| In an interview recently for Sunday Sitdown, Jessica Alba, founder of The Honest Company, reflected on her experience launching her wildly successful company despite her aversion to strangers.
“My husband has no problem calling people up and asking for advice. But I am not someone who speaks to strangers in the elevator. I’m a naturally shy person. “But I’ve had to learn to get out of my comfort zone and connect with people. [While launching The Honest Company,] I would reach out to any woman I met in retail and at conferences. “I’d say, ‘Can I call you?’ and then I would. And I would say, ‘Have you ever dealt with this or that?’” Jessica concluded that it’s all about being relentless! While I am a fan, I disagree with Jessica. I can be relentless, but if I’m not intensely passionate about something, I don’t intentionally connect with and seek out help or advice from everyone I meet. Instead, I will enjoy the comfort of my comfort zone. If I’m going to talk to strangers about a project, my heart needs to be pumping life into that project. And when my heart is in, I’m all in! I will connect with strangers. I will ask for their advice. I will be relentless. When I wrote my first book in 2007, I was obsessed [click to read Obsession Beats Talent]. I wrote every day before starting work. One morning I was boarding a plane, eager to work on my book uninterrupted. But I worried about the reclining power of the passenger in front of me. So, when she sat down, I shared my undertaking and offered her $20 not to move her seat back. She agreed but refused my money, excited to support my project. And here’s the secret I discovered that day: I cared more about my goal than her judgment. It was unabashed freedom. One of the hardest things about running a mentoring program is not finding time or herding mentors. It’s getting people to identify a heart-pumping goal that will drive them to relentlessly connect and deliberately engage with someone they’ve just met. Introvert. Extrovert. Omnivert. Ambivert. None of these hold us back from or propel us forward into connecting and collaborating with others. It only matters whether our ambition is on a mission. © 2022. Ann Tardy and MentorLead. www.mentorlead.com. All Rights Reserved. |