Eshal Lakhani

I definitely attribute my success to my parents and my close friends. They have been there through the late nights where I'm like, oh my god, I can't do this, I give up, I don't want to do this anymore. It gets too much, I'm so over it, I already have so much going on, I don't need this going. But then they're there to remind me of why I chose this, and what makes this so personal and so meaningful to me. My parents have always been in the business world, so growing up, I've always just seen every single family member, whether that be my cousins, my brothers, anyone of any age, they've always had a business. That environment taught me to just get ideas and start them without thinking about failure, just taking it one step at a time and learning new things about it.

The best career advice I've ever received is just take that leap forward and just dive in, because you never know. You'd rather dive into something and at least build something than think a couple years later, oh, I wish I did that. You would never want to regret something. It's like, oh, I wish I went to that place when I was there. No, go, you live one life, just go do it, and don't think about it. The worst that's gonna happen is you're gonna fail, you can pick yourself back up, and move along, because you're gonna learn lessons from that situation.

Always be confident, keep your head high. There will be a lot of obstacles that come in your way that will make you want to quit, or make you feel a certain way. There'll be a lot of clients and customers that will bring you down, try and tear you down. Even family members and your close friends that would support you will try and bring you down, but you just have to keep your head high and just keep going at it. Whatever you want to do, just go full force, do that, and trust me, you will come out on the other end. All those people that you thought mattered will no longer matter to you because you curated something so much far bigger than what they didn't support.

The biggest challenges in our field right now are definitely getting all the licensing and all that, the upfront costs, those one-time costs of just opening a company. At my age, you wouldn't expect someone to have all that money. I had to pour in all my savings, I didn't take any money from anyone, no loan, nothing, so it's just straight of my own liquid money poured into this company. All the blood, sweat, and tears, everything from day one is all mine, and I've never changed that. It's always very challenging when you don't see the result you want so fast, but you have to remind yourself of why you chose to go down this path. You're not gonna see the positive side so fast within 2 months, you're not gonna expect to see a result so fast, but you won't, no matter what business it is. It takes time.

The values most important to me are definitely a lot of dedication, a lot of creativity, a lot of patience, especially with these things, because going back and forth in contracts and stuff takes a lot of determination and perseverance to actually get that contract signed. Vendors will go back and forth, nag at your brain, so you have to be very curious, you have to be very dedicated, you have to be very transparent when it comes, and you have to be very blunt at times. You have to say, okay, this is it, it either happens like this, or we cannot offer this, because we're not gonna put our company at a loss. But we will come to a conclusion of where both parties can meet mutually, and set price at that.