Vince and Linda McMahon, founders of World Wrestling Entertainment, may be worth an estimated $1.24 billion today, but early in their careers, they lost everything and had to come back from bankruptcy. In the 70s, on the advice of an accountant, the couple invested in a construction company — an industry they knew nothing about. "We signed personally on some loans from the bank to float that business for a while, and we didn't understand [the industry]," says Linda McMahon, head of the Small Business Administration, during a Facebook Live for Small Business Week on Tuesday. "It went belly up. … We tried for over a year to pay off the loans and we just couldn't do it anymore, so we had to declare bankruptcy."

Linda McMahon speaks at National Small Business Week event in Washington, DC Nicholas Kamm | Getty Images

The McMahon's house was auctioned off and Linda's car was repossessed right from her driveway while she was pregnant with their second child. "It was tough," admits McMahon, "but you know, it's not how you fall but how you get up." McMahon says Vince and she learned a very valuable business lesson from the experience: "We had to go right back into it, on the mission and the plan and the strategy that we knew and understood." At the time, Vince was working for his father's business, Capitol Wrestling Corporation, promoting local wrestling events; it was the business the McMahons would eventually buy and transform into World Wrestling Entertainment. "The advice I give from all that is do something that you're passionate about and that you understand and that you know," says McMahon.