Jessica Alba shares how she forged her own career path – even though other people told her to head in a different direction.
The Honest Company founder, 41, appeared at the MAKERS 2022 conference with Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone, where she spoke about her passion for creating baby products without potentially harmful ingredients. Alba, who suffered from asthma and severe childhood allergies, first became interested in making these products when she was a new mum and the laundry detergent she was using gave her a skin reaction. . (Alba is a member of Yahoo’s board of directors.)
“I had flashbacks of my childhood with the breathing machines and being in hospitals and being isolated and lonely and also just the fear that my throat would close up and suffocate,” Alba recalled of that scary moment. “When I had this allergic reaction to this detergent that’s marketed for people who have babies, I thought, ‘What if my little baby has this allergic reaction? “”
Despite this passion, however, Alba – who was known primarily as an actress at the time, thanks to shows like Black Angel and movies like Honey – she was told she should think smaller.
“I went to people in Hollywood, who were the only people I knew in business, frankly, and they were like, ‘How about making a perfume?’ I was like, ‘What?’ And they’re like, you know, ‘You should be the face of a perfume if you want to do anything else,'” she shared. “I was like, ‘No, no, no. Like people are getting sick. There’s like kind of a parallel hockey stick, like sickness, like cancer and learning disabilities and obesity and all these hormonal issues – all my friends are doing IVF and they’re in their 20s, something’s wrong and we need to fix it.
She also faced a lot of pushback — and sexism — from Silicon Valley when pitching Honest and she described interactions with venture capitalists who would say, “We’ll check with our wives if that’s a good idea. And I was like, ‘Cool, I’m going to be right.'”
Alba’s dedication paid off, with the company going public just after Alba’s 40th birthday in 2021. In the end, she said, starting her own business allowed her to avoid some pitfalls that come with aging in Hollywood.
“For every yes that anyone saw, you know, in a role or a movie or a TV show, I got thousands of noes,” she shared. “It’s hard to deal with that level of rejection when you’re a kid and then an adult. Hollywood is interesting because there are no hits that really grant you anything in Hollywood. If anything, the older you get, the more they like to tell you, “You’re lucky to be here and your time is running out,” whereas in any other career, seniority matters. So it’s a really interesting thing – the more you invest in it, the more comfortable you feel with it, the more you get taken. It really unsettles your brain and your soul.
Looking back, Alba said it was her “midlife crisis” at 26 – when she began to reevaluate her place in the entertainment industry – that changed the course of her future.
“I got pregnant accidentally, and that’s how the midlife crisis happened,” Alba said after finding out she was pregnant with her first child, daughter Honor. “I had this amazing human being and his beautiful soul that really put everything into perspective and really forced me to look at the world differently and forced me to prioritize nothing but, frankly, his well- be. And that opened the next chapter of my life.”
Today, as Alba balances multiple careers and her personal life, she credits her support system — but it’s clear she’s not doing it all, and she’s not doing it well. “I’m really outspoken about my flaws and that makes me vulnerable and sad and it’s hard to express those emotions with my kids. But I think it’s really important for them to see. … And I think that’s important for them to see that it’s OK to make mistakes and not have it all together.”
This message extends to social media with Alba lifting the veil for her daughters. “I’m really, really upfront with my girls that social media is fake. It’s not real. And they’re like, ‘Well mom, why are you doing it then? And I’m like, ‘Because that’s good for business. Next.’ Like, let’s use it. Let’s call it what it is. We don’t have to pretend it’s somebody’s real life.”
Editor’s Note: Jessica Alba is a member of Yahoo’s Board of Directors.
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