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Most people have a dream of one day becoming an entrepreneur. They want that lifestyle of calling their own shots, waking up when they want to, and making good money doing it. The problem is, it’s not always easy to do. The road towards this type of freedom can be fraught with failure, mistakes, and problems.

There are barriers to success. You might see the lives of others who have made it and it might seem so easy. But it was never easy for them, either. Many successful people today grew up in very poor situations and built their empire on their own, brick-by-brick, failure-by-failure. The difference between them and most people isn’t the start they had, but that they were unwilling to give up their dream.

Instead, they took a circumstance they were going through and endured. They wouldn’t let it interfere with what they wanted to do, even at the risk of losing everything. There are plenty of names and stories, which will be listed below. Learn from these stories.

1) It’s Okay to Take Care of Yourself

Many people think they have to work so hard at creating the reality they want for themselves. Yes, you will have to work hard, but not at the point of completely exhausting yourself. Arianna Huffington was one of those people. Huffington went to Cambridge University and majored economics, but really dreamed of becoming a writer. She had a long-held believe that if you wanted to be successful, you have to work excessively.

She never gave herself a break and it hurt her in the long run. One day, she passed out from sheer exhaustion at the office and slammed her head on the desk as she hit the floor. She learned a lesson that day that she can make sleep a priority in her life. Working yourself to the bone won’t always translated to success and can even be detrimental, as you need a clear mind and to value the work your doing enough to ensure you’re doing well.

“I wish I could go back and tell myself that there is no trade-off between living a well-rounded life and high performance is actually improved when our lives include time for renewal, wisdom, wonder, and giving. That would have saved me a lot of unnecessary stress, burnout, and exhaustion,” she said.

2) Failure is Okay

Too many people take failure the wrong way. They end up losing their confidence and decide that maybe they shouldn’t be doing what they’re trying to do and give up. But everyone who has ever made it has failed at the venture they eventually succeeded at. Elon Musk is one example of that. He has had several failed businesses and even at the beginning of SpaceX had several rockets blow up. Did he decide that was the end for him? No. He kept pushing forward.

Musk is now worth $19 billion today. Apparently, he was successful enough at something. Musk says that failure is indeed an option. “If you’re not failing, you’re not innovating enough,” he once said. Look at failure as an opportunity to improve and grow. Build upon what failed and try again. Only then will you become successful.

3) Investment is Key

Many people work to make money. Once they start gaining a lot of success, they rarely use that money to invest back into the business to make it better. They would rather start spending their money and live lavishly. Mark Zuckerberg has a different approach. He lives a very frugal lifestyle. Has anyone ever seen him in a nice suit? Sure, as a billionaire he probably has a few toys, but he doesn’t focus on making money. He uses the money he has to improve what he’s built.

“We don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services,” Zuckerberg said. Other sites and apps have come and gone with the weather. Facebook has stuck around and is as popular as ever. Why is that? Because he has tirelessly worked to build and adapt. He’s doing a lot of good in the world with his money. He invests in developing technology and is building a better world, not just collecting his money and running.

We may give too much credence to the idea of generational differences. If there’s one thing we can be sure of, it’s that one generation tries hard to learn from the mistakes of the previous. Gen Z is no different in that regard. They’ve had privilege of learning from several generations who had to face unique circumstances. They hope to apply these lessons into their own life while blazing a new path that may change the way we do everything.

Gen Z ranges from people born between 1998 and 2016. While the youngest of the are only a few years old, the other end of the spectrum is graduating college and entering the workforce. The largest group of them is currently in middle and high school, learning new ideas and being trained on technology the rest of us could’ve never imagined in our days.

Learning from Our Example

Our generations certainly had a lot of failures. Baby Boomers worked tirelessly and instilled the concept of a work ethic. They ‘played the game.’ “They saw their parents believe, ‘All you gotta do is work hard, keep your head down, go early, stay late, and you can advance and move up in a company.’ They saw their parents do that, and lose their jobs,” Casap said. All their hard work proved nothing in the end. It wasn’t any better for the Millennials who focused on education.

“They watched their brothers and sisters

[get that college degree]

and then come home and live in the basement with $200,000 worth of debt,” Casap said.

Gen Z sees more than ever how the entire system is broken. Going to college means starting out life tens of thousands of dollars in debt. It’s almost not worth it. Applying yourself at a job and busting your tail to move up ultimately proves fruitless as well. The economy is more volatile than ever and there’s more risk for taking chances. It breeds nothing but exhaustion and worry.

Gen Z wants something unique. They want to change the culture so they’re not just another cog on the wheel. They’re out there inventing new ways of doing things and that gives them a great deal of power. Technology gives them a door that wasn’t as accessible to us. They’ll do it with ease, breaking all the standard rules.

How Gen Z Will Rule the World

Starting a business in today’s world of technological advances are quite easy. You don’t need money to make money anymore. You just need to know a skill…a skill that easily accessible and can be learned for free online. Before, you had no chance of success unless you had a ton of money saved up to buy your merchandise and hope your store front is easy to find. All you need today is a bit of WiFi and a laptop.

Why do the standard, boring job, like working at McDonalds, like previous generations have done? Instead, they can learn a little bit of code, start a YouTube channel, or start selling art on the Facebook marketplace? More kids than ever are in high school today who also run a business on the side and make money using the internet.

This will change the world because Gen Z has other options than to sit in a stuffy office. If employers want to fill their seats and bring in qualified workers, they’ll have to change how they do business. If not, they’ll wither away and die.

Actor Dan Nufer was in the market for a new home in the Los Angeles area. Driving around and looking for new properties, he found one specific house that had everything he was looking for. It was larger than other homes he tried to get, was newly renovated, and even fit within the lower end of his budget. His first thought was that this was too good to be true.

“This house was way too nice, in an up-and-coming neighborhood and at the low end of my budget,” he said. “It was too good to be true.” In some ways, it was. When he asked his real estate agent to check into how this larger house in an awesome neighborhood went for so cheap, he found out that it was being offered as a tenancy in common.

Believe or not, there’s actually movement going on in neighborhoods and cities across the country. In these areas, rent is so expensive that it’s forcing complete strangers to decide to buy a home together. They want a nice house in the nice neighborhood. Rather than living in an unsavory and unsafe area, they’re deciding that buying a home with someone else puts them in a better situation.

Managing living in a home with roommates, except this time, both roommates are the owners. They share all the bills and have every responsibility and right to the home. No one owns it outright, so they both co-own it together. This can be a large townhome, a very large house, or even a single property that has several smaller homes on it.

What is Tenancy in Common Like?

“It is exactly like living in a condo complex,” says Nufer. “Except that legally I don’t own my house, I own 1/7th of the property and I have the right to live in my house.” This might seem like a strange situation, but there is an upside for people looking to buy a home or property. The prices for owning a piece of it are much lower than if you are buying the entire thing yourself.

Again, think about sharing rent with a roommate. Many people live like this already to help with the bills. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t any risks involved with the situation either. If things turn sour between you and the other person(s) involved, it’s more difficult to just up and leave. You partly own the property. You would have to sell your share.

There are other risks as well. You might be difficult to find financing and/or insurance options that cover the living situation. Then there’s the situation of what happens if your partners financial situation goes downhill. You will be expected to share property taxes and maintenance costs. Your real estate partner in this deal may not be up for all the costs.

“I understood the potential risks. And I was fine with it,” Nufer said. “From start to finish, with TICs, I found the bark was much worse than the bite.”