Jesse Wechter figured out the whole business at eight years old. He was at a Greek festival, his dad wouldn’t give him money for food, so he stormed off, grabbed a leaf off the ground by the gate, and sold it to a stranger for twenty bucks. He’d only asked for five. The lesson stuck: people will buy almost anything if you present it the right way.

It took him a while to turn that into a company. Jesse came back to Indianapolis after flipping cars in West Hollywood and bartending in Chicago, living with his mom, owing money, and unable to land a job in a brutal hiring market. He had the skills, including email marketing for healthcare and medical device companies and a stretch at Red Bull Media House, but no work. So he started building a logo and pulling leads off Google into an Excel spreadsheet, emailing over a hundred people a day. That became Wechter Media.

When Matt runs his standard question, the one about whether you had a strategic plan, six months of savings, and a clear read on what customers would pay, Jesse landed about where most founders do. No savings. A plan that wasn’t strategic or detailed. And a customer understanding he had to learn the hard way, after getting stiffed by two clients, one he nearly took to court and another who dumped the contract right before Christmas. The scramble to backfill all of it took about three years.

Then came the part a lot of founders recognize: trying to get stable too fast. Jesse hired three salespeople, bought a CRM, fed them 1,250 leads a month, and watched it sink him into a hole because the reps treated salary as the finish line. His takeaway is the difference between what you need and what you want. These days he only buys the thing when it actually makes sense.

The advice he keeps circling back to is the stuff nobody teaches you, mostly financial literacy. Running a business is not the same as running a household checkbook, and the IRS does not care how small you are. He pays for a bookkeeper and two CPAs now, and he sleeps fine. It’s the same answer Matt hears more than any other when he asks founders what they wish they’d known going in.

And if he could sit his 2019 self down before opening the doors, it’s one word: focus. Build the frame and the skeleton before the glamour muscles. Do it for yourself, not to impress a table full of friends. Celebrate the wins when you actually land a client, and don’t take the big loan and blow it.

Learn more about Jesse and Wechter Media at wechtermedia.com. 

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