The Biggest Lie in Entrepreneurship Is That You Have to Pick One Thing
Most startup advice tells you to go deep on a single idea, protect your focus, and ignore everything else. I’ve built three bootstrapped companies at the same time — and the reason it works has nothing to do with hustle.
I recently shared the full story with Indie Hackers, breaking down the system behind all three — AliveDevOps, Pabs Marketing, and Pabs Entertainment. It’s one of the most honest things I’ve written about how I actually operate.
The moment that changed everything
I lost six figures of investor capital on my first major venture. Then I was scammed out of another six figures on top of that. What kept me alive wasn’t a pivot or a relaunch. It was a quiet services business I’d been running on the side — lean, simple, and generating a 20% margin while everything else was collapsing. That business became my foundation. The lesson became my rule: stay small long enough to become big enough.
Why three companies share one operating system
DevOps infrastructure, digital marketing, and live event production look nothing alike. But underneath each one, the discipline is identical — lean teams, automation from day one, global talent, and a weekly payroll rhythm I run personally, every Monday without exception. Golf taught me this without me realizing it. You don’t reinvent your preparation for every tournament. You bring the same mental framework to every round. What changes is the course.
The payroll habit nobody talks about
Most founders delegate payroll immediately. I’ve kept it intentional. Every Monday, I personally review and send every employee’s payment across all three companies. It keeps me financially connected to each entity I run. And it tells the team something no HR system can replicate: their work is seen.
Automation explained through a bakery in Spain
My mother runs a bakery. Every night, she manually built a production sheet so the factory team knew what to bake the next morning — thirty minutes of tedious, error-prone work. We built her custom software that reads the orders and prints a ready-to-go list automatically. One click. That’s what operational automation actually means at the ground level.
If you’ve ever wondered how to run multiple businesses without any of them breaking, this breakdown is the most direct answer I can give.
Read the full piece on Indie Hackers →
The foundation has to set before you add more floors.
