Mastering Resilience: Learn to Detach Mistakes from Your Self-Worth with Darrell Vesterfelt A moment of crisis led to his partners asking him to step away from one of the businesses that he co-founded

By Terry Rice Edited by Dan Bova

Lucas Botz Photography

Darrell Vesterfelt is a visionary leader who builds and scales businesses. Since 2015, he's helped creator-entrepreneurs generate over $45 million in core sales. He's a friend, mentor, and the founder of the creator agency that I help lead, HeyCreator.

As a leader, a serial entrepreneur, and the former head of growth at Kit, Darrell had a track record of success. But a moment of crisis led to his partners asking him to step away from one of the businesses that he co-founded. Today, Darrell is publicly sharing that story for the first time. Discover powerful insights as he recounts his transformative journey from a challenging year shrouded in shame to emerging more resilient and successful than ever.

Key takeaways:

  • The fallout from losing his place at a company he co-founded and the lessons he learned.
  • Why hiding from tough situations feels better in the short term, but is a mistake in the long run.
  • How you can develop a healthy self-identity that doesn't lean on ego.

I'll share a few of my favorite quotes from Darrell below.

Finding Work-Life Integration:

"What I love about work and life is that everything's so integrated. So I feel like I have deeper friendships than I've ever had before. Work has been challenging and fun and rewarding like never before. And it's a fun game to play. I think it's the most fun game to play is how to improve your life and yourself and your relationships and your business."

Leveraging Feedback and Self-Reflection:

"And how you respond to feedback goes a long way in partnerships, not just at work, but at home too. When a partner comes to me and gives me feedback, I just want to acknowledge the fact that they're experiencing what they're telling me they're experiencing. And I think a lot of times people go immediately into like telling a story or justifying the behavior or whatever else. And I've just learned, man, can I just acknowledge, hey, I'm sorry that you're feeling that way. If I were in your shoes, I'd probably feel the same way."

Embracing Challenges:

"If you just hit a golf ball and it went into the hole every single time you hit it, it just wouldn't be fun. Like, part of the fun is the contrast between the roughs and the bunkers, and also the sweet shots that you just hit down the middle of the fairway. And so I'm just having fun playing the game right now. Not everything is perfect, but I'm having a lot of fun playing the game. More fun than ever, actually."

Click here to listen on your platform of choice, or tune in below.

Learn more from our guest:

Follow Darrell on LinkedIn.

Partner with Darrell and team to build your business as a creator.

Terry Rice

Entrepreneur Staff

Business Development Expert-in-Residence

Terry Rice is the Business Development Expert-in-Residence at Entrepreneur and Managing Director of Growth & Partnerships at Good People Digital; an agency that provides marketing and monetization solutions for entrepreneurs. He writes a newsletter about how to build your business and personal resilience and personal brand in just 5 minutes per week and created a revenue optimization checklist to help you multiply your income potential. 

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