The (16 year) overnight success.

I started a business and sold it 4 years later.

Maybe you've seen the posts on social media of people promising you a fast-track to £10k per month. Or a proven strategy to get you above £100k.

So you might be wondering how it took me so long to start a business and grow it into something that someone wanted to buy. Four whole years. When I could have just joined a cohort of other ambitious founders and whipped up a £1m side hustle in a few weeks.

Well, if you've never run a business you might be wondering that.

If you have run a business, you'll be wondering how an earth I managed to do it in just 4 years. That's quick. Very quick. Unusually quick in fact.

So any non-founders reading this. Reality check. You won't build and sell a business in weeks or months. It'll be years. Or probably decades.

Because here's a little behind the scenes insight. I started my business in 2017. But I started laying the foundations for its success 12 years earlier than that. The year was 2005 and I was 21 years old (I think I've got my maths right...).

I owe so much of the success of my business to what came before it. Of course you can set-up a business with just an idea and a smartphone now. Many social media accounts suggest you should do it instead of getting a job. There are lots of good arguments for that. But it's also possible that by starting off with a more traditional career, you actually fast-track success of your own business when the time is right.

Read on and I'll explain.

Me on my 21st birthday. On the balcony of an apartment in Newcastle. Wearing a Sunderland shirt. Not all of my decisions back then were well thought through...

Network

When you start a business it's very difficult to sign clients and hire people. Both tasks involve persuading people that they should put their faith into a new, unproven entity. In my case, the key team members and some of the first clients were people that I'd worked with previously, in my former 'normal jobs'.

Having built that network of people and a reputation as someone that could be trusted meant that I was able to hit the ground running with my business at the time that many struggle.

Business sense

I can't think of a better way to summarise this than 'business sense'. Basically, by working in commercial roles within various companies during my career, I learned so much about operational processes, team management (some good but mainly bad), margins, P&L's, selling, building relationships. Basically all of the things that every founder struggles with at some point. It was priceless to have experienced all of the challenges and issues from employee-side, so I could try and quickly solve them, or avoid them altogether from founder-side.

An idea

Successful business ideas are very rarely unique. They're also very rarely particularly inspiring or exciting. The best business ideas tend to be an improvement on an already proven business model.

But to be able to spot the opportunity of what boring process or industry to disrupt, it helps to be on the inside. Frustrations of why your employer isn't doing something better, or being braver. It's the reason so many agency owners have previously worked in agencies. They learn the craft, build their network and then spot a missed opportunity.

So maybe you're about to leave school and working out whether to find a job or set-up a business. Or perhaps you've had a 15 year career and wonder if now could be the time to make a leap into self employment. There's no right or wrong answer. But just know that there is no short cut. Any time learning from the inside while getting a regular wage isn't wasted time. And if you make the jump straight into business ownership, know you'll have to work twice as hard to build a network and a reputation.

Overnight success takes time.