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Hey honeys and hustlers,
10 years of running a business feels like it flew by. I can still remember the nerves I had photographing my first wedding. I still feel, as I felt then, that learning how to use a camera was the best thing to ever happen to me. It’s opened so many unexpected doors and opportunities that a degree alone could not. But creativity is generally the easy part. Learning how to run a business is a whole other skill set. It entails learning yourself, networking, sales, budgeting, marketing, and so much more. The wins are real—and so are the parts where you realize balance is sometimes/often times seasonal, sales is the lifeblood of any business, and consistency is less of a virtue and more of a survival strategy (especially at the beginning, and the beginning can be 3+ years). Here are some lessons I’ve learned over the years, and maybe ones I wish someone had handed me earlier than when I learned them.
Year 1 is not the year for balance. You need to be trying a lot of things.
If you struggle with sales, you will fail as a founder.
Doing it daily is easier than doing it sometimes.
Doing things that don’t scale, even if you’re trying to scale/grow
Your best hire matters more than your biggest client. You get to choose who you work with, so choose wisely.
Understanding your capacity will help you build your ideal week.
Surround yourself with founders, even if you have to pay for it.
Celebrate the small wins.
Stop pretending you don’t have an opinion.
Do hard things, in life and in business. The harder it is, the more focused you must be to achieve it, and the harder it is for others to replicate it.
These harsh lessons aren’t to humble you; they’re to sharpen you. If any of these lessons stung a little, good—that means you’re probably on the right path and figuring things out. You don’t need to master all of this at once; you just need to stay in the game long enough for the seemingly boring, daily work to start working back. The goal is to become the kind of founder who can choose—choose clients, choose pace, choose projects, choose an ideal week that doesn’t eat you alive (I’ve been there. IT turns out that there are indeed enough hours in the day; you’re probably just doing unfocused work). Keep showing up. Do the unsexy work. I’m rooting for you.
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