One Piece Of Advice To My Younger Self

I built my first business when I was 15. My best friend and I launched a t-shirt business called Gold Clothing, before receiving a terrifying cease & desist which put an end to the project. Then, I built an image-based search app called Huuno (think Quora meets IG). After that, I spent nearly a year launching a peer-to-peer grocery delivery platform called Servu (I still think this idea has legs). Finally, in 2016, I started an oral-care subscription box company called Bristlebox.

All of these businesses have one thing in common — they failed, and I think I know why.

When I was younger, running a business or creating a startup was the most exciting thing ever, and honestly, it still is. The problem is, I got wrapped up in the things that I thought were important, rather than the things that actually moved the needle.

• When I launched my t-shirt company, I spent more time designing and printing fancy business cards, rather than designing t-shirts that actually looked good.
• At Huuno, rather than knuckling down and pushing out an MVP, I read TechCrunch and ‘networked’.
• At Servu, I spent countless hours applying to accelerators and pitching investors, rather than running deliveries to flatmates & proving my concept.
• At Bristlebox, I was more interested in making my website look beautiful & driving Instagram followers, rather than learning how to run FB ads (oh, what a wasted opportunity in 2016!)

In 2020, though, I launched another business — Everyday, a pet care brand. I forced myself to work only on the things that were absolutely essential. No business cards, no fancy networking events, no vanity metrics, nothing. I refused to work on anything that wouldn’t directly move the needle on getting my product in the hands of more customers, every single day.

With this approach, I went from nothing to a fully-functional business with four SKU’s in just over a month. Less than a year later, I sold my business, marking my first small ‘success’, almost ten years after my first attempt at entrepreneurship. So, if I could give my 15-year-old self some advice, it would be this.

Stop wasting time on things that make you look or feel like an entrepreneur, and start actually being one. Build things quickly, get them in the hands of customers, rinse and repeat. Nothing else matters — everything else will fall into place.

This post was created with Typeshare