I've founded around a dozen companies over my career. Some became solid businesses. Some taught me expensive lessons. A few never should have been companies at all. Looking back, the pattern is clearer than it felt at the time. Here is what I would tell myself before the next one.
An idea is not a business.
Excitement is cheap. A business starts when you can name the customer, the problem you solve for them, how they pay, and what it costs you to deliver. Until those four answers are written down, you have a hobby with paperwork. I used to skip that step and jump straight to branding and company formation. It felt productive. It wasn't.
Cash is the only scoreboard that doesn't lie.
Revenue stories are easy to tell. Cash in the bank is harder to argue with. Before I open anything now, I map the first six months of money out and money in, then add a buffer for the things I haven't thought of. Fit-out always costs more than the first quote. Marketing takes longer to work than you hope. Staff need training before they earn their keep. Build those realities into the plan, not the apology afterwards.
Start smaller than your ego wants.
The first version of a venue or a product should be the smallest thing that can prove the idea. A full build-out before you've served a single customer is a bet on hope. I learned to test the offer, the pricing and the location assumptions before committing to the expensive parts. Pride wants a grand opening. Survival wants proof.
People beat process — until you scale.
Early on, a great hire can paper over weak systems. Later, weak systems burn out great people. The founders who stay sane write the basics down early: how you open, how you close, how you handle a complaint, who owns each decision. That discipline is boring on day one and priceless on day one hundred. I wrote a lot of it into Launch Your Venue because I kept relearning it the hard way across different sites.
Your calendar shows your real strategy.
Whatever fills your week is what you're actually building. If every hour goes to firefighting, you don't have a growth plan — you have a dependency. I now protect time for numbers, for people and for the next decision, and I treat those blocks as seriously as a supplier meeting. Acting and writing help here too: they force me off the operational treadmill so I come back with clearer judgement.
Know your kill criteria before you start.
The hardest companies to close are the ones you love. Agree in advance what success looks like in six months, and what would make you stop. Revenue, margins, customer retention, your own energy — pick measures that aren't vanity. Walking away from a weak venture frees capital and attention for the ones that deserve it. Founders who never stop anything eventually stop everything.
Diversify the kind of work, not just the number of logos.
Running several hospitality and beauty businesses taught me a lot about operations. Property investing taught me to think in longer cycles. Writing the book forced me to turn messy experience into steps other people can follow. Acting still uses a different muscle entirely. Spreading across types of work has kept me sharper than collecting similar companies would have.
What I'd do differently next time.
I'd talk to customers earlier. I'd hire for the role I actually need, not the person I like hanging out with. I'd document week one, not month six. And I'd treat the quiet, unglamorous work — banking, insurance, licensing, supplier terms — as part of the craft, not admin to rush. The companies that lasted weren't the ones with the flashiest launch. They were the ones whose foundations could take weight.
If you're about to open a salon, café or bar, start with the practical sequence rather than the mood board. Launch Your Venue is the 26-week playbook I wish I'd had. Get it on Amazon in paperback or Kindle. And if you're already running more than one company, my earlier piece on habits for running several businesses at once may help you stay sane while you grow.