Not my job. I did it anyway.

Yes, the photo is real: I am cutting another entrepreneur's hair. (Thank you, Anna, for convincing me I could trust myself.) How that came about is a story best told over a beer. What it stands for is the lesson.

Nobody warned me

Nobody warned me how much of being a founder is doing things you have never done before. I thought my job was product and vision: big decisions, big picture. Then reality handed me the rest – contracts I barely understood, the pitch, the website, the furniture, sales calls, support tickets, payroll, taking out the trash.

It wasn't a distraction. It was the education.

Here is what I got wrong at first: I treated all of it as a distraction from the real work, something to get past as fast as possible. It wasn't a distraction. It was the education.

Doing every job once, even badly, taught me what good looks like, how long things really take, and what to hand off later – and to whom. You can't lead work you have never touched.

It did something else, too: it kept my ego in check. The company doesn't care what you studied or what your title says. It cares what gets done.

What I tell founders today

Now that I also act as a sparring partner for founders, this is one of the most important things I look for. Not the perfect CV, but the willingness to get your hands dirty. So yes, sometimes that means cutting hair.

What is the strangest thing building a company made you do?