Lessons in Entrepreneurship: The Making of a Successful Founder

Lessons in Entrepreneurship
Featuring Carrie Zuchorski
Episode 1

Behind every successful business is a story few people ever hear. Recently I had the opportunity to sit down with CE Design & Execution founder Carrie Zuchorski to talk about her journey over the last five years of growing her company from the ground up.

This interview was especially meaningful for me not only because it is my first article for The Start-Up Network but because Carrie, or as I like to call her mom, has served as an inspiration for me throughout my whole life. She has been my greatest supporter throughout my process of starting my company and the reason I even became interested in entrepreneurship in the first place. As one of my role models, I wanted to share what she has taught me not only about business, but also about life, which is why I founded The Start-Up Network in the first place. 

Many people take for granted how hard it really is to start a business, something I’ll admit I was once guilty of myself. I think this belief came from watching my mom succeed in a way that just looked effortless. In the earlier years of her journey my brother and I would jokingly refer to her company as a “side hustle” because all we saw was her working at our kitchen table during the day. 

It wasn't until much more recently than I'd care to admit that I truly understood the amount of work and dedication she has put into her business. She knows what it is like to struggle in the beginning and what that can do to growth, which is why I am so grateful to have her there for me as I start on my own business journey.

For those of you who are not familiar with CE Design & Execution, it is a boutique consulting firm founded by Carrie Zuchorski in 2021 at her kitchen table that specializes in customer experience. This specialization allows it to continually deepen its expertise in a specific niche, rather than spreading its focus across multiple services like many larger consulting firms.

Before founding CE Design & Execution, Carrie worked at various companies in different roles all focusing on customer experience. This level of experience allows her to deliver the expertise clients expect from a major consulting firm without the overhead, meaning you're not hiring a partner who charges thousands of dollars per hour while delegating much of the work to junior consultants. With her, you get the assurance that she and her experienced team are directly involved in every project, delivering exceptional execution from start to finish.

The company started after a friend asked Carrie for advice as she stepped into a new role. After their conversation, her friend asked whether Carrie would be interested in coming in and working directly with the team. Rather than continuing to work in-house for a large company, the opportunity sparked the idea that she could start her own business, with her friend becoming her first client. 

The process of starting the company only took around 30 to 60 days. Although it was a relatively short amount of time to get the business up and running, it was anything but easy. It took her countless days and nights working with people who had already founded businesses to understand what she needed to do to get started.

After hearing about her journey of learning from those who came before her, I wanted to use our conversation to better understand what she believes truly makes a successful founder.

As with everything in life, not everything goes as planned in business. Carrie understood this from the beginning, which is why she has always tried to have a Plan B. She has found that having some sort of Plan B before going into any situation is vital for avoiding the stress of having to come up with a solution on the spot, allowing you to focus your time and energy on execution. To her, this is among the most important strategies for success that a founder can employ.

Even with a Plan B, however, founders need to be resilient. Time and time again something will not work out, and in order to succeed, you need to be able to move on and try something new. Failure is just part of the process–you need to learn, adapt and overcome. 

This does not mean you should never plan; you can’t go into a business with no plan and simply hope for the best, but you also must recognize not everything is going to work out. Nothing is guaranteed. Some of your biggest successes come from the moments when you took a risk and it pays off. Even if it doesn’t, you must be able to learn, adapt and move on.

Finding the balance between careful planning and willingness to take risks is crucial, yet it is something that is often not discussed enough.

While Carrie found it useful to plan in order to avoid stress, planning was also responsible for her greatest failures. She found that when trying to plan everything out and have a backup in mind she became overly focused on the individual projects. Ultimately, this led her to not set aside enough time to grow and improve the business, something that she claims to be one of the most common mistakes amongst other founders in the beginning and one that often prevents them from growing more quickly. She wants new founders to understand that giving yourself time to grow and develop your business is just as important as doing the actual work of the company, you cannot go all in on one or the other and just expect success. 

Carrie learned the hard way that growing your business takes time and passion which is why her biggest piece of advice for anyone starting out is to make sure they are truly passionate about the business they are building. Even though she loved what she was doing, it was still extremely difficult in the beginning, requiring countless hours of dedication. It only becomes harder for you to keep going and push through if there's no passion involved. Passion is your strongest source of motivation, driving you to keep going even through failure because you refuse to give up on something you truly care about simply because it becomes difficult. This willingness to fail and resilience that comes from passion forces you to learn from your mistakes and improve quickly. 

Many companies with great ideas have ultimately failed because they struggled with execution, often lacking the passion and adaptability needed to learn from their mistakes. Some of the most successful companies are built on relatively simple ideas but succeed because of the dedication and thought put into bringing those ideas to life. Those qualities come from your mindset and your willingness to work hard, not from innate talent alone. At the end of the day what really sets a company apart from others is the team behind it and how much effort they put in.

While her company starting off from a friend asking for help may not be how you envision your business starting, it is a testament to how unpredictable business can be and all the different ways businesses can come about, you never know what will spark an idea. 

While there unfortunately is no single key to success, Carrie’s experience should inspire you to do something you are truly passionate about instead of whatever you think would be the most profitable because business is hard and unpredictable no matter what you are doing, the only thing you can actually control is your amount of drive and passion for your work which is what will pay off in the end.

Carrie says that this experience is the most rewarding thing she has ever done in her life (beyond me) and that her ability to keep going is something she is beyond proud of. There is always uncertainty -about success and growth, but she has faced that uncertainty head on and not let it slow her down. She never thought she would be able to go this far in five years and build something into a sustainable business. 

This is a lesson that all aspiring entrepreneurs should learn. No matter your doubt or struggle, keep going. Business isn't supposed to be easy—it's the challenges that force you to grow.

It truly was such an honor to get to speak to Carrie not only because of my personal connection with her but also because I truly have learned a tremendous amount from her about starting a new business. I knew even before I met with her that her lessons learned were something I wanted to pass on. 

I am beyond grateful for everything that she has done and her unwavering support of me, it means the world to me and serves as my greatest inspiration every day to grow The Start-Up Network so that I can hopefully help others even half as much as she has helped me. 

Business really isn’t easy and I am just fortunate to have someone like her there for me that serves as an inspiration, role model, and friend all in one. I hope everyone reading is able to learn as much from Carrie’s story as I have and will use it as part of their own inspiration to chase their passion.