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BIO:
Writer Jillian Lauren is a Jersey girl turned Angeleno, by way of Borneo. Yes, Borneo. She was an NYU theater school dropout who went on an “audition” that led to her spending eighteen months in the harem of the youngest brother of the Sultan of Brunei, a tale that she recounted in the New York Times bestselling memoir, Some Girls: My Life in a Harem. The book has been translated into 18 different languages and is being adapted for television. She went on to write a second memoir (Everything You Ever Wanted, about her adoption of a special-needs son from Ethiopia), as well as a novel called Pretty. She’s a mom, a rock-wife (to musician husband Scott Shriner), and a teller of stories that appear everywhere from Vanity Fair to The Paris Review, as well as live through outlets such as The Moth and TEDx.
Q+A:
Did your original business plan change along the way or are you doing exactly what you set out to do? If it changed, how so? I’m doing exactly what I dreamed of doing when I was eight years old. I just tried about 30 different things in between!
What makes you different from your competition? I’m an artist and a teacher, so I have less of a traditional business model than most. But I do consider myself a businesswoman, and look at all of my enterprises as part of a whole. What defines me as a unique voice is my willingness to be vulnerable, my attention to offbeat details, and my insatiable curiosity.
Tell us about a time when you thought you should throw in the towel. What kept you going? As a writer, I face so much rejection, and that isn’t even the hardest part. The hardest part is facing my own self, and the blank page in front of me. It’s a real bear! I think about throwing in the towel all the time.
What three factors have most contributed to your success in business and in life? Open-mindedness, creativity, and stubbornness!
If you could have a one-on-one meeting with any woman, who would it be and why? What’s the first thing you would you ask her? I would give anything to be able to sit down with my grandmother, who passed away when I was 16. I would ask her to tell me the story of her life, now that I am so much better able to listen.
I wish someone had told me… That the road to the worthwhile stuff in life is almost always rocky and hard to travel. I know it seems obvious now, but for a long time I thought that if stuff was hard I probably just wasn’t very good at it and should quit and not waste my time. I wish I had figured this one out sooner.
I gave up ____ to pursue my dream: There is a constant give and take. It wasn’t like I gave up one big thing, but I do give up time that I could be spending with my family, and that is a huge sacrifice for me.
My biggest challenge is… My biggest challenge is always circumventing self-doubt and plunging ahead, even if the voices in my head are telling me I’m a huge fraud.
Being a mom and an entrepreneur means… Giving up on being a superwoman and embracing imperfection. I’ve particularly had to let go of that infernal, elusive idea of balance! I hear working moms talking all the time about trying to find a balance. I’ve never heard one say: “I’ve done it! My life is totally balanced!” I love the idea of striving to be good enough. I’m a good enough mom today. I’m a good enough writer today. Good enough is pretty darn good!
One thing I hope to pass along to my children is… Tenacity and compassion.
EXPERT ADVICE:
What advice would you give to someone who feels overwhelmed by the competition? It might seem clichéd, but believe in yourself and never give up. Don’t be deceived by urban legends of insta-success. They’re almost always falsely representing the real story. If the world needs what you’re offering, a window of opportunity will eventually open up.
What is something that has really worked for you on social media? What is something that has not? I find social media works best when you look at it as a community, and participate just as you would participate in any community. Respond, communicate, entertain, support… don’t just relentlessly plug your brand and your product. Think about what you can give to the community and not just what you want it to do for you.
When you think of the best people to work with, what traits do they share? The best people to work with are honest, brave, authentic, vulnerable, creative, hard-working, and supportive.
At what stage of your business did you need to build a team? Tell us what that looked like for you. As a writer, I work alternately alone and as part of a team, depending on what stage my work is in. When I’m starting a project, it’s just me and the wall. When I have a book coming out, I’m on the phone constantly with my editor, my agent, my publicist. I’ve found that the people I’ve worked best with over the years have been not just ambitious and effective (although that’s nice, too!) but also genuinely passionate about the project.
Entrepreneurs often say that “you can’t do it all.” What three things do you always outsource? I outsource housework because I hate it. I outsource a lot of technology stuff, like web design, because there are people way more talented and efficient than me. Right now I have an assistant who helps with research, makes sure everything is up to date, and handles some of my publicity correspondence.
What are a few of the business resources that you can’t live without? I pretty much stole everything I just said in this interview from Brené Brown’s book The Gifts of Imperfection – it’s a must-read. And Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott is the ultimate writing inspiration book, though you don’t need to be a writer to benefit from its wisdom. Everything I don’t steal from Brené Brown, I steal from Anne Lamott!
Give us your top five tips that would benefit a woman who is starting or growing her business:
Don’t be a perfectionist. As Voltaire said, “Perfect is the enemy of good.”
Think about your audience in a very specific way.
Find a voice that is a unique and authentic expression of who you truly are.
Talk to yourself like you’d talk to one of your children. You’d never say to your kid, “You suck. How could you have made that mistake? You’re so stupid. Everyone else is better than you.You should just quit. Oh, and by the way, you’re also fat.” But I hear bright, accomplished, kick-ass women talking to themselves this way all the time. It’s a crime. Don’t do it!
Never, never, never give up!
AND FINALLY:
Please share your favorite quote: “We have not come into this exquisite world to hold ourselves hostage from love.” -Hafiz
And tell us what LIVING THE DREAM means to you: Living the dream means living with an open heart, fully experiencing all the joy and pain and success and failure and triumphs and mistakes and love and heartbreak that life has to offer.
Want to connect with Jillian?
Image: [Robyn Von Swank]