14. It was my birthday, and I couldn’t sleep. I was alone in the Sheraton near the QVC studios in Exton, Pennsylvania, the night before making my first on-air appearance on the TV shopping network. They had told me a Saturday-morning time slot was a good one—millions of people would be sitting on their sofas sipping their second cups of coffee, looking to be dazzled by a new product. So I lay against my headboard in the dark watching the clock, counting down the minutes before I’d be looking into the cameras. Why did I think this was a good idea?
∞
Several months earlier, after tossing and turning in my own bed, I stumbled into the family room of the house we rented in Corte Madera, California, and flipped through the channels, looking for distraction. If I couldn’t figure out how to get more people to buy holiday gift sets, my life would become a horror show. So watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre—one of only two choices at 2:00 A.M.—hit too close to home. QVC it was.
Sitting at a table with a ruler was a chatty woman measuring amethysts, selling three stacking gemstone rings while I curled up on the sofa chewing my retainer. (I’d been grinding my teeth to stubs.) I liked this lady Jane. She was talking to me. “C’mon, Leslie, look how sparkly! It’s only three easy payments of $11.66.” Plus shipping and handling. I called the QVC 800 number from our cordless phone, placed my order, and went back to bed.
After more late nights with my new buddy, Jane, I had a crazy thought: What if I went on QVC with bareMinerals? We had launched this innovative formula in our boutiques a year earlier, but it was basically collecting dust; a light foundation in loose powder form that had only five ingredients, at a time when everyone used liquid foundation and no one cared what was in their makeup, was not what women wanted. To educate women, the normal route would have been print ads. But we didn’t have the money. I sent in an application to appear on QVC.
They invited me to Pennsylvania for an interview.
I walked in wearing my white bebe pantsuit with the new $30 five-carat QVC cubic zirconia ring I had bought for the occasion. I wanted to look the part: I couldn’t pay a celebrity to be the spokesperson, so the spokesperson would be me. The buyer said she would give me a chance and told me the way things worked: Whatever didn’t sell would be shipped back. In other words, if this failed, we’d be screwed.
I didn’t tell her I was an introvert. I didn’t tell her I HATED public speaking*—much less speaking to the NATION. I didn’t tell anyone that their colleague/friend/wife/mother was risking her company by going on national television. I already knew this was a crazy idea.
And no one had a better idea. Including me.
∞
Thirty seconds till airtime, I was standing next to my host, Lisa Robertson, hoping the mic didn’t pick up my heartbeat. I was pretty sure she had no idea how terrified I felt, and I wanted to keep it that way. I prefer not to fail in public, and passion can make you look confident—even when you’re taking the biggest risk of your life. Apart from the people in the television studio, nobody even knew I was there. So if I bombed, my plan was to pretend it hadn’t happened.
And there was a good chance I would bomb: How do you sell a foundation on TV when women need to match it to their skin tone in person? How do you convince women that changing their makeup routine is a good idea to begin with? Why did I think this was a good idea? I lowered my expectations and hoped only that I could tell women I believed in our product—without throwing up on national television.
And then . . . I was on. Paralyzed with fear. Not wanting to be there. Which is the nature of risk: Risk makes you afraid. You don’t get to choose whether or not to be afraid. Only whether to dive in, despite your fear. If you wait for the fear to go away, the opportunity will go away too. I wanted the opportunity.
I asked viewers to imagine a makeup that was good for their skin, a healthy alternative to the liquid they were using.
The phones in the studio started ringing.
Six minutes later, the SOLD OUT graphic flashed on the studio monitor and on TV screens across the country.
And I was literally tingling, head to toe. It didn’t feel as amazing as the day my son was born. But it was up there. It changed my life.
But what happened next is what changed everything.
* See No81. Risk Taking for the Fearful.