Issue 01 // Seven Companies, Three Inc. 5000s, and Nothing Left
I built seven companies in about five years, made the Inc. 5000 three years in a row, and then lost everything. This is why I started over, and why I’m writing to you.
I started my first business at twenty years old, a photography studio, while finishing up my bachelor’s in marketing. In three years, I grew the studio to a million-dollar brand with zero startup capital. I then started building other businesses to fill gaps I found in the industry. I created a post-production company, an album company, a fine arts products company, camera bags, wardrobe rentals, an educational division and ultimately ended up building the world’s largest professional photography magazine. I started 7seven companies in four years.
My partner and I were personally sponsored by several fortune 500 brands who flew us to China, Brazil, all over Europe and the United States to teach business to entrepreneurs. I lived in a big house, drove an expensive car, and bought all the Louis Vuitton my closet could handle. I made the Inc 5000 list of fastest growing companies in America for 3 years in a row. My clients included The White House – yes, we photographed a sitting president and first lady, I also photographed sports celebrities, I was featured on a reality TV show, I was in international magazines, and so on. On the outside I had it all, everyone wanted my life, everyone thought I was lucky to be me.
But on the inside was a different story, I was dying a little bit every day. I worked 90 hours a week for 6 years straight. Every single day, I worked, Christmas Day, I worked. I traveled 265 days out of the year. I did a ninety-city U.S. tour in 1.5 years’ time. I had no friends, I saw my family twice a year if I was lucky. I had no hobbies, I didn’t have a pet, I couldn’t even keep a plant alive. And after nine years of hustling and grinding, my body began breaking down. At twenty-eight years old my body went into perimenopause. My joints started falling apart, my hormones were nonexistent, I was desperate for rest. And every day it got worse.
Finally, my doctors told me I had to slow down, or I would eventually die. So, I took a three-month sabbatical from my business and started focusing on my mental, emotional and physical health, and once I did, I discovered my business partner had betrayed me. While I was falling apart, they had restructured our seven companies behind my back and ultimately, I lost everything. Everything I had sacrificed ten years of my life for, my health, my family, everything. I lost over one million dollars.
Overnight I went from living in a six-bedroom home to living with my parents, from driving a six-figure car to having no car, from flying first class around the world to babysitting my nephew, and from owning seven companies to being unemployed. This was the darkest time of my life. But at the same time, it was the happiest. After being estranged from my family for ten years, we made up for lost time by spending every night for the next six months drinking wine, putting together puzzles, and watching friends. I found joy in simplicity.
Finally with room to breathe I realized that while I loved my businesses, they didn't love me. They weren't giving me the life I wanted, heck they weren't giving me a life at all. That’s when I realized we’ve been building businesses wrong all along.
As entrepreneurs we are passionate about THE THING, the product or service we’ve dreamt up that will change the world. We figure out the thing and we start building, because there is no other option, we must build. But we don’t pause to think about HOW we’re building. We don’t stop to map out what we’re working towards, what we hope the thing gives us. Sometimes we fail because we don’t have a clear destination, and sometimes we succeed by society’s measurements, but we become a slave to that success. We’re building wrong, we need to build backwards, with the end in mind.
That’s why I built The Founder Life, to teach founders how to design their business backwards to give them their dream life. And that is why this newsletter exists, from your BFF (best founder friend) to you. Design the life first, then build the business.
The concept is simple, reverse engineer your life. That’s it! Think about what kind of life you want to be living in five years’ time and build backwards from there.
It’s so simple and can be applied to every area of your life. Want to put on a successful event, reverse engineer it. Want a happy healthy marriage, reverse engineer it. Want a strong fit body, reverse engineer it.
But before you design anything, you’ll want to name what’s lurking in the shadows. We all have unspoken fears preventing us or slowing us down from following our dreams. Until we address those fears, we can’t fully dive in. It’s hard for us to dream and vision because the dark clouds of doubt blocking our view of the horizon. We must call them out by name before we fully give ourselves permission to dream.
And dream you will.
Try This // Name your fears exercise
Naming our fears out loud takes away fear’s power (thank you Brene Brown). Name your three biggest fears in your founder journey thus far. Good news is 75% of founders have the same fear as you, you’re not alone.
Fear of looking foolish
Fear of failing
Fear of not making money
Fear of letting people down
Fear of losing work/life balance
-Tay