Success in Entrepreneurship is Just a Collection of My Many Failures and Mistakes: Lessons Learned In Building a Ecommerce Beauty Business

As an entrepreneur in eCommerce, specifically in the beauty and nail industry, I’ve come to realize that success is not about being flawless. It’s about stumbling, falling, and then figuring out how to stand taller after each misstep. MakarttPro has grown into a six-figure business in less than a year, but the journey here has been anything but smooth. My path is lined with mistakes, and I want to share five major lessons I’ve learned, in hopes that it helps you navigate your own entrepreneurial journey.

1. Don’t Try to Hire for What You Can’t Do—Learn It Yourself

In the early stages of MakarttPro, I knew I needed help with nail content creation. I thought hiring nail technicians and trying to mold them into marketing personnel, or vice versa, was the answer. I went through several hires—four, to be exact—and after one left us high and dry right after the Christmas holidays, I had enough. It was time to take matters into my own hands. I learned the craft, got hands-on with content creation, and from there, our followers and engagement grew exponentially. Only after doing it myself did I begin to understand how to connect with our audience. That was when our sales started taking off.

2. Don’t Skimp on the Essentials: Legal and HR Support

At one point, I thought I could save money by not investing in proper legal and HR support. This decision came back to haunt me. Three employees tried to corner me into paying excessive severance, threatening to report labor violations due to murky exempt vs. non-exempt employee classifications. After that disaster, I finally brought on a third-party HR team, along with multiple lawyers to help with trademarks, contracts, and employee documentation. This was a hard lesson in the importance of building a strong foundation, legally and operationally, from the very beginning.

3. Seeing Potential Where There’s None

One of the most expensive mistakes I made was trying to discover “potential” in everyone I hired. From hiring a convicted criminal to bringing on multiple people who had no drive or ambition, I thought I could turn them into assets with the right freedom and opportunities. Spoiler: I couldn’t. I ended up paying them hefty severances to part ways. Not everyone will live up to the potential you imagine for them, and that’s okay. Hire for proven capability and drive, not for a dream of what someone might become.

4. Over-Relying on Industry “Experts”

Early on, I thought I had to lean on others who claimed to know more than me about my own business. From sales reps to marketing partners, and even my own partner, I let their voices guide me, often to our detriment. This mistake cost us close to $2 million, as we had to scrap everything and start fresh. In the end, I took control. I found my own suppliers, created my own products, and built a team I trusted to push them out to our market. That’s when we saw the turnaround that transformed MakarttPro into the thriving business it is today.

5. In-House Isn’t Always the Best House

I once thought we could handle fulfillment ourselves—after all, it seemed simple enough, right? Wrong. Warehousing and fulfillment are not our core competencies, and attempting to manage them in-house was a disaster. Meanwhile, I outsourced our marketing and social media, assuming agencies would be the experts. They weren’t. When I flipped the strategy—outsourcing fulfillment and bringing marketing back in-house—we finally saw progress. By focusing on what we do best, we gained control over our advertising costs, dropping them to 15%, and our sales finally started to soar.

In entrepreneurship, mistakes aren’t just inevitable; they’re crucial. Each failure taught me something vital about running a business. Success isn’t a straight line; it’s a collection of all the wrong turns you take and the lessons you learn along the way. I hope that by sharing my missteps, I can help others avoid the same pitfalls and encourage them to keep going when it feels like everything is going wrong. Because sometimes, that’s when you’re closest to getting it right.