11 Apr Time to Vacate Your Comfort Zone

Fear of failure. Fear of rejection. Fear of the unknown. Fear of going for it. Fear of standing still. It can all be paralyzing.

Sometimes the best thing to do is stare it down head-on and jump over it. Easier said than done!

There are two moments in my career when I recall being fearful.

The Dot Com Shakeout

The first episode is when I had landed my job after graduate business school at a digital agency. This is when the Web was relatively new, so the industry was called e-Business Strategy. In the Spring right before graduation, there were rumblings of the dot com shakeout. Some people had their job offers reneged. It was a little unsettling, but I felt good about the company I was headed to. I remember our prospective landlord even asked if I was going to keep my job with the uncertain economy. I remember saying, “of course!” what in the world are people thinking?

A few months later, 9/11 happened. This was catastrophic and tragic on so many levels. It’s probably the most defining historic moment that I think about in my life. Everything fell apart after that for our company. The recession caused our client base to retract spending. Many dot coms were going bust. People I knew in West Los Angeles were selling their cars, and there were alumni peer groups to support each other through job transitions. There was no stigma for getting laid off because it was so prevalent and almost a badge of honor.

Our agency went through many rounds of layoffs, and I remember being acutely fearful each day that it was going to be D-Day. I would look at the conference room calendars to see if private meetings were being scheduled and try to eavesdrop. I started bringing personal items home. Our Strategy Department was once five people large, down to me, the last one standing. That was after our VP walked out of a management meeting out of disgust and never returned. Being the sole survivor of my group was not any special recognition – it was circumstance and luck. It was a massive workload dump as well. But working in a shoestring team, I was able to immerse into things that I wouldn’t have been able to before. I was able to connect with colleagues and learn a tremendous amount by capitalizing on the projects and client work we had. Eventually, we grew the team again and fears normalized.  I had a twinge of comfortableness, but my colleague Jon Yokogawa encouraged me to leave, otherwise I would “waste away there.” I remained there until the economy turned brighter in 2004, and Jon brought me with him.

I can sort of understand what people mean when older generations used to reference The Great Depression (although it was a dramatically different magnitude). But this experience profoundly impacted me. I will never take things for granted, and I’m a bit conservative with decisions because I know what uncertainty means. At that age of 28 years, I didn’t even have major financial responsibilities. But I lived in fear. And I worked my butt off and tried to keep my head down. That was the only thing that I knew how to do. The lessons here for me were to make the best of challenging situations, work hard under all circumstances, and turn fear into opportunities to learn and grow. Don’t wallow in your comfortable hole.

Happy v. Comfortable

The second time I was fearful was in 2009, when, after incepting and leading our Strategic Planning team at our current agency, our CEO, Julia Huang asked me to focus on Imprint Lab full time. Imprint Culture Lab was our entrepreneurial unit, born out of Strategic Planning, and focused on global creative culture. And we also spun off a venture incubator called Imprint Venture Lab. At the time, I was splitting my time between the two departments.

So I fought this idea, with my hardheaded stubbornness. I wanted to be able to manage both groups as I had done in the past. I wanted to be useful to both groups, to have a diversified hand. At the pinnacle meeting, I remember Julia asking me, “What are you afraid of?” I honestly can’t remember what I said, but I bet that I didn’t have a good articulation down. But truly it was about the unknown. I would be committing myself to build something that hadn’t been done before. It wasn’t a typical agency group, where there are roles and guidelines in the industry to look it. It was also that gnawing feeling of the fear of losing my job. What if I failed? What if it didn’t work? What if I look stupid? Was this their way of forcing me out?

But honestly, after thinking about it, I don’t know why I didn’t see it at first. It was such an opportunity. This was a huge, once in a lifetime opportunity. Julia was visionary enough to kick me in the pants and tell me to go for it. Thank goodness.

Go For It

After sleeping on it, I wrote Julia an email.

October 17, 2009

Hi Julia, I had time to think about the new shifts.

I had been watching some videocasts of Marissa Mayer, who is the iconic, young, female exec at Google.  She told the story of how she turned down 12 job offers to accept the Google job when they were only 8 people large.  She felt it was the right decision because the best opportunities force you to go outside your comfort zone.  I totally resonate with that.

Part of the reason why I so wanted to hold onto my 50% role in Strategic Planning was for the comfortable mind state and nostalgia.  But six years is an eternity and twice as long as I’ve ever stayed at a company because I’ve tended to get bored and feel like, “is this it?”

I am very honored to fully dedicate myself to Imprint Lab and Imprint Venture Lab as it’s a source of interTrend/parent company pride and passion and a source of inspiration to people.  Maybe that’s gushing too much and inflating the ego, but you know what I mean.

Thank you again for the second opportunity to build something.  I’m really excited about the possibilities.  So, now I’m throwing everything I have and not looking back!

Here was Julia’s response.

October 17, 2009 

Thanks for this thoughtful e-mail.  

I know sometimes my decisions and recommendations seem flippant and haphazard, but there is a long process of agonizing and thinking that takes place that even I’m not aware of.  I do however know one thing.  That is, if I can dream of what I want to achieve and be remotely close to making it a reality, it’s because I know that you have my back.

So this was the turning point, when I made the mental commitment to go all in, to try my best to make this new venture arm work. It has been a crazy ride, one with infinite mistakes and learnings, challenges and stimulation. It has been really fun as well.

Rinse and Repeat

Now, here we go again, in high velocity build mode. This is the first time I’m putting co-founder on my title. But fear isn’t in my vocabulary this time. This round, there is pure exhilaration and I would say an almost fearless-ness….not only because I’ve seen how companies hit the bottom (and I’m not going to let that happen), but also because I trust that this world is going to embrace Built By She, successful women founders, and everything we represent.

So. Get out of your comfort cave. Go for it and don’t look back. Do it. Build it. Dream it. Make it. Drive it. If you’re going to fear something, fear regret.