3 Brutal Lessons I Learned Building And Exiting My First Company
For 6 years, I gave up everything in order to build a technology-based influencer marketing agency called theAmplify.
I started the company in 2014 with the belief that influencer marketing was going to become “the next big thing.” And it did. Within a span of five years, we went from a society that thought posting pictures of yourself on the Internet was “weird” to a digital economy willing to pay tens of thousands (even hundreds of thousands) of dollars for social media stars to post pictures with products. We forget how quickly the evolution of influencer marketing happened — and I’ve written several pieces about what that journey was like.
Then, in 2016, theAmplify was acquired.
What made us unique was the fact that we had a technology component to our business. We weren’t just brokering campaigns between brands and high-profile influencers. We were also supplying the tools for internal teams to manage these campaigns themselves, track progress, measure ROI, and so on. Our being acquired was exciting, especially considering theAmplify was my first venture, but it also increased the amount of pressure I was already under to maintain rampant growth.
Here are 3 brutal lessons I learned building and exiting my first company, that I encourage all current and aspiring founders to take to heart:
1. Relationships will come second, and you’re going to have to make a choice.
When I first launched my company, I had a girlfriend.
In the simplest way, I chose to end that relationship because I decided my company was more important to me than our relationship. That’s hard to say. That’s hard to look back on and acknowledge. It was incredibly difficult to do in the moment. But it was also true — and I knew I wasn’t being fair to her in the process.
For the 6 years that followed, I barely dated at all. I was extremely selfish with my time, and I considered my venture “my only job.” And unfortunately, I also neglected a lot of the lessons that come from having a healthy relationship in your life. It wasn’t until I sold my company that I began to invest in my current relationships.
Looking back, I can see how difficult it was for me to know how to balance a relationship and a company — especially my first one — at the same time. And my hope is that, with the next one, I’ll have more tools in my toolbox to know how to merge these worlds together.
2. Self-love has to be part of the journey.
At a certain point, I stopped loving myself.
I wasn’t enjoying the work I was doing or my reasons for working as hard as I was. I knew I wasn’t taking care of myself, and yet I suppressed those intuitions in order to work harder. There were a lot of different moments in the journey where I stopped listening to what a deeper part of me needed, and when you ignore yourself long enough, you eventually lose that connection altogether.
This is something I don’t think gets talked about enough in the business world, especially when it comes to entrepreneurs aiming for big exits (or even entrepreneurs of companies, period). We celebrate the founders who achieve major milestones in their careers, yet we rarely discuss the cost at which those milestones are reached. For example, the co-founder of HQ Trivia and 6-second video app, Vine, recently overdosed, but we still don’t talk about the impact entrepreneurship can have on mental health.
If you’re planning on building a company, or if you’re on the journey right now, you have to play the long game. And the only way to succeed over the long term is to be honest with yourself about what it is you’re feeling and experiencing along the way.
3. You can only neglect your body and mind for so long.
By the time the acquisition period was over and I left the company, I looked nothing like the person I used to be.
I was 70 pounds overweight. I had bags under my eyes from being on planes and constantly flipping between time zones. To say my life had become “imbalanced” would be an understatement, and that was a difficult thing to acknowledge in myself.
What I learned, though, was just how much you can endure without really admitting to yourself where you’re at physically, emotionally, even spiritually. By the time I was “done,” I felt like I had a long road to recovery ahead of me — and I’ve since spent the past 12 months focusing all of my time and energy into taking care of myself again. I’ve gotten back into a regular meditation routine. I’ve started tracking my sleep, and what foods I’m eating that make me feel healthy and full of energy. I’ve even started training for an Iron Man triathlon.
All these things, I hope, will better prepare me for my next entrepreneurial endeavor. And help me remember what routines I need in my life in order to be happy, fulfilled, and balanced.
