I started in 2016 and now employ 60+ people and make $500k. My business is worth $4-5 million. Here's what I've learned.

I started a service-based company in 2016, and my startup costs were around $3,500. I was employee number one, delivering the service directly to our customers while also writing code, designing logos, doing the books, etc. Now, I employ over sixty (maybe 70, actually) part-time employees and a few full-timers. My personal income will be about $500k this year, and my business is valued at around $4-5 million based on standard industry multipliers. I have learned a thing or two in the last few years -- but all that really means is the mistakes I make now are mostly new mistakes.I'm going to give you a few things that I think I have learned, but you should keep in mind that much of this is business model-specific. What works for a service-based company that delivers an in-person service is very different than what will work for a venture-backed tech startup. I know nothing about that world, and I won't pretend to. I do know how to sell other people's labor in a way that will make a ton of money, scale quickly and pay them well for their work -- and get them to stick around long-term.A bit about me: Mid-30's, degrees in finance, marketing and philosophy, long-term career history of being a terrible employee who was lazy and unmotivated. I had very, very little career success prior to being an entrepreneur, and much like a felon on the lam, I won't go back to that place, man. I did work in this industry before I started my business, and I came into this with some solid design and web development skills.This is the internet in 2021, so let's do a numbered list:You should be able to start a service business on a shoestring (in most cases). People think they need $100k to start a business. Most of the time, you don't. I was in a Q&A with Michael Dell (in college, not because I'm a baller) once, and someone asked him what to do if they couldn't get enough funding for the business they wanted to start. His response: Find a way to start with less money. I needed about $3,500, but I was also married to a nurse. We didn't need my income. But $3,500 is scratch that most of us can come up with.Try to learn the industry on a future competitor's dollar. Work in the industry first! I did 80% of what I do now for a company that we now compete against. Granted, I made way less money working for them than I do now, but the lessons I learned made it much, much easier to start my own thing. You have to watch out for non-compete agreements, though. But working in a related job first will make your learning curve so much flatter.There has never been a better time in history to start a business. I genuinely believe this. A bunch of losers will tell you that corporate America is colluding to sabotage the little guy, and whether that is true or not doesn't really matter; what matters is that all sorts of business things that used to be expensive are now cheap. You can have ten phone numbers ring to your phone for an extra $50 per month with Grasshopper. You can compete against the biggest local companies there are in the most important marketing channel there is (Google) with just a little know-how. You can have things custom-made in China to your specs (hopefully) and sold online without ever needing to buy a manufacturing facility or know about six sigma. The age of the entrepreneur is now.Too many people are trying to start the next Facebook/Netflix/Google/insert pipe dream here. You may as well try to be the first man to walk on Mars or be the next Lebron James. Would you rather have a 40% chance at being worth $10 million or a .01% chance at being worth $200 million? Venture-backed tech startups are great when they succeed, but the odds of success are low. And you may not be able to hang onto enough equity in the process to really make it as big as you think you will. Stop trying to be the first to do something and instead focus on delivering an existing service better than the next guy. Which leads me to...More people should be starting local-oriented, "regular" businesses and winning via operational excellence and superior marketing. There are so many industries out there that are ripe for the picking. Most local businesses are run terribly, and just because you are solving a local problem doesn't mean you can't scale. Become a good enough plumber that you can hire other plumbers. You probably can't make it to a ten man shop before you're a millionaire. Start a commercial cleaning service. Start a staffing agency. Whatever industry you choose, chances are that the local person doing it right now sucks at the things you need to be good at. Do they have a strong digital presence? Do they answer the phone? Probably not. If they do, they're probably the only one near you who does.Answer the damn phone. I really believe half of success in a small business starts with answering the phone. I am constantly blown away by how frequently I call a local service business and no one answers. If I leave a message, I get a call back maybe 50% of the time, and it's probably a day later. Your competitors are setting a low bar.Digital marketing is marketing. Your first, and most realistic, goal is to get into the top three Google map results at the top of the search engine results page for your main local keywords. "plumber in Cheboygan" should show a map at the top with you and your five star reviews. It's not that difficult to do this in most industries in most cities. But that's your first goal. If you're doing that, there's a good chance you're near the top of the organic page results, too. Learning about SEO and spending time doing quality blogging will pay dividends for you long-term.I really can't emphasize enough how badly most local businesses are run. This is opportunity for you. I can boil down half of my marketing degree to "Be customer-oriented." Think about how your potential customers see your business as they are going through their shopping process. What are their objections? What are their fears? What kind of interactions do they want to have with you while shopping, and what can you do to overcome their objections and fears? How are they perceiving your business after they have chosen you, and what can you do to meet their expectations? Assuming all went well, how can you use them to generate further business? 95% of small business owners haven't thought about any of this stuff a single time. Run your local shop like you are the CEO of Coca Cola. Hold yourself to a very high standard and make 99.99% of your customers happy with their decision to go with you. This is operational excellence. If you can do that, and you can figure out marketing, you will be successful.Learn what to delegate or hire out. When I first started, my task list was massively long. But I also wasted a lot of time doing things I shouldn't have been doing. One of them was off-page SEO. I eventually hired it out to an Indian agency I found on Upwork, and they did good work for us for three years. It saved me tons of time, and they got the results I wanted much quicker. For anything that is revenue-generating (like marketing), time really is money. The longer it takes to get to a certain level of sales, the more revenue you've lost. That agency is no longer what we need to go from being a strong regional player to beating the best national competitors, but they were exactly what we needed (and could afford) to start winning business on the local level.You are going to have to learn some things by doing them and messing up and trying something else. One of my big fears initially was how to balance marketing in a new city with hiring staff in that market. If we made sales but had no one hired and trained, we couldn't deliver the service. If we hired staff but had no sales, we would be paying for staff who had nothing to do. I've gotten much better at that balancing act, but I also just realized it wasn't that big of a deal if we made a sale but couldn't deliver the product. One call to the customer and a quick "I'm really sorry, but we don't have the capacity for this right now. We're issuing you a full refund, and I wish you the best" gets it done every time. Something I fretted about many times turned out to be nothing. You should plan and prepare, but you can't foresee everything.Stop trying to find a partner because you're too timid/scared/lazy to do a business on your own. There are times when a partner is the answer, but too many entrepreneurs want a buddy to build something with. But all that does is split your profits and give you a complex relationship to manage while trying to build something. Don't get a partner unless it is unavoidable.Try to find a business model that ties the bulk of your expenses directly to your revenue. Hiring a full-time employee who makes $50k per year regardless of their workload is to be avoided if possible. There are times you will have to do this, but a better model when starting out is to hire part-time employees and pay them either per project (if your pricing is project-based) or per hour (if your pricing is hourly). In doing so, you know exactly what your gross margin looks like, and if you run a tight ship otherwise, your net margin isn't far off.​A few questions and answers to finish it off:Why don't you sell? Will you sell?Hell yes, I'll sell. But it's tough to sell a business that is "only" worth $4-5 million. Plus, we are still seeing 200% annual growth. I anticipate selling for $20 million or so in 2-3 years. I probably get a call from a private equity guy once a month right now, so I have no shortage of contacts when that time comes. One thing I have realized, though: By the time this is at the right size to sell, I won't need the money. I'm already pretty much at that point. I'm a frugal guy by nature, and while I have a family, $500k is way more money than we can spend. So the question I have to answer in the next couple of years is what I want to be doing with my time. I may not be able to replace this job with something equally interesting, so I might decide to not sell.​How many hours do you work?Fifteen or so per week. No, I'm not blowing smoke. In the early days, I probably worked more like thirty. I had weeks here and there that were more like fifty or so, but I've never averaged forty. To be honest, I'm not sure what most people spend so much time doing.​What's the biggest mistake you have made in your business?I haven't done anything that I would call a terrible mistake, but I was probably a bit late in getting out of delivering the service myself and moving completely into focusing on sales and growing the business. Phone sales are the heart of my business, and you can't take phone calls when you are out delivering the service.​What's the biggest little thing you've done?I hit the jackpot when I bought an expired domain that had previously belonged to a competitor of ours in a key market. That $150 expense took us to an entirely new level, at least at the time, and I personally made tens of thousands of dollars off of that decision. I'm not suggesting you focus on expired domains as a key part of your digital strategy; I got lucky that a direct competitor with a good digital presence in a key city for us went under, and I got their domain for cheap.​What are the most important practical, daily skills for an entrepreneur?Personally, I couldn't imagine not having design skills or web development skills. If I had to call a designer everytime I wanted to make a change, I'd either be broke or our marketing would look terrible. I had been dabbling in web design since 1998 (yes, I was 14 and was terrible), so while I wasn't a professional, I was proficient. I am a design-oriented person by nature and interest, so this stuff is a big deal to me. I also think it makes us stand out.​That's it! Best of luck. I'll answer any questions you guys have. see hubwealthy.com/wealthy