Jessica Alba | Power Trip | Marie Claire
Over the past 10 years Actress gone Entrepreneur Jessica Alba has broken barriers and paved the way with her company "The Honest Company." Alba joined us at Power Trip, Marie Claire’s annual conference bringing together some of the biggest and brightest female leaders and execs. During her conversation with Marie Claire's Editor-in-Chief, Sally Holmes, Alba shared some words of wisdom that she's learned over the past decade of building her brand.
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00:00You are, I would say, the OG celebrity founder.
00:05You have been 10 years of Honest Company.
00:09A little more than that.
00:11A little bit more than that?
00:13Totally.
00:14Okay. Tell us, how does it feel 10 years later?
00:18With me in the business, I was so hard on myself for so long.
00:23And then I got to a place where I gave myself some grace.
00:26I take in the lessons of the challenges or the hardships
00:31and also allow myself to receive the wins.
00:36I used to be, up until not too long ago, wildly uncomfortable
00:40with taking in anything that was good.
00:44I felt so undeserving.
00:46So I think that's another thing.
00:49Maybe when there's so few of us at the table
00:53in those positions of power, especially,
00:58we do make up 50% of the population,
01:00but we're so wildly underrepresented in business,
01:04in a lot of power rooms.
01:07And when you don't see yourself,
01:09you feel like maybe you don't deserve to be there.
01:11And that's fake news, right?
01:13It's the conditioning that we're used to,
01:16that we grew up with, that we have to unwind.
01:19It's been an amazing journey, and very fulfilling.
01:26It's cool how it can take on so many different waves
01:30as you grow.
01:32So the company started with a more narrow selection
01:36of baby products, wipes, and personal care,
01:40and has expanded.
01:42How do you guide the strategy of a now publicly traded company?
01:47I started with 17 products
01:50in three pretty large sectors.
01:55I felt like I needed to test out
01:58whether there was going to be reception of clean
02:03in these pretty major categories.
02:06Home, detergent space, the personal care space,
02:11which is not necessarily beauty, but kind of.
02:14It's like what you put on your skin,
02:16what you put around the home,
02:18which is the detergents and cleaning.
02:20And then obviously, the thing that's going to touch,
02:23probably the most vulnerable people, which are babies.
02:26So that's why I chose those three categories.
02:29And what I was really trying to solve for, or tackle,
02:32is the injustice that we face every day
02:36in being exposed to unnecessary and harmful chemicals
02:41that actually cause lots of illness.
02:45And these companies that are making these chemicals
02:49that put them in the products that are in,
02:51on, and around all of us every day.
02:54And I was like, maybe there can be
02:58a more human way to approach business.
03:01And so I really was trying to tackle
03:04these sort of like giant categories
03:07in my small, little, tiny way.
03:09And that's why I created a company
03:11that went into three different pretty big categories.
03:1417 products.
03:16And I launched online because I felt like
03:18that was going to give me, I guess,
03:21the ability or the leverage to show
03:26that no matter where you lived,
03:28you should have access to these types of products.
03:30You didn't need to just live next to said store to access it.
03:36And to make this information
03:39just more accessible also to everyone.
03:43I think a lot of people didn't know that,
03:45you know, if you go to the grocery
03:47or if you go to a department store,
03:49you think if you spend more money on it,
03:51it's going to be safer.
03:52Or if you go to that store that you grew up going to,
03:57it was going to be safer, but it's actually not.
04:00There's no real laws that protect human health
04:05or really protect you around your safety.
04:11Even for pregnant women,
04:13there's no real laws that say
04:16that companies can't market products to pregnant women
04:20and make sure that they're actually safe for pregnant women.
04:23There's no laws protecting babies that, you know,
04:26if something is marketed for you to use on or near your baby,
04:30that it's actually safe for that baby.
04:33And there's certainly no laws saying that
04:36anything that comes in contact with your skin
04:39or your environment will be safe for you.
04:43So they're testing on us.
04:46And I was like, what the heck?
04:49So that's why I went into all those different product categories.
04:53And then can you really differentiate?
04:56Can you really stand up against competition?
04:59Is there a real reason for you to be there?
05:01And can you do it at a price that's within reach?
05:07Because there's a lot of things we can do for like a million bucks.
05:11But if you're trying to make it accessible,
05:13can you scale the idea?
05:15Can you take us behind the scenes
05:17of what it looks like to take a company public
05:20and specifically your company public
05:22and really navigating the seas
05:25of a historically male-dominated stock market?
05:30I would say that if you have a peaceful, relaxing life
05:35and you sleep well at night,
05:36don't take your company public.
05:39But who has that?
05:41No, I'm kidding.
05:42No, it's actually important for us to take our companies public.
05:47It's actually necessary.
05:49Between 2013 and 2020,
05:52there were over 2,000 companies that went public
05:55and only 18 of them had female leadership.
05:59That's wild.
06:01It was a really brutal experience.
06:04They really do try to throw as many banana peels in front of you
06:08as humanly possible.
06:10And I would say that there's probably no one better
06:13to navigate banana peels than a woman in business.
06:17We get these things thrown at us left, right, and center.
06:22So you're the youngest Latina ever to take a company public,
06:27which I think deserves a big round of applause.
06:33So you just talked about how hard it was to get there.
06:36What was it like then ringing that bell?
06:40It was interesting because I think when I started the business,
06:46it was really around this social justice of how can I make sure
06:50that more people have access to live their best life,
06:56access to the information, access to products.
07:00Hopefully, if I can get the consumers to feel more empowered,
07:04we can actually start to change other companies
07:07and other companies' values,
07:10and there will be a bit of a groundswell.
07:13So now before, everyone was like,
07:15what does clean mean?
07:17Is that a thing that only moms care about?
07:19Now you literally can't walk into a store
07:22without seeing clean beauty,
07:25without seeing products that are clean and better for you,
07:28basically in every category.
07:31And I'm really proud that it only took 10 years for that to happen,
07:35to literally create that space.
07:38And a lot of the competitors are forced to step up,
07:42which is awesome.
07:44And certainly getting us to that finish line,
07:47that it wasn't until I was writing the speech with Jen,
07:50who's here, who's head of Marcom,
07:53and she's one of my ride or dies, that's been with me.
07:57And we were writing the,
08:00she was like, you have to do a speech.
08:03And this was like, we were the first company during COVID
08:06to actually do it in the NASDAQ offices.
08:09So it was like a whole situation, we weren't sure,
08:11are we going to do it there, are we going to be remote?
08:13And I realized in that moment
08:16that sort of it was like a call to action,
08:20but also a way to kind of show up for a community of people
08:24that for the most part have never been on that stage.
08:29And I was like, okay, so I felt that.
08:33And then that, I guess, I mean,
08:36I know it gave me the strength to really allow the moment to breathe
08:42and be what it needed to be, which is,
08:45I got this far so that not only did I like open the door,
08:51but I blew the doors open,
08:54and I mowed down a lot of those hills
08:57so that a lot more can come through.
09:00And so I just wanted to make sure that anybody who was watching
09:05or listening in that moment or any moment
09:09can see that that's what me being there meant.
09:13I felt like it was easier to control my destiny
09:17launching a D2C brand,
09:19and I would say I recommend that for anyone,
09:23having your foundational principles in D2C,
09:28because there's nothing like that ownership, right?
09:32It's sort of like the flagship store.
09:35Imagine your flagship being online,
09:38and so take care of that,
09:40and no one can take that away from you,
09:42and it's sort of like your nucleus,
09:44and anything else can happen from there.
09:47But ultimately, you have to be where the consumer wants you to be,
09:51and so if the consumer wants you to be in a brick-and-mortar,
09:54go to make sure you have that.
09:57If they want you to be in a retail channel,
10:00make sure you're there or partner with, you know,
10:03wherever there's more ease for them to find you, frankly.
10:09I don't think we should be too married to any model.
10:13I think social commerce is actually 10 years behind where it should be, frankly,
10:19and that's probably where it's all going anyway.
10:23When you control the relationship with the consumer,
10:27you just have so much more power,
10:29and you can test and learn a lot more.
10:34You don't have to rely so much on others for innovation.
10:40So my final question for you,
10:43and to say thank you also for joining us.
10:45This has been so fun.
10:47In the beginning, we introduced you as an actress, an entrepreneur, a founder.
10:53How would you introduce yourself?
10:56I'm a terrible speller.
11:00I'm an amateur chef.
11:04I think I dream big.
11:08I'm a dreamer, and I believe in people.
11:15I do, and I believe in goodness, and I have hope.
11:23My job, I think, is probably to unlock as much of that as possible,
11:29and whether that's through telling stories in entertainment
11:32or telling stories through products, great.
11:37So maybe that's how I would describe myself.
11:40And a very imperfect mom, but my kids still tell me their secrets,
11:45so that's cool.
11:48Jessica, thank you so much for joining us.
11:51So lovely to have you.