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Key Takeaways Validate demand before you build anything.
Keep your team lean for longer.
Stay profitable from day one.
Build strategically — don’t chase every trend.
If I were starting a small business today, there are certainly things I’d do differently — but there are plenty of decisions I’d make the same way. Experience teaches lessons you just can’t learn in business school, and I’ve spent 20 years building a company that has grown sustainably, profitably and resiliently. If I had to start over, here are the lessons I wouldn’t leave behind.
Validate demand before you build anything
One of the biggest mistakes I see fellow entrepreneurs make is falling in love with an idea before confirming that anyone actually needs it. Unfortunately, starting a business simply because entrepreneurship sounds exciting isn’t enough. Before investing any serious time or money, your very first step should be to make sure you’re solving a problem someone actually wants solved.
My software company didn’t start as a business plan — it started as a problem. 20 years ago, I was working full-time at a growing internet service provider, and I had simultaneously started investing in rental properties and managing them myself. Balancing this alongside a young family became unsustainable, and I found myself frustrated by the lack of tools available to help me streamline everyday tasks like accounting, maintenance requests and lease renewals. So I built my own tool to solve the problem.
That tool wasn’t created to become a company, but I knew there must be other independent landlords like me facing the same challenges. I shared the software for free, and soon, hundreds of users were relying on the platform and requesting new features. I hadn’t spent a dime on marketing, advertising or any other customer acquisition. This early adoption validated demand and gave me the push to leave the security of my career and jump full-time into building my business.
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