Flex Work Is Essential to Women: An Interview With Jessica Herrin

Randi Zuckerberg
Mon, 16 Oct 2017 21:00:00 -0700
Lifestyle

Jessica Herrin is a major powerhouse in retail marketing. She's also given women a way back into the workforce after gap years and offered flexible careers to women who aren't ready to go back full time.
Updated: Tue Oct 17, 2017

Jessica Herrin is a major powerhouse in retail marketing. She's also given women a way back into the workforce after gap years and offered flexible careers to women who aren't ready to go back full time.

That's why I support this woman's work.

Jessica Herrin is the CEO and founder of Stella & Dot and the author of "Find Your Extraordinary."

1) What career opportunities for women needed the most adjustment?

I wanted to offer women a flexible way to earn incremental income — or even a full-time income, but on their own terms. When I looked at the existing career opportunities, I saw corporate jobs that often required working inflexible hours or old-school home-based businesses that felt like they were built for a 1950s housewife. I wanted to reinvent the home business for a savvy, modern woman who wanted to share a great product, as well as benefit from having a smart, multichannel, tech-enabled business. Our mission as a company is pure. We help give every woman the means to style her own life. Flex work is essential for women. So many women are not afraid of hard work, but they simply want to be the one that decides when that will happen so that they can work around their other priorities in life. Many others want a side gig, a business on top of their other career that helps them add extra rewards and more financial independence to their lives. This creates more possibility and freedom.

2) What's the No. 1 way success can be achieved on personal terms?

Success is only meaningful when it translates into personal happiness. Take a long hard look at your goals and ask yourself whether achieving them will truly make you happy. Are you chasing your authentic dreams or someone else's cookie-cutter version of what success looks like for you? In my book, "Find Your Extraordinary," I offer a framework for how to have the courage to listen to your own voice and the grit to go out there and create what you want in life.

3) How can one get into his or her own entrepreneurial spirit?

It all starts with honing your self-confidence — so that you truly believe you can create the success you deserve in life. Then I provide a tactical framework of the six P's of the entrepreneurial spirit. It starts with finding your authentic passion and helping to create your path to attain it. The first step is to surround yourself with the people that will help you achieve your goals and make it all worthwhile, helping you to cultivate the positivity and perseverance to go the distance and the productivity to get it all done while you still love your life.

These are the traits that ordinary people can each cultivate within themselves to achieve extraordinary things. This is the side of each of us that looks around the world and sees the way we want things to be instead of just accepting the way that they are. It's the will in us to create the life that we want. It's the part of us that truly knows that our life is not created by our past or our circumstances but instead what we choose to do next.

4) Why is it important to live life on your own terms, especially in business?

You can become commercially successful and yet still not feel happy and fulfilled. Life is too short not to love what you do, why you do it and who you do it with. You should feel soulfully connected to your work. That's the only way to find success that puts peace in your mind and happiness in your heart rather than just money in your bank account and a title on your resume. Now, that doesn't mean that you don't have to figure out how to pay your dues and add value or that you only have to do glamorous work. Rolling up your sleeves and getting it done is still required. But you have to care about the why, which makes all the hard work — and even the grunt work — worth it.

5) How do you live your own extraordinary life?

An ordinary definition of success is making money, moving up the ladder and being well-regarded by others. Extraordinary success, however, includes doing well at something you love and being well-regarded by those who matter most to you, especially yourself. It's about learning what you want, developing the confidence to admit it and having the grit to go out there and make it happen.

For me, that means pursuing my business goals while also putting boundaries around my family time. It meant kicking the foolish guilt of being a working mom to the curb so that I could make more room for love, joy and accomplishment in my life.