Reach Or Miss

The biggest failure vs. the biggest success - what leads successful entrepreneurs to the highest breakthrough?   It was September 15th, 2008. I was in Zurich, on my way to a big annual exhibition with one of my startup clients. I got a call from my bank’s manager. A big payment of 25,000$ that was to be deposited into my bank account that day had been canceled. It was the day of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy; the financial landscape changed forever that day. Over the next few days, two of my biggest clients cancelled their contracts. My company was less than nine months old. I carefully built it step by step with clients I knew and could trust. It was my first year of being independent after more than 20 years of executive marketing roles in international brands. The situation was totally new to me. It was a painful failure and the next few months were incredibly difficult, however, looking back, this was exactly what allowed me to grow so fast in the following years. In 2010, we closed the first