5 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started My Business

When you start out and build your first business, you're sold for the freedom, the flexibility, the upside. And after years of running my own business while raising a young family, I want to share with you the part that nobody actually warns you about. These are the five on this truth I wish someone had told me years ago. And I want to give you a simple framework that helps to turn the chaos of business. into your biggest advantage to create the working life that you love. Let's get into it. And the first lesson is that you will work harder, not less. And I don't just mean more hours.

Although yes, there will be more hours. I mean a different kind of heart because when you work for someone else, you can clock out and the problems stay at the office, right? But when you run your own thing, that problem, it comes home with you. They sit with you at dinner, they wake you up at 3 a.m.. You're thinking about cash flow while you're giving a kid a bath. You're mentally drafting emails while you're supposed to be. relaxing the weekends. And I remember the early days of my business so clearly.

I had just left a very comfortable corporate career. I was very excited, I was motivated, I was ready to build something of my own. But then it really hit me. I was doing the marketing, the sales calls, the client. delivery, the invoicing, finance, the admin. I was working longer hours than I ever did in corporate, and I was making a fraction of what I used to earn. So here's the thing that first, when that first client, that first bit of traction, it feels really incredible. It's like this rush that makes you think, yes, I made the right choice.

But what happens after that rush is the part nobody talks about yet. They keep showing you up day after day without the team. cheering you on, with our manager giving you a performance review. Without this clear ladder to climb in your career, it's just you. And research has found that 70% of entrepreneurs, they report significant mental health challenges, including anxiety, burnout and chronic stress. It's because nobody prepared them. for what building a business actually feels like on the inside. So here's the first part of the clear framework.

C is for clarity. Get clear on what you're actually signing up for. Is not this Instagram version of entrepreneurship that real one? Because when you expect the hard part, it's. not feeling like something is wrong with you. It just becomes part of the process. And that shift in perspective, that's really your unfair advantage. You know what you are really in for and whether you actually love the game. of business. And lesson two. I want to tell you this honestly upfront is that nobody has to figure it out. Now this next part is something I wish someone had told me.

when I was just starting out, because I spent years looking at the other. successful entrepreneurs and thinking they had some master plan that I was missing. Like everyone else had a roadmap and I was just basically wing yet along the way. But the thing is, nobody has it all figured out. Now all the people. with millions of followers, not the people on stage at conferences. now, even the ones who look like they build their business overnight. And I love what Simon Script talks about when it comes to business planning. He built and sold multiple companies.

And his advice is to forget the 20 pages business plan. Instead, he uses something called the mind map. It's just very simple, flexible way of mapping out where your business. could go without locking yourself into like a really rigid path. That would probably change anyway. And that really resonated with me, because when I look back on my own journey, almost nothing went according to plan. I didn't plan to get laid off twice, right? I didn't plan to end up at Google. I didn't plan to start a YouTube channel here.

And every major point turning point in my life. came from willing to move forward without knowing exactly where I was going. And this is the second part of the framework. So L is for lean on systems, not uncertainty. You don't need a perfect plan. You need a few simple systems that help you make decisions. and keep moving when things feel like they're just uncertain. Because clarity doesn't come before you start. It comes from doing so. If you're sitting there right now. thinking, I don't have it all figured out yet. I want you to know that it's completely normal.

And honestly, it might be your greatest strength. because the people who insist on having everything mapped out. before they begin, they're usually the ones who never even start. And speaking of systems, I want to share a story with you that happened to me in my own business. So when I first started, one of the best decisions I ever made, though I didn't realize at the time was hiring the right accountant. Can you relate to this? I bet a lot of you agree with me that this is such an important hire. So before that, I had a terrible experience.

with a much bigger accounting firm. Absolutely terrible communication and lots of missed deadlines. That's honestly a story from another time. But this new accountant, he just came highly recommended by friends. who had been running their own business for years. And he was exactly why I need it. And luckily, he recommended that I switch to zero as my accounting software. But that was over eight years ago now and I've used it ever since. So with zero, I get a real time view of how the business is. doing every invoice with reminders that are overdue. And as a freelancer back then, this is such an important part of being paid on time.

So every expense automatically reconciled in the system. I use it integrated with a software called Dax, and I simply have to just take a photo of my receipts. and have them all cleanly organized in one place, and I can see where my income is coming from, what's outstanding, and how much I should set aside to make sure I have enough to pay taxes. Right. So now I check my dashboard in 30s. It tells me what I need to know, and when I get back to work, I can get back without carrying all those. Invisible stress is one of those systems that I think pays.

for itself over and over again, in just peace of mind alone. If this is what you need right now, there's an offer on the moment. At the time of making, this video is 90% off for six months. Using the links below and thanks to zero for sponsoring this video. This next lesson is a structure is what sets you free. and this is the part that honestly took me the longest to learn. And I think a lot of people resist this because it doesn't sound exciting. But here it is. The entrepreneurs who feel the most free are the ones with the most structure. I know that sounds a bit backwards.

because when most of us start a business, we're running away from structure. We don't want that rigid schedules, the corporate processes and the politics. and all that bureaucracy. We want flexibility. We want to do things our way. But here's what actually happens when you have no structure. So every single day becomes a guessing game. What should I work on? Who do I follow up with how much they spend last month? What's my priority right now? You end up spending half your energy just figuring out what to do. instead of actually doing it. So Martel, who's built and sold multiple companies, he talks about this idea.

of spending money to save time instead of spending time to save money. And I think that principle applies to structure, too. So when you invest a little bit of time upfront building. simple systems, then you buy back hours every single week. So for me it was small things at first. A weekly. planning session every Sunday night where I map out my top three priorities. maybe a simple spreadsheet to track my content pipeline, maybe a recurring calendar block for a deep work in the morning.

before I check email or any social media scrolling. So none of it was really complicated. But when you stack them together, these small systems, they can change how you operate. And that is the third part of this framework. So E is for expect the messy middle, because. even with good structure and systems, this is still very messy. The difference is that the structure it gives you floor to stand on. When things get really chaotic, it means that you're not starting from scratch every single day. You have something to fall back on, something that keeps you grounded.

when everything else feels really uncertain. So hear me out. If you tell a person that resists structure like I did because it feels too. corporate or too rigid, I really encourage you to reframe that. Because in the everyday chaos of running a business is the one thing that sets. you free to do your best work. This next lesson is that your energy is the business. And for someone. who is a recovering workaholic, this really shows up in everything you do. When your energy is low, everything suffers, so your content gets flat, your decision making suddenly.

get slow, your creativity disappears and you start saying yes. The things I should really just say no to. because you're just too tired to think clearly. So I used to believe that productivity was about squeezing. more into my day, into every single hour and every single minute. I worked nine hours straight and realized I only done about four hours of real, meaningful work, and the rest was just really busy work, like distractions and lots of decision fatigue. I was managing my time, but I was ignoring my energy completely. You probably heard about this study from the American.

Psychological Association, which found that decision fatigue. is significantly reduced the quality of choices people make throughout the day, which means that the more small decisions you're making, like what you pose, what to reply to, what to eat, the less mental energy you have left. The big ones. And this is the fourth part of the framework. A is for all to make your decisions. Not with complicated software, although that helps sometimes. But we've really simple rules and routines. that remove the need to think about everything from scratch. So for me, I did a few things, for example,

like batching my content creation to specific days. So I'm not constantly switching between creating and managing and other things. like having a standardized response. for the type of emails that come in every single week. And I also learned to protect my mornings for deep work. So I only do deep work in the mornings and push all of my meetings, emails, and everything else in the afternoon. because that's what my brain has really spent as best energy, and that's when I can do my shallow work. So the point of this is this is that you can't pour from an empty cup. and I know that sounds like something you read in the motivational poster,

but it's actually true. So if you don't protect your energy, that business that you're running will drain it. And then you wonder why you're working so hard and getting so little back. The last one to stay in the game long enough to win. So this last truth is one that ties everything together. as probably one the hardest one to start, especially in a world that loves. overnight success stories. So the unfair advantage in business is not being the smartest person in the room. It's not having the best idea or the biggest following. is staying in the game long enough for the compound effect to kick in.

So Simon Skip, he talks about this concept of delayed gratification. He shares how his first client as agency, he actually did the work for free. Not because he didn't valet himself, but because he was playing the long game. And that one client stayed on with him for years and referred dozens of others. Most people never have the patience for that. And I see the same thing in my own journey. So when I started this YouTube channel, I posted videos for months with barely any views.

There were so many days when I thought, is that even worth it? But I kept going now because I'm more disciplined than anyone else, but. because I really learn from my career that the compound effect is really real, and every small action you take, it really adds up. Not a week, not even a month, but over a year or two years. Five years. The result becomes almost unrecognizable compared to where you started. It's very hard to write about this in the compound effect. Small, consistent actions repeated over time.

It leads to massive transformation. It's not that big dramatic moves that can change your life. It's really that boring daily stuff that nobody sees. And this is the last part of the clear framework R and that stands for revisit. and the just because the people who stay in the game. aren't the ones we get it right the first time. They're the ones we keep checking in, keep tweaking on the process, keep learning from what's working and what's not working. And they treat their business like a living thing. It's not a fixed business plan. So if you're in that stage right now where it feels like.

nothing is happening, where you're putting in the work. and not seeing the results, I want you to hear this. You're not behind. You're just in the building process. And the people who win are the ones who don't quit during the part. where it doesn't feel like it's working yet. I'm Laurie, and thank you so much for being here. I'll see you in the next video.