Believing in yourself has immeasurable value, says Anne Wojcicki.
As the 49-year-old CEO and co-founder of 23andMe, she'd know. Her company created the first personal genetic test with FDA authorization to send genetic variant information directly to consumers, and it boasts a $1.06 billion market cap today — but when she launched it back in 2006, she was met with naysayers.
People were skeptical of the company's mission and her background in investing. She recalls a high-profile geneticist telling her directly ahead of the startup's launch, "You're so unimpressive."
"It's helpful for people to realize the world is often wrong," she tells CNBC Make It. "I remind people at 23andMe that when we started the company, gay marriage was illegal. Society changes, new ideas come, the world changes."
She credits that mindset to her mother, educator and parenting expert Esther Wojcicki, and says the careers of her two sisters are additional proof of its power. Janet Wojcicki is a doctor and professor at the University of California San Francisco, and Susan Wojcicki spent more than 20 years at Google, including a nine-year stint as CEO of YouTube that just ended last month.
"When you're swimming upstream, it's hard and you're going to have people telling you it's a bad idea or you're not capable," Anne says. "I don't have an M.D. ... but what I did have was people who believed in me, who thought it was a good idea."
Young girls are often deterred from STEM-related careers because they don't see women doing those jobs. It's the reason the trio agreed to appear as Barbie dolls, a partnership with Mattel announced last week — to show girls they can "follow your passion, be creative and there's no limitations" even in traditionally male-dominated fields, Anne says.
Her sister Janet agrees. Growing up in a supportive community near Stanford University, where their father Stanley is an emeritus physics professor, made the sisters think "there were no limits as far as what women could do," Janet says. They didn't even realize other people thought those limits existed until college, Anne adds.
That community — the siblings' parents, along with plenty of professors and deans, and their respective children — didn't just offer encouragement. They helped the girls set and push toward goals, even ones that seemed unattainable or unrealistic.
Many of those close relationships remain: Anne says she and her two sisters all still "have the same friends from early elementary school."
That bodes well. Having a strong social circle can help you delay memory loss as you age, according to a Harvard University study published in 2008. Similarly, positive relationships and being socially active within communities tend to make people healthier and live longer, found an ongoing 85-year study, also at Harvard.
Such a support group is most crucial when you hit obstacles and roadblocks throughout your career that inevitably shake your confidence, Anne and Janet say.
"My dad gave us this notion that not everybody has to take the same path, and the path is not always linear," Janet says. "Being able to have a support structure you can return to and feel like, 'OK, I can regroup from here, I can bounce back from this,' is very key."
"My mom, who's the teacher, she's like, 'All you need is one person who believes in you,'" Anne adds. "And we had lots of people believing in us."
DON'T MISS: Want to be smarter and more successful with your money, work & life? Sign up for our new newsletter!
Get CNBC's free Warren Buffett Guide to Investing, which distills the billionaire's No. 1 best piece of advice for regular investors, do's and don'ts, and three key investing principles into a clear and simple guidebook.
