![\"Jelena](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Copy-of-32-Split-Screen-2026-06-26T083501-738.png\"\/)
<\/p>\nFrom resilience and risk-taking to sharp instincts and the ability to bounce back, success in business is often tied to familiar traits\u2014but three women who built thriving companies say one less talked-about quality helped them push past doubt and keep backing their ideas when nothing felt certain.<\/p>\n
According to a Shopify-Gallup Entrepreneurship study, 62 percent of U.S. adults would prefer to be their own boss, with more than half (52 percent) willing to take on financial risk.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been delusional for seven years now,\u201d Jelena Skene told Newsweek.<\/p>\n
Read More on Life<\/p>\n
The 37-year-old recalled feeling panicked as her notice period at her full-time job\u2014paying almost $80,000 per year\u2014came to an end in 2019.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of my friends thought, when I quit my job, I was completely \u2018delulu\u2019 and that I will be back within six months (sometimes I did too), but that never came true,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Skene quit her job as head of digital marketing to launch a marketing agency and later became a co-founder of Pressflow, a PR platform connecting journalists and experts.<\/p>\n
While she described starting her own business as a \u201ccrazy decision,\u201d she said she never looked back.<\/p>\n
London-based Skene said: \u201cMost days are amazing, and then there are some when you really feel completely delusional, but I feel like that delusion is what often turns into success, at the end.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018The Only Thing That Keeps You Going\u2019<\/p>\n
More than half of existing founders (57 percent) who participated in the Gallup study credit encouragement from people in their lives as a key factor. But not everyone receives that initial support.<\/p>\n
Jessica Strickland, co-founder and CEO of a matchmaking agency, said her loved ones thought she was \u201ccrazy\u201d when she walked away from her $100,000 salary as a boutique matchmaker.<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old, based in Austin, Texas, told Newsweek: \u201cWhen you\u2019ve been told \u2018no\u2019 a hundred times, worked 80-hour weeks, and worried about making payroll or paying your mortgage, that\u2019s the only thing that keeps you from feeling like a complete lunatic.\u201d<\/p>\n
After years working in the dating industry, Strickland decided to launch Matchmaker AI, an artificial intelligence<\/a> powered matchmaking platform for professionals.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is built off feedback I got from singles about what they did and didn\u2019t like about dating apps,\u201d<\/a> she said.<\/p>\n Strickland added that having \u201can unreasonably high-risk tolerance and delusional confidence\u201d in herself helped bring her vision to life.<\/p>\n \u2018Fake It Until You Make It\u2019<\/p>\n Zakia Moulaoui Guery, 39, agrees that belief can play a critical role in success.<\/p>\n \u201cThe \u2018fake it until you make it\u2019 motto is true and good to follow,\u201d she told Newsweek.<\/p>\n Guery is the founder of Invisible Cities, a social enterprise that trains people with lived experience of homelessness <\/a>to lead city tours and share their stories.<\/p>\n After battling bowel cancer at 26<\/a>, Guery, from England, quit her job as director of international partnerships at Homeless World Cup.<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted to make a difference myself by starting something new that would give people a practical chance to tell their stories. So, my cancer really made me take the plunge. I thought, well I didn\u2019t die so let\u2019s do it!\u201d she said.<\/p>\n What Experts Say About \u2018Delusional\u2019 Confidence<\/p>\n While all three entrepreneurs<\/a> agree that there is an element of \u201cdelusion\u201d that keeps them convinced their ideas will succeed, careers expert Abi Hall is not entirely convinced by the label.<\/p>\n \u201cI do think there is often an element of irrational confidence behind successful entrepreneurs, <\/a>but I wouldn\u2019t necessarily call it delusion,\u201d she told Newsweek.<\/p>\n Hall, the co-founder of Just Starting Out, a startup-customer connection platform, explained that founders must believe in something long before there is any evidence it will work, as there are often no customers, testimonials or guarantees in the early stages.<\/p>\n She said the key difference lies in how that belief is applied. Rather than blind optimism, she said successful founders tend to have an informed conviction\u2014remaining aware of the risks while choosing to push forward regardless.<\/p>\n According to Hall, those who succeed are constantly learning, adapting and adjusting course when needed, while staying focused on the bigger picture.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve certainly experienced this myself,\u201d she said, adding there have been moments where it would have been easier to quit.<\/p>\n \u201cBuilding a platform from scratch has taken far longer than I imagined, but we never stopped believing in what it would become. To some people, that probably looked irrational. To us, it was believing in it long before anyone else did.\u201d<\/p>\n Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Charlotte Nisbet<\/a> and Emma Lee-Sang<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From resilience and risk-taking to sharp instincts and the ability to bounce back, success in business is often…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":729868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[181,28,525,313674,527,158,313675],"class_list":["post-729867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entrepreneurship","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-business","tag-careers","tag-careers-advice","tag-entrepreneurs","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-startup-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=729867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/729868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}