Miri Rossitto is the founder and chief executive of Cowe Communications, a Calabasas-based business and brand-development firm. During the course of her career, she has made a few mistakes. Here, she talks about being resilient and not doing things alone.
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The path of my career has been paved with the shattered remnants of my optimistic ego. It was never my intention to own a communications firm because my childhood dream was to go into the medical field (first mistake). As it turns out, my inability to get beyond fifth-grade math made “Dr. Miri Rossitto” an impossibility, so I turned to the next obvious choice: journalism (second mistake). I tried that path too for a bit, but I was incredibly unhappy just learning in a classroom. I wanted – no, needed – to get my hands dirty. And so, I became an entrepreneur.
To me, entrepreneur is just a fancy way of saying “someone who willingly signs up for a rollercoaster ride of punishment and pain.” Why is it so excruciating? Mistakes! So. Many. Mistakes. From the moment I wake up until the moment I pretend to sleep for three hours, I do nothing but orchestrate new ways for other people to say to me, “Really, Miri?!”
Interestingly, amidst the chaos, I discovered my superpower: resilience. The countless embarrassments I endured wove a coat of confidence around me, but had I not experienced my biggest mistake early on, I certainly wouldn’t be here today telling you this cautionary tale.
Trying to be a lone wolf
When people think of an “entrepreneur,” they typically think of a lone hero who bravely scales the impenetrable walls of business all by themselves. This was how my ego and I viewed entrepreneurship when we started this company: with a vision that it was going to only be my way and that other people were a liability and distraction. What an epic and costly mistake that turned out to be.
I buried the headline, so let me just say this now: There is no success without a team. Not one entrepreneur, not one company, not one anything is successful without a team. Sure, there are dysfunctional teams, but the fact remains that truly nothing impactful or important happened because one person did it all by themselves.
Nine years ago, I was convinced that I knew best. I was going to save so many businesses all by myself because of me, me and me. My prior 20 years of repeatedly making mistakes in business clearly positioned me to help others avoid the same humiliation. How wrong I was. It took me two painful years and $150,000 to figure out that while I could develop game-changing ideas, none of them could be executed without a team. My biggest mistake wasn’t prioritizing and investing in a talented team of my own for far too long and not realizing that outstanding teams were undoubtedly the solution to almost every client problem that I encountered.Â