IF I KNEW THEN WHAT I KNOW NOW, I WOULD'VE BUILT DIFFERENTLY

I've written before about how I first got into entrepreneurship—working my first job in 2008, selling products through catalogs to coworkers, and eventually finding my way into e-commerce, websites, and digital business.

I was learning as I went.

I didn't have much capital, and I didn't have experienced entrepreneurs or investors around me showing me what moves to make. A lot of what I understand today came from years of trying things, making mistakes, researching, building, and figuring things out for myself.

So I'm not going to tell that whole story again.

There's another part of it I've been thinking about lately.

If I knew then what I know now—and actually had the capital to move differently—I would've built in a completely different order.

I WOULD'VE BUILT THE FINANCIAL FOUNDATION FIRST

When I was younger, I looked at entrepreneurship as a way out.

I didn't want to spend the rest of my life working a regular job. I wanted to build something for myself, make my own money, and eventually reach a point where I didn't have to work for somebody else anymore.

I wanted financial freedom.

At the time, I connected that freedom mostly with starting businesses.

Come up with an idea.

Figure out how to build it.

Find customers.

Make money from it.

Grow it enough that one day I wouldn't need a regular job anymore.

That was the picture in my head.

What I didn't understand yet was that starting a business and becoming financially free aren't automatically the same thing.

A business can create income, but it can also constantly need money, time, attention, and reinvestment. You can own a business and still have everything financially depending on you showing up and keeping that business moving.

As I've gotten older, my definition of financial freedom has gotten bigger.

I still believe in entrepreneurship. I still want to build businesses and create things of my own.

But now I think much more about ownership, assets, multiple sources of income, equity, and building a financial foundation outside of whatever business I'm currently working on.

If I had serious capital from the beginning, I don't think my first move would've been putting all of it into businesses I was creating from scratch.

I would've wanted assets first.

Real estate would've been one of my biggest priorities.

Flips.

Rental properties.

Properties where there was an opportunity to create value, build equity, generate income, or eventually do all three.

Franchise ownership would've been another area I explored seriously.

The appeal would've been completely different from building one of my own businesses from scratch.

When you start your own company, you're building everything.

The name.

The brand.

The systems.

The customer base.

The reputation.

The operating model.

You're trying to prove that the entire thing works while you're already putting money into it.

With the right franchise opportunity, I could've taken a different approach.

Instead of creating another unknown business from zero, I could've invested in an established—and potentially globally recognized—brand with an existing business model, operating systems, training, customer awareness, and a track record I could actually evaluate before putting my money into it.

That's always been one of the things that attracted me to franchise ownership.

That doesn't mean buying a franchise automatically means buying a profitable business.

It doesn't.

Individual locations can struggle or fail. The market matters. The location matters. The numbers matter. The investment still has to make sense.

But there's a major difference between saying, "I'm going to create another business from scratch and build the market for it," and saying, "I'm going to evaluate an established brand and determine whether owning one of its locations makes financial sense."

And if the first location performed well, I would've wanted to look at expanding from there.

One location.

Then another.

Potentially building a portfolio of locations over time instead of creating a completely new business every time I wanted to expand.

That's the kind of ownership I would've wanted alongside real estate.

Because what I was really chasing all those years ago wasn't simply entrepreneurship.

It was freedom.

I just understand a lot more today about what it may actually take to build it.

THEN I WOULD'VE BUILT THE BUSINESSES

I still would've created businesses from scratch.

That part wouldn't have changed.

The order would've.

Instead of starting another business and then trying to figure out how to keep funding it from whatever money I personally had available, I would've wanted other things working underneath it.

Income from investments.

Equity.

Assets.

Established businesses.

Different sources of income and capital that didn't all depend on the newest idea working immediately.

Then I could've taken some of what those things produced and put it into something I wanted to create from the ground up.

That's the strategy I wish I understood much earlier.

Build the foundation.

Let that foundation create more options.

Then take some of those resources and use them to build the original ideas I believe in.

I USED TO THINK MOSTLY ABOUT WHAT I COULD START

That's probably one of the biggest differences between how I thought then and how I think now.

For years, most of my thinking started with:

What can I build?

Now there's another question that matters just as much:

What can I own?

Those aren't necessarily the same thing.

You can spend years creating businesses and still never build much outside of those businesses.

That's something I think about a lot more now.

I don't only want companies and projects that require me to continuously put money into them.

I want assets too.

I want things capable of producing income.

I want equity.

I want different pieces working together instead of every new idea beginning financially from the same starting line.

I still want to be a builder.

I just don't want building from scratch to be the only way I know how to create something valuable.

CAPITAL CHANGES WHAT'S POSSIBLE

Bootstrapping can teach you a lot.

I've learned how to work with limited resources, find different ways to get something done, bring in people with skills I don't have, and keep moving even when everything isn't perfectly lined up.

I value those lessons.

But I've also learned not to romanticize doing everything the hard way.

Capital matters.

Having resources gives you options.

It can give a good idea more room to develop.

It can allow you to bring in the right expertise sooner.

It can give you room to make decisions based on what's best for the business instead of always making decisions based on what you can afford at that exact moment.

And having income-producing assets behind you can completely change the position you're building from.

There's a difference between building because you have an idea and building with an actual financial foundation underneath that idea.

That's the position I would've wanted to create much earlier if I'd understood it and had the ability to do it.

I DON'T WANT EVERYTHING TO START AT ZERO

I'm still building businesses.

I'm still developing ideas.

I'm still interested in creating things that didn't exist before.

That hasn't changed.

What has changed is what I want surrounding those things.

I don't want every future idea to begin with me asking how much of my paycheck I can put toward it.

I don't want every business I create to have to become the financial foundation for whatever comes next.

I want to build the foundation too.

Real estate.

Investments.

The right franchise opportunities if they make sense.

Other assets and sources of income that can exist alongside the businesses and projects I create myself.

Then, when there's another idea worth pursuing, I'm not necessarily starting from zero again.

I'm building from something.

I CAN'T BUILD BACKWARD

It's easy to look back and create the perfect strategy with knowledge you didn't have and money you didn't have.

That's not what I'm trying to do.

I couldn't have made all of these moves back then simply because I understand them better today.

My circumstances were different.

My knowledge was different.

My resources were definitely different.

But looking backward can still teach you something about how you want to move forward.

If I knew then what I know now, I would've built differently.

I would've focused more on ownership.

I would've built assets.

I would've worked toward multiple sources of income.

I would've used some of what that foundation produced to finance the businesses and ideas I wanted to create myself.

But I can't build backward.

And maybe that's the most important part of realizing what you would've done differently.

It isn't about spending the rest of your life wishing you had done it sooner.

It's about recognizing what you understand now and deciding what you're going to do with it.

I still want to create.

I still want to build things from scratch.

I still want to take ideas that exist in my head and turn them into something real.

I just want to build from a stronger position.

Because the goal I had when I was younger really hasn't changed.

I still want financial freedom.

What has changed is my understanding of how I want to get there.

I can't go back and change the order.

But I can change the order from here.