If you have an existing business, you’ll eventually want to grow it. After all, when you grow your business, you can make more profit. But people often confuse that mindset.

About a year ago, we received a call at our family business from someone who owns a laundry company. My family business supplies professional laundry equipment, and the person who called us needed a spare part.

My father said, “I’m visiting one of our clients tomorrow who’s close to you. I can’t make any promises, but I can stop by and see whether I can help.”

When he hung up the phone, my father said he knew exactly what the problem was, and that he was going to solve the problem for the person who called.

The following day, my dad stops by the person’s shop, looks at the machine, and says, “I’ll be right back.” He goes to his car, grabs a small electrical component, and hands it to the laundry owner.

“Here you go. This should solve your problem.”

The person is surprised, and says, “Wow, that’s amazing. What do I owe you?”

“Consider this as a service. We’re in business to help our customers, and in return, our customers buy all of their machinery and parts from us.”

People often jump right into all sorts of tactics when they start an online business. These are common things a new entrepreneur often does:

• Brainstorming branding ideas
• Starting a website
• Increasing followers on social media
• Creating a logo

There are so many tools for entrepreneurs nowadays that choosing the right platform already requires work.

These things are important, but they’re not what you want to focus on first.

Instead, focus on finding your first three paying customers. And preferably, these customers shouldn’t be close friends or family who only bought to support you.

Why three? Three is a good number because it’s not too many that you need to overthink things – which causes its own problems when you’re starting out. But it’s also not too little that you didn’t get enough real-world validation.

The keyword there is “paying customer.”

You can ask people, “will you buy X?” all the time. And they can tell you, “Yeah, sure, I’d buy that.” But you won’t know for sure until they actually do.

The best indicator of real-world demand is when people are willing to spend their hard-earned money on your product or service. When people are happy to pay you money for something; that’s how you know you’re doing something they truly want.

A while back I stumbled upon a Twitter post with a list of harsh writing advice. I can’t recall what the advice was, but I thought to myself, “I could do one of those on entrepreneurship.”

Building a business is hard work.

Data from Fundera says that 70% of small businesses fail by their 10th year.¹Source: Entrepreneur

When I started my first business in 2010, I was blessed to work with my father and one of his business mentors. I didn’t have to figure a lot of things out on my own, which drastically improved my learning curve.

So every time I run into young and inexperienced entrepreneurs who don’t have any mentors around them, I’m willing to help if they want. This post serves that purpose.

These are the tougher lessons about entrepreneurship that most people are not aware of when they start. If you’re appalled by these things, it’s probably not for you. But if you don’t mind them, you will likely do well.