Roads Less Traveled: 7 Founders Who Built a Business on Their Own Terms

“It just comes down to the point where if I can no longer sustain my job and the business, then I would have to really consider the options. But, for now, it's to the point where I can still manage both. I really enjoy both. My day job's actually really interesting. I work with a team of people that are super smart and they motivate me."

“A lot of little things that trouble businesses and take up a lot of time, you can actually automate it or build processes around it. I tracked all the things I do with my business and how much time it takes, and then see how I can automate it. Sometimes we also build processes around it so the customers can actually do it themselves.”

—Remi Silva, Blank Tag Co

I think anyone's career path has to be tied to how they tick. The way that I thrive in any environment or any role is by having a holistic understanding of whatever it is that I'm trying to do. When I pursued my MBA, it was about learning business holistically. Getting more hands-on experience, expanding my network, spending more time in different functions, and learning. To me firsthand learning is invaluable and it was such an incredible experience. I actually got to work at Daimler. I went to Germany and lived there for a little shy of a year and got exposure to international business firsthand. And then came back and landed this role at Cisco, which is almost an MBA on top of an MBA. I got to spend six months in planning, six months in product operations, six months in manufacturing operations, six months in supplier management and got to work on a joint venture that we did with China.

That experience is invaluable, from MBA into the real-world experience and then into ARGENT, I developed relationships, I had a sense of command over not only the subject matter but also myself. I think that understanding your own leadership style and having an intimate understanding of your own blind spots is critical to be successful as an entrepreneur. Taking all of that into ARGENT really set me up for success or as much as possible. It's not to say that any path is wrong, that's just my path based on how I operate.

—Sali Christeson, ARGENT

对我来说,它是如此缓慢,因为我真的到research and I like to know what I'm jumping into before I actually take a leap. So part of that was just personal style. I wasn't like struggling for two years. It was researching and doing all this in my spare time while I worked at a nonprofit as my day job. So putting time into it when I could was also a part of the reason why it took so long.

For me, I just wanted to make sure that I did it right. I really cared about the people that I would be making these swimsuits for and I wanted to do it sustainably. And to grow slow. It really wasn't about making money, it was about doing this and doing it right.

—Mel Wells, founder of Beefcakes Swimwear

When I started my business it was really from a place of no plans. I was in college and I had planned to go to graduate school, and at the very last minute, on the eve of graduation, I decided not to go to graduate school. I didn’t have any plans. I decided to start my business because that’s something I’d always been interested in and had been researching throughout my senior year. I decided to just go for it since I didn’t have anything else to do. I was making all sorts of different products, and just trying to see what would land and do I like doing. I think that is an important step for a lot of people to take—just trying things and see what works and adjust from there.

I was making a lot of sewn products, fabric buntings and different sewn projects, and I just decided that I really wanted to only be embroidering. That was the main thing that I loved to do and it was the thing that I felt the most drawn to. Once I cut the other stuff out, I was able to really focus on those embroidered projects and do more of them, evolve them better, do them differently, do them better than I had been doing them, market them better. It’s about finding that niche and digging into it.

—Danielle Spurge, Merriweather Council

The idea for Big Life Journal was born in 2016. That’s when I was pregnant with our child. My husband is my co-founder—he and I are doing this together. We were expecting our first child, and we were sitting down and having conversations about how we wanted to raise our children, and what kind of skills, attitude, and mindset we wanted to instill in our son.

That’s the time when we discovered “growth mindset” and how important it is to start early. We were looking for different tools that would be helpful for parents to help raise kids with this type of mindset, and at that point, there was nothing available. So we decided that we’re gonna create something.

At that moment, I was working corporate and my husband was too. But, I was doing a lot of things on the side. I was starting lots of different businesses in different industries, and all of them were failing one after another. But for me it was just about the experience, I was gonna try new things, and trying to find what I would be interested in doing. I never took those failures as something personal, they never crushed me. It was more about, “Oh that’s interesting. That didn’t work. Let’s try something else.”

—Alexandra Eidens, Big Life Journal

I would say my age, alone, is one of my biggest insecurities. Most of the brands that I work with, and the brands that I know personally, their CEOs are way older, their marketing managers are way older than me, so coming into the space with no prior knowledge or experience in the beauty industry was pretty scary. But that's where I was able to do my research and really use my disadvantages as advantages. I was able to open the floor, create a community where I educate my customers. And they educated me, too. It's an ongoing dialogue, and that's how we've been growing.

When you're starting a subscription box, you ideally should have prior brand relationships and have prior experience in the industry. Honestly, I had absolutely none. The fact that I didn't know enough gave me that boost to probably do so much research. Not only was I learning the foundations of the industry, but I was also learning the trends and the forecast. I'm always up to date with those things. I was also able to come out and be very honest with my subscribers and saying "Hey, guys, this is who I am. This is what I've done prior to owning Tribe Beauty Box, and this is my vision for the Box." Any questions that I have, I ask my subscribers.

—Bili Balogun, Tribe Beauty Box

“My initial criteria was a physical product, low complexity supply chain, massive commodities market, a highly fragmented marketplace with no market leader that I can chip away at with no brand differentiation or loyalty across the industry. And something that was largely in traditionally physical retail that I could help bring online with the direct-to-consumer model.

I looked across all of the websites that I owned, and I owned sheetsgiggles.com, because Ibuy domainswhenever I think of a business idea, and I had thought of this may be a year prior, and bedding fit the criteria almost perfectly. But that's not to say it's the only thing that did. It was just the one that had the model almost locked in perfectly and that I had a fantastic brand name for. I felt like I can build a brand that reflected my own personality.

—Colin McIntosh, Sheets & Giggles