Joe Yakuel is a good example of a CEO who managed to create a successful career through learning from the lessons of the past. Despite experiencing some failures in his early career, he succeeded in creating several companies that have contributed to the development of the modern marketing landscape. Several lessons can be learned from his experience, which can be useful for other young CEOs looking to chart their own career paths.
First of all, it is worth noting that Yakuel was born and brought up in a typical entrepreneurial environment. Both of his parents immigrated to the United States of America and opened a taxi company in New York. They had five kids and ran a family business, which allowed Yakuel to get used to business realities from an early age. One of the lessons that young entrepreneurs can take from this is the importance of adopting an owner’s mentality. In addition to the ability to generate ideas, Yakuel learned consistency, responsibility, and problem-solving skills from observing his family doing business.
The second important element in Yakuel’s success lies in the mindset imposed upon him by his parents and older brother. The idea expressed in Yakuel’s father’s phrase, “What’s next?” combined with his brother’s encouragement to aim higher, led to the emergence of the need for innovation and evolution in everything. This is the key to success for many companies, since it allows CEOs to anticipate future changes, identify upcoming trends, and search for new growth opportunities. Thus, this aspect may serve as another example of how young CEOs should think to succeed.
In addition to developing such a mindset, Joe Yakuel faced multiple business failures before succeeding in the market. First, he founded the equity research platform Shareports.com, which ran for less than one year before closing down. He then created a business connected with contact lenses that closed within two weeks. Despite these challenges, Yakuel did not give up and used each failure as an opportunity to gain valuable experience.
Many businesspeople quit their endeavors when their companies fail because they view this as a lack of ability to run enterprises effectively. However, it should be noted that business failures are often helpful because they provide young entrepreneurs with the knowledge that helps them to avoid mistakes during the creation of more successful businesses.
Yakuel eventually found success when he started FireForLess.com, a custom fireplace eCommerce business, which proved to be a profitable business within its first week. Within its first year of functioning, it generated enough profit to reach roughly $3 million in revenue. Thus, the third lesson from this experience is that execution is crucial to success. Many entrepreneurs pay too much attention to innovations while ignoring the effectiveness of business operations, forgetting that the latter is what sustains profit.
The experience that Yakuel accumulated before founding his companies, when he was working as a marketing executive at Quidsi and The Vitamin Shoppe, led him to the conclusion that the existing approach to marketing is ineffective and can prevent companies’ growth. The problem that Yakuel noticed is based on the separation of brand-building efforts and performance-driven marketing. This insight helped shape WITHIN’s integrated approach, which combines creative thinking with data-driven decision-making to help brands drive growth. That approach has contributed to WITHIN signing contracts with companies such as QVC, Ben & Jerry’s, and The North Face.
Yakuel also utilized his problem-solving approach during the launch of brkfst.io in 2020. During the scaling of WITHIN, he realized that there were no traditional agency models capable of coping with the ever-increasing need for high-quality creative material. Hence, the aim of brkfst.io was to enable brands to increase the efficiency of user-generated content creation and testing. Over time, brkfst.io has partnered with such brands as Corkcicle, HelloFresh, Warby Parker, Casper, Michaels, and Perfume.com to scale content as a profit-generating channel.
Finally, Yakuel demonstrates that learning should continue even after starting businesses that are profitable. As the founder of the marketing agency WITHIN and the platform brkfst.io, he decided to use his experience to become an educator. More specifically, he became an Adjunct Professor at NYU and taught several courses concerning marketing techniques and campaigns.
Overall, Yakuel’s experience shows that successful leaders cannot be simply associated with a particular product or innovation. Rather, they must also develop a mindset characterized by such traits as perseverance, adaptability, curiosity, and problem-solving. For young founders trying to create sustainable businesses, these lessons can pave the path to future success.
