The Operator

Choose to be an entrepreneur and understand you have picked one of the hardest paths a person can pick. What you can expect is a life of waking up and getting your arse beaten, day after day. That is the deal. Take it or do not.

The reality

My first year I assumed people with longer histories and bigger businesses knew better. Then I partnered with an agency and found the faults from inside, to the point where I did the work they had promised a client myself. Turns out the difficult thing needing a huge team was not difficult. That is what made me an independent consultant: past a certain size, agencies stop prioritising the client. I do not stand for it.

Do not meet your heroes

Ten thousand a month in Sydney is not that hard. You hit it, it is a milestone, and then you get stuck there because your brain stops looking for growth. Getting past it means breaking down the very habits that got you there. And the frustrating part: when it finally happened, it felt like nothing. You arrive too tired to notice you have arrived. Keep going anyway.

10k months

Fighting taught me more about business than any guru could. The fight is one element; the real work is the 5am training nobody sees. Teammates spar with you, but they cannot win the fight for you. In the ring you need one hundred percent belief, because one percent less might be your opponent's edge. Four years into business, same rule. Show up, believe, do the work.

Fighting taught me business

Fighting is a gentleman's sport and the loneliest one. People support you, cheer for you, but the person who has to show up is you. The 5am runs, training after a long day when you would rather not, alone. Being able to do it alone in the ring is exactly what gives you the belief outside it.

The loneliest sport

If you knew you could not fail, what would you want to do? Big question, useful one. Sit with it, then notice the gap between that answer and what you did today.

If you could not fail