USE WHAT YOU HAVE, NOT WHAT YOU WISH YOU HAD.

This article is a note to myself. It is most certainly told in retrospect, looking back over the last 12 months or so. However, I am sure the point I’m trying to make is something I could remind myself of every other day. As it turns out envy, such a base human vice, isn’t the most productive of emotions.

When diving into the world of entrepreneurship and company-building, I went in search of guidance. I naturally started looking for mentors or experienced industry leaders who I could get close to and from whom I could learn. An interesting ambition, but ultimately, it proved to be a waste of time. 

Sure, there are sources of intellectual inspiration and aspirational stories aplenty. However, they all fell short on helping me solve my shitty little beginner-sized problems. Someone who set up their business in 1998, or even 2008, wasn’t going to be able to relate to my concerns about finding a place to work or carving out a space in an overcrowded market full of commoditized products that lack real value as profit margins shrink. And if they had multiple revenue streams that allowed them to take the financial risks up front and retain ownership down the line—forget it, we weren’t remotely on the same level. 

More frustrating still, even when you start to identify plausible business/growth strategies, you can’t put them into practice because you don’t yet have a sound structure in which to test them out. When I reached this point, I realized I had started looking too far ahead and had come down with a first-class case of envy that needed to be cured asap.

I quickly learned that continually comparing yourself to an agency that generates $10 million a year and has designer furniture artfully placed in every corner of the office isn’t really helpful. (It is a great way to feel like a massive failure, though.)  However, admitting that you are not at that level yet, and instead, accepting exactly where you are is the only way forward. With that reality check, I put my feet back on the ground and started toddling on, one baby step at a time. 

Thanks to this big dose of self-awareness and radical candour, I started to change things based on the simple logic that the tools that got me here (an executive position at a well-financed animation studio) were no longer available to take me where I wanted to go next. I started focusing on what value, if any, I could offer and how I could market it. If I accepted that I had to leave my past behind and start from zero, I had to figure out what my product was and identify my potential clients. 

So I started doubling down on my strengths, instead of sweating over my weaknesses. And the most valuable one was time—the time I could save my clients by packaging my experience into an easily accessed process had real value. It is the one thing no one ever has enough of, no matter what size the company. Time is the most sought-after resource in modern society, so I began to focus on selling it. The impact has been immediate, and all the things that seemed complex and abstract to me started becoming clearer. It’s not exactly what I set out to do, but it seems to be what people want, and it fits perfectly into my values, vision and mission. It allows me to finance content development and gives me hope of sustainability. 

I guess Gary Vee was right when he said the notion of a 20-year-old life coach is just weird. And I realize now that it’s equally strange for a budding entrepreneur to be focused on building a business culture and brand before they’ve ever signed their first client—something of which I have been guilty. I got a lot from books like Hacking Growth or Blue Ocean Strategy, and I can’t wait to read Radical Candour, but I now know that I have some key administrative hurdles to get over before I can start employing their strategies. 

Then there’s that little issue of the continuing struggle to keep the lights on. Things like employment law, rights management, hiring and accounting can suck 90% of your day away.  To counterbalance all of it, I make sure to have a regular wreck-and-check and continually remind myself "to use what I have, not what I wish I had.” At the end of each week, I try and look at what I am doing and see what I have to pull back on, what I need to push harder on, and what I can build on. 

I am trying to build a sustainable business through setting up multiple revenue streams and growing slowly. I am always testing and looking for low-friction high-engagement activities that will help to fuel my engine. So after 1.5 years, the shape of what I do has changed, but the mission remains the same—to make a safe place to be creative and a creative place to do business. As for that bout of envy? I’m well on my way to recovery.