins. I know I don’t take anything for granted because anything can change tomorrow and the next hour. So I’m constantly having to remind myself that it is okay to celebrate some good things happening.”
One of those wins has been the success of the Tux Clutch Mini, an accessory from Woods by Jordyn that went viral during the New York Knicks’ championship run and was later featured at the Guggenheim. But Woods is already thinking about what comes next.
When Brzezinski asked whether she had retired the now-iconic bag, Woods revealed she was torn between celebrating its success and making room for something new.
“But it’s like, don’t you want to end on a high note … Let’s create something new,” Woods said.
The bag will have another moment in the spotlight at a Woods by Jordyn pop-up in SoHo over Halloween weekend, she said. But her instinct to keep creating reflects a larger lesson about entrepreneurship: success is worth celebrating, but it doesn’t have to define what comes next.
That forward-looking mindset is especially important when navigating the internet, where young women face relentless pressure to look perfect, build a personal brand and absorb public judgment.
Woods, who experienced social media’s evolution firsthand, said the pressure on today’s younger generation feels different. When she and her friends first joined Instagram, they posted freely. Now, social media can feel like a carefully curated business opportunity in which imperfection has little room to exist.
“I feel like I just got out of my awkward phase a couple years ago,” she said, noting that her 19-year-old sister never seemed to experience one.
For Woods, building confidence required self-reflection and learning to distinguish between other people’s struggles and her own identity.
“I feel like it was a lot of self-reflection and really identifying that most people are dealing with their own sense of trauma and pain and projecting that onto you, and that is not your trauma to carry.”
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