Topic 3: Case study. Female entrepreneurs who turned failure into success
Amy DeLardi: Amy decided to start a new entrepreneurial activity in 2001. She was quite a pioneer since, instead of engaging in traditional entrepreneurial activities, she decided to launch a web design and marketing business. According to her, back then, many didn’t understand her decision to take on this adventure in a ‘world’ so unknown to her, considering it risky and unstable. However, she succeeded, and she is now the Creative Director and Owner of Infinite Web Designs, (https://infinitewebdesigns.com/) a webpage that creates eye-catching graphic designs, hard-working advertising, high-impact digital media, effective corporate identities, and attention-grabbing websites that mean business. With more than 20 years of experience, she has developed a strong network of loyal clients and continues to receive new ones every day. Yet not all was plain sailing. As she has mentioned in several interviews, one of the turning points in Amy’s career was a failure episode from which she obtained a positive material outcome. She worked for 3 months for a client with a promissory of payment. The client assured her that she would make this payment and kept doing so, but without transferring the money. She kept working hard for her client, but she never paid her for the services she provided. This not only failed her budget expectations but also made her waste time and not focus on those clients who were willing to pay her. Therefore, it made her miss some good opportunities and left her business close to bankruptcy. However, she stood up, engaged in a learning process, and implemented concrete strategies. She learned how to manage finances and budget in a better way, developed her own online payments system and established tighter policies for securing payments before working on different projects. On a more personal outcome, she realized that her business needs are equally important to her clients. This helped her bring back her business to the top, and she is now successful, doing what she enjoys most.
Anooja Bashir: Anooja’s journey has been interrupted by several failures. However, she has been able to overcome them and become a successful entrepreneur. Anooja’s entrepreneurial journey began in 2013 when she quit her former job and decided to launch her first venture by herself, called LIKES (Learning Innovative Key Employment Skills). Her main idea was to encourage graduates and professionals to land corporate jobs. This represented her first failure because it did not last long, as she failed ‘pathetically’, as he explains. However, this first experience made her engage in a strong reflective phase. She analysed what she was best at and figured out it was marketing, which eventually led her to jump into the creation of a marketing company. Thus, she detained herself into a deep abstract conceptualisation phase, discovering her intrinsic motivation and passion for marketing. She also realised that technology was a necessary element. However, due to the lack of a strong network and not choosing the right partners, she had to close down her business. This, however, did not stop her, as she decided to quickly re-engage in the market. Thanks to her previous experiences, she developed a comprehensive stock of knowledge: she clearly knew what she wanted and who the right partners would be, and she also knew she had to introduce IT elements to her new business. Thus, this resulted in the creation of Ourea (https://oureacorp.com/), a branding and IT solutions company, that brings strategic marketing and innovative tech together in entrepreneurship. In her entrepreneurial path, she pointed out several interesting points, very much related to the contents of this module. She mentioned she never had a mentor to guide her, which, although it did not stop her from becoming successful, has nevertheless made her figure things out by trial and error, therefore not being very efficient. She also recommends increasing one’s knowledge and strengthening networks. Furthermore, she referred to failure as something that “is always going to be a part of your life, you’ll keep failing, and that becomes the major source of learning (…) Embrace your failures and learn from them” (Eatmynews, 2021).
Theresa Roemer: Theresa’s life is quite enlightening. She is a bodybuilder, but she runs several business brands, from clothing to home goods to oil. However, her main source of income has been her main company, https://theresaroemer.com/, in which she offers coaching and lifestyle services, sells her own beauty products, but, most importantly, offers services for philanthropy and fundraising. According to her, this was the area that made her succeed. And it all started with a failure. Before engaging in her entrepreneurial activity, she was sharing a small company with her best friend as a business partner. Thanks to their management, this company started to gain important revenues and grow, but her partner suddenly left without a warning, taking more than half of the inventory with her. She was left with almost nothing and she thought about selling the firm. However, after a long time of rethinking her possibilities, she decided to re-engage in the market with the inventory she was left with, using it to create more resources, which enabled her to open to new markets. Moreover, she rebranded her business venture based on her passion: philanthropy. Once she overcame the initial failure, she engaged in a success circle mindset that allowed her to create new sources of income, following what she learnt from her previous experience. Now she owns a national radio show, a fitness, fashion, and beauty line, in addition to promotion and counselling services for philanthropic activities and events.