And these are not all the mistakes I made because I made a lot.

I'm just gonna talk about three and I have a feeling some of them are going to be a little bit contentious.

Some of you watching might disagree that these are mistakes.

I think it's important to try and learn other people's hard lessons the easy way.

And these are some hard lessons for me, things that cost me dearly in making them as mistakes.

So here we go, the state number one We did not start with enough money. 00:00:53.400 --> 00:01:2.020 Now this one is gonna upset people who believe in lean who believe in starting something scrappy, not being kind of bloated by too much money. 00:01:2.690 --> 00:01:5.690 But the problem is, money is a resource. 00:01:5.820 --> 00:01:11.270 And if you don't have enough resource in terms of money, you have to find that resource somewhere else.

Chances are that resource is going to be you and your labor.

You're gonna have to work harder than you'd have to if you'd had a little bit more money.

Now, I'm not saying you should go out and raise enormous amounts of money.

I think too much money could be even more of a curse than not enough.

But but not enough is a problem, and I don't think that the business would be that much bigger than it is now.

If we'd started with more, but it would be better and it would have been a much better experience to start it.

It would have been less painful, less hard, this one you could disagree with. 00:01:47.700 --> 00:02:3.870 But for me, I think it's important that whatever you think you need, you should add 50% or even 100% of that to give yourself breathing room, give yourself a chance to become profitable without having to compromise yourself or your business along the way. 00:02:3.920 --> 00:02:8.650 Now this does tie into the second mistake that I made, and this one is really no question. 00:02:9.040 --> 00:02:12.350 I fell for the myth off the heroic entrepreneur.

I fell for that story that we tell that the right thing to do.

The correct thing to do is to work every hour God sends right.

You should be doing 100 hour week minimum to start your business successfully.

You should be grinding you should be hustling and it's wrong and it really messed me up.

It nearly burned me out.

It turned the thing that I was the most passionate about into something that I resented.

Now, when you start working every hour fields amazing, it feels really good.

It feels so good to get home from work and work a little bit more because it's yours.

The challenge here is that how long you want to run a business for five years, 10 years, 20 years, the rest of your life?

You can't keep that pace up.

This remains for me. 00:02:59.030 --> 00:03:6.480 Probably the mistake I regret the most, like it was physically damaging to me, mentally damaging to me on my watch. 00:03:6.480 --> 00:03:8.940 It happen over and over and over again. 00:03:8.940 --> 00:03:14.190 To people in so many industries, it's it's back to that kind of classic work.

Smarter, not harder.

And the other thing is that if you give yourself 100 hours a week, if you give yourself 12 plus hours a day to do your work, that'll be how long the work takes.

No one.

No one could work really hard 100 hours a week.

No one can.

And yes, some of what you do is quite laborious, quite physical.

You can't really hurry that up, but lots of the work you do on your business rather than in your business well, that the work that just swells to fill the time and you end up with no life outside of work and not being a hugely fun person and not having a lot of friends and not being particularly happy.

But it feels good.

So beware.

That's That's a really big mistake for me. 00:03:57.150 --> 00:04:0.980 And like I said, I like to try and learn people's hard lessons the easy way. 00:04:1.220 --> 00:04:5.530 And that way I didn't make a huge number of mistakes that I see a lot of other people make. 00:04:5.580 --> 00:04:14.650 In part, this was because I was given some great recommendations before I started my business, and I'm gonna give a recommendation or two to you now because this video is sponsored by Audible.

That means that if you sign up using audible dot com slash James Hoffman or Text James Hoffman to 505 100 in North America, you get a 30 day free trial that includes one free audiobook or to audible originals, and here's my recommendation I would recommend Michaeli Gerber's The E maiI three visited Don't judge a book by its cover.

This is a phenomenally good book for someone who is passionate about a thing that's a coffee, and they want to make a business out of that thing.

I avoided so many mistakes that people make, who try and transition from doing a thing they're passionate about into running a business that does that thing.

And if you want a different recommendation because you're not planning to start a business, then I would recommend winners take all by an and get Dada's. 00:04:58.010 --> 00:05:9.300 This book fundamentally changed the way that I see this industry and how it approaches inequality, its efforts to change it while at the same time it's efforts actually to preserve it. 00:05:9.480 --> 00:05:21.620 It is a hugely important book that is incredibly relevant, important to anyone who's working and coffee, who wants to make a change and the great thing about audio books, and you can listen to them on your way to work your lunch break on your way home.

You contend your commute into an investment in yourself, so if you wanna give it a try, click the link in the description down below, and I'll tell you now about 1/3 mistake that I made.

The third mistake was that we kind of ran a business in the early days like a family, and maybe that sounds like a weird thing, but it's easy to create a family dynamic inside a small business on the problem with families with everyone's family is that families are dysfunctional.

There is an inherent dysfunctional nature to them in a practical terms. 00:05:52.180 --> 00:06:1.450 In business terms, family feeling generates loyalty, loyalty to an employee and loyalty from the employees or team member to the business. 00:06:1.970 --> 00:06:5.270 And that feeling of loyalty can often cloud decision making. 00:06:5.610 --> 00:06:11.650 Someone may choose to stay in a role that doesn't really work for them out of loyalty to the company, to the people inside it.

Or, you know, an employer may keep somebody in a role that doesn't work for them out of loyalty to that person.

That's not really to the long term benefit of either the employees or the company, but it's done with the best intentions through this kind of Emilio think relationships inside family units can easily become emotional and complicated.

I'm not saying that you can't have healthy interpersonal relationships with people that you work with.

I'm not saying you can't like them.

I'm not saying that that's bad.

But I'm saying that the dynamic of a family is quite a separate, distinct one to that off a small business, potentially.

And I think allowing a family dynamic to form is probably a mistake.

And it certainly was a mistake for me that I felt cost the business and actually was detrimental to a number of people that worked as part of that team. 00:07:0.180 --> 00:07:2.460 And I feel bad about that. 00:07:2.460 --> 00:07:8.080 I regret that, and I see it as a mistake for that reason, a now outside of a family kind of dynamic. 00:07:8.090 --> 00:07:15.640 I think you can have a really healthy culture inside a company based on mutual respect based on collaborative working.

But it's not a family dynamic, and I think it's hard to talk about.

But I think if you've experienced it, either it's someone inside a business like that or someone who ran a business like that, then you'll understand what I'm talking about.

But this is the point where I'd really like to hear what you have to say.

Did any of these resonate with you either a someone who runs a business or who works inside one.

Do you disagree?

Do you agree that I really miss something?

I would love to hear your thoughts, Stamler.

And again.

Do you want to hear more of these stories of my mistakes?

Of my failures from the past, there are a lot, and I'm more than happy to talk about them.

So let me know.

Leave me a comment down below to say thank you so much for watching.

And I hope you have a great day.