If I Started My Business Today, I’d Ignore My Own Advice (Here’s What $9M Taught Me)

  Sam Vander Wielen: So you’re starting a business or you feel like you need a little bit of a refresh on the one you’ve got. You want a business that grows without taking over your life. But most start here advice was written for an internet that, frankly, just doesn’t exist anymore.

Including for yours truly. Here’s what I do today after over $9 million in sales and where I have completely changed my mind.

First and foremost, I wanna welcome you back to On Your Terms® or welcome you to On Your Terms® if you’re new here. On Your Terms® is a podcast for business owners who want to be as present in their lives, as profitable in their businesses. And after a brief summer break, I am so excited to be back.

I missed podcasting so much, but I also feel like my summer was actually really representative of a lot of what we’re gonna talk about today, and I feel like a lot of what I did and didn’t do this summer, which I’ll talk about throughout this episode, is really relevant to what I’ve stopped doing in my business and what I wouldn’t actually recommend that people do anymore, and things that I think if I had continued on doing them, my business actually wouldn’t be doing very well, or at least as well as it is.

Now, I have to say before we get started today, just to kind of set the stage for some context here, my business is doing better than ever.

And you have to remember that this year is actually what I’ve been lovingly referring to as a entrepreneur gap year, which by entrepreneur gap year, I did not mean that I wasn’t working or anything like that. It just meant that I was kind of taking the year off of expansion.

Like, I didn’t wanna add on a bunch of new things, not create a new product. I wasn’t coming out with a book this year because I came out with one last year. I wasn’t really trying to, like, growth hack or do any of that stuff and honestly, going into this year, I kind of expected and thought it would be reasonable if my business just slowed down a bit. At the very least, if it didn’t grow.

Like, that seemed realistic to me. And, you know, I recognize that I’m very fortunate that I’m able to make that decision, like that that’s something I was even able to do after 10 years of really busting my butt and growing this business and saving. I save like crazy, and I don’t spend a lot in the business, so I have the capital to do it and to take breaks, which I’m very fortunate But at the same time, I, I honestly did think I was signing up for slowing down financially. And what I really didn’t expect, and which has been one of the biggest, like, twists and feels like kind of egg on my face for this year, is that, yes, I slowed down, probably not as much as I thought. Mm, probably, yes, probably not as much as I thought at all. But I, I did slow down. I definitely have held to the, like, I haven’t created new products, you know, I haven’t done all that kind of stuff.

There have been a lot of things behind the scenes that I actually have said no to, even if maybe from your perspective, it looks like I’m saying yes to everything ’cause you see me out and about doing things. But there’s been a lot that I’ve said no to and by doing so much less and saying no more, I didn’t expect what ended up happening. So we’ll talk about it throughout this episode.

Now, the title of today’s episode is If I Started My Business Today, I’d Ignore My Own Advice: Here’s What I Learned From $9 Million, over $9 Million in Sales. And this is actually not the first time I’ve answered this question or kind of phrased, uh, or that I’ve framed an episode this way.

I’ve actually answered this question twice on the show before, and if you’ve heard any of those episodes, I’d like to go and take it back.

Okay, so a quick recap, all the way back in 2022, episode number 28, which, like, to me just sounds so funny. I’m almost on episode 300. I can’t believe I had an episode 28, but you gotta start somewhere. But episode 28 in 2022 and episode 186 in 2024, I talked about what I would do differently, how I’d start over, how I’d approach social media today, that kind of stuff.

And the gist of those episodes, for those of you who don’t want to go back and listen, or, you know, for the few of you who don’t remember off the top of your head what I said in episode 28, like, how could you not? But basically, I talked about creating a lot, right? I was in my… I would call it, like, my creation phase.

I was creating a ton of content. If you think I create a lot of content now, you should’ve seen me then. I was a creation, content creation monster. And I, I would’ve given you the advice to go deep, but on fewer platforms, right? Like, not to spread yourself so thin. And I also gave the advice to practice your voice on social, that you should really be showing up there and testing what works.

And like always, I was happy to see when I went back and reviewed these episodes, that I was still preaching back then, in 2022 and ’24, that there is no secret formula, that what works for one person might not work for you, or just because something does work for everybody doesn’t mean you have to do it if you don’t like it or it doesn’t feel right to you. So, like, I was still preaching that, which I would also, again, tell you today.

Speaking of what I would tell you today, here’s what I would keep about what I’ve always recommended to people, what I’ve recommended to people in the past. If I started my business today, this is what I would essentially keep in place as the same as what I did when I started.

Keep in mind, for those of you who might be new here, I used to be a corporate lawyer, so I graduated from law school in 2012. I worked in corporate law for over five years, and when I left, I actually did not start this business right away. I started a health coaching business right away, and I was sitting there in my corporate job planning my exit, my 9:00 to 5:00 exit, beyond… it was really like a 7:00 to 7:00, but still. And I was, I was thinking about what to do, and of course there was all the practical stuff of like, you know, I saved up money, and I budgeted, and I started setting aside some time, and money, and effort towards my new business. But I was also trying to figure out and kinda get my legs under me as to like, what do I need to do to market this new business, right?

And I was out there doing everything. I was posting everything, being everywhere all at once. If you think social media’s loud now, I thought it was pretty busy back then, just in a very different way. And so I was doing all the things. And I just mention that because sometimes there’s a, a want or a desire to skip this part, and I guess I’m just sharing that it’s normal to go back, just like how you look at photos of yourself in high school, and you see, you know, like clothes, and you giggle at yourself that you’re like, “Oh, I would never wear that now,” or, “I would never do this now.”

Like, I think we all go through that same awkward stage in our businesses as well, and it’s perfectly normal. And honestly, I think it’s kind of part of the required process.

So all that to say, when I got started and, like, the thing that I would still tell people who are getting started is that I still think that there is no secret formula. I think that is very true. I don’t think there’s a cookie cutter or one cut- one right way to grow your business online. I think that there are many, many ways.

And in fact, I think that just following what everybody else is doing can be quite limiting. As I always say, you know, if you see somebody online doing something that’s successful, I want you to treat that more as an example and not a box, right? So because you can box yourself in and limit yourself if you see everybody else doing something, and you just keep replicating that.

The only reason that my business is successful today, and this is why I would continue to recommend to you that there is no secret formula or one way of doing this, is that when I started eventually my legal business a year later after I left the law, and I had started a health coaching practice, and I realized that that wasn’t my thing, and I wanted to start this legal templates and education company.

The thing that really saved me and that made this business so successful was that I looked at the examples of what people were already doing in the legal space in this industry and just said, “Cool, I see what they’re doing. I’m gonna go this direction.

And I think what happens so often, and I understand the temptation, is that when you’re starting out, you just look at other people who are successful, and then you think that that’s the rubric, and you don’t just treat them as a, as an example.

I actually think that the secret and, like, hidden success lies in what people who are successful are not doing, if that makes sense. I think you have to look at what successful people are not doing and say, “There’s the hole. That’s what I’m gonna go do. That’s how my business is going to answer this. This is how I’m going to be uniquely different than these other people.

And I’m so glad that there are other people out there doing what it, they’re doing. It means that there’s demand, there’s proof of concept, but let’s go in a different direction.” And so I would continue to recommend that to you today, to be unique, to be original, and that, you know, really enforcing this idea that there is no secret formula.

Of course, I would still recommend to you that you should focus on fewer platforms, but to be more prolific on the platform that you do end up choosing, right? So if there’s one platform in particular that speaks to you, whether that’s YouTube or Instagram or Substack or wherever else, I would just recommend really pouring yourself onto that platform versus trying to post and repost and reshare and chop up content and be everywhere.

My recommendation stays the same, but this advice is definitely impacted by the fact that today, unlike when I started, you’re now using tools like AI tools that can take a single podcast episode like this one and then chop it up and make it into posts everywhere and all that kind of stuff.

Now, the way that I approach this is that I, I have my kind of cornerstone piece of content, like the, the podcast, for example, that you’re listening to, On Your Terms®. That’s my main thing, like, this is what I wanna focus on. This is what I do. This is the podcast episode.

Of course, yes, I would love to use modern tools and technology to then take this episode, take the transcript, and we can chop it up, and we can make it into some different posts elsewhere.

Or, you know, we can grab video clips for the social team, and then they can post it on social, or they’ll grab an audio thing and throw it over B-roll and make it into an Instagram reel. Like, that’s great, and that’s a great way to utilize, technology, and maybe they turn it into, like, a LinkedIn post or something like this.

The point is, like, LinkedIn, for example, is not my focus. There’s nothing against LinkedIn. LinkedIn works incredibly for a lot of people. I am not focused on it. So that’s why it’s like the podcast is my focus, and if we chop it up and we post things elsewhere or we utilize this content to create content for other platforms, I see that as a bonus, like a cherry on top, not really where I’m focused.

It’s more about just maybe being present on all of those platforms, but I’m not pouring any energy into them at all, and I then can’t judge myself at all for how my content’s performing on those platforms, right? So I can’t go onto LinkedIn and be like, “Oh, no one’s liking my stuff.” It’s like, well, I’m not trying at all on LinkedIn.

I’m still a big believer as well in experimentation and using your voice on social media or wherever you’re choosing to create content. I mean, this has only gotten more and more important. I was in a meeting the other day where someone was asking me about creating a newsletter that was sort of, uh, I would call it more like infographic style. And the thing that I brought up was about how in today’s world when people talk about AI and what they’re concerned about, we don’t need more information.

We really need more differentiation. We need people to be unique. I need your voice. I need your stories, people. Like, I need to know about the funny thing that happened to you at that concert, or the lady you saw at the grocery store, or like whatever it is. That’s what I wanna hear about because I can spot AI slop from a million miles away, and I can spot just information dumps, right?

Like, we don’t… None of us… I mean, do you need more information? No. Right? Even if I’m sharing information here, it’s information followed by my personal experience and my analysis of, you know, what I see going on and what’s working for me in my business ’cause I’m a real human running a human-based business.

So I would keep practicing on social media. In fact, I would probably argue that these days it’s more important than ever that you let your you know, freak flag fly, for, for lack of a better term, because I think that’s what’s going to allow people to see your humanness, and unfortunately, it’s like something right now we have to wear as a badge of honor.

Okay, so those are a few of the things I would keep, but what would I reverse on the advice that I used to give you about starting an online business and, and starting your marketing and building an audience?

Well, I would say that 2016, 2017 me, when I was first starting out, was very social media first. I mean, it was kind of the heyday of especially platforms like Instagram. It was where everybody was going to build an audience. I really bought into the idea that if you had a big audience, you not only were, like, probably a better person, even though I wouldn’t have thought that out loud, that’s probably what I thought internally, and I also thought that that would make my business instantly successful or would, like, seal the success of my business.

If I had a lot of followers, then I have a lot of people to buy from me. I also… You know, I’ve been very open about the fact that pretty much from the start of when I, when I started my business, I had wanted to write a book, and I was convinced that if you just had a big social following, not only would you get a book deal, but then your book would just sell like hotcakes.

Well, now I know that pretty much none of that is true, but also knowing what I know about mental health now and how social media is impacting, I, I think all of us, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll speak for myself, how it impacts me and a lot of my friends, um, I wouldn’t recommend a social-first strategy, but I also wouldn’t even recommend a social-first strategy, because of the lack of contact with the audience that you build there.

I felt like, and a lot of people around my, my, like, entrepreneurship age, like the 2016 crew of us, which there seems to be a lot, a lot of people started at that time, a lot of us are really frustrated because we’re like, well, back then, you know, someone followed you on social media, they saw your stuff.

Well, now somebody follows you on social and it doesn’t really mean anything, and they probably won’t see it. It might mean they see it even less.

I always think it’s really funny that when people buy from me, they always w- write to me afterwards and they’re like, “After I bought from you, then I got, started getting served all your competitors or like a s- a certain competitor’s, ads.

And like by the way, her ads look exactly like yours, and she’s like ripping off your stuff.” And I’m like, “Oh, okay. I don’t know. I don’t really care, but also thanks.” But I, I think it’s really funny that, you know, I’ve spent so much of my time, money, and energy on that platform, and I literally pay multi high five figures per month to run ads there, and they are turning around and serving my customer, someone who’s already paid me money for my product, they’re serving my customer ads, right?

So it’s like it’s messed up. That’s their prerogative and that’s how they make their money, but I don’t need to continue to build my house on r- not only rented land, but like such messed up land.

Now I would definitely recommend, uh, focusing on building an audience-first business versus a social media platform-based, um, business. And the audience can exist wherever you want. So I think that now there are better tools available to people. Like, I think Substack is a great place to build an audience, especially because there’s discovery tools available there.

I have a really popular episode from this year on how I got my first 1,000, subscribers on Substack, which I’ll link below. But yeah, you could do that. You could start a podcast or a YouTube channel. And of course, you still could build a social media platform, it’s just that I would focus my attention.. If I could go back and talk to myself 10 years ago, I would say, “Don’t fuss so much about how many people are here. Just get these people, like transfer these people over to your email list, because then your email list is going to be not only huge, but you’re going to have so much better access to people.”

And so I’m very, very happy and proud to report that my email list is actually bigger than my social following now. Um, so that’s really great, right? So that’s why I’m, I’m really focused on, like, g- let’s get these people out of the boat, social media being the boat, and, like, let’s get them onto dry land, which dry land is the email list, and, like, I need to transfer people over there as fast as I can.

I think that’s only going to become more and more important as, you know, AI is… Like, whatever’s happening with AI on social media. , To be quite honest with you, I have not consumed anything on social media since early July, so I don’t know, I, I don’t know, like, the day-to-day. It’s kind of funny when I talk to my friends and they tell me what’s going on on social media.

They’re telling me that there is a lot of AI stuff. They’re seeing a lot of AI-generated content. And also it feels like everyone in our industry is just talking about AI. So it’s really annoying, I find, and I’m personally just frankly, like, very sick of talking about it. I’m, like, fed up talking about AI as much as I know we have to, I guess, talk about it.

Um, but I just feel like it’s kind of an insurance policy for the future to focus on getting people to somewhere where you’re actually going to be able to reach them. There’s also great platforms like Substack, like I mentioned, but you can create a paid community there. Obviously, platforms like Patreon are great with same thing, like you could create a private podcast there.

You could have extra bonus exclusive content for your podcast listeners. There are many more ways to create revenue streams, and I think to start training your audience earlier on getting used to paying for your content. That is something I would reverse and something I would’ve done earlier, is that I would’ve gotten more comfortable with actually getting paid for what I talk about.

I came up in an era of a lot of educational free content, and everybody can get free content now from either Google, ChatGPT, Claude, whatever else you’re using, and n- you- that’s not really where your value exists anyway. You’re not just an information machine. You’re an information synthesizer, and also you’re somebody who can break things down in an easy way. You’re going to be the person that lends a listening ear, to your customer. You’re going to solve their problems. You’re gonna use your expertise to be able to see through the matrix and know what’s really going on.

So you’re going to offer a lot more than that, and I wish I would’ve started a paid tier of, like, a paid community, something else that I would’ve had to really get people used to, like, “Hey, what I’m saying is valuable. I’ve worked really hard for this. I’ve paid,” you know, in my case, “hundreds of thousands of dollars for a degree that’s allowed me to talk about this thing.

Now I’m 10 years into a business that I’ve paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to invest in my business to help you, then tell you what I’m talking about.” So I wish I would’ve turned it around and created that earlier.

The other thing I would reverse is instead of telling you to like post everywhere and create so much and do all that, is that I would tell you to do more of what I’m doing now, which is to focus on the bigger picture.

I realize now looking back, and something I would do very differently if I started over, that it’s really easy when you get started to just fall into the trap of a lot of, like, minute tasks and these little things, like little tools and whatever on social media platforms that end up taking up a ton of your time, but actually don’t yield any results.

I would imagine if you slowed down and looked around at what you’re doing day to day and looked for the data to back up what you’re doing to see if it’s even working, you would realize either that the data shows you that whatever you’re doing is not working or it’s not worth it, right? Or you would realize there’s actually no data, um, for some of these things.

And in some cases that might be fine and might still work, but in others it doesn’t. So let’s give an example. So when I started in 2016, one of the most popular things to do was to go on Instagram Stories and do a lot of educational teaching, spend a lot of time in Instagram Stories crafting the perfect stories, teaching, talking to people, sh- taking people for your whole day, doing so much, right?

And this took up a lot of time. Fast-forward 10 years and my relationship to Instagram Stories has really changed. I, l- before I got off of social media this summer, um, and really let the team just kind of run the account, I, I was like, “Okay, I’ll post a couple of times a week. Sometimes it’s personal, sometimes I’ll do a call to action to business.”

Sometimes I would get on there and do face-to-camera video, but it was one of those things I was spending a lot of time doing. And it wasn’t just the time that I actually spent on Instagram Stories actually physically posting, which was still a lot. It was even the time, the mental time and the mental band- mental bandwidth it ended up taking up day to day as I would be out and about being like, “Oh, I have to capture this for stories. Oh, I have to remember this video. Oh, this would be a good thing to talk about today.” And I didn’t realize until I stopped doing it, not only that it wasn’t really that helpful, and I was making it really important in my mind, but the data didn’t back me up on that, but I also just didn’t realize how much it was zapping me of energy to do other things that were more important that would take me even less time that had a way bigger impact.

So these days I’m focusing on bigger picture and I’m doing fewer but bigger tasks, I would say. So I’m focusing on my weekly newsletter, Sam’s Sidebar. It’s the newsletter that goes out to almost 70,000 of your online entrepreneur friends every single Tuesday. If you don’t get it yet, make sure you go and subscribe down below. It’s free.

I’m recording this podcast. I’m writing on my Substack. If you don’t subscribe to that, also free. I’ll, he’ll include the link down below. And then outside those three main pieces of content, my newsletter, this podcast, and the Substack, I’m then responsible for, you know, here and there I have batch days where I record all of my content for social media or other little blips of content I need for, for various, like, miscellaneous things.

And then a lot of my time is actually just spent looking deep at big picture marketing strategy, pitching myself for podcast interviews, spending a lot of time writing, um, obviously writing the content that I am, but I’m also just trying to improve my skills as a writer, ’cause I want to continue to write more books and it’s just given me the white space I needed to zoom out and be like, “Oh, if I just do these things, like this actually works a lot better than when I was doing like a million little things,” because a lot of those things actually weren’t moving the needle.

You also have to come to this point, it’s, it’s hard for me still, admittedly, but you have to come to this point sometime that you accept the consequences of something you give up for the greater consequence that it might have in your life or your business.

So Oliver Burkeman talks about this in Meditations for Mortals, actually. I love that book, and you know, he talks about how sometimes it’s just about us accepting that there might be consequences for dropping something that is not serving us. So even in my Instagram stories example, I would get really good signups for my newsletter through Instagram stories.

Not as many as I would through a post or as I do through Facebook ads or other, you know, things that I do, this podcast, you know, other things that have more impact, being a guest on somebody else’s podcast, right? I’m gonna get a lot more signups during those methods. But it was really easy for me at first to look at the data and be like, “But see?

Like 12 people signed up for my newsletter through the story that I posted yesterday.” But it- you get to this point where you say, “If I didn’t have to do the stories, period,” right? And I’m just using stories as an example. You can like insert whatever your annoying task is here. But if I didn’t have to do stories, period, and yes, I gave up those 12 subscribers or 100 subscribers or however many subscribers it is per, per thing or per week of me doing this, is it still worth it?

Do I still get more subscribers doing the other things? Which the answer in my case is yes. Or even like, even if I don’t get those subscribers elsewhere, is it helpful for my mental health? Does it give me the energy that I need to go out and do the other things that have more of an impact? And the answer was just like yes across the board.

So I wanna say this too is like it’s not always about just dropping things that have no impact. Sometimes it’s dropping things that have an impact, but you’re willing to take those consequences because it serves the greater purpose.

Okay, now the last thing I would reverse of what I would do differently if I started my business today is that I used to talk about pace in terms of output. Like post a lot, post frequently, post everywhere, have a podcast, and an this and that, and this and that. Like, I would have a lot of volume, right?

But nowadays, when I talk about pace, I would say that I’m talking about it more from a perspective of reactivity.

Now, this is certainly not required, but what I would say someone would need to do nowadays to be successful in business, and most certainly on social media, is that you have to be much more on the ball about, like, what is happening right now.

You essentially have to be in the conversation. You have to be reacting to what’s going on, whether it’s in the news, or in trends, or in your industry, or something that you just heard another creator say that you totally disagree with or you totally agree with, or you see something taking off that’s an example of what you talk about and teach your customers. Like, whatever it is, it has to be much more timely nowadays than when I created content.

The content that’s doing the best for me right now is the content where I’m jumping into a conversation about something with AI, or privacy, or a lawsuit trend, or something I saw in the news, or something that happened to another creator that I’m then reacting to.

It’s a lot more timely. Now, the downside of that is obvious, which is that a little frenetic to be creating content on the fly or kind of being like, it’s like you’re on call. You’re like an on-call content creator, and that can be a little exhausting. But I guess on the flip side, it’s also gotten me away from having to batch and create so much content ahead of time.

So I feel like I’m creating, like, less content upfront, but I do kind of have to be ready… I mean, have to be as in quotes. Like, I can just say no if I want to, again, accepting the consequences that I just miss out on that trend and I miss out on whatever success may or may not have come from that, and that’s fine, and sometimes I make that choice, and sometimes I don’t. But if you, you know, want to get on it, you can, but I, I think that’s kind of the balance nowadays versus how it used to be.

And you wanna know one thing that I did from the start and that I recommend everybody does from the start that I would most certainly recommend that you do today, whether you’re doing this in 2026 or beyond, is starting your business properly. And that is why on October 19th, I am bringing back my live legal workshop, my free live legal workshop for the very last time this year it’s called “How to Legally Protect and Grow Your Online Business Before 2026 Ends”. And like I said, it’ll be the last time I offer it live this year. It’ll be live on Monday, October 19th, but here’s the thing. You need to sign up for it starting on Monday, October 5th.

So doors are going to open for free registration for my last live legal class on Monday, October 5th, and seats fill up so fast. So make sure that you get my free weekly email, Sam’s Sidebar. You can click the link down in the show notes below to make sure you get my email every single week, because those are the people that are going to get first dibs to sign up for my last free live legal class of the entire year. And I would definitely recommend legally protecting your business now more than ever with all the stuff that’s going on between everything happening with AI, protecting your privacy as an online creator.

I’m really freaked out about a lot of what I see happening online. I’m also freaked out about some of the AI laws that I know that are coming down the pipe, as well as the ADA website lawsuits that continue to unfortunately trend in our industry. And that’s why in this live legal workshop that I’m hosting on Oc- on October 19th, I’m actually going to recap everything that’s going on in the online business industry right now, what you need to know about it, what you need to do about it, what stuff you can just forget and not worry about anymore.

But I’m gonna do a little state of the online business industry for you in that free live legal workshop. Make sure you sign up even if you can’t make it live, because that’s how you’ll get the replay. The only way to get the replay is to sign up for this free training.

So like I said, doors will open on Monday, October 5th, for my October 19th training. You can get my free weekly emails now to make sure that you don’t miss it when that registration window opens on October 5th.

With that, thank you so much for listening. I’m so happy to be back. Um, and I am freaking out about my episode that you’re gonna get next week, because next week I am going to be sharing and recapping and giving you all the dirt I’m allowed to give you legally from something I’m going to in a couple of days with, like, the top New York Times bestselling authors in the world.

I’m not sure how I got included in this. I feel so lucky to get to go. The people on this list, you guys, crazy. Crazy, crazy, crazy. I’m trying not to freak out about it. I am so excited to go to it this week, but that’s why next week you will get to hear my recap that I’m going to do live from Kit Studios in New York City right after this incredible, incredible elite mastermind that I got invited to attend.

I just cannot wait to share everything that I’m, like I said, everything I’m legally allowed to share with you, um, based on whatever they tell us, I will share with you. So you have that coming for you next week, and make sure you get on the Sam’s Sidebar list so you know when doors open for my last live free legal training of the year. With that, thank you so much for being here. It’s so good to be back. I’ll talk to you soon.

Thanks so much for listening to the On Your Terms® podcast. Make sure to follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. You can also check out all of our podcast episodes, show notes, links, and more at samvanderwielen.com/podcast. You can learn more about legally protecting your business and take my free legal workshop, Five Steps To Legally Protect and Grow Your Online Business at Samvanderwielen.com and to stay connected and follow along, follow me on Instagram at samvanderwielen and send me a DM to say hi.