Everyone has weaknesses. These weaknesses, unfortunately, sometimes can be barriers to our success. But I’ve learned throughout the years that weaknesses can only affect your performance if you let them. If you work hard enough, you can turn your biggest weakness into your biggest strength. Or so I thought.

Until this week, I’d never heard the name Peter Shankman. And after Skyping with him in our class last Friday, I have no idea HOW I haven’t heard of Shankman. He is a brilliant entrepreneur who has learned to use his ADHD to his advantage.

This is a perfect example of someone who has, what some people consider a weakness, and has turned this “weakness” into something extraordinary. His entrepreneurial journey is quite inspiring. Shankman has founded companies, has wrote a couple of books and has created a successful podcast.

Even though he talked for a short amount of time to our class, he left me more inspired than I’ve been in a while. He gave loads of advice that really taught me to look at my own entrepreneurial journey in a different light.

He taught me that it’s important to surround yourself with people that know what type of journey you are on.

I’ve tried to explain to my roommates, to my friends and my family, my own journey that I’m on in this class. Though they are supportive and show interest, I have a feeling that they don’t fully understand what the rest of the class and I are actually doing. We are creating a start-up. With doing that, we have to face the good days and the bad days.

Shankman alluded to the fact that there is going to be days where you feel like you are on top of the world and there are days that you feel like you’ve hit somewhere further than rock bottom.

I’m forever thankful that I was put in such a fun class of students that show not only interest but show loads of support as well. It truly is vital to have people around you that know the ups and downs that creating a start-up might entail.

Another piece of advice that Shankman gave to us was to take care of ourselves, to “eat a vegetable or two.”

Though I never really considered physical and mental health important when it comes to creating it start-up, Shankman made me consider how important it actually is. Shankman goes running every morning at 5 a.m. He made it clear that he does not mess with his routine. He even stopped drinking to help increase productivity.

It made me realize that if you truly want your start-up to be successful, you need to be in a good state of mind as well.

And lastly, what I realized after talking with Shankman is, if you truly can’t turn a weakness into a strength, then you need to learn how to work with your weakness as well as you work with your strengths.  It’s okay if you can’t fix a weakness, because who knows, it might be your ticket to the top.