Entrepreneurs are courageous individuals. They take great ideas and turn them into lucrative businesses. They are dreamers, risk takers and they are not afraid of failure. But without failure, success is difficult to achieve – even the most successful entrepreneurs have stumbled from time to time and have become more successful because of it.
These five entrepreneurs struggled through the early stages of their careers. But with a little perseverance and hard work, they were able to establish themselves in their respective industries.
Meredith Valiando Rojas
Meredith believes that mistakes bring new opportunities. They do not end your business, they provide an opportunity to revamp your processes and build on constructive criticism. She feels that you can excel by learning and evolving through mistakes and perseverance. Having dealt with moments in her entrepreneurial career that tried to break her, Meredith used an experience at Capital Records where a client was dropped as a devastating failure.
Being a successful entrepreneur means that you have to rise up from the ashes of disaster, develop new skills, and ready yourself for the next step. Following her disaster at Capital Records, she co-founded DigiTour. Her best piece of advice for other entrepreneurs? Not give up, accept the roller coaster ride of entrepreneurship and reach set goals.
Nate Matherson
Nate Matherson has worked in several industries, with his career started him out in sales. From there, he moved to writing and blogging, and then into investments. While working with investments, Nate dabbled in the education sector. He co-founded Shop Tutors, Inc. and LendEDU, a program that helps students to compare student loan lenders.
One of the benefits of LendEDU is that it does not hurt anyone’s credit report. Nate has learned, from jumping into several industries, that he preferred doing what he loved to do, which is providing college students and their families a way to afford expensive college tuition by providing guides, resources and other tools to help students navigate through the financial aid process.
Ekaterina Walter
Ekaterina Walter is an entrepreneur, world-renowned motivational speaker, business innovator and best-selling author. Ekaterina focuses on seeing the good in every situation, believing that you should welcome minor setbacks and tackle them with newly found strategies and build success from those failures.
When she is not busy giving speeches, mentoring or writing, she works as the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) for Househappy. Househappy is an app that stores a home’s DNA, so-to-speak and makes home management easier. Her motivational speeches have been called “invigorating, inspiring, engaging and educational”. She believes that confidence is a quality that every entrepreneur must have to succeed.
Courtney Jeffries
Courtney Jeffries is the founder of Happy Cheeks, a travel-size toilet seat cleaner.
She received assistance getting started from her father, who works in sales, who connected her with a few people to get her started.
Shane Snow
Shane Stone is an author and co-founder of Contently. In his time as an entrepreneur, his biggest lesson learned is that you cannot do it alone. The project of becoming successful requires a team of investors, advocates, marketers and developers that are on the same page. It’s ideal to work with partners, especially those that complement your personal skills. You must have trust in your partners to work cohesively, and be prepared to work hard.
Shane had several startups that were unsuccessful. The failure was mainly his own mistake as he did not obtain a good enough support system. He was also in the midst of developing a website similar to Pinterest, which he continually kicks himself for.
Though they are only a few, these entrepreneurs have learned quite a bit throughout their careers. Taking their advice, you can learn how to further your own career by applying their knowledge to your startup or business venture.