Leila Janah: How Rejection Is Inevitable and the Key to Success and Grit

Sep 25, 2025

Leila Janah, a social entrepreneur and founder of SamaSource and LXMI, transformed her early struggles into a powerful mission. She shares her journey of grit, revealing how cleaning toilets and tutoring paved her way to Harvard and ultimately led her to employ thousands. Leila discusses resilience, the importance of compassion, and practical strategies for staying grounded amidst challenges. Her insights on combining social impact with business show how imperfect people can still drive meaningful change. Discover her vision to shift corporate procurement toward social enterprises.

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INSIGHT

Hardship Builds Entrepreneurial Grit

Grit often comes from early hardship and builds the resilience entrepreneurs need to survive repeated rejection.
Leila Janah credits her immigrant upbringing and tough jobs with teaching persistence and frugality that aided her startup journey.

ANECDOTE

Cleaning Toilets To Pay For Harvard

Leila scrubbed dorm toilets at Harvard and calculated purchases by how many toilets she'd need to clean.
That experience taught her frugality and discipline she later used in building SamaSource.

ADVICE

Learn Grit By Studying Failure

Read failure case studies and immerse yourself in stories of hardship to cultivate resilience if you lack tough upbringing.
Accept that early-stage startup rejection is inevitable and plan to get back up repeatedly.

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Leila Janah didn’t have the money to start her company, but she didn’t let that hold her back. She paid her way through Harvard by cleaning toilets, serving cocktails, and tutoring wealthy students while pitching her sustainable business model to anyone who would listen. Since the inception of her company, Samasource--named as one of Fast Company's most innovative companies in 2016--Leila has employed nearly 10,000 people and helped nearly 35,000 people permanently move above the poverty line. Her customers are some of the world’s biggest companies such as Google, Microsoft, Walmart, eBay and she’s been profiled in The New York Times, WIRED, Forbes, and Inc. Leila also founded LXMI (pronounced luxe-me) which is the first social impact beauty brand to be sold at Sephora. Meet the founder, author, and social entrepreneur who believes in reversing poverty one job at a time in this episode of Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu.

Original air date: 11-7-17

SHOW NOTES

Leila walks through how grit was baked into her upbringing. [3:27]

Leila talks about post-traumatic growth and how you can build resilience. [6:30]

Tom and Leila dive into her personal narrative and how she found refuge in social impact.[8:38]

Leila opens up about her struggle with depression and finding nourishment for her soul. [12:55]

Leila takes you through the 4-step process that you can use to keep yourself grounded. [17:00]

Leila explains the benefits of “the pause.” [19:11]

Tom and Leila discuss how she helps people in the gig economy. [22:46]

Leila debunks the myth that people who work in service of humanity are flawless. [25:28]

Leila shines the light on profit versus non-profit and why she chose to launch a benefit corporation.[27:02]

Leila shares valuable about what she looks for in team members. [30:03]

Tom and Leila go deep on the first steps that she took to start her business. [34:42]

Leila recalls living in Ghana and the reverse culture shock she experienced coming home. [40:36]

Leila talks about the reality of scarcity and the power of unleashing untapped potential.[48:00]

Leila defines the impact that she wants to have on the world. [50:23]

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