I've been talking about this with quite a few people lately because it's a similar thread to some of the conversations. Learn when to fire yourself. It would be the advice I would give you and you're not going to be able to fire yourself for a while when you're a solopreneur and you're just starting and maybe you have one or two employees, right? But you are going to have to figure out along the path when it's time to let go of certain things. You should look at it as like, I'm firing myself from being the Director of marketing, I'm the CEO, I can't be responsible for putting out all of the tweets and running the paid search program and all these kinds of things that might come up.

Make sure you're aligned with the vision of the founder, because if you have conflicts you know, I think one thing is to be a contrarian, right? To kind of present all sides and all views to see what is possible, but also to make sure that you're aligned to the vision of any founder that you're working for because at the end of the day, what I always tell people, rather bluntly is it's their company and they had the idea, and they got the backing for it. So your job is to execute and grow the business and do it in a responsible way. So I've seen people who have clashed and butted heads with founders. There's no sense in that. It's certainly something that you can be the contrarian and you can be somebody who gives up good advice, but if you're foundationally opposed to something and you think you want to do it your way, there are certainly other opportunities to do that.

Focus. Focus, Focus. I serve on the advisory board of a number of different startups, and the one thing I remind them of is sticking to their core competency. You can't be all things to all people. You need to think every single day when you wake up, it's the number one thing I have to do to survive, thrive and grow. Anything else that does not directly contribute to that quantitative value that you have placed in your measurement needs to go away. So, the bottom line is the focus.

Find help to give you guidance because it's so easy to get enamored with your entrepreneurial journey and everything is fresh and new and exciting. We're kind of adrenaline addicts when we're entrepreneurs, so we can get really high off the adrenaline and not really see the situation for what it is. So even though you think you're really smart and you think you know what you're getting yourself into, there's so much that happens behind the scenes to make a company successful and have the longevity that it is worth investing in, getting a coach to help you to pivot to success and build things up properly.

Action, taking action, and learning because I think most of us learn best as we're going through the process. We could sit here and talk about business, or you can read books, which are very good and valuable. You can learn a lot from those but most of the time, the best learning is getting out and doing. Not being afraid to take that action, but also being smart about it. Getting a mentor or getting other people that are ahead of you to have taken that journey, hopefully learning from their mistakes so you don't have to repeat those. Take action, even if it's just baby steps because taking that action is key.

Figure out what you are great at and passionate about and as soon as you can get enough revenue going, find a way to extract yourself from every other piece of the business.

Be very frugal and make sure you hire the right people to work with you because you can't do it all by yourself. You need to hire consultants or other suppliers who can do some things for you. Make sure you hire the right ones. I threw some money away on a website company that I hired early on to build a website for me, and they really did a terrible job. They didn't answer my messages, and all that was just not a good relationship. So be very careful with who you hire and get references. Talk to people and make sure you have the right helpers. I think that's crucial.

Take a look at your business model and the problem that you're solving in the specific space that you're in. There are numerous amount of resources, so educate yourself. There are plenty of resources out there whether it's from funding or whether it's resources. I highly believe your network is your net worth. So utilize your network and learn as much as you can from reaching out to individuals within the industry that you're in.

In general, be ready to not listen to a lot of people, because you're going to hear a lot of no's and don't do that but what the world needs is innovation. As a society, we aren't going to get very far unless there are people willing to not listen to people.  If people only did the easy things, we wouldn't have any innovation. So, yeah, I'd encourage people to go for it. You can try and fail quickly, that will help but just do it.

It's always be learning, be open. I think I've been doing this for so long. I have proof of concept, of the kind of magic that I can create for the clients that I have but the world is always changing. People's needs are always changing, and there's always something to learn. People are innovating all over the place. So I think that to be humble and courageous and to continue to be open to learning.