I had an accident. A car ran into the building I was in. As you can imagine, that’s not something that often happens. Do you know anyone who has experienced a situation like that? Me neither. Oh, wait – myself. No matter how light my tone of voice may sound now, it seemed to be a nightmare back then. I was petrified, got injured, and couldn’t sleep. There was nothing I could expect less than a car in the bathroom, trust me. And that’s exactly why I view this accident as a life-breaking moment. Surprisingly enough, it was a precious lesson, which has resonated in my all actions ever since. Knowing that everything can change at any moment is my source of strength. Fearless, bold, and ambitious, I just plan the steps to get what I want. What’s the worst thing that can happen if I fail? Nothing. If I fail, I fail. The end of the story. There is always another mountain to climb. Or another lesson to learn. Thanks to this attitude, I succeed.
Leaving a firm that allowed a prospective client to use a derogatory word to define my race changed my trajectory from employee to business owner. The situation fueled my drive to be the change I seek in the world by pursuing my passion for nurturing human capital, including my own. My vision evolved into creating an alternative workplace that refused to dehumanize its people–its greatest asset. Valuing yourself as an asset is a lucrative investment for your life and your livelihood.
I started my company 15 years ago and remember the exact moment that I decided to turn my side gig into a full-time career. At the time I had a good job as a network administrator. We managed a lot of smaller companies providing all their IT needs. When managing servers, the work needed to be done on off-hours. This means a lot of nights and weekends. I was on salary and already had close to 60 hours in for the week. It was a Friday during the summer and the weather was nice. I decided to do a half-day and leave the office a little early since I worked so many hours already that week. I let my manager know I was leaving early and didn’t think anything about it. I then got a call that afternoon from the owner of the company and he was very upset that I didn’t work till 5 pm. That was the exact moment I realized that I didn’t want to work for anyone else ever again. I now have 18 employees and a very successful online dental manufacturing company. Thank You, Evan McCarthy
Up until I began my new career, I had followed a very conservative set of choices after I graduated business school, however, that all changed when I suddenly lost my dear friend and mentor, leading to my breaking moment. Their passing sent me on a journey in which I had not anticipated or planned, but altered my life forever. In searching for ways to honor their memory, I found the choices to memorialize cremated ashes to be underwhelming and not what I hoped for, so I decided to create my own vision to accomplish this mission. This, in turn, led to a whirlwind adventure in which I found myself taking unconventional approaches to everything from creating the company, to an appearance on the television show Shark Tank, in which we raised additional funding by partnering with Mark Cuban. So, in essence, my breaking moment came as a result of my most heartbreaking loss.
I was finishing university. The digital marketing business I had started a year earlier was going under. I was a victim of my own success with more work than I could manage. I finally went to see my mentor, one of my business professors. We had lunch and he listened as I explained my conundrum. My mentor was furious! He said, “What’s the first thing a successful start-up does?” I repeated the lesson from his class: “Find a management team the CEO trusts.” Smiling, my mentor added, “And, if the CEO’s lucky, they’re smarter than the CEO.” I went back to school and called my oldest friend who’s joined my fledgling firm as co-founder and COO. Five years later, we’re rocking it and making a difference.
The moment came when I was promoted to my “dream job” in telecommunications. Head of US marketing for a Fortune 50 company and all I could think was “get me the heck out of here!” I had spent 20 years working for other people and I was tired of being second-guessed. I wanted to see what I could do. The day I decided to gamble on myself was the day I had an epiphany. I’d rather be happy and fail, than be a success, whatever that meant, while miserable. That night I went home and started working on my business case. Taking the risk was the best business decision I’ve ever made.
Working freelance made me realize I needed something more. I have always enjoyed the ability to make my own schedule and work at my own pace. Having the freedom to choose your best hours during a day to put in your best effort is great. After working through freelancing platforms for years, I realized one day that I was placating myself just to keep going. I would tell myself, the fee's weren't that that bad, after giving away 20% of my income. I would say to myself, the clients will get better, but I was always fiercely competing for jobs that paid less than minimum wage once you divided them by the the hours spent. I had to admit that it just wasn't sustainable for me and that I needed to do something more for myself. I needed to put more effort into making good career choice for myself. Subsisting was not ever going to be enough.
As one of the partners at Adamson Ahdoot LLP in Southern California, I am dedicated to being an advocate for those who have been overlooked and marginalized – those who are most vulnerable in personal injury cases. It was while I was earning my law degree from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles that an anti-Muslim and anti-immigration sentiment was taking shape nationally. As a Jewish-Iranian, I hated seeing it. I knew that I had to be a passionate voice for those being portrayed as villains in society. That realization is what drove me to focus my entire legal career on representing those who have been maligned and oppressed. Those years post-9/11 shaped who I’ve become.
I was an addict. Disease was a wake-up call I never expected to receive at 30 years old. I threw myself into work and kept self-care on the back-burner. Now, I’m trying to live every day to find balance. My breaking point was sometime over 6 years ago when I was working for Google making six figures but spending all my income on drugs. One day, I couldn’t even afford to make my rent payment. Everything hit me at once, and I broke down confessing all of it to my mom. The next day, I decided to turn my life around and get clean. In myself, in my work, and in moving forward, I strive to get a little better and a little stronger every day.
In 2012, I was working at a full-time salaried office job where I dreaded going to work every day while trying to build a side business. My parents both passed away suddenly that year, 10 months apart, after working their entire lives for someone else. They didn’t even get to enjoy retirement since they passed away in their early 60’s (my father had just turned sixty 2 1/2 weeks earlier). It was that realization that was my driving force to build the business and live I dreamed of. Those losses pushed me to focus on what is really important in life and build a successful business and life as a CEO.
I was the kind of person who played by the rules and achieved whatever wished and worked towards. If not 100% my performance was always better than my friends and peers which made me happy. I ducked failure for many years of my life until there came a point when I had to taste failure. Before I accepted the defeat, the fear of failure was always at the back of my mind. after it happened, I became one of the most risk-taking, fierce, and bold personalities. The fear inside me was stopping me to try out new endeavors. I was a little upset in the beginning when it happened but then I realized people don’t care what’s going on with you, everyone is living their own life and people have bigger problems. This became my turning point which commenced a bumpy ride towards success. later on, I also realized that the reason behind my average performance was not going all in and living in the moment.
A few years ago I ended up in a position, both emotionally and financially, where I had to get creative quickly, so as to not derail completely. I had just come out of a toxic relationship, had no regular job and I also hadn't made an effort to keep in touch with my close friends and family for a while. I had no motivation and slumped into procrastination and self-destructive behaviors. In order to get out of this quickly accelerating downward spiral, I decided that it would take some serious discipline and management of my time and resources, which is how I came up with the idea to start this business. I started off slowly, setting small goals, which were easy to achieve. As soon as I had more confidence and a more positive focus, which quickly came with the successful completion of my daily targets, I started to raise my targets and set my sights higher gradually but steadily. Sometimes you just have to hit rock bottom to realize that the only way is up!
When you're heading somewhere, I suppose a journey makes sense. Similarly, your life will be significant if you strive for a higher purpose. Many people feel lost in life because they are aimless, purposeless, and directionless. Drifting without a meaningful aim can never provide you with a sense of accomplishment or fulfillment. There comes a moment in life when you must make a difficult decision about what you want to do with your life, which industry or area you want to thrive in, and what passion you want to follow. Those who make the correct decision at the appropriate time and keep their sights on their goal achieve enormous success and soar to greater heights. A meaningful life, in my opinion, is one in which you are strongly connected to your purpose. A hero is someone who wakes up every day with a clear sense of who they are and what they are doing in the world.
Emotional instability occurs when you consider judgements and opinions close to your heart. Failures teach the value of people and peers. The moment I heard a discouraging comment on my capabilities from one of my valuable peers, I wanted to change the trajectory of life to create success. I felt an invisible emotional push inside me to bring out the best in my activities to pursue success in my tasks. It helped me handle the struggles on the path and choose different routes to achieve success. This breaking point taught me life lessons and the need to be a successful person in this society amidst the competitive platforms.
I worked as an executive in a medium-sized nonprofit corporation for two decades and in the last three years of this tenure, I found myself tolerating harassment and other demeaning behaviors from others on the executive team that made it nearly impossible to do my job. I stayed because I believed deeply in the mission of the business and my ability to have an impact. When I left, I immediately started consulting for smaller nonprofits and have found it so rewarding to help them amplify the impact that they have in the community. It makes me wonder why I didn\'t take the leap sooner! My advice for anyone in a toxic culture is to move on sooner than later. Your physical and mental health will reap immediate benefits and your future self will thank you.
I think the major breaking moment for me came in the form of innovative ideas and confidence. Education gave me knowledge and working gave me experience, but choosing to branch out and start a business is an entirely new career adventure that nothing else can truly prepare you for. If you don't give yourself time to take stock, it's very easy to continue working for others and be satisfied with where you are. But my breaking moment came when I realized I had built enough skill and experience to trust my judgment and take a leap of faith. It's a decision my younger self never could've made, and while it's hard to pin down exactly when the change occured, I know for sure that I now have the confidence to captain my own success and I'm not looking back.
The realization that failure and success are not destinations. After losing my job and dealing with an overwhelming medical diagnoses, I felt like a failure. But after the initial shock wears off you realize time just goes on. You can either stay in that failure or move through it. A project or life-event only ends in failure only if you cease to continue moving forward while success is persevering to find solutions to problems.
The pandemic (days of COVID-19) were the hardest for me and my company and I am sure they were for every business around the globe. I was seeing myself and all my life’s hard work going down the drain and the tension was only increasing. So, in those testing and breaking times, I learned new wood carving techniques that my employees are using at the company. The new skills are extremely profitable for the company as we have found a new way to move forward with the company’s operations. Those breaking moments actually made me change the trajectory of life and created success not only for me but for my brand as well and the people associated with it (my employees).
Manager at Talentify
Answered 4 years ago
Divorcing made me change my life. I don't mean to say it is the solution or the secret to success. It's not! Actually, it is very sad, and it hurts, no matter why people get divorced. In my case, I decided to live it- I decided to embrace my divorce and all its pain so that I could go over it and change what I felt I should. I was halfway through finishing my master's, my company was not in its best moments. I don't know how to explain it, one day I looked in the mirror, and literally asked myself: "Look at your life, man! What are you going to do about that?" The question kept in my mind like a bee in the bonnet, and the answer came: "See what you have built so far. You must be great. Now work to be the greatest person you can." Coincidentally or not, success became part of my life in the way I wanted after that' episode.' Sure that losses came, but from that moment on, I have felt that I can manage things towards my life goal, my legacy- To Be The Greatest Person I can actually be!
Job search burnout is in a few words: tiring, stressful, and demotivating. Knowing you have so much to offer a company, yet you can’t land a job or fruitful opportunity is gut wrenching. Coming out of college, I applied for many jobs that led to nothing before I effectively reached the burnout stage—this was my breaking point. I took a break and used this as motivation to secure an opportunity to utilize my skills and contribute to a strong organization. I used this break to do volunteer work and other freelance opportunities. This allowed me to reaffirm my skills and usefulness by producing quality work for other dedicated people and businesses. The pay was frequently low or non-existent, but this approach also allowed me to build experience, make connections, and bolster my resume. This experience gave me greater perspective on business and life and has stuck with me as I continue on my 20+ year journey of entrepreneurship—it instilled in me the importance of a good work ethic.