Jessica Alba Founded A Billion-dollar Company?
I just met a woman who didn’t quite believe that Jessica Alba – a mere actress – could be anything more than a hired “spokesperson” for a billion-dollar company like The Honest Company. She was hard-pressed to believe that Alba was an actual co-founder who was there from the start.
“Maybe Jessica Alba got a percentage of the company in exchange for being the public face of the company,” she wondered out loud.
I can understand her skepticism. After all, we all see Jessica Alba as a well-known Hollywood movie star. When I first heard that Alba’s company hit a billion dollars and Alba was on the cover of Forbes magazine, I was like, “Wait, what? Jessica Alba, the actress?” Then I realized: holy cow, I have Jessica Alba’s toilet paper in my bathroom right now! When I bought it at Target, I didn’t even know The Honest Company was Alba’s.
Then everything changed for me when I read the reason why Jessica Alba founded The Honest Company! It’s her WHY* that has made me both a customer and advocate. And her WHY reminded me of Simon Sinek’s TED Talk: Start With Why.
Why do we think an actress with a pretty face doesn’t have a brain? Or do we think that a famous person can’t do something completely different from what they’re known for. Maybe some people find it hard to believe that a woman can start a billion-dollar company.
Jessica Alba is an entrepreneur, plain and simple! And leading by example is what up-and-coming young girls need to see.
Actress Jessica Alba and Internet entrepreneur Brian Lee, co-founders of The Honest Company, discuss the shift to healthy products at the 2014 New York Times DealBook Conference.
Alba proves that you can be anything you want to be: actress, wife, mom, businesswoman, advocate. She’s proving that a great business idea is solving a real-world problem. She has drive, guts and a WHY that drives The Honest Company. More importantly, for entrepreneurs everywhere, she never gave up in the face of her doubters.
How Jessica Alba Built A $1 Billion Company, And $200 Million Fortune, Selling Parents Peace Of Mind
To the very nice woman who genuinely didn’t quite believe that Alba started The Honest Company, I found some details that I didn’t know myself: “It took Alba three years to find her business partners—chief executive officer Brian Lee, chief operating officer Sean Kane, and chief product officer Christopher Gavigan.” Source.
*Like most great ideas, The Honest Company was inspired by a need that wasn’t being filled.
Featured Jessica Alba photo credit: By Gage Skidmore [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
