The 23-Year-Old Behind the $100 Million Woman
Two years ago, Catherine Cook sold MyYearbook.com (now MeetMe) — a company she had founded in high school — for $100 million. At the time, the site had 32.7 million members worldwide. Catherine was just 21-years-old.
Hearing her stats or reading a quick profile might intimidate, but if you were to run into Cook at a coffee shop or the airport, you wouldn’t guess her achievements. Catherine is incredibly humble and down-to-earth, and she’d just as soon put on something from Target as she’d wear any fancy brand.
“I think a lot of times when people see successful people they forget they are human,” says Cook. “It’s important to me that I maintain my character. I’m the same person at work as I am at home.” Like all insights, this was hard won for Cook.
Related: How a Chance Encounter on a Bus Inspired a Social Entrepreneur to Start Up
Ironically, although she had millions of friends on the social networking site, Cook found her ambitions and success sometimes led classmates to actually like her less. Through high school, she faced peers who mocked her ambitions with reminders that she had no experience.
One of the most painful experiences was when a teacher showed a live broadcast of her first TV appearance. Cook remembers the stress of not only having to confront the fear of doing her first TV interview, but also jaunts from her classmates. Despite Cook’s athletic, petite figure, one classmate even called her ‘fat.’ The whole experience gave her a fever of 104 degrees even though she wasn’t sick.
Despite many people being supportive, for Cook, it was those negative comments that stood out most and until her junior year of college, she lived a double life keeping business separate from school.
Perhaps the reason that Cook doesn’t look so much different from other 23-year-olds is that at her core, maybe she isn’t so different. “You do feel afraid. You just can’t let it stop you,” she suggests. In other words, this insanely successful and extremely young businesswomen is just like us — she questions herself, does mind replays of hurtful comments, and has the days where she wants to cover her head with a pillow.
Related: How One Young Entrepreneur Built a Credit Card Processing Empire at 16
What distinguishes Cook from the rest are the steps that she’s taken to deal with the fear she continues to experience and to become comfortable living with uncertainty. She’s persisted through these feelings enough times to know that everything will be okay on the other end, no matter if the outcome is success or failure.
She gives an example of overcoming insecurity: “When you’re doing presentations in front of investors, it’s pretty obvious they’re not all paying attention. Having the experience of being there over and over and then getting positive results makes you realize it’s not personal.” Understanding this doesn’t always make things easier though. Cook says she still overanalyzes herself too much, sometimes getting frustrated when she can’t think of a word she’s looking for or feeling like she’s pausing too much in a presentation.
I asked Cook to break down how she experiences the fear and moves through it and she shared four pillars to work from:
1. Find a role model. Cook’s older (by 11 years) brother was an entrepreneur who had sold a company for millions at the age of 24. To her, it was incredibly helpful having watched him create his company because she knew from her experience of watching him that it would feel “like a roller coaster ride with no light at the end of the tunnel.”
Because she knew going in that it was going to be tough and painful at times, it was much easier to deal with the inevitable disappointments along the way.
2. Be ambivalent to uncertainty. Entrepreneurs usually aren’t super risky, but they realize they have to be ambivalent to the things they can’t control. “What makes entrepreneurs who they are is that they force themselves to live in the uncertainty.”
Related: How Two Recent Grads Turned a Study Abroad Trip into a Social Venture
3. Work through the fear and journal. Cook acknowledges that she is definitely not immune to fear and uncertainty. Although many entrepreneurs think that once they achieve a certain level of success, they can rest easy knowing what they have achieved, she knows better. “The fear of failure and fear of the unknown never leaves you.”
To her, the key is dealing with the fear and the methods she has for doing so have developed and changed over time. Cook is big on writing down and reflecting on her challenges. Putting it on paper makes the situation feel better to her so she will elaborate on thoughts, make lists and model out plans. Every morning she makes task lists of three to five things that she must do that day in order to “limit the crazy.”
Still, she notes that coping with fear is a personal process, and that part of the entrepreneur’s responsibility is finding what works through trial and error.
4. Surround yourself with people who love you unconditionally. One of the biggest mitigators to the uncertainty according to Cook, is spending time with people who are supportive. Not just mildly supportive, but those that truly love you unconditionally. These are the people you can talk to when you’re stuck in a situation where you don’t know what to do — even if they have no knowledge whatsoever what the company is about. “Simply talking through your challenge out loud to someone else who has an unconditional and positive attitude towards you is sometimes enough to solve it or at least to get you on the path to solving it.”
5. Stay away from sinkies
Ultimately, what her advice boils down to is that old Nike slogan: Just do it. Though it’s easier said than done, following the steps above will help anybody get through the sometimes rough ups and downs of the entrepreneurial path.
Two years ago, Catherine Cook sold MyYearbook.com (now MeetMe) — a company she had founded in high school — for $100 million. At the time, the site had 32.7 million members worldwide. Catherine was just 21-years-old.
Hearing her stats or reading a quick profile might intimidate, but if you were to run into Cook at a coffee shop or the airport, you wouldn’t guess her achievements. Catherine is incredibly humble and down-to-earth, and she’d just as soon put on something from Target as she’d wear any fancy brand.
“I think a lot of times when people see successful people they forget they are human,” says Cook. “It’s important to me that I maintain my character. I’m the same person at work as I am at home.” Like all insights, this was hard won for Cook.
Related: How a Chance Encounter on a Bus Inspired a Social Entrepreneur to Start Up
Ironically, although she had millions of friends on the social networking site, Cook found her ambitions and success sometimes led classmates to actually like her less. Through high school, she faced peers who mocked her ambitions with reminders that she had no experience.
One of the most painful experiences was when a teacher showed a live broadcast of her first TV appearance. Cook remembers the stress of not only having to confront the fear of doing her first TV interview, but also jaunts from her classmates. Despite Cook’s athletic, petite figure, one classmate even called her ‘fat.’ The whole experience gave her a fever of 104 degrees even though she wasn’t sick.
Despite many people being supportive, for Cook, it was those negative comments that stood out most and until her junior year of college, she lived a double life keeping business separate from school.
Perhaps the reason that Cook doesn’t look so much different from other 23-year-olds is that at her core, maybe she isn’t so different. “You do feel afraid. You just can’t let it stop you,” she suggests. In other words, this insanely successful and extremely young businesswomen is just like us — she questions herself, does mind replays of hurtful comments, and has the days where she wants to cover her head with a pillow.
Related: How One Young Entrepreneur Built a Credit Card Processing Empire at 16
What distinguishes Cook from the rest are the steps that she’s taken to deal with the fear she continues to experience and to become comfortable living with uncertainty. She’s persisted through these feelings enough times to know that everything will be okay on the other end, no matter if the outcome is success or failure.
She gives an example of overcoming insecurity: “When you’re doing presentations in front of investors, it’s pretty obvious they’re not all paying attention. Having the experience of being there over and over and then getting positive results makes you realize it’s not personal.” Understanding this doesn’t always make things easier though. Cook says she still overanalyzes herself too much, sometimes getting frustrated when she can’t think of a word she’s looking for or feeling like she’s pausing too much in a presentation.
I asked Cook to break down how she experiences the fear and moves through it and she shared four pillars to work from:
1. Find a role model. Cook’s older (by 11 years) brother was an entrepreneur who had sold a company for millions at the age of 24. To her, it was incredibly helpful having watched him create his company because she knew from her experience of watching him that it would feel “like a roller coaster ride with no light at the end of the tunnel.”
Because she knew going in that it was going to be tough and painful at times, it was much easier to deal with the inevitable disappointments along the way.
2. Be ambivalent to uncertainty. Entrepreneurs usually aren’t super risky, but they realize they have to be ambivalent to the things they can’t control. “What makes entrepreneurs who they are is that they force themselves to live in the uncertainty.”
Related: How Two Recent Grads Turned a Study Abroad Trip into a Social Venture
3. Work through the fear and journal. Cook acknowledges that she is definitely not immune to fear and uncertainty. Although many entrepreneurs think that once they achieve a certain level of success, they can rest easy knowing what they have achieved, she knows better. “The fear of failure and fear of the unknown never leaves you.”
To her, the key is dealing with the fear and the methods she has for doing so have developed and changed over time. Cook is big on writing down and reflecting on her challenges. Putting it on paper makes the situation feel better to her so she will elaborate on thoughts, make lists and model out plans. Every morning she makes task lists of three to five things that she must do that day in order to “limit the crazy.”
Still, she notes that coping with fear is a personal process, and that part of the entrepreneur’s responsibility is finding what works through trial and error.
4. Surround yourself with people who love you unconditionally. One of the biggest mitigators to the uncertainty according to Cook, is spending time with people who are supportive. Not just mildly supportive, but those that truly love you unconditionally. These are the people you can talk to when you’re stuck in a situation where you don’t know what to do — even if they have no knowledge whatsoever what the company is about. “Simply talking through your challenge out loud to someone else who has an unconditional and positive attitude towards you is sometimes enough to solve it or at least to get you on the path to solving it.”
5. Stay away from sinkies
Ultimately, what her advice boils down to is that old Nike slogan: Just do it. Though it’s easier said than done, following the steps above will help anybody get through the sometimes rough ups and downs of the entrepreneurial path.
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