Special Spark

You have a personal board of directors, folks that you turn to for personal advice. Why is this important to you? How do you go about selecting who should be in that personal board of directors?

I do, I have some amazing mentors who are my personal board. I check in with them as needed, really. It could be midnight, where I'm having a crisis, or you just catch up, as we all have them sometimes. And to me, the biggest quality in the relationship is truly around being able to be myself and being able to truly tell them how I feel, and truly tell them the problems that I'm facing. And so I feel as if sometimes it's hard to be extremely vulnerable and be open. But I think that the openness that I express with my mentors helped them help me, and also being able to ask the questions. Another lesson that I learned as CEO is you don't have to have all the answers, and it's okay to say "I don't know" and be resourceful in finding those solutions and those answers. So really getting to know them, forming those long term relationships has served me really well in building up my personal mentor network.

So where do you find them? How do you go about selecting them? Are there certain traits that you key in on?

I would say that the chemistry is number one. If you have that chemistry, that spark with someone, I know right away. I feel as if I've met incredible people in my life. Although they would have been great mentors and they would have wanted to mentor me, I just didn't feel that connection. And so I didn't really pursue that mentorship opportunity with them, because I do believe that that you know whether you click with someone or you don't. And so I think the selection process in my mind is our chemistry, one; two, do I admire them? Do I look up to them? Are they someone who I would want to be when I grew up? And those are ones if I can answer yes to both of those questions, I would say that's my typical selection process.