At age 25, Brit Morin left a highly coveted job at Google to figure out what she wanted to do with her career.
Today, at age 30, she's running a successful content and e-commerce platform.
The founder and CEO of Brit + Co, a media company that inspires women to be more creative, has since built a readership of tens of millions, worked with top brands like Target and Starbucks, and rolled out a line of products and online classes.
While the decision to leave Google "was really hard," Morin said it was the right move. "I felt like there was no better time to take a risk than when I was young," she said.
Morin shares with CNBC four key lessons she learned from the transition.
1. Recognize what you're good at.
As both a product manager and marketer at Google, as well as a millennial, Morin was uniquely qualified to understand how the media industry was reaching young people.
"I was working with all kinds of content companies and the cable networks and the operators, and it just felt like the legacy media companies were not very forward-thinking about millennials, nor about digital media," Morin said.
She saw a unique opportunity.
"Couple that with the fact that I've always loved being creative and helping people achieve their own creative confidence and I happened upon the idea for Brit + Co," she said.
2. Buckle up.
Morin has also learned that entrepreneurship can be rocky.
"I would say that my biggest learning in being an entrepreneur was to understand the bouts of emotions you're going to have on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis," she said.
"One day you could have the highest high, and the next day you think your company's going out of business," Morin said. "So my learning was to really maintain a solid, steady ground."
"As an entrepreneur, you have to be willing to tolerate risk," she added.
3. Hire the right people.
"When you can really step away from the business and know that it's OK, because you've hired so many great people who do your job better than you do your job, then you know you've succeeded," Morin said.
Looking for people who share the same mission as you is key, according to the CEO.
"You have to have a solid mission people believe in and that's going to drive your employee retention more so than anything else you can do."
4. Work hard.
At the end of the day, you have to put the work in, Morin said.
"You can do so much if you are honestly working hard, showing up on time, [and] making sure you're understanding the market that you're working in and how it's changing," she said.
Video by Jeniece Pettitt and Mercedes Barba.