Ashley Mills on Growing from Feedback

Ashley Mills started in the mailroom at the talent agency CAA and worked her way up to becoming a talent agent. But after a decade there, she took a leap of faith and became the founder of obé Fitness, an on-demand exercise company. And Ashley says that on her journey as a founder, she had to listen to a lot of feedback – and grow from it – to be the leader she is today.   

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On the Hardest Thing She’s Done in Her Career

Ashley: I got a lot of feedback. This was, evidence based, you are doing XYZ things that are making me not like my job. And it wasn't one person, it was people. Plural. And so I was obviously so tempted to rationalize it, as you do. But I had to really sit with it and that was painful and it hurt. And they were right. It forced me to slow down. It forced me to figure out what were the things that I was doing that were obviously not helping the business or helping these folks. I reached out to a couple of my advisors in the business who recommended a coach, and I have a therapist that I see quite often. And so, that was a really important moment in my life to learn about myself, to learn about, how my stress, how my anxiety can rub off on people. And when you're the boss, you have to recognize that there's a lot of people that do a lot of good work to help your vision push forward. And so it's not okay to be short. It's not okay to be not fully present in showing up the way that you wanna show up. 

On Maintaining Great Work Relationships

Ashley: Richard Lovett, who was running the agency, he would always say in our full team meetings that everything connects. And it's so true. You meet someone at one stage in your life and then they're gonna be part of this other stage of your life. The world is very, very small. And I think it's really important to think about that as you deal with your colleagues, as you deal with your friends, as you deal with anybody, kind of in your environment. We have this very rich partnership strategy. And I think the reason that our partnership strategy has worked so well is that we're really good to the people that we work with. They know that. And it obviously leads to great relationships.