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Business advice to my 16-year-old self

What business advice would you give to a youngester looking to start on the path of building a business.

Here's what I'd say...

  • Use debt to build things, not buy things. A small amount of low-interest debt is a really good way to build (or test) a business.

  • It's OK to take a short-term low-paid job if you are learning something. When I left uni, I worked for five years at a startup. I was employee number two, growing from zero to three million turnover. The money was not great, but I learned so many essential lessons about building a business.

  • Understand that your ideas are worth money. I remember realizing that if I needed to make more money, I could just come up with a new idea. Yeah, not all ideas work, but understanding that I was self-sufficient was liberating.

  • Know that you can live on very little money with no family and no commitments when you are young. This will change! Families and mortgages are expensive.

  • Learn to code. Nothing fancy; teach yourself the skills you need to build a website. HTML, CSS, and Javascript, then Ruby, Python, etc. for the backend. You can do this in about 6-12 months and there are loads of resrouces out there. Having the ability to build a site to test an idea quickly is invaluable and will save you loads in the long run.

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    Do not set ambitious goals when starting a business,We can first set a small goal to complete and then expand, Which makes it easy to succeed。 Because big targets tend to overwhelm you。

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    Here's what I'd say...

    1. It’s okay to build businesses outside your passion, as long as it generate enough money, you can do other thing later.

    2. Start investing as early as possible and learn about value investing.

    3. Don’t do same mistakes over and over again.

    4. Don’t waste too much time.

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      Number 1 is gold dust! I think people mistake 'passion' and 'interest'. I 100% agree it's OK to have a passion for building a business, rather than a passion for the market segment.

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    Thanks Gary for some really good advice.

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      I am glad it was helpful. What are you currently working on?

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        Right now i am wordpress web developer (not that proud to say)

        But i will be soon working on my own SAAS app which will be like notion

        Problem it will slove : It will help doctors and hostipal better connect and communicate with patients

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          Why do you think Wordpress is a bad thing?

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            I never said wp is bad. I am just not proud by looking this indie community. You guys do great thing and what i do is making ecomm & business website for other fellows for 50 dollar 😪

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            I think there's a certain section of the development community that likes to hate on Wordpress. Personally, I think it is a great tool for creating websites at a low cost with minimal knowldge.

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          Nothing wrong with Wordpress. Lots of people have WP sites and they often need help.

          The first sites I built were in Wordpress. I then tried to learn php, but realized it was just too messy. I switched to Ruby and started using Rails.

          One advantage of Wordpress is that you can build stuff fast and test the market.

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