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Jessica Alba was nine months pregnant, stressed out of her mind and battling a bad allergic reaction to laundry detergent when she decided to launch her first business.
Alba spoke about her experience as a successful
entrepreneur in a conversation with Courtney Kelso, senior executive VP and head of payments: consumer and small business for U.S. Bank and Visa, held Oct. 29 in Hollywood. Alba, the actor known for such films as “The Fantastic Four” and “Sin City” and James Cameron’s Fox TV drama “Dark Angel,” was recently named spokesperson for U.S. Bank on behalf of small businesses. She’s featured in a national ad campaign rolling out for U.S. Bank’s Business Essentials Visa Card.
Alba’s determination to launch a company that used safe and healthy chemicals in skin care and cleaning products was realized after the birth of her daughter. The Honest Company made its retail debut in 2012 with a handful of products. Nine years later, the company had a successful IPO, making Alba one of the youngest and one of the few Latinas to take a company public.
In the conversation with Kelso, moderated by Cynthia Littleton, Variety’s co-Editor in Chief, Alba recalled the hard work of getting the company off the ground. She was ahead of the curve in recognizing that her name recognition could be harnessed to create awareness for her brand.
“I didn’t slap my name on a brand that already existed. I didn’t collab with the brand that existed. I did something impossible. I created something that never existed, and to build a consumer brand around a digital marketplace, which also had not been done before,” Alba said. “I was really trying to solve something, I had to learn about operations, supply chain. I had to learn about shipping and packing. [Alba and her initial partners] were literally getting different types of bubble wrap around our detergents and throwing them off the back of the cars because we’re like, that’s going to happen when said delivery person is irritated in the middle of winter in Ohio, they will be tossing it and so we had to see if like the cap would break. And it did, it totally did.”
The learning curve was steep, Alba admitted to the invitation-only crowd of small business owners, entrepreneurs and business influencers.
“We launched with a beta website because entrepreneurs don’t know that you shouldn’t launch with the beta website,” she said. And then there was the time that they had to chase after consumers for payment because the system failed to charge credit cards. “You sent them the product, and then you have to call them because you are also customer service and you say, ‘Excuse me, can I please charge your credit cards because you have the products and we didn’t really charge it last month.’ ”
Kelso confidently assured Alba that her experience was not unusual.
“Small business owners have these wonderful characteristics of entrepreneurialism and resiliency, and it’s no surprise that 30 million small businesses in this in this country with more than 60 million jobs are responsible for half the country’s GDP,” Kelso said. “It’s about ingenuity, it’s about what you see and how you can solve [a problem], and the determination to get it done. That is what makes small businesses the force that they are in the American economy.”
Kelso added that the rising Gen Z generation is predisposed to think about launching business, in part because of the role models provided by Alba and other determined stars-turned-entrepreneurs.
“Millennials and Gen Z entrepreneurs are driven by purpose. They more optimistic than other generations that are starting businesses,” Kelso said. “They start them as passion projects. They start them on the side in some cases. We find that they are creating them at a faster clip and faster rate, and they are more optimistic and deeply connected to what they are building.” Keslo complimented Alba for being “the role model for the scaling of that kind of business.”
Determined as she was, Alba also had to fight off her own insecurities about her ability to succeed in the business realm. She came from modest means, with both of her parents serving in the military.
“I had a major impostor syndrome about whether I was even worthy of running a business because I had been an actress since I was 12. I graduated with a GED at 15, and I’m surrounded by venture capitalists and all these people in business that know so much more than me,” Alba said. “I can imagine that entrepreneurs, especially if it’s your side hustle before it becomes the main hustle, you’re like, ‘Can I really do this?’ But you have to be scrappy about it.”
