505: Designing your life and leading with curiosity with Ania Smith

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Season 5, Episode 5: Designing your life and leading with curiosity with Ania Smith

This week I'm joined by Ania Smith — CEO of TaskRabbit, the IKEA-owned platform that connects people with skilled Taskers for everyday home and life tasks, operating across North America and Europe.

Ania became a first-time CEO in August 2020 — in a pandemic, unable to meet her team in person for months. Before that, she did something most people only dream about. She and her husband packed up their entire life, sold their cars, pulled three kids out of school, and moved to Buenos Aires for a year. On purpose. At the height of her career.

In this conversation we talk about what it takes to design your life intentionally rather than just following the path everyone else is on. About the gap year that changed how she leads. About walking into a CEO role with a listening tour before she made a single decision. About one-way door decisions and why the best CEOs make as few decisions as possible. About curiosity as the most important leadership skill she knows. And about what she wishes she'd learned sooner: how to really listen.

This one is for every woman who has ever wondered if there might be another way — and had the courage to find out.

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Timestamps:
01:37 | What does it mean to be in bloom — in work and in life?
03:43 | Curiosity and adapting to unprecedented change
06:00 | Holding uncertainty in your body — the calm that leadership requires
08:09 | Fight or flight is real — and Ania has a lot of fight in her
09:26 | The gap year: selling the cars, pulling the kids out of school, and going to Argentina
11:44 | You're so lucky — and why Ania pushes back on that every time
13:00 | Don't let a good life get in the way of a great one
15:10 | What the year away changed about how she leads
16:31 | Coming back, COVID hitting, and still feeling stable
18:25 | TaskRabbit and why giving Taskers autonomy over their own rates matters
21:40 | Becoming a first-time CEO in a pandemic — and starting with a listening tour
23:19 | When things go wrong it's on me. When things go well, the credit belongs to the team
24:14 | One-way door decisions — the only ones that land on her desk
25:26 | Building your personal executive team — the cheerleader, the challenger, the champion
28:09 | The season that shaped her most: spring — and why she protects her explorer energy
30:30 | One thing Ania wishes she'd known sooner: how to really listen

Resources mentioned:
TaskRabbit: taskrabbit.com
Ania on LinkedIn