1) At the very beginning, I wish I had someone to help explain PAYE and NI and the way it mounts up and builds with every employee, being a start-up these costs have a massive effect from day 1, the trick to running a good business is to stop losing money. But HMRC make it very difficult if you are paying good salaries to hire good people. The costs cripple the business and make so many fail before they have even got started. 2) Getting customers to pay on time is an art in itself, don't bend over backwards to extend payment terms as the customer won't thank you for it in the long run, and it has a knock-on effect across the business with morale, stress, and causing doubt about if that customer is a good fit for the business. So don't be afraid to turn down work, as you are running a business not a charity. 3) Surround yourself with people smarter and better than you. This is a hard one as good people are not cheap, and neither should they be, but they are worth their weight in gold and more. My team are everything and I am blessed to be surrounded by such talented individuals that always deliver.

1. Set a relevant, clear and understandable mission for your business and communicate that regularly to your team (more often than you think). 2. Have objectives that relate to your mission and measure those every week, month, and quarter but understand that it isn't about hitting objectives that count, it's about learning why you did or didn't reach them and putting that learning into action. 3. Declare and live by your company values - don't paint them on the walls, paint them into your operating model and build them into how you decide what to do, who you expect people to do it and how you judge success.

1) Passion - Successful founders are often people who don't focus on money but instead are humble and passionate about their business. The money and success will come later. Someone who enjoys their work and is passionate won't view the hard work in the early days as a problem because they will be focused on their passion. 2) Goal Setting - It's vital for any successful founder to set short, medium and long-term goals. When setting goals its also important to put time aside from the day-to-day workload in order to push through other actions to achieve those goals. 3) Being Analytical - There's a saying 'if you can measure it, you can improve it'. In my view and experience successful founders are often those who track metrics and work on improving them whether it is for staff performance, revenue targets or website traffic.

The problem. If you can articulate it better than the people experiencing it can, they will subconsciously associate you with the solution.

I'm from the B2B SaaS world where we need to work closely with our clients to make sure they are getting maximum value from our platform - otherwise, they won't renew. Value means different things and doesn't necessarily equate to $$$$. At Ada, we're a HealthTech platform and we work with our partners to save them money but, more importantly, to help them deliver better health outcomes to their end-users. Find out what value means to your client and work together on a plan to deliver it.