How Entrepreneurs Can Stay Positive in the Face of Adversity

When Tobi Skovron landed in LA, he had a great idea, a start-up mentality, and the Global Financial Crisis awaiting his arrival. Luckily he doesn’t believe in negative thinking.

Tobi Skovron explains:

I’ve got this unbreakable spirit, I can’t explain where I got it from but it’s just deep inside. When something like the GFC presented itself, I just felt there was no alternative other than to keep going. To me, the glass is always half full and I never once looked at that situation with doom and gloom.

Skovron puts his positive attitude down to many things, the most significant being the death of his father when he was just 16.

It was a life-changing experience. My mom didn’t focus on the loss, she focused us on what we had, and so perhaps this played into the way that when things go sour I can just shake it off. It’s just who I am.

This relentlessly positive attitude is paired with an incredible ambition to succeed, which came in handy when Skovron first launched Pet Loo into the Australian market in 2003. It flew off the shelves, and so Skovron and his wife made the decision to expand their horizons and take Pet Loo to The United States.

He laughs when asked about his experience of starting, growing and selling a business in America.

It was horrible. We ate cereal for dinner for 4 years! I had no money and it was all hustle and very hard, but once someone gave me a chance, Pet Loo became really popular. When it came to the eventual success of the business, there were no tricks, it was all hard work. It sounds crazy to say, but something I did quickly learn was just how huge the US is. As the business took off, we quickly started to ship to a number of different states and cities and I think we went too quickly. If I could do it again, I would start with one city at a time instead of the whole country. It put pressure on everything. However, it was great, in hindsight, and I certainly learned a lot about my limits. Saying that, when it came to launching Creative Cubes, I ignored everything I learned!

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