Eric Spofford is a 37-year-old serial entrepreneur, who recently sold one of his businesses for well over 9 figures. His primary focus now is his entrepreneurial investment firm, Spofford Enterprises, which specializes in real estate, venture capital, and entrepreneurial coaching.

We recently had the opportunity to interview Eric, where he shared three critical life lessons from his own success journey.

Hard work has no substitute

"Hard work beats talent 100% of the time, you need to always be willing to go the extra mile and push further than those around you," Spofford told us. "The journey to success isn't easy, nor is it supposed to be. Anything of true value requires an immense amount of hard work and self-discipline."

He also emphasized that you need to fall in love with the journey, sharing that the journey to success is more important than the destination itself.

Even though Eric has become wildly successful, he still works 12 - 16 hour days, 7 days a week.

Learn to embrace failure

Failure is not the final destination, it's a part of the journey. You need to learn to embrace failure and learn from it. If you manage to stay on your feet, you continue to move forward. If you stop and throw in the towel, you become stagnant. 

Eric Spofford believes, "If you're not failing, you're not doing enough. There is no success without failure. Success is the tip of the iceberg built on a mountain of failure." 

What's vital is learning from your failures, so you can correct course and continue to move forward in the right direction.

Be able to learn from anyone and everyone

You need to establish the humility to learn from absolutely anyone and everyone. The humility to realize you don't know everything, and be willing to genuinely listen and be a student.

"In my opinion, the greatest contributor to failed leadership is an imbalance between ego and humility. People who have an inability to learn from others will never be great leaders," Spofford told us.

If you're interested in learning more about Eric, you can follow him on Instagram.