Everyone shows you the good bits.
The launch post, the funding announcement, the team photo where everyone’s laughing at nothing.
Nobody shows you the Sunday night where you’re doing VAT with a cold cup of tea, wondering if you’ve made a horrible mistake.
I founded AI-powered fitness app VEYR in 2025 and am currently leading the company through a £1 million funding round. I’ve learned a few things along the way – and I’m still learning.
Sacrifice
If you are an entrepreneur with a dream, you will sacrifice time with your friends and family. Not a little bit either – whole years of it. I’m not going to sit here and tell you it’s worth it, it might not be. But you have to make peace with that before you start, not after.
You’ll miss more of your kids growing up than you would in a 9-to-5. School plays land on the same day as the pitch. Bedtime lands on a call with a client three time zones away… then they don’t show up!
If you started this thinking you’d get more holidays, stop now. You’ll get a laptop on a sun lounger and a WhatsApp notification or an email that will take you mentally back to your desk at any moment.
You’ll have sleepless nights. Several a month, easily. Payroll, a client going quiet, a bug you spotted at midnight and now can’t stop thinking about. Closing the laptop does nothing. The work just moves upstairs into your head and nests rent-free, redecorates.
No overnight success
That overnight success you keep comparing yourself to is about 10 years old. You started reading their story last Tuesday and they’re on year seven. Comparison is the thief of joy.
Your friends and family will think you’re mad. Some of them are right. You’ll get asked when you’re getting a proper job, usually at Christmas – so smile and pass the gravy.
Everyone will offer advice. Most of it is rubbish. Listen to the people who have actually done the thing you’re trying to do and be polite to everyone else.
If you work in tech, good luck. Every mate has an app idea and wants you to build it for a slice. Your mum will ask you to look at the toaster because you’re good with computers. You’ll look at the toaster.
But… balance is the word. Some months you’ll have it, some you won’t, beating yourself up about it just adds a second job.
Key advice
Time is your new currency. Spend it like it’s the last of your money, because it is.
Cashflow is king. Turnover is for vanity, profit is for sanity. A big revenue number is a lovely thing to say out loud and it pays for nothing. Same with staff numbers. In fact, a bigger number now just looks like you are less efficient.
Be mindful and keep your shares. Scrape together whatever you can yourself before you sell a chunk of the thing you built. ‘Future you’, sat at an exit table, will want to buy ‘present you’ a drink.
You’ll end up doing jobs you have no business doing. Sales, support, contracts, the bins. You’ll get good at most of them because there’s nobody else.
Nobody is going to thank you. Nobody is coming to save you either. Once you properly accept that, it gets easier.
Work with people you actually enjoy being around. You’ll see more of them than your own family.
Get rid of the customers who drain you. Do it quickly. The one who eats all your evenings is quietly costing you three better ones.
Be honest, even when it’s awkward. It has never once come back to bite me. Same with difficult conversations, have them now and be decisive, rather than a death by a thousand paper cuts.
Pick a goal that frightens you a bit. If you can already see exactly how you’d get there, it’s too small. Do it today. There will always be more tomorrow than you’re expecting.
Also, learn how to spell entrepreneur. You’ll be typing it forever.
Not all bad
It’s not all bad though. You’re on your own schedule. You’re in charge of where this thing goes. And the person you’ll be in five years is someone you’d probably really like. You might even make a few quid.
Still want in? Good. Go build it.
Building our app and Fitness Intelligence Engine from scratch, growing a team of likeminded people with one common goal, and riding our funding raise as I type this, has taught me…
Building your own dreams is way more fun than contributing to someone else’s. You have to get over ego, comfort and the fear of failure, but in doing so you’ll unlock a new level in life where your job isn’t work anymore – it’s pleasure.
Founder who nearly lost company launches exit preparation platform