She should know; in 2012, Blakely became the world’s youngest female self-made billionaire. Her idea to experiment with pantyhose design that would look great with closed-toe shoes and still offer support would eventually grow into a multimillion dollar company.

Blakely had no idea in the beginning how things would go. She relied on her family and friends to help with product testing in her first year of development, then worked on obtaining a patent and eschewed industry norms with her creative packaging and branding. She trusted her gut and embraced what she didn’t know, achieving $4 million in sales in Spanx’s first year of operation.

“Your biggest challenge as an entrepreneur is not concealing your ideas from others or keeping your idea a secret, it is actually convincing people that you’re not crazy and that you can pull this off,” Parker has said.

A talented hacker and programmer early in life, Parker had ambitions that undoubtedly seemed lofty to investors and potential partners. He learned early on that winning their support meant taking risks and being open with his ideas.

It seems that every time Facebook is down, it’s a news event. In fact, there are websites set up for the express purpose of telling people whether Facebook is experiencing an outage. Why is that? Because when Zuckerberg’s creation is down, it’s a crisis. People are so in love with his product that they actually get anxiety when they can’t use it.

Isn’t that incredible? Zuckerberg has been able to tap into the psyche of consumers worldwide in almost unheard of ways, because he and his team are constantly trying new things, testing features, and taking risks.

Even if it means they break things sometimes.

Entrepreneurs can get sucked into this trap of perfectionism quite easily. You’re taking a huge risk-you don’t want to fail publicly. Still, you have to be willing and able to get your product or service out there and test it in the market.

Don’t focus so intently on your own vision of the perfect product that you aren’t getting it out there at all. You’re going to get valuable feedback and your users will help drive your next steps.

He’s said, “You need space to try things and create. It takes a long time to recalibrate if you let people pull at you all the time. A lot of stress comes from reacting to stuff. You have to keep a certain guard up if you’re a creative person.”

It’s good to be receptive to feedback, but make sure you aren’t taking too much to heart.

Silbermann says, “Don’t take too much advice. Most people who have a lot of advice to give-with a few exceptions-generalize whatever they did. Don’t overanalyze everything. I myself have been guilty of overthinking problems. Just build things and find out if they work.”

You don’t have to do things exactly as others have done. Learn lessons from them, but don’t feel bad for going your own way.

There are a lot of perceived obstacles and potential stereotypes facing you as an entrepreneur. Don’t let them get you down!

If you have no confidence in yourself, why should your team, customers, or investors? Focus on what you know and what you’re passionate about. Go forward and speak, write, and create from that place-wow them with your creativity and don’t question yourself!