We recently connected with Marcus Lara and have shared our conversation below.

Marcus , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What do you think it takes to be successful?

In 2017, I dropped out of medical school to start a company. I sold my car and moved back in with my parents, leaving a career path that came with both prestige and financial certainty. That didn’t matter. I wanted to build something I could call my own and was willing to risk it all to make it a reality.

Building my own succesful business was always a dream. And at the age of 24, I knew that it was time to put myself to the test and make that dream a reality. So in 2017, I started Hathaspace, a wellness brand that began selling essential oil diffusers on amazon.

Manufacturing and selling these essential oil diffusers eventually led my business partner and I to fly to China, where we discovered the product that would ultimately change the course of Hathaspace and our lives – air purifiers. Fast forward 4 years later and Hathaspace was one of the top air purifier brands on amazon, with annual revenue of over 20 million. In 2021, we sold the company to a consumer products company at an 8-figure valuation.

Looking back on that journey, I think what made us so succesful was two things. First, it was an obsession with the process. To succeed in anything, whether that be race car driving or e-commerce, you’ve got to want to be the best and have this insatiable curiosity and drive to do whatever it takes to get better. I spent countless hours learning on youtube as well as studying our competition to understand how the process worked. You need to have that obsession because it fuels you consistently to get better every day.

Second, I think what made us really succesful was our ability to balance open-mindedness and the ability to pivot with focus and the understanding of when to double down. In Hathaspace’s early stages, we tried selling all types of random products. We were tinkering and experimenting, and we could have gone in many different directions. That open mindedness and playfulness led us to discover air purifiers and once we found a winning product market fit and traction, we knew where Hathaspace needed to focus and the story became a lot more clear.

In entrepreneurship, you have to be agile and be open to what the market and the world will show you. Success isn’t linear and as a business owner, you have to be able to walk away from what you thought your business was towards what your business is now becoming, without fear and with obsession.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Like most succesful entrepreneurs, once you do it once, you want to do it again. And so after selling Hathaspace, I quickly began working with two other cofounders on Dorado – a retirement savings platform that makes it simple and easy to invest and save digital assets within a tax-advantaged IRA account.

Dorado is solving the problem of younger generations not saving and investing enough for their retirement. Let’s face it, the retirement industry is boring and antiquated. But investing in a tax-advantaged IRA account when you’re younger is one of the greatest financial moves you could make. Even more so if you are investing in an asset class that’s still so early and you have a long term investment horizon. Dorado is going to make retirement investing more interesting and a lot more easy. We want to inspire millions to better grow their retirement savings and we think digital assets will be a part of every investors retirement portfolio in the future.

The retirement industry has been closely guarded for so long by the major brokerage houses and this has led to an innovation lag and disconnect with the new types of investors entering the workforce. Dorado is here to change that. We’re building our company to serve our generation and the generations after us. With a focus on community, education, and transparency.

You can check out what we’re building by visiting http://dorado.tech. Join the waitlist and you’ll get early access to our platform launching in early 2023.

Have you ever had to pivot?

My biggest pivot was when I decided to drop out of medical school and build my own business. This pivot stemmed from one specific question/realization. I had succeeded in getting into a great medical school without any real passion or excitement. What can I accomplish if I am actually excited about it?

This led me to take the plunge and bet on myself, giving up a life of certainty and a significant level of financial success. Working day and night to build the Hathaspace brand was very challenging but because I was so emotionally involved with the brand and the process, those challenges were met much more easily.

The key difference between owning your own business and being an employee is the fact that you drive the business and determine its success. If you don’t feel like showing up and working, nobody is going to tell you otherwise. It’s 100% up to you. That blurs the line between work-life balance and requires a certain level of obsession and even selfishness. But that obsession is what makes life exciting and meaningful. In my case, it changed the course of my life completely.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

One of the greatest lessons I had to unlearn is that perfection is a real thing. It’s absolutely not. I think when you come from a mathematics and science degree, you’re trained to always strive for getting to the right answer – an absolute destination. In life and especially entrepreneurship, perfection is fleeting and trying to be perfect often prevents you from making progress and moving forward.

If you need to wait to have all the answers before moving forward, you’ll never make it. The key to navigating life is to take what you know and have, and keep moving forward. I knew nothing about selling products online or digital advertising but that didn’t stop me from learning how to do it – eventually managing over $500k in ad spend per month. I knew very little about the retirement industry but that didn’t stop me from diving into my newest venture where I am going head to head with the biggest and smartest institutions.

Humans fall victim to the “perfection” mentality far too often, thinking you have to be an “expert” to be any good at anything. I unlearned that the fun way. My dad said it best when he said, “Perfection is the appreciation of the imperfections that surround us”. Learn to appreciate the imperfections in your life and you’ll thrive.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://dorado.tech
• Instagram: @thelaramar
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcus-lara/