A Reflection On The Last Year
Looking at what my first full year of entrepreneurship taught me
Overview:
Where I lost my way in 2024
Some things I discovered last year
What I’m looking ahead to this year
Where I lost my way in 2024 (my writing)
In 2024 I think I lost site of what really matters when it comes to writing. For me, so much of 2024 was about figuring out my business. It was a year of trying different things, uncovering my strengths, my weaknesses and discovering the things that fire me up and the things that sap my energy. Beneath all of this was an unspoken goal of growth. Of building a business that could not just sustain me, but allow me to prosper. And while I feel like I am now on a great path, as I worked to find that path my writing really suffered. Instead of sharing honest thoughts and reflections based on things I was learning, feeling, experiencing etc. I opted to write posts (not through this publication) designed to appeal to a very specific audience (i.e my prospective customers). Unsurprisingly, the results were 1) very sporadic writing because it felt forced 2) a lot of reflection and personal learnings left on the table. Perhaps most ironically, the one customer I got from my writing in 2024 was actually a Compstep reader who had followed my original blog and liked the way I was thinking about life/building a business. So with all that said, this year I am going to try and recenter my writing. Business and entrepreneurship will of course be at the forefront of what I write, but not in a forced/calculated manner. Instead, I intend to share what I’m learning every month about building a recruiting company here in NYC*. There won’t be any specific agenda other than hopefully genuinely connecting with a number of you reading this.
So what did I figure out in 2024?
I was trying to apply stage 2 mentality while still in stage 1
To get really good at something you have to just put your head down and do it over and over and over again. From my time rowing and swimming I know that I’m very good at doing the boring stuff. I can stare at a line or at the back of a person’s head for hours on end day in and day out without seeing immediate results and never bat an eye. In my mind, this mentality (which I’ll call stage-2 mentality) was what I needed to apply to my business coming into 2024. HOWEVER, what I failed to realize/remember was that before I was a swimmer/rower, I was an experimenter (stage-1). Prior to the age of twelve (when I went all in on swimming) I played baseball and hockey and soccer and ran cross country and track and played guitar and piano. I experimented with a ton of different things until I eventually found the one thing that 1) I was decent enough at 2) I liked enough/got enough energy from to be willing to commit to. In retrospect, coming into 2024 I was still in stage 1. I hadn’t yet found the right combination of things to go all in on. I was starting to get some signals about what I liked/didn’t like, but if I had gone all in I think the biz would have imploded because there were things that I was never going to enjoy/be good enough at (the sport equivalent would be me at 6’4 200lbs deciding to commit to gymnastics…there would have been a ceiling to my growth/enjoyment/success!).
I LOVE connecting with people
It feels so natural to me and I get a TON of energy from it. Moreover I love connecting people. Few things fire me up as much as connecting two people who I know will hit it off/be able to help one another.
I do NOT like being on call
I did a pretty bad job of defining the scope of our engagements early on. As a result, I basically ended up on call for some of our early customers and that was so energy draining. Waking up and having complaints/concerns on my phone every day was exhausting. It genuinely made me just want to quit entrepreneurship and go back to a job.
I HATE working alone (NOT WHAT LIFE IS ABOUT!)
Initially I thought the “solopreneur” life that I saw on X (formally known as Twitter) was sick. Nobody to answer to. Nobody to manage. A couple of hours of work per week and then the rest of the time to do whatever you want. Late in the year I got to a point where I was making like $15-$20k/month on my own, but the problem was I hated it. What I soon came to realize was being a “solopreneur” was totally against my nature as a person. Everything I’ve ever truly enjoyed doing/found super meaningful was with a group of people. If I were on the rowing team alone in college I would have hated it (and I NEVER would have made weight). The only reason I showed up to the boathouse everyday was because of how fun it was to train for something WITH A GROUP. Life is about finding awesome people to work on things with IMO. Even if you don’t like your job right now, don’t underestimate how awesome having colleagues is. Bonding with others over shared problems is core to the human experience. Working alone sucks
Don’t try to force habits. Follow what comes naturally and build an environment to accommodate that (I think the book atomic habits made me realize this?)
I used to think discipline was everything. Now I’m a bit more skeptical. Instead, I think the easier way to accomplish what one wants is to recognize one’s tendencies and build systems/environments around those things. For example, I used to spend 3.5-4 hours per day on my phone. It got to the point where I would open up my phone, click into instagram, scroll for a bit, close instagram, only immediately re-open it moments later. It was a total force of habit. In between every call/meeting I was crushing social media. Initially I told myself “I’m a disciplined person I will stop doing this now”. It worked for a bit, but pretty soon the notifications starting dragging me back in. Finally I just deleted the app and now my screen time on avg is 90 minutes/day and it’s SO easy. I’m not actively fighting against some desire every 60 seconds. Instead, I don’t even let the desire arise because i’ve removed the option altogether.
Sell to people who can PAY
It’s way easier to sell to people/businesses who have money than people who don’t. I think about it this way: imagine two people at a fancy restaurant. one of the people has saved up for months for this dinner. Every paycheck that’s come in they’ve set aside $20 just for this dinner and now the night is finally here. the other person is a businessman who dines at the restaurant 2-3 nights a week with clients. Who do you think has higher expectations and is going to be more critical of the experience? Who do you think is going to hand over a bigger tip at the end of the night?
Don’t bring 100% sometimes. Bring 80% all the time
There is so much stuff out there that would make you think that you need to show up every day and give 110% and tbh I think that’s kind of bogus. In my experience, the biggest outcomes are the result of very consistent little efforts not sporadic intensity. Sure there is a time and a place to bring 100%, but doing it every single day is a recipe for burnout. I will caveat this and say that my approach here assumes that you KNOW what to focus on. If you’re still in stage one then it’s probably a slightly different story.
New things are dangerous!
One of my biggest weaknesses that I’ve found is that I will read something or see something that gives me a brief surge of inspiration and allow it to take me totally off course for a day or two. I’ll hear of a business similar to mine doing something different and want to totally shift gears. I’ll go all in on that and get super excited because I feel busy and inspired and like I’m going at 110%. In stage-1 this is probably okay, but in stage-2 I think it’s essential to avoid that. The best athletes in the world aren’t changing their training plans every day! Consistency is key.
Being a beginner isn’t just for kids
I wrote about this at the end of the summer after attending the Paris Olympics, but I think it’s so bad that being a beginner isn’t encouraged after college. Maybe it’s just that we don’t talk about it, but I really think it’s super important to recognize that just because we have college degrees/a few years of work experience doesn’t mean we can’t be a beginner. I think everyone needs to embrace being a beginner over and over and over again in life. It totally sucks to be a beginner and it’s definitely easier to go back to what we know, but real success lies on the other side of enduring enough discomfort in the beginner stages to get to the later stages. Don’t expect to be good at stuff right away and be okay with that! (← this is me reminding myself)
Just because you can reach a ton of people at once via technology doesn’t mean you should
The way people connect with one another virtually is very similar to how they connect in-person. If I were meeting someone at a coffee shop for the first time and they immediately started pitching me I’d be pretty turned off. However, if we started talking about their background, work experience, what they’re reading right now etc. I’d walk away feeling like I built a genuine connection. A few months a few more conversations later I might organically refer business their way or become a customer myself. Just because the internet ALLOWS for super scalable outreach doesn’t mean basic relationship-building principals should be thrown out the window.
Study yourself
I think the reason I feel like I’m setup for success in 2025 is because I spent a ton of time studying myself in 2024. I put myself in a super tough situation (entrepreneur running a bootstrapped business) and the just committed to paying super careful attention to how I responded to different things. Now, coming into 2025 I’m using my observations to inform my path forward.
Conclusion:
There’s a lot more I could write and I intend to share more each month. To conclude I want to share where the business is right now and where I see us headed over the next year. I am in stage-2 focused 100% on building TopSDRs into the premier-SDR recruiting business for Series-A and B startups in NYC. I LOVE meeting amazing people living in New York, from top schools, who are excited about sales. It gives me a ton of energy and is something that I am 1) good enough at 2) excited enough about to work on day in and day out. So far in January we’ve closed $20,000 in placement fees (10 days in) with much more to come (hopefully). I’d love to build out my team this year (hiring my brother Chris full-time is the next big goal) and continue to build relationships with great investors, founders, and salespeople/future salespeople. Talk soon!
-Andrew
P.S Thanks Josh Cohen for the nudge to get back into writing. Dang it feels good!
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