This Retail Executive Has Spent 20 Years in Fashion. Here's What She's Learned.

“It’s kind of funny: If you'd asked me growing up what I would be doing, I would have assumed it would be finance—I was a finance undergrad, a finance MBA,” says Denise Incandela, who's worked at Saks Fifth Avenue and Ralph Lauren, and now is the head of fashion e-commerce at Walmart.com, focusing on elevating their in-house offerings to compete with the Targets and Amazons through in-house lines and collaborations with celebrities like Sofia Vergara.

For a while that was it. But then fashion came calling.

Yes, a traditional finance path—specifically, a stint at McKinsey—led her there. (Saks Fifth Avenue was a client that eventually hired her.) She found the “fact-based decision making” skills she gleaned from there helped her make the move into e-commerce, where she’s built her career. She started “in 1999, when, frankly, all that was selling online were books, some electronics.” That opportunity turned into a huge business for the company and a job title change for Incandela, before she eventually moved on to Ralph Lauren and, now, heading up fashion at walmart.com, as well as jet.com, shoes.com, and barenecessities.com.

She calls making the jump from McKinsey to Saks Fifth Avenue “one of the biggest and most important decisions that I made. Because I had come from a finance background, very focused on a different approach to my career. I didn't feel I was going to be a career consultant, and felt like the opportunity to run something and build something would be more gratifying.”

“I consider myself a transformational change agent,” Incandela says. “Every opportunity was a transformation within its own right. When I was at Saks, no one believed that people would buy apparel online—forget luxury apparel. From my own point of view, I always felt like I had a keen sense of what was coming down the pike, that I could sense from a macro point of view what the macro trends were faster than others. It was never an ‘if.’ It was always a ‘when.’”

The common thread that runs through every opportunity she’s had, from Saks Fifth Avenue to Ralph Lauren to walmart.com, has been “the opportunity to do something that hadn't been done before, and to break all status quo.” Her current position feels like “a culmination” of this: “Being able to come here and build a formidable online fashion business at accessible price points, where Walmart Fashion was pretty much what was in the stores, it’s an extraordinary opportunity.” That has meant revamping the look of the site, bringing in products at higher price points, and creating editorial content “so that we can provide [the shopper] with a much broader assortment that compliments and expands upon what’s in the stores, that enables her to buy a bigger portion of her closet with us,” she says.

Ahead, Incandela shares six career tips worth following—no matter what you do.

Every challenge is an opportunity. Even after being a leader in the fashion industry for years, Incandela was dipping her toes into new waters when she went to walmart.com. But that learning curve was a plus in her book. “It would be something that I was excited about because I hadn't worked in this space before,” she says. “The opportunity is so much greater given the size and scale of the business, as well as the needs of consumers. After having been at Saks Fifth Avenue for 14 years, I feel like I know luxury super well. I also learned a lot about being on the brand side when I was at Ralph Lauren. [Walmart] was something that I felt like I could bring keen aesthetic and relevant editorial that inspires customers to browse and shop, which frankly is very well-positioned on the luxury side but very nascent on the mass side. I felt like I had a lot of value to add.”

…and that’s exactly what you should be saying “yes” to. “When people say it can't be done, that’s when I get even more excited,” Incandela says. “I get energized when I see a path where it can be done, where I can break through and chase a big opportunity. That was her mind-set when she was brought on to turn walmart.com into an e-commerce destination, and allows her to leverage her past experience to find solutions to current challenges. “My constant passion to challenge the status quo, to constantly ask, ‘Why not? Why can't we do this a different way? Why do we have to do it this way?’ That, I think, is my McKinsey background, with an emphasis on strategy, analytics, and fact-based decision making.”

Take risks, but have a backup plan. Something Incandela says she learned “very early on” in her career, especially as she was at the forefront of the still-nascent online-shopping boom, was “to take risks, but in a prudent way—with a plan B.” Think about not only yourself, but the people that work with and for you. “I'm still constantly throwing spaghetti against the wall, but I’m making sure that I do it in a way that is mindful and doesn't put the business at risk.”

Define a mission statement for your work that motivates you. “Part of what gets me so excited to come to work every day is having a purpose,” Incandela says. It’ll not only help you navigate challenges but also think about the skills you possess that can help you overcome them. “I felt that purpose at Saks, building out e-commerce in the luxury space when no one was really doing that; same thing at Ralph, building a high-def digital IQ within a brand; now, even more so at Walmart, building a fashion destination that has accessibly priced products.”

Give people around you the support they need. “You want to move fast, but you have to make sure that you’re going at the pace that your team can go,” Incandela says. “You have to make sure that you’re supporting them as well: giving them what they need, delegating to them, thinking about who can be empowered to go out there, pivoting your approach depending on the personality of the individual. You can hear how fast I'm speaking, right? Not everybody wants to operate at this pace, and I totally appreciate that.”

Failure’s not something to be feared. It happens to everyone, no matter the job title or the industry. And more often than not, it leads to greater things. “I liken it to cooking: My best cooking skills come from failure,” says Incandela. What has helped her has been forming a network of people that understand her and her goals. Because, at the end of the day: “You can't succeed on your own.”

Originally Appeared on Glamour