Just a few weeks ago, the annual filing for Sulte Group, the marketing agency I run, came up for renewal. As I renewed it, I realized I officially registered the business in 2016, which means this renewal marks ten years of my entrepreneurial journey and ten years of running the agency.
Wow, ten years have gone by so fast.
I think about who I was when I first started the business and who I am now. Being an entrepreneur has completely transformed my life, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, and there are still a few things where the verdict is out.
When I set out to build a business ten years ago, I was coming off a period in my life when I had really started questioning the meaning of work. What does work actually mean in the context of our lives? If you are going to spend 40 years doing something, what should that experience feel like?
I had been through multiple experiences that gave me a clear, resounding answer about what I did not want work to feel like. When I started my first business, a travel magazine that ultimately failed, some part of me was searching for work that felt meaningful. I was searching for something I could imagine doing for the next 30-ish years of my life.
At the time, I was so focused on building and creating that I completely ignored a huge part of entrepreneurship: the process changes who you are.
So, to celebrate ten years of being in the trenches, building, figuring things out, and failing constantly, here are a few things I have learned.
1. Get personally aligned with what you are professionally pursuing.
One thing I didn’t do early on was sit down and really think about why I wanted to build what I wanted to build, what message I wanted to put into the world, who I wanted to serve, and how I wanted the business to fit into my actual life.
With my first business, I knew I wanted some media company. I knew I wanted to tell stories. What that meant to me, and how it would play a role in my life, were things I was still unpacking and figuring out.
I truly think that your business is a reflection of you, and when you are aligned, it has a better chance to thrive. Spending time doing the deep work to think about who you are, what lights you up, and how that can solve a need in the marketplace is key.
Some people don’t need to do this. They can run whatever business they choose, in whatever way works for them. For me, things flow better, and my creativity improves when I am personally aligned with what I am building and can bring that alignment into the business.
2. Entrepreneurship can be financially challenging.
I think this is one of the things people do not talk about enough. You see people on Instagram and across social media saying being an entrepreneur is the only way to get rich.
Let’s take a time-out on that.
Entrepreneurship can be an incredible wealth-creation vehicle. In my experience, I have also seen so many entrepreneurs become financially devastated because their businesses did not work. I’ve seen people get sued, I’ve had clients disappear, and I’ve watched deals fall apart while the expenses kept coming.
Some entrepreneurs live worse than paycheck to paycheck, struggling and stressing about how to fund their businesses, pay people, and keep everything moving. Sometimes that means robbing Peter to pay Paul just to get through another month.
I am not going to give you rainbows and roses and tell you that entrepreneurship is simply the path to getting rich. That has not been my experience. There can be periods of debt, maxed-out credit cards, financial uncertainty, and struggle that bring tremendous shame. Those periods can make you feel behind in life, especially because people don’t often talk openly about them. I’ve had all of these experiences. From negative (and I mean like, negative, negative) bank accounts to such abundance I couldn’t even believe it.
And let’s face it, sometimes stuff really hits the fan, and you have to go back and get a job (which I had to do at one point in my own journey). This is not failure. This is facing reality, putting on your big girl panties, and dealing with life on life’s terms. It’s not glamorous and comes with many, many mascara-ruining ugly-cry moments.
I think it is important to acknowledge all of the flavors and seasons of entrepreneurship from a financial perspective because the journey is rarely linear. Sometimes things go incredibly well, and other times you are trying to figure out how to make everything work. Both can exist within the same entrepreneurial life. It’s just important to be kind to yourself and give yourself grace no matter which season you’re in.
3. You do feel crazy when you are trying to create something from nothing.
I remember when I started Clean Rebellion, my second company. I had this vision, and I had absolutely no business creating a CPG company. I was working in marketing, but I had this vision that I couldn’t stop thinking about.
One of the things I struggled with was talking about what I wanted to build before there was much physical evidence that it existed. I would explain the idea to people, and sometimes the response was basically, “Oh, that’s nice.” I felt absolutely Looney Tunes for wanting to do it.
When you are building something, you are going to feel a little odd sometimes because you are literally taking your life force and creative force and creating something that is still unseen to everyone else. You can see it clearly even when other people may have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
You have to become comfortable with feeling a little crazy and with people occasionally giving you the side eye.
Visualization has helped me tremendously with this. I will sit down for 30 minutes to an hour and play out how I want things to unfold in as vivid detail as possible. I think about what I am building, what it looks like when it works, how I want my life to feel, and what I am actually trying to create.
When you are creating something from nothing, you sometimes have to see it long before anyone else can.
4. Hustle culture is a seductive path on the road to burnout.
I used to be obsessed with hustle culture. I loved those 5 a.m. club videos. There were periods when I woke up at 3 a.m. and started working on my businesses because I thought that if I worked harder than everyone else and could simply outwork everyone, I would eventually win.
You hear famous entrepreneurs talk about how hard they work, how they never take days off, and how many hours they put into building their companies. I absorbed a lot of that messaging and thought that was what serious entrepreneurship was supposed to look like.
That pace almost broke me. In 2022, I found myself covered in shingles from the sheer amount of stress I was under. I was neglecting my body while trying to maintain the facade that I could just keep hustling.
Entrepreneurship requires hard work, and it is no joke. I also think you need to understand what type of person you are and what kind of life you are actually trying to create.
Are you someone who genuinely wants to get up at 5 a.m.? Does that schedule actually work with your body and your life? What kind of business do you want to build? What do you want that business to provide for you beyond revenue?
I eventually realized that I wanted to build a business that felt nourishing, could pay my bills, and could help other people create financial opportunities. I didn’t need to be competing and working all the time in the way that I had been.
The amount of work required to build something meaningful is real, and your body, relationships, and life outside of the business are real, too. All of those things have to exist together for a long time if you want to keep building.
5. Relationships and leverage are key.
This one took me way too long to learn.
I always thought that if I pitched more, wrote more, emailed more, and did more, I’d eventually win. Over time, I realized that leverage through relationships, proximity, and partnerships often outperformed sheer hustle.
Of course, you have to do great work and put good things into the world. However, the right relationship can help open doors and expose your work to the right audiences, suppliers, and investors faster than just trying to bulldoze your way to the next milestone.
There were times when I would send thousands of emails trying to close a deal, and then I would reach out to someone I hadn’t spoken to since college. That person would connect me with someone they knew, and within two days I would have an MSA out.
That experience completely changed the way I thought about work.
Before automatically asking yourself, “What else do I need to do?” or “How do I stay up later and work harder?”, start thinking about who can help you.
I read the book Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy, and it was transformative for me. It made me think differently about how I approach work. Before I start anything now, I ask, “Who can help me get to the end result faster? Who can I partner with? Who can I align myself with to make this whole thing more fun?”
Always be thinking about relationships and how to leverage them in a reciprocal way (no one likes a taker). Also, try to build relationships with people you genuinely like (because no jerks are allowed), and make a plan to help each other win. The road is less lonely and way more fulfilling when you have other people walking alongside you.
Building a business changes the way you think about money, work, relationships, creativity, your body, and yourself. It has been the ultimate growth journey. I am still figuring it out and feeling uncomfortable as it stretches me in new ways every day.
That’s all for now. Here’s to ten more years of creating, building, and exploring.