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Success is a process, not an event. To do any great task, you must first begin from somewhere. This could be the start of a new idea, a new road, a new approach, or a new business. In our everyday life, we frequently end up focusing on achieving what others consider to be a success rather than returning to our original goal or purpose. In this interview series, we spoke with a variety of entrepreneurs and leaders from around the world to learn how some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs and leaders faced adversity and succeeded.
“Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.” Arthur Ashe
INTERVIEW HOST
Hello, my name is Jerome Knyszewski, I’ll be the host of your interview today. I am the CEO of HeavyShift. My specialties are online reputation marketing and SEO. Looking forward to reading your insightful answers and publishing your featured interview.
Table of Contents
The question we asked:
Sweet Ha
First is the income threshold. Many bosses are the backbone of the company before starting a business. They are highly appreciated by the boss and are naturally worth a lot. However, due to various reasons in the early stage of the business, after a year of hard work, the income obtained is far less than that of part-time jobs. “This vast income gap is a cruel reality that every early-stage entrepreneur must face and accept.
Second, family ties. The impact of the decline in income will gradually spread to the family. In addition, entrepreneurs work day and night without taking into account the “internal affairs” of the family. At this time, the family’s resistance tends to increase day by day. At this time, entrepreneurs need to withstand the pressure and work hard. Disagree, keep going.
Third, lead the hurdle. There is an essential difference between management and leadership. Entrepreneurs must have specific management skills and strong leadership skills to lead the team in the right direction, continuously create benefits for the company, and benefit team members. More importantly, entrepreneurs can make mistakes in management, but they must not make leadership mistakes; otherwise, the company may encounter danger.
Fourth is the human bond. In the early stage of starting a business, entrepreneurs will encounter setbacks and blow in various aspects, especially criticisms from others.
Valentine Okoronkwo
Family
One big difficulty I faced on my journey to become an entrepreneur was pressure from my family to stick to a 9-5 job and not venture into entrepreneurship.
My family never wanted me to become an entrepreneur. They got really depressed and disappointed when I quit my job. This got to me as well. It affected my productivity and also affected my belief in myself.
I noticed it was getting to me, so I had to avoid communication with them for a while to focus on making my business work. I made sure I put in work every day to accomplish my goals to my dream a reality.
Till today, though I earn 10x what I earned in my last job, my parents still encourage me to get a job and still send me job opportunities and offers. However, I am happy they have gotten the fact that this is what I want to do.
But to be honest, it’s just my mother that is happy with the path I chose to take. My father is still disappointed with me because I disobeyed him and went against all the plans he had made for me. So this is a difficulty I still struggle with today.
The thing I have learned from this is that: against all adversity or motivation you have, just to do something every day, no matter how small, that can take you closer to your goals. The action you put in every day will bring results, and those little results or wins will help you believe that you can actualize your dreams, which will also motivate you to put in more work.
Action => Inspiration => Motivation
Mapesho Mukanga
Running a platform that is centered on creating content which inspires people to improve their lives is always difficult because each person is going through something different but the best way to stay original and authentic is to use your own experience as a map to serve as inspiration for others.
Putting yourself out their in front of others is always going to be challenging but when you think about the lives you get to impact, it becomes much easier for any individual to feel the freedom to speak freely.
Nate Tsang
The biggest challenge in running your own business is in hiring. You first have the immense difficulty of finding the right person for your specific job.
You’ll find many great marketers out there, for example, but are they informed and experienced enough to market your business in your niche to your specific buyer personas?
I recommend working with a hiring expert who knows your field. It’s an expense, but it also saves you a great deal of time in sourcing candidates. And they can teach you enough about the process to where you can run it more independently in the future. But building those initial skills takes time and expertise.
From there, you also have to give your new hires the right responsibilities. A lot of entrepreneurs I know (myself included, admittedly) have trouble with delegation at first.
They’re accustomed to doing everything themselves and only want to delegate the tasks they have little to no experience in. Recognizing that you’re not the best person for this task—at least in the long-term—takes some self-reflection and involves making tough decisions. But that’s what being a business leader is all about, and if you trust your talent they tend to thrive more than they fail.
Alex Bryce
When I reflect on my journey, I believe the biggest challenge has been making the right decisions. As a business owner, you will be responsible for making all of your company’s major and minor decisions on your own.
The burden of making decisions is real and unavoidable. One of the common challenges I believe every entrepreneur faces are making decisions on their own while being conscious that making the wrong decision can result in losses. However, I believe that experience improves your ability to make important decisions.
Another obstacle for me, I believe, was pivoting my business during the pandemic. But it taught me one important lesson: everything works out in the end.
Aquif Shaikh
The difficulty I had to face while launching my own business was obtaining funds, securing finance is one of the most difficult tasks for new entrepreneurs. Raising funds and obtaining loans was a difficult undertaking for me.
Even the most experienced entrepreneur will have difficulty obtaining financing at first because many capitalists are unwilling to participate in new enterprises.
However, this is only a temporary setback because, if the business idea is innovative, fresh, and compelling, getting an investor to provide startup funding is not a difficult undertaking. As a result, as an entrepreneur, I had a well-thought-out strategy and business model to present to investors and banks to persuade them that their money was being invested wisely.
Meera Watts
Our lives were turned upside-down by the pandemic. We changed the way we used to approach challenging situations in the past.
We had to use a variety of methods to teach our students as teachers. We concentrated on offering them online yoga courses. We emphasized tutorials, live sessions, and even fun activities to encourage students to practice yoga at home.
I’m quite pleased with how things are going right now because my learners are enjoying their classes and learning something new every day.
Baidhurya Mani
I am Baidhurya Mani, and one of the greatest challenges I have faced towards becoming the CEO of my own company was whether or not I should pursue this lifelong dream.
My biggest enemy was no other than myself. I spent a lot of sleepless nights riddled with anxiety during the week before launching my company. You see, my business is far from the usual, and it will either be a hit or a miss. I was so full of self-doubt, but I am incredibly grateful for all the support I got from my family, friends, and even my previous boss.
I believe in the theory that to overcome this, you have to be careful with the stories you tell yourself. You should stop the self-loathing and start telling yourself that everything will be fine even if you take a giant leap of faith.
One thing I would always tell myself every time things don’t go as planned is that “I stumble, and I rise.” It’s a tremendous mindful practice to keep you going. You have to repeat this to yourself even in the minor errors or mishaps that occur throughout your day so that it doesn’t snowball into heated anger and frustration, which will not help you at all.
Through this, I earned the confidence, and now, I am in my 6th year of running my own company. A dream I never thought would come true.
Smita Das Jain
After 14+ years in leadership roles in Fortune 500 companies, last year I decided to pivot my career to transform my passion of mentoring people to become the best version of themselves into a professional pursuit for coaching, and founded the ‘Empower Yourself’ Coaching Program-a customised set of personal clarity and executive performance enhancement coaching interventions.
The first challenge was the resistance that I encountered from my well-wishers who dissuaded me from leaving a stable job for an uncertain future. It took a lot of willpower, and not insignificant time, to listen to my inner voice and move ahead on the path that my heart was set on.
Then opening my business while simultaneously undertaking three certification programs as opposed to the usual norm of starting a business after completing your certifications was a leap of faith that entailed straddling different time zones and plenty of workload. My time management skills held me in good stead here.
Then came the challenge of a successful Go-to-Market. Given my background, Executives and leaders were more willing to hire me as one of their team than entrust me the task of coaching them or their employees. I decided to focus on Life Coaching to start with and put Executive Coaching on the backburner.
Having a structured yet productive day is a constant challenge for an entrepreneur who is her own boss and works her own hours. So far, I have managed it well by ensuring that I open my laptop at the same time every morning as when I worked for someone else (even though the work hours stretch much longer sometimes), and planning my key priorities for each day of the week, a week in advance.
Discipline, Patience and Consistency has been my mantra to overcome any challenges that I encountered in my business. With less than a year and close to 150 coaching hours, webinars, and live learning sessions, Empower Yourself has positively impacted the lives of many working professionals ranging from entry-level to the topmost hierarchy, I can say that this mantra has worked for me.
I enjoy doing what I do, have never been happier and earn more than what I used to do in my corporate role. Success is not called success unless it entails overcoming challenges.
Adam Jacobs
First, entrepreneurship could be a journey — but often times, it’s a rollercoaster. A journey indicates that there is an end, but in entrepreneurship, that’s not the case. There are highs, lows, ups, downs, twists, turns and then the process repeats itself.
There are so many obstacles you have to overcome, such as the bravery to go ahead and pursue your goals, especially when people tell you that you don’t necessarily have what it takes or that you won’t succeed. The first obstacle is to have a reasonably good idea, and many struggles with this.
Saying you are going to create the next Netflix with no money, no concrete idea on how to make it happen, and without a team to back you up.. this is no surprise, but man, that’s not happening.
The second most pressing obstacle I’ve had is to secure funding or capital. Followed by finding a team: Either in the form of partners, staff or both. Once you’ve got some start-up cash, a plan on how you are going to tackle it, and then a team.
Now take this: People will always be your biggest obstacle – your customers, your staff, your stakeholders. You will have to balance yourself with your staff, staff will have conflicts with you, with each other and even with your customers.
Difficult customers can drain your energy and your cash, and learning to manage them quickly and well will be one of the biggest obstacles that you will have to tackle and need to revisit regularly.
Going back to entrepreneurship being a journey and a rollercoaster — I am sure of one thing: obstacles, big or small, are just bumps on the road to goals – be resilient, be persistent. Know when to zig, know when to zag, when obstacles come up, run through them, over them, and know when to avoid them altogether. Obstacles could be big, they could be small, but just believe that you’re on a monster truck to conquer them all.
Craig Schulze
My name is Craig Schulze and I have been in business and an entrepreneur for over 20 years.
In short I left home at 15, been financially independent since 17, fired my boss at 21 to follow my dreams and passion.
Started a fitness club which led to be 5 and 22 franchises. I have built business online, been in coaching and consulting throughout the last decade.
I am an investor. Two of my biggest challenges. One was the lessons learned throughout the global financial crisis.
The second was my wife and I losing our first son stillborn which inspired me to build a brand around peoples “One Shot” at life.
I have travelled the world and been to over 120 different cities and gains huge perspective from that experience.
Ashley Bellino
As an advocate for mindful modern living, I launched home decor and styling brand, Stoned Crystals, in an attempt to re-position and redefine the role of crystals in modern society with a focus on ethically sourced a-grade crystals that are used as functional pieces of art. I believe we sit on the knife’s edge of spirituality and design offering decor, furniture and jewellery made from crystal.
Our physical retail store endured 262 days of closure during the pandemic in one of the worlds most locked down cities, Melbourne. Despite this, we were able to increase sales thanks to our virtual live-sales model. To say the retail landscape has changed in the last few years is an understatement.
The global pandemic in particular forced businesses to diversify their business model. Thankfully, we were ahead of the curve in establishing a very successful virtual live sales model. Whether our bricks & mortar location is open or not, we’ve been able to maintain and actually increase our sales through online shopping. And, with social media impacting the way consumers interact with brands, we were able to take advantage of this evolution and create the next generation in e-commerce.
Stoned Crystals further leveraged the virtual live shopping on social media by developing an App that allows for an uninterrupted shopping experience for the customer, while giving control back to the brand. The result is a less static and more immersive experience that allows for a more authentic and personalised shopping experience.
The concept of selling over live video was established with my partner, Jeremy LeBard, in 2017. We have since taken those learning and tuned them into their own Omnichannel App and plan to make this available to like-minded brands. We essentially redefined the bricks & mortar store through an innovative live sales model that turns our space into a virtual showroom.
Our customers can tune in from anywhere in the world and receive VIP service from our Crystal Concierge team who offer styling advice as well as mindfulness and intention setting tips. In a declining physical retail world we were able to transform the intrinsic value of a physical space into the online world. Our live sale business model alongside a message of mindfulness and hope has generated great interest and found itself a very pertinent strategy that saw us continue to take flights, even in the face of adversity during a global pandemic.
Bree Stedman
The biggest obstacle I faced in my journey towards being an entrepreneur was my own internal insecurities – particularly around feeling like a fake and a fraud. That devil on my shoulder consistently told me I wasn’t good enough, despite my accomplishments.
The second part of this difficulty was finding someone who could help me to irradicate them without having to explore the WHY….. as an ambitious entrepreneur, I already knew the value of Personal Development and growth, however didn’t ‘have time’ to spend hours on hours exploring all of the possible reasons why I felt like I did. And I didn’t want to have to ‘keep working’ on myself. I just wanted a resolution that worked with who I was as a woman, that could get to the root of these insecurities, so I could move forward.
Acknowledging and working on these saboteurs have helped me to confidently build a business while authentically being myself to the point where I now facilitate the training of others in an International company.
J.D. Drayton
After running a locally based branding agency in Melbourne, Australia, I too, was forced to adapt during the pandemic in early 2020.
90% of my clients cancelled their contracts because suddenly we were all stuck in lockdowns (in the city that ended up spending the most days in lockdown, 260 days within 18-months).
I couldn’t survive during the lockdown, so I closed my business. Overnight, I lost all my income! Days later, I launched my coaching and online education business while also launching a new online-based branding agency to serve online-based female CEOs.
The online world was thriving during the pandemic, but I had no idea what I was doing at first. Traditional marketing was not the same as online marketing. Yes, it was similar in some ways, but it was different. It pushed me to think outside the square, but it was not easy, after 20 years doing traditional marketing and seeing clients in-person.
I invested all my savings into online courses and business coaches. Slowly, I started to work it out and to transition online. Transitioning was difficult, as I attempted to translate everything that I had known to the online space.
I was either going to swim or sink, and for a long time, I was sinking fast! I felt hopeless. Defeated. And very lonely, now working from home, without that in-person interaction with clients.
I missed the human-to-human connections, but eventually, I choose to swim as a tiny fish among some big sharks. I became obsessed with self development and online learning and turned to the big names such as Amy Porterfield, James Wedmore, Lewis Howes, Jenna Kutcher, Jasmine Star and Rachel Pedersen.
Marty Spargo
With the changing marker conditions that involves increase in competition within several industries, our yearly sales massively declined in comparison to the past years. It was indeed a tough time for the business and almost left us bankrupt.
But we didn’t allow this setback to stop us, we formulated a strategy that could help us get our numbers back up again and with everything we’ve got, we rose up to most of the competition and even led the market for some time.
Toby Schulz
As a young entrepreneur, co-founding a house cleaning business with my brother when I was 21 and he was 26, the biggest challenge I faced was convincing others around me of the goal I was working towards.
Explaining to family and friends that I had to say no to a lot of plans was not easy or readily accepted. I had to make many sacrifices on the personal front to start a successful business.
When you rely on self-motivation to get an entire business off the ground, if you don’t make the time to do something, it won’t happen.
It was a learning curve to figure out where to spend my time, and how to handle things that I’m not the best at, yet need to be done.
Bronwen Sciortino
I am an International Author & Simplicity Expert.
Having experienced mental health issues after suffering from burnout, and a complete breakdown as a result, I wrote my first book during my recovery which received international critical acclaim and 5-star awards.
During my recovery, I learned a lot about the role that stress and exhaustion play in our lives, and the way that we accept them as a normal way of living. As I pieced my life back together, I made the choice to find the simplest steps for me to move forwards in a way that supported both myself and those with whom I was working.
With burnout on the rise all around the world, this saw me create a global business teaching people there’s a very different way to live so they can tailor-make the life that allows them to lead happy, rewarding AND successful lives.
From burnout to global business happened within 3 years.
There’s nothing normal about being constantly stressed and exhausted AND there are simple and easy ways for people to do things a little bit differently. Everyone deserves the opportunity to create their own life, in the way that is absolutely perfect for them.
Because I live my life governed by simplicity principles I have not been affected by the chaos being experienced around the world and I have been able to easily adapt and quickly move forward in a different way.
Women, in particular, are carrying the load and research conducted pre-COVID showed that they were suffering from burnout more than men. COVID has only exacerbated these statistics.
All three of my books provide individuals with tools and activities that they can apply to their own lives, so they can find their own answers and move forwards on the pathway that is right for them.
I recently launched an online platform to assist busy, professional women to reduce stress and beat burnout. I launched this program (and continue to run it) at a 96% discount so that as many women as possible can access it in these tough times. I’m currently building mini-programs around self-care, stress and energy management so that people can access the information they need to move forwards in bite-sized pieces.
I’m also currently building new online mini-programs that help people to tackle their stress and improve their health and wellbeing in a bite-sized way.
I work with people globally through my books, corporate programs, leadership development programs, conference platforms, retreats , professional mentoring and in the online environment. I share practical and easily implemented steps and inspire individuals to simplify their lives.
I also guest blog regularly for membership platforms around the globe, have been featured on the TODAY Show, Ticker TV, James Miller Lifeology Show and The Author Show and contribute regularly to major online publications such as HuffPost and Thrive Global (Arianna Huffington’s new platform).
I am also frequently asked to be interviewed through global radio, podcasts, vlogs, YouTube, Facebook Live, print media and blogs.
Elley Hudson
The first difficulty I faced on my journey to becoming an entrepreneur occurred when I was 17. I had dreams of breaking into the real estate industry, but I was turned away for being too young. However, I was determined to prove myself, so I worked as a property management assistant for the next 2 years. My persistence paid off and I eventually landed a career as a real estate sales agent.
Unfortunately, that’s when I faced my next challenge, as I quickly discovered the position had a quick turnaround of relationships. As someone who loves to maintain close connections, I was left feeling dejected and depressed. This, and the ridiculous pressure caused by the GFC, led to me leaving my position. Instead, I returned to my roots and spearheaded the company’s property management division.
Soon after, a new difficulty arose with my superannuation. Long story short, I left the company, made my way to Townsville and became the co-owner of a local agency. However, their staff were poorly trained, and their owners were losing money. The worst part was that despite my position, I was helpless to change things. At this point, I started to believe the difficulties would get the best of me and I was ready to give up.
Thankfully, I remained strong and told myself that if I’m having an issue, I should do something about it. All I wanted was a job that allowed me to create great relationships and work in an environment with well-trained staff. I figured the best way to do that wasn’t to rely on finding the right agency but to become an entrepreneur and create it myself. After all, only you can make your dreams come true.
Ellie Pietsch
With a marriage imploding, an 18 month old in and out of daycare – leaving a ‘safe’ job halfway through a global pandemic, to join a team of business owners whose model involved face-to-face delivery seemed like a stupid decision on paper.
But deep down, I knew it was the right time for me to step out of the shadows and into my own light. Pivoting an entire delivery model dependent on building meaningful and trusting relationships into a virtual space virtually overnight seemed crazy, but with a deep commitment to our purpose – helping leaders and teams achieve high performance – and a conviction to live our trademark as colleagues – go the extra yard- , we achieved the unthinkable.
Our business grew 25% during the pandemic, recruiting new team members and building our expertise. And I became the person I always wanted to be. A people-focused, outcome driven business leader who helps leaders and teams improve their performance.
Connor Ondriska
Finding product-market fit was the largest challenge I had. Prior to launching SpanishVIP, I dabbled in some different business models that worked but did not easily scale with my skillset.
This journey, which is quite normal for most entrepreneurs, entailed significant testing and analysis to determine where to focus my energy.
It’s also incredibly important to be a great leader. If you want to do something truly innovative, you will need many smart people to build towards that goal. Understanding how to attract and work with a talented team was something that I struggled with. Studying leadership has and will continue to be of immense value.
Victor Fredung
AI and ML were relatively new concepts when I got into the industry ten years ago and here I am today, CEO of Shufti Pro, an award-winning AI-driven company that seeks innovation and has 5 international offices.
The way to becoming a CEO of a company is absolutely not easy. It may look like a piece of cake from the outside but when you really get into this game, you realize that there is no such thing as “time-limit,” you have to work day in and out to turn your passion into reality. The same happened to me.
Talking about the difficulties, I had my fair share of challenges along the way. The biggest challenge that came my way when I started out was to make my business flourish between the big giants that were already associated with the industry. To make your space in an already packed room is difficult of course, but I believed in resilience and trusted my team that soon we will be giving them competition, and boom, here we are. A company serving in 230+ countries and territories.
Another challenge that I encountered was my belief in the thinking that I can get everything done single-handedly. I was of the view that only a few teammates would suffice for my company. However, this is not the case. One cannot be the expert on everything and you do need a team of highly skilled people in every department to ensure higher levels of productivity. I am glad that I understood it on time and saved my company from becoming a victim of this thought.
In the end, I would like to say that it’s like to be living in a fool’s paradise if you think that you are headed on a journey of becoming a CEO and would not encounter any challenge. Or you have a smooth path looking your way. No, it does not happen in real life. Challenges are a part of every entrepreneur’s journey. CEO’s/entreprenuers must take these challenges as a stepping stone and motivate themselves to keep doing more and better
Paul Peros
I spent over 10 years in management consulting being part of GEA (a “pre-McKinseyan”) strategy boutique in Milano, mainly working on new product and brand development and engaging with global leaders in numerous consumer product categories.
This is where I realised that the majority of the business leaders and models are working in the same way, bringing the same old solution to a problem. I believe this was one of the biggest challenges I faced at the beginning as well – to develop critical thinking skills in order to bring a true and meaningful innovation, one that will address the real concerns of consumers.
Many years of experience has taught me that you need to be adaptive, resilient, always evolving, and going with your instinct, especially during the COVID-19 time. A true entrepreneur should have the courage to see things as they are, the vision to organise resources beyond the way things were done before, and solidarity to trust in one’s and our colleagues’ abilities to tackle challenges.
This critical thinking allowed me to be a true disrupter as a CEO in the beauty tech world. I have been pushing the industry and growing brands from start-ups to companies with more than $1Bilion annual revenue. I am now at the helm of RÉDUIT and our innovative thinking is pushing the high-tech beauty industry further to find the most advanced solutions to skincare needs.
We have merged the laws of physics with beauty to create the world’s only smart and customizable skincare innovation – BOOST. This device and its accompanying app, customize your favorite skincare products, ensuring your skin receives the actives it needs most and provides four times more absorption than fingers alone, to give five times better results.
We launched via Kickstarter and in less than one day secured more than $60,000 in pledges, which is a true testament to how innovative and desirable our solutions are.
Indiana Gregg
Indiana Gregg is the founder and CEO of WeDo, a new app that simplifies work for small business owners, gig workers and freelancers. In Indy’s app, users can connect, make and receive payment and network within their community. Indy created the app during the pandemic and the Great Recession.
You can learn more about the app by going to www.getwedo.today. Here’s what Indy has to say about some of the difficulties she faced on her journey to becoming an entrepreneur / CEO.
“Entrepreneurship isn’t ever easy. It takes grit and belief. When I first started out, probably the biggest challenge was being a woman in tech. It was very difficult. You’d be the only woman in the room talking about a build, and the guys would act like you should be out getting them some coffee. Even now, as the CEO of a fintech, I’m told that I won’t be needed on a tech call even if I’m the only technical person in the conference call.
The second most difficult thing was raising capital on those early rounds. Again, a lot of investors are still skeptical about investing in a female led tech company. Only 2% of VC investment goes to female led companies and even with an outstanding team, a track record of success and innovative scalable fintech, it can still be difficult.
So, from an emotional point of view, that can be very frustrating. I’ve learned that persistence wins over the years and that if you want to make it happen, you will find a way to get through those barriers. Another difficulty was being too early to market, learning that timing is everything and understanding that sometimes you have to keep working on something until the market is ready and the time is right and that the myth of ‘fail fast’ doesn’t always apply.
I think at the beginning, new founders and entrepreneurs are learning as they go, so over time with years of practice in building companies, you learn to be intuitive to the point where you know what your business needs next. This doesn’t always come naturally, so I had to go through a few failures before I had my “overnight success”.
Some people think there’s luck involved in it, I’m telling you, you make your own luck. Overall, I wouldn’t trade my failures for anything. Knowing that you put something out there and learned from your mistakes always leads you to your next success. In leadership, I’ve learned to gather the best people on the planet who align with the mission of the company. That wasn’t always the case with my first couple startups.
You live, you learn. I have a funnel of ideas and a quality filter now that I didn’t have when I started out, so I only create things that I believe will leave the world a better place and help millions of people.
Rafał Młodzki
It was a challenge to stay ahead of the crowd. My brothers and I decided to start a business during our studies. I broke away from the typical way of studying – corporate job – next career ladder. Several people discouraged me and told me it wouldn’t work.
They said we have no experience so that we won’t succeed. It caused me to doubt my ideas, and I was on the verge of resigning.
However, thanks to the support of my friends and family, I was able to survive that social pressure. The experience taught me resilience. Now I trust myself and stand by my decisions. I discuss critiques with people I trust and do not worry about others’ opinions.
Tomek Młodzki
My journey to becoming an entrepreneur required one big sacrifice. In my twenties, I was studying law. You can imagine that this is not a simple field of study and consumed most of my time. Simultaneously, I wanted to pursue my passion – my first online product, Fiszkoteka.
The idea was simple – my website offered customizable flashcards to learn English and other languages for free. Together with my brothers, I used flashcards to study when we were kids, so I transformed them into the online world!
Fiszkoteka was getting better and better, and I realized I would have to sacrifice something – a secure, respected job as a lawyer or what I really love doing. I don’t believe in the efficiency of partial engagement. You do or do not.
Fiszkoteka’s small successes and listening to the voice of my heart made me choose to abandon the law. At first, I felt guilty, but then I realized that it was the right decision with time.
Johannes Larsson
One of the biggest difficulties in my career was when I had to start over from scratch after months of working hard on my first business. I ran several websites that relied on ads to generate revenue, and it took half a year of hard work and not getting paid to finally make a consistent albeit modest amount of income.
I was happy that my work was finally starting to pay off, but things quickly derailed when my advertising account got banned for reasons I still don’t know. Not only did this prevent me from accessing my earnings; it also got my websites blacklisted.
Fortunately, the skills and experience I had already gained let me start over and work up to the same income in a relatively short time frame. I also decided to change my business model to something more stable to avoid the possibility of getting banned again.
The main thing that got me through this hurdle was the knowledge that I had already succeeded before. I knew that if I worked hard and used what I learned to my advantage, I could build something better that would last for the long term. Today, I’m happy to say that I was right.
Christiaan Huynen
Proactive management. Even before a problem arises, I acknowledge the threat and attend to it immediately. Prevention is certainly better than fixing a wide-scale damage in the future.
As a leader, I stay on top of the game through assessing possible difficulties that may be perilous to the business. For example, if a trend on tech is booming, I analyze its connection or relevance to my company. The visionary in me seizes that opportunity to either advance or protect my business from its effects.
Jake Smith
The biggest challenge I faced in establishing Absolute Reg was self-doubt amid uncertainty. As a new entrepreneur, I was anxious to make business decisions outside my comfort zone. However, to be a CEO, I need to conquer the fear of apprehension and teach myself when to take a risk.
Success requires a high level of critical thinking skills. Most often, this aspect is what most business-minded people fail to develop. The ability to decipher calculated risks from foolish ones makes an excellent CEO. Only those who possess such immense skill to discern situations worth risking make it to the optimum peak of their careers.
On my journey to becoming a CEO, I trained to be resourceful and mindful with all my decisions as I am my company’s brain. My command is powerful since I have the final say in every transaction we make. One wrong judgment about when to take risks can put my business at stake.
Lucky enough, I have persevered and treated every downfall as a lesson to progress. I have defeated my fear of the unknown and become the successful person I am today.
Nanditha Vijayaraghavan
The biggest challenge I’ve faced in my executive journey so far has been more internal than external.
I’ve had to frequently challenge myself to step out of my comfort zone, as often as I could, dipping my toes into roles that weren’t fully within my job description, and essentially working the role/position ahead of me.
David Bowen
The main difficulty I faced, is feeling like I had to do everything. There is a lot of competition out there, and often, it feels as though you have to be on top of every single opportunity in order to succeed. Especially because everything is so fast-paced nowadays, and people expect your business to cater to absolutely everything.
However, I learned that it’s best to prioritize and focus your efforts on a smaller niche, and to then build a strong management team to help you keep everything on track! That’s certainly how I ended up developing my own business, and not only did it make things easier, it built a more reliable target audience too.
Daniel Foley
The most difficult thing I found managing was maintaining a healthy work-life balance:
When I launched my business, I could not afford to take breaks. Running a business added to the burden of achieving a work-life balance. Unfortunately, all entrepreneurs are subjected to this strain.
This is because when you started working on your own business, you were only busy during office hours, but once you started working on your own business, there was no clock to regulate.
You are always working without regard for the time of day, and family time is lost, but in order to achieve something, you must make many sacrifices, and things are now in a better place.
James Dyble
Time is frequently one of the most difficult challenges I had to overcome when ascending the echelons. There is frequently the perception that there is not enough time to perform the necessary activities for growth, and this was often the case for me.
As a result, delegation was one of the most critical skills I developed early in my career. Delegation allows for more time to work on the most important tasks and allows for more to be accomplished in the short and long term.
Anthony Mixides
When I first started my business, I experienced a variety of problems. Different difficulties and possibilities need different answers as a firm expands, and what succeeded a year ago may no longer be the ideal approach.
All too frequently, avoidable errors convert what could be a fantastic company into a flop. If your organization is to keep expanding and thriving, you must recognize and overcome the usual problems connected with expansion.
Importantly, you must guarantee that the actions you do today do not cause new problems in the future. Effective leadership will assist you in making the most of the opportunities available to you, resulting in long-term progress.
I believe, confronts a variety of hazards, including insolvency, financial risk, competitive risk, environmental risk, reputational risk, and economic risk. So, in response to the query, I worked on team building to avoid such a danger because a team is the pillar of any company, and I understand that I am not the best to face any difficulty.
We needed experts in specific fields such as financial or demand planning, and I don’t believe an entrepreneur can do everything or be the best in every field, so I worked on team building as a strategy to avoid business difficulties.
Gilles Bertaux
When Livestorm was launched back in 2016, we had a few challenges to face: our brand awareness was non-existent, many large competitors were already present in the market and our SEO traffic was weak as we had just launched the website.
We built an early website targeting specific keywords and created a lot of content around our chosen topic. But when it came to prospects further down the buying process, we didn’t have any content to attract them to our website. In January 2018, we came up with the idea to create comparison pages on our website to address that problem.
Our objective was to present Livestorm as an alternative to our main competitors, in a tone that was as neutral as possible.
This project was a success: the comparison pages generated 6% of Livestorm’s organic traffic and they generated links from over 130 referring domains.
Also, we realized that there were quite a few people asking for advice on the Quora platform on how to organise webinars. I took the time to give very detailed answers, which brought credibility to my profile and made Livestorm known by providing answers to some people’s challenges or needs. In addition, these answers were upvoted and he had more visibility on the platform.
However, after a while, a lot of people started to adopt this technique/hack and it was not really useful anymore. Also, Quora is not used much anymore, but it was something that worked quite well in the beginning of Livestorm to give credibility/visibility, and it was a free technique.
