• Kim Gravel is the founder of two top-performing QVC brands.
• She's also a mom to two teenage boys.
• Gravel has learned a lot from her failures and is determined to let her sons fail too.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kim Gravel, the founder of Belle by Kim Gravel and Love Who You Are. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I was 19 when I won the Miss Georgia pageant. Even more exciting than the crown was the $100,000 salary that came with it.

This was back in 1991, so that was serious money. For the first time, I felt like I was being paid not just for the task I was doing but for my talent.

Since I was little, I knew that I wanted to be paid for the value I brought. My first job was washing hair at a salon. I was making something like $3 an hour, but I knew I was providing more value than I was being paid for. I wasn't just washing hair: I was talking to the ladies about their families and their churches, giving them one-on-one attention.

After my year as Miss Georgia, I was hired as a Goodwill Ambassador to Japan. That came with a nice paycheck, too. I realized that if I got lots of bookings like that, I could make as much as I wanted. I started to develop my speaking and performing skills. I realized my value was whatever price tag I put on it.

That realization helped me become a multimillionaire.

I landed a reality TV show while I had an infant

A few years later, I was married to my husband, Travis. We had an infant and a 2-year-old, and I was bored to death as a stay-at-home mom. I knew my most important job was being a mother, but I wanted more. I needed a sense of purpose.

I Googled reality TV shows and found a contact for a producer. I remember sitting at home, no makeup and no bra, with spit-up on my shirt as I reached out to him. That led to a reality TV show about coaching pageants. It got picked up by Lifetime, and I was so proud to be a stay-at-home mom who had landed a television show.

When the show was canceled 18 months later, I was devastated. I didn't know that would be the turning point in my life.

I love running my company

At the time, I wasn't thinking about myself as an entrepreneur. I just thought I had a slick mouth and a big personality, and I knew how to use them.

After the show was canceled, I whined to my parents, who told me to cut it out and put on my big girl panties. My mom had an idea for soft jeans that wouldn't stretch out throughout the day. I started trying to make her vision come to life, and 18 months later, I was selling them on QVC.

Today, I've created two of QVC's most successful brands. Over the last seven years, I've sold over $1 billion in clothing, and last year my companies did $283 million in sales. I love that I run the company, and my husband is the chief financial officer. I'm not licensing my name or brand; I'm making decisions and developing this company.

Failure has helped me learn

The beautiful thing about being successful and having financial wealth is what you can do with it. Travis and I have built outdoor classrooms and have redone a girls' locker room for our local schools. We also started a nonprofit to teach girls about entrepreneurship.

I grew up middle class, but my dad, a banker, was cheaper than dirt. He taught us to save 70% of our money and live and give with the remaining 30%.

In some ways, I'm still cheaper than dirt. If our family goes out to dinner, we drink water or get one soda to share. My 16-year-old got a hand-me-down car when he got his license: a 2014 Nissan Rogue. I try to be like the millionaire next door.

Throughout my life, I've learned more from my failures than I have from my successes. If my show hadn't been canceled, I wouldn't have started making products.

I want my sons to experience failure, but I'm worried that they're part of a generation that doesn't know how to fail well. I don't want them to experience serious failures, like mental health issues or financial scams. But if they don't make the sports team, I'm not the parent calling the school to express outrage. Failure is our friend in finances, romance, and life. It's where we learn.

• Many tech leaders tried to get close to Trump after the election, donating to his inaugural fund.
• One expert told BI that, since then, it's been a "rocky road" for Silicon Valley leaders and Trump.
• Here's where some of tech's big names — and businesses — stand with the president a few months in.

Some of the biggest tech leaders tried to get in President Donald Trump's good graces before he took office for a second time, meeting with him at his Mar-a-Lago resort and snagging prime spots at Trump's inauguration.

A few months into his presidency, many of those tech leaders are now dealing with tariffs and other disruptive policies, like immigration restrictions and funding cuts, that could impact their bottom lines.

At the time of writing, Trump had exempted many electronics from the harshest levies on China and instead said they would be moved to a different tariff "bucket" in the future. Yet other tariffs have caused US CEOs to pause spending and hiring, and they could make it more expensive to build AI data centers.

The stocks of all publicly listed companies included here have dropped since the inauguration, as has the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 index and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite.

Darrell West, a senior fellow in the Center for Technology Innovation at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution, said some of the tech leaders have "probably been disappointed."

"The tech leaders had a buddy-buddy relationship with Trump early in the administration, but since then, it has been a rocky road," he said. Moving forward, he anticipates that tech leaders will still try to remain close to Trump, even if it doesn't guarantee returns.

"The fact that he meets with CEOs does not mean that he follows the advice they give him," he said.

Here's where some of the biggest tech leaders — and their companies — stand with the president now.

Representatives for Meta, Nvidia, and Amazon declined to comment to Business Insider. Representatives for the White House and other companies did not respond to a request for comment from BI.

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, X, Boring Company, Neuralink

Elon Musk spent at least $277 million backing Trump and Republicans during the election, has influenced policy and personnel decisions, and is the face of the White House DOGE Office — for now.

The world's richest man has remained close to the president in the months since, but his involvement in Washington seems to be waning. Americans are souring on his political involvement, according to public opinion polls, and he has been viewed by some as a political liability. During a Tesla earnings call in April, Musk announced that he would be stepping back from DOGE and devoting more time to Tesla.

Tesla has suffered since Trump took office due to a widespread protest movement and plummeting sales. Musk has publicly criticized Trump's tariffs but said on the earnings call that Tesla is generally "the least affected car company" when it comes to levies. SpaceX could also benefit from new government contracts.

Other than Tesla, Musk's companies are privately held.

Mark Zuckerberg: Meta

Mark Zuckerberg and Trump have a tumultuous history, but the Facebook founder has recently tried to patch things up. The Meta CEO called Trump a "badass" before the election and ended fact-checking on Meta platforms. The company donated $1 million to the inaugural committee.

Court proceedings recently began in the Federal Trade Commission's blockbuster trial against Meta. The government is trying to force Meta to sell Instagram and WhatsApp, arguing that the company operates as an illegal monopoly. Zuckerberg was the first witness and testified for hours.

Before the trial, Zuckerberg tried to have the suit dismissed. The FTC asked for $30 billion to settle, but Zuckerberg offered only about $1 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Meta could also take a hit from tariffs, since Chinese advertisers buy ads on its platforms. The company could lose $7 billion in ad revenue, the Journal reported.

Sundar Pichai: Alphabet

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago after the election, and Google donated $1 million to the inauguration fund.

The company hasn't been spared from lawsuits — in April, the Department of Justice kicked off a remedy hearing for Google, where it will decide the company's fate after a previous ruling that it's a monopoly. One proposed solution is separating Chrome, Google's flagship search engine. Google has said it intends to appeal the case, and an executive said in a blog post that the DOJ's proposed solutions are "unnecessary and harmful."

Alphabet, Google's parent company, reported first-quarter earnings on April 24 and exceeded initial revenue expectations despite market volatility.

Jensen Huang: Nvidia

Unlike many of his counterparts, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang did not attend Trump's inauguration. He spent the day celebrating Lunar New Year with employees in Asia. He met with Trump shortly after, however, and Nvidia donated $1 million to the inaugural committee.

The chipmaker sources many of its semiconductors abroad, primarily in Taiwan, making the trade environment tricky. Yet in a March interview with CNBC, Huang sounded relatively calm about tariffs, saying that he's "enthusiastic" about building in the US and that "in the near term, the impact of tariffs won't be meaningful."

Morgan Stanley said in April that Nvidia was still its "top pick" in the market.

Tim Cook: Apple

Apple CEO Tim Cook personally donated $1 million to the inaugural committee and attended the event. He also had dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago after the election.

Apple is vulnerable to tariffs as the company manufactures many of its products in China. Analysts predicted that the original tariffs could massively drive up iPhone prices; It remains unclear exactly how prices will change in the fluctuating trade environment. The company is ramping up production in India.

Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts sent Cook a letter asking for more information about his reported efforts to get specific tariff exemptions. She wrote that they "raise fresh concerns" about corporations' abilities to "gain special favors."

Jeff Bezos: Amazon

In addition to his role as the founder and executive chairman of Amazon, Bezos also owns The Washington Post. During the most recent election, he sparked controversy by deciding that the WaPo wouldn't endorse a candidate.

After Trump won, Bezos had dinner with Trump and Musk at Mar-a-Lago. Amazon donated $1 million to the president's inaugural committee, and Bezos and his fiancée attended the inauguration.

Amazon is facing an ongoing antitrust lawsuit from the FTC and tariffs look set to affect it. Some Amazon sellers have had to raise prices, though a representative for the company previously told BI only a "tiny fraction of items in our store" have been impacted.

Shou Zi Chew: TikTok

TikTok is running up against the clock — Trump has repeatedly paused enforcement of a US ban to try and broker a deal with potential bidders for the company in America.

CEO Shou Zi Chew, the company's CEO, met with Trump in December and attended the inauguration. TikTok spent $50,000 on an inauguration party for Gen Z and influencers that helped spread the president's campaign message. The app's future remains uncertain.

TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a privately owned Chinese company.

Sam Altman: OpenAI

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman personally gave $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund and attended the event. He also visited the White House early in Trump's term to announce Stargate, a $500 billion private-sector AI infrastructure investment that spurred a public spat with Musk.

The company gave the White House recommendations for an "AI Action Plan" due to be submitted to Trump in July and advocated for a light regulatory environment.

OpenAI is a privately held company. At the end of March, it announced a new funding round that put its valuation at $300 billion.

Satya Nadella: Microsoft

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella didn't attend Trump's inauguration but did congratulate him online, like many other tech leaders. Microsoft donated $1 million to the inaugural fund.