The 8 Lessons I Wish I Knew When Starting a Business

Welcome to the Inner Edge, where I explore insights on wealth, fulfillment, growth, and mastery.

As much as it seems easy to build a business, a million things get in the way.

I wish I had told myself these 10 lessons when I started Trendify.

These are the behind-the-scenes lessons that I wanted to share as I go.

1) Energy

If your gut tells you something is off, listen to it.

I’ve felt this the most when bringing people onto the team.

This applies to hires, clients, and everything in between.

I’ve learned this firsthand.

There were people I hired who seemed like a great fit on the surface, but something just felt off. I don’t know what it was.

And when it started to get tough, things went south.

Now I’ve stopped second-guessing myself.

If someone’s vibe is off, they’re not a long-term fit.

2) Delegation

I wasted years thinking I was being productive when I wasn’t.

I spent almost two years doing tasks I could have delegated in weeks.

I was stuck in the weeds, doing things that didn’t move the needle.

And then I read Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell. Insane book on the power of leverage.

He says the point of a business isn't to make more money, but to buy back your time so you can do things that light you up.

And it’s true.

I felt this before we brought on our amazing account manager.

I was handling a lot of client communication, which stalled me from working on the processes the business needed.

I love building SOPs and leading teams, but I wasn’t able to do it all.

Then we brought her on.

She impressed our clients (more than I did, because she’s that great) and made the business better.

This also freed up my time to build systems across the business.

You can’t do everything at once.

Start by doing everything yourself, then hand it off to others.

I won’t get too technical for how we hired, but if anyone asks, I’m happy to email you.

3) Structuring

It’s okay if you have no structure at the start. We didn’t for almost two years.

Until I read The E-Myth Revisited (thanks to Ali Abdaal for recommending it in a YouTube video).

The book explains that at first, you'll wear all the hats.

You’ll be doing customer success, accounting, sales, and marketing yourself.

But the goal isn’t to do everything forever.

It’s to systemize and delegate.

At Trendify, I started by doing everything manually.

But then we built SOPs for every department.

Simple docs listing how to do things.

The key is to think in systems. If something happens more than once, document it so someone else can do it.

I wish I had written down everything I was doing, even before systemizing it. Just to know what was needed.

The process looks like this:

1. Start with nothing.

2. Do everything to figure out what matters.

3. Cut out what doesn’t and refine what does.

This applies to meetings, processes, and even life outside of business.

4) Networking

Our business started because of a random friend I met.

He introduced me to his neighbor, who was looking for an ad agency. I was just starting mine, and we landed a big contract.

Four of our best contractors came through people I know.

Our biggest client came from a cold dm I sent.

I just had a friend reach out about a business opportunity. I met him randomly at a philosophy lecture. Like what?

It’s crazy how that works.

So put yourself out there.

But remember, it’s not enough to just network. You also need to build something valuable.

You never really know who will change your trajectory.

5) Emotions

I had to understand that nothing is a personal attack on me.

I get why people say business is really about sorting out your personal life.

If you take everything to heart, you can’t scale.

Not because people will destroy your character, but because you think everything is about your character.

I used to be defensive and fearful.

I remember when I accidentally did something wrong.

A client got upset and took it out on me for 30 minutes.

I spiraled into paranoia for days, imagining the worst.

Nothing happened.

I learned my lesson—be careful.

But when mistakes happen, focus on learning instead of getting emotional.

The less reactive I become, the faster I learn and grow.

The more reactive I become, the more I stall my progress.

It’s never about you. It’s about aligning the right people to the right mission.

And if it is about you? If someone attacks your character?

If they’re right—great. Improve.
If they’re wrong—great. Learn not to be affected.

6) Distractions

If something doesn’t bring me energy or move me toward my goals, I take time to address it.

I never did this before. I’d just do whatever, whenever I felt like it.

Not realizing that I was:

1. Feeling like crap (and didn’t know why)

2. Not achieving any of my goals, which made me feel more like crap

It’s easy to fall back into old habits. But it depends on how badly you want to design your ideal life.

This became clear to me this year.

I wanted my own business and freedom more than I wanted to watch tv.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy watching tv.

But something had to go if I wanted to improve my body, bank and family life. And tv was the least of my priorities.

I still watch tv. Just not much.

The hardest part of working for yourself is building your own schedule.

It can go one of two ways:

1. You drift into entropy and do nothing (very easy with no boss).

2. You design your life and make yourself do hard things daily.

Shifting from 1 to 2 changed everything.

The beauty of having your own schedule is that you can technically do whatever you want.

But I wouldn’t want to. And I’m not at a point where I can for a long period of time lol.

But I have tried it.

I spent an entire year making content for two hours a day and doing nothing else.

And my energy now is way higher than it was then. Because I schedule things that actually give me energy and move me towards my goals into my calendar.

The cool part of designing your own life is you see both sides.

You see what it's like to have nothing to do.
You see what it's like to have things to do.
And you learn that fulfillment comes from choosing what to do.

At first you have to force yourself to work through the boring stuff.

But one thing I learned—it does get better.

I used to take 6-8 calls a day. Now, it’s about 1 call. So I can focus on building the business. That wasn’t easy to do, but it happened.

Because I cut out the things that I knew were a distraction.

That 10x’ed the rate at which I was able to get to my goal outcomes.

…Until sales calls pick up again and I have 20 calls on my calendar.

7) Feedback

I wish I had asked everyone ahead of me what to do.

Still something I need to do more of.

The hard part is knowing who gives real advice vs. those who just like sounding smart.

Not all advice is equal.

I’ve realized asking tactical questions is 100x more valuable than vague ones.

When I asked mentors for “advice on my life,” they ghosted me.

And deep down, I knew what I was asking was BS too.

But when I asked specific questions, I got the right advice saved me months of progress.

8) Standards

You set the standard in your company.

If you slack, your team will too.

If they do, you can’t even be mad because deep down, you know you’ve been slacking too.

That’s why stepping up in every area of life is key.

If you want a serious company, you need to act like it.

The hardest (and best) part of running a business is that every other area of your life slowly levels up too and vice-versa.

Building systems made my room neater.

Having structured meetings made my family life better.

Leading people made my friendships stronger.

It sounds strange, but it’s true.

It goes either way, but your personal life does have some correlation with your business life.

At least for me.

And I think that’s a good thing. As your business grows, you grow.

Entrepreneurship is hard.

I didn’t mention these things, but it comes with a lot of doubt, uncertainty and imposter syndrome.

… and yep I feel that right now too.

But the rewards of this life are pretty cool. So back to building!

Thanks for reading guys.