Some things I've learned so far
What I wish I could have told myself before starting a business
I posted this on X, but adding some more color here without the shackles of a character limit*.
18 months ago, I left my job in tech to open a trash franchise. I caught the “boring business” bug and decided franchising was a good place to start. It’s worked out great - but MAN - I went in totally blind, and it could have been a disaster. Here are some things I wish I could go back in time and tell my past self.
It’s going to take way longer than expected to actually make money. It’s gone as well as I could have hoped, but I’m just now paying myself. Starting a business means growing. Growing consumes cash (more trucks, more territories, more employees). I only get what’s left over after all of that. Profit ≠ cash flow. I want this business to pay the bills, so cash flow is what matters.
Going in, it would have been great to know finance and accounting better. I thought “I’ll pay someone to do that.” That doesn’t work - at least not before you can afford a CFO. The owner has to own the numbers. I’ve gotten there, but I wish I had a running start.
Managing blue collar employees is a learned skill. One tactical thing that seems to work for me: Ask for advice (”What would you do if you were me?”) from every single employee, especially on stuff “above their pay grade”. This has gotten me great input, fierce buy-in, and employees who think like owners. Overpaying also helps.
It’s blind leap after blind leap. I thought once I built some momentum, I could slow roll growth without much risk. It’s not like that. Growth happens in blind leaps. Each time I buy a new truck, I am betting that I can fill it without knowing that I can.
There is power in picking up the phone and calling people. Email is comfortable. Calling someone’s cell phone is uncomfortable, especially to deliver a tough message or ask for money. But it’s been a guaranteed way to stand out and move quickly.
Move quickly MOST of the time. I pride myself on speed of execution. But when the stakes are high, I’ve had to learn (the hard way) when to move SLOWLY. Read important contracts line by line. Run background checks and reference calls before hiring. Think carefully about comp plans before sharing them. Guard the cap table.
It feels unnatural to aggressively delegate, but you have to do it. As an employee, you get points for optics, so it’s good to be busy. I’ve had to shake that urge. Now, when I do something that I know I shouldn’t be doing, I record a Loom video and make someone else accountable for it going forward. When an employee comes to me with a problem, I make sure they leave with the responsibility for solving it.
The world of franchising is misunderstood and overlooked, including by me when I started. It’s not just fast food. It’s also not a “business in a box” that you can run for 5 hours a week and sit back. It’s not as cool as tech or search. But there are lots of reasons to love franchising, including the unique M&A opportunity it presents for people looking to build a big business.
*when I was young and first starting to use Microsoft Word, I thought the “character count” was a feature that aimed to ascertain how many characters you were introducing in the story you were writing (at the time, it was a lot of story writing). I assumed the feature was wildly inaccurate and far overestimated the number of characters."