If I knew these five lessons before I start my first business, I would not have to suffer a lawsuit, a million dollar debt and wasted time. Read till the end. The last one is the most important one. It will save you many sleepless nights of fear, worry and anxiety. On people Don’t trust people so easily. Fact is when they want to work with you, they will promise the sun, moon and stars. But when things go south, they either disappear or play the blame game. So the smart thing to do is to make sure everything is written down in black and white. It may be awkward at the beginning to draft agreements with potential partners, but do it anyway. Contracts will protect you and your relationship with that partner. On money Learn how to look at your own financial statements. My mistake is to trust my partner to take care of all the finances. And when shit hits the fence with the finances, I have no one to blame but myself. Years later, I realise that revenue is vanity, profit is sanity and cash flow is reality! On hiring If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. So cheap employees doesn’t mean good employees. As our business was growing rapidly, we need a lot of help we can get. But our mistake was hiring by availability, not capability. Just because someone applied doesn’t mean he/she is the best fit. Instead of asking questions, create tests. They are a better way to assess fit. On loans Always borrow within your means! We are too ambitious and overly confident about our business plans. Which is why we happily borrowed and the banks happily loaned us the money. But when we couldn’t pay up on time, they became very nasty to us. My lesson is this: always set aside a percentage of your profits for business investments. This way, you won’t need to rely on banks. Better yet, use a percentage of your profits to invest rather than keeping the money in the bank. You will end up with more money without having to borrow! Here’s the most important lesson. Also the last one in the list. Hope for the best but always plan for the worst! There is a place for pessimism. It helps you manage the downside which is usually what kills the business. So don’t just be blindly optimistic. Think about what can go wrong in your business and put in measures to prevent your worst nightmare from coming true! Let me know which lesson resonates with you the most? Your #1 fan, Eric Feng

P.S. If you want to become successful on TikTok, listen to this week’s podcast! My guest amassed over 36K followers on TikTok within months, with some of her content watched by millions of people. And she just turned 40! So yes TikTok isn’t just for young people. Learn all about her strategies below. Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple podcast Watch the video interview