My Top 5 Mistakes When I Started My Service Company

When I started my service company, I was full of excitement and ambition, ready to dive into entrepreneurship. But looking back, I realized not all my motivations were as solid as I thought. Like many others, I made some key mistakes, driven by the wrong reasons, and it set me up for some hard lessons. Here are the top five misguided motivations I had when opening my service company, and why they weren’t as they seemed.

1. "I Want to Be My Own Boss"

When I started One-V in 2007, I had just finished my first freelance project and thought I could work on my own terms. Instead, every customer became my boss. I needed a steady income, and each customer demanded full attention, saying 'no' wasn’t an option.

Vacations or being sick? Forget about it. Unlike being an employee, there was no safety net, people paid me and expected results regardless. The pressure and stakes were much higher compared to being employed.?

This sounds great on the surface, who doesn’t want freedom and autonomy? The truth is, being your own boss means everyone else becomes your boss. Your clients, your team, your stakeholders all have demands you’re obligated to meet. In the early days, you’re likely answering to more people than ever before, with higher stakes than you imagined.

2. "It’s Easy Money, I Just Need Clients"

This was another mistake I made. I earned a lot from my first freelance project, what I made in one week would have taken me months as an employee. The second project paid even more, and I assumed this was the norm.

But I wasn't prepared for the next six months with no projects, and running out of money. Nobody had taught me how to recruit new customers or what it truly takes to run a business.

Many people think if they’re good at something, they can turn it into a successful service. But finding clients and keeping them happy is a completely different skill set. Lead generation, client management, and delivering value consistently aren’t easy, they require relentless effort and a mindset geared towards solving people’s problems. "Easy money" often turns into unpaid invoices and sleepless nights.

3. "I Can Work Less and Earn More"

It all started well, one week of work paid me two months' salary. I thought I could work one week each month and relax the rest of the time. But I quickly learned the reality: I had to fill many roles, and mistakes were costly. Instead of working 186 hours a month, I often worked over 250 hours during the first 2-4 years of growing my business, just to keep up. Vacations were never truly vacations, work and my laptop was always with me.

There’s this idea that running a service business means you’ll be sipping mojitos while others do the work. Reality check: it’s often the opposite, at least initially. To build trust and reputation, you'll need to put in long hours. You’ll wear many hats—salesperson, marketer, accountant, and service provider. Until you reach scale, "work less, earn more" is usually a pipe dream.

4. "I’ll Get to Do What I Love All the Time"

I entered my business with a passion for development and creativity but soon discovered there were many tedious activities I disliked. In the beginning, you are everything, doing invoices, company planning, reading and writing legal contracts. Even within my core area of marketing, there was a lot of repetitive, mindless work that customers outsourced to me to avoid doing themselves. Over time, you can outsource these tasks, but initially, I had to handle all of it, including many things I didn’t like or love.

Passion is important, but turning it into a service business means tackling the business side too. You'll be handling paperwork, customer complaints, and marketing, tasks far removed from your passion. If you love development, for example, running a development company often means managing developers rather than coding yourself.

5. "The Market Looks Huge, There’s So Much Demand"

I thought I was better than others and assumed that with such a big market, there would be enough room for me to grow. The reality? Not at all. The size of the market has nothing to do with your ability to penetrate it and offer unique value to attract customers. Don't get me wrong, a big market is better than a non-existent one, but finding and building my unique value proposition took years of effort.

Seeing demand isn’t enough, you have to consider competition, differentiation, and your own value proposition. Many markets look attractive from the outside, but without a clear strategy to stand out, you end up in a race to the bottom on pricing. Demand alone doesn't ensure you’ll succeed, having a unique angle, top-notch quality, and clear customer value does.

Starting a service company can be rewarding if approached with the right mindset and motivations. Instead of falling for myths of freedom, easy money, or endless passion, it’s better to ground yourself in the realities of serving customers, solving tough problems, and building something bigger than yourself.

Have you seen people make these mistakes? Or maybe you've been there yourself, I'd love to hear your take in the comments. Let’s help others understand what starting a service company is really about.