""For many of us who are entrepreneurs, we don't listen to anybody, and we just make a bunch of mistakes," O'Kelley tells Fortune's Orianna Rosa Royle. "I go back to myself in my 20s, I wasn't going to listen to anyone. I thought I knew everything, I burned a lot of bridges, and spent a lot of time learning the hard way.""
""It was pretty embarrassing to go to Princeton and six weeks after college, be unemployed on your dad's sofa.""
""I was like, 'I worked my butt off for you, I trusted you-how dare you sell the company?' I kind of threw a fit. I definitely handled it poorly, and the guy who hired me fired me," he adds."
Most professionals face layoffs, firings, or ousters at some point in their careers. Brian O'Kelley experienced repeated firings while building a tech career after graduating Princeton in 1999. His first venture at a consulting company failed and he was fired by a close friend, leaving him unemployed at his father's home. He later became a vice president at IT consulting firm LogicSpan, but the dot‑com crash and a company sale prompted a confrontation that cost him his job. O'Kelley acknowledges having burned bridges, resisted advice, and learned hard lessons that fostered humility, growth, and eventual entrepreneurial success.
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