Five Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Starting a Business

So, you’re talented and there’s a market for your talent and one day you wake up and decide that you’re going to turn your talent into a business. At least that’s how it happened for me. I had always dreamed that *one day* I would start my own company and run a business and grow it. But the comfort of a six-figure salary and always knowing when my next paycheck was going to come in was just so compelling. Plus, in my youth I tried baking cupcakes and selling them (read as: starting a cupcake business) and being an entrepreneur was difficult (read as: not being able to eat my inventory), so I figured the path of starting my own business just wasn’t in the cards.?

Until *one day* became today and now I’m the Founder & CEO of a multi-million dollar business with clients and consultants all over the world. The journey of starting said business, for me, has been like throwing a bowling ball down the lane and hitting the bumpers on the way to the pins: you learn so many things in such a short period of time and most of the lessons are learned the hard way by hitting a blocker and having to change direction. There are so many things I wish people - someone, anyone - had told me about starting a business, but here are the top five:

1. I wish someone had told me about business finances before I got started. It wasn’t until I was deep into a cash flow mess that I learned I couldn’t run the business finances like my personal finances. In my personal life, I was always paying things days, weeks, and months in advance, making double payments, and incurring as little debt as possible. Running finances for a business is an entirely different animal and plays by entirely different rules.?
2. I wish someone had told me my credit would tank. Not just my credit, I had credit cards that cut my limits in half overnight, and mortgage companies rescinded their approvals, killing my search for a home. Going from “fully employed” to “self employed” or “business owner” means that you’re less stable to those all-powerful financial algorithms, so even though I bring in several multiples more than my previous salary, I no longer have access to traditional credit. I’ve since been told that I will need at least two years of tax returns as a business owner to even be considered for things like a mortgage. (sidebar: this is a huge problem that someone needs to tackle and find a solution for).?
3. I wish someone had told me to learn about technology. Until you’re able to bring on someone to run IT, when you start a business, the buck stops with you. That means I had to learn how to give people email addresses, troubleshoot issues with shared folders, navigate our emails getting hacked, and implement technology for all areas of the business. I often guess what I think will be the right solution to a technology problem and hope my choice doesn’t break everything (spoiler: it always breaks everything).?
4. I wish someone had told me how consuming it would be. Going to dinner with friends? You’re going to be thinking about the business. Trying to have a night off? Nope, thinking about the business. Taking a vacation? The business is there, in your brain, on the beach. When I left my corporate job, I thought I'd be working two hours a day and sleeping in until noon. But because I’m finally doing the best work of my life FOR ME, I want to work on it all the time and talk about it all the time and that can be both consuming and isolating.?
5. I wish someone had told me everything would be okay. When you start a business, some days it feels like the entire world is going to end. There are a hundred million things that could go wrong at any second and it often feels like I’m going to look outside and see comets crash into the ground like the scene of a monster movie. But, when I venture outside, the world is normal and all is well. Things have a way of working themselves out, and I wish someone had told me that would be the case.