I’ve Been an Entrepreneur for 10 Years. Here’s What Actually Matters (And What’s Total Bullshit).
I hope this post gave you a few lightbulb moments or at least a good laugh. If you want me to handle your operations so you can focus on the fun stuff, click here.
Author: Frane Cvitanic | Founder of Avensys, Fractional COO & Business Operations Consultant and Advisor
Published: November 20, 2025
Published: November 20, 2025
I ain’t a perfect man. I’m trying to do the best I can with what I have. (How to Be Free: A Proven Guide to Escaping Life's Hidden Prisons, by Shaka Senghor)
And after a decade of running businesses, teams, systems, and myself… here’s the truth:
Most of the advice you hear about entrepreneurship is noise.
Most of what actually moves the needle is painfully simple and inconvenient.
What follows isn’t motivational fluff or recycled LinkedIn wisdom.
It’s the hard-won set of systems, principles, habits and patterns I wish someone handed me on day one, the ones that consistently held up under real pressure.
Let’s get into it. 👇🏻
1. Your thinking is the real operating system - not your tools, not your strategy
You can copy someone’s framework, habits, routines, funnels, workflows - and still fail.
Why? 🤔
Because your thinking creates your experience.
- Change thinking → change outcome
- Event + same thinking → same pattern
- Event + new thinking → new trajectory
This isn’t philosophy. It’s pattern interruption.
I use a simple internal protocol:
- Pause
- Ask: Do I want to keep suffering?
- Understand the story I’m running
- Say: Thinking is the root cause
- Experience emotions without judgment
It sounds subtle.
It isn’t.
It’s the difference between:
- reacting vs. responding
- spiraling vs. correcting
- repeating the problem vs. solving the cause
Everything else - strategy, optimization, productivity - sits on top of this foundation.
2. Time is the only currency that can’t be refunded
I treat time like a billionaire treats capital (The Time Billionaire Concept, by Graham Duncan), because that’s what I am:
I have roughly one billion seconds of life left.
That fact completely reframed how I work.
Time management isn’t about calendars or routines. It’s about energy allocation.
I ask myself daily (kudos to James Clear):
- Where is my energy better spent - pushing harder or changing the environment?
- What am I doing fast that deserves patience?
- What am I delaying that would save me weeks if I did it now?
The wrong environment can waste years.
The right system can save decades.
3. Extreme Ownership is not heroic. It’s efficient.
This is the least glamorous but most practical truth:
100% of the problems in my business are my fault.
Not in a self-blame way.
In a diagnostic way.
Because when something is your fault/responsibility, you can fix it.
Ownership turns chaos into action:
- unclear expectations → clarify
- bad clients → disqualify better
- no progress → change the system
- overwhelm → tighten scope
- burnout → fix boundaries, not take vacations
It’s not moral. It’s mechanical.
Ownership = leverage.
4. Systems outperform motivation 100% of the time
I stopped relying on “trying harder” years ago.
I run my life and work through systems:
- ADD Framework (Actions, Decisions, Deadlines) for meetings
- Progressive Summarization to actually retain information
- Notion to keep everything visible and organized
- 1–3–1 Rule to force solution-oriented communication
- Empty Chair to keep the customer in the room
- Two-Pizza Rule to keep teams functional
- Pareto Principle to cut waste
- Parkinson’s Law to shorten timelines
- …and so much more…
Systems reduce friction.
Less friction = less overwhelm, more consistency, fewer mistakes.
Motivation is unreliable. Systems aren’t.
5. Discipline is not punishment. It’s alignment.
I don’t chase discipline for discipline’s sake.
I align discipline with things I like, not things I want.
- I may not want to train, but I like what training does to my mind.
- I may not want to write, but I like the clarity afterward.
- I may not want to wake up early, but I like the calm of morning.
This is how discipline becomes sustainable:
MIND > FEELINGS.
When discipline is tied to identity and desired outcomes, it stops being a fight.
6. Health isn’t optional. It’s the multiplier.
Nothing in business works if your brain is inflamed, your sleep sucks, your dopamine is shot, and your nervous system is fried.
My non-negotiables:
- At least 2L water/day
- Nutrition over stimulation
- Oura for sleep, HRV, readiness, cumulative stress and resilience
- Japan’s 80% eating rule
- Controlling dopamine (Opal, Airplane Mode, boundaries)
- “IDGAF muscle” training: cutting off people and inputs that drain energy
If your physiology is weak, your decision-making is weak.
If your decision-making is weak, your business is weak.
Health isn’t self-care. It’s strategy.
7. Most people fail because they refuse to ask better questions
Everybody focuses on "what to do."
I focus on:
- Who am I becoming?
- Can my current habits carry me to my future?
- What belief once protected me but now confines me?
- Am I defending my limitations or expanding my possibilities?
- What good did I do quietly today?
- What am I undervaluing right now?
These questions remove delusion.
They expose the bottlenecks you won’t admit.
They force alignment.
Better questions → better thinking → better decisions → better life.
Simple math.
8. Communication solves more problems than skill ever will
95% of problems I’ve seen across teams and companies weren’t about competence. They were about communication:
- unclear expectations
- assumptions instead of agreements
- roles not defined
- feedback delayed
- silence during uncertainty
- too much context or too little
Want to instantly stand out? Communicate:
- early
- clearly
- without drama
- without ego
You become the person everyone trusts, because you lower friction for everyone around you.
9. Social media wasn’t worth the price of admission
I’m not anti-social. I’m anti-time-waste.
I tried social media. It created distraction, comparison, FOMO, and mental noise.
Leaving it gave me:
- deeper relationships
- more focus
- cleaner thinking
- more peace
- more presence
I don’t need validation loops.
I need clarity.
I’m reachable by anyone who matters, just not through dopamine-driven platforms.
10. AI is not a shortcut. It’s a multiplier for people who already think well.
I don’t use AI to avoid thinking. I use it to expand thinking. (Thought Partner by Scott Galloway)
How I work with it:
- Ask for ideas, not finished answers
- Give deep context
- Make it run my problems through different personas
- Make it defend its reasoning
- Feed it my actual data (plans, budgets, strategies)
- Treat it like a partner, not a crutch
AI doesn’t replace judgment. It accelerates it.
11. The game truly changes when you accept this: You don’t have unlimited time
I track my life in seconds, not years.
A billion sounds like a lot. It isn’t.
Everything I do now must:
- increase clarity
- reduce friction
- improve health
- strengthen relationships
- expand capability
- compound over time
I don’t compromise on these.
I don’t need more things. I need better decisions.
The real summary of my decade
- Success doesn’t create well-being. Well-being produces success.
- Systems beat motivation.
- Reality is shaped by thinking, not circumstances.
- Ownership creates leverage.
- Health drives output.
- The quality of your questions determines the quality of your life.
- Most “risks” are exaggerated; most opportunities are underestimated.
- Focus is the ultimate competitive advantage.
- The most powerful productivity tool ever invented is the word “no.”
- Every day, you’re making deposits into your child’s memory bank. That matters more than revenue.
And above all:
I ain’t no perfect man. I’m trying to do the best that I can with what I have.
But if you refine your thinking, your systems, your environment, your questions, and your energy,
what you have becomes more than enough to build something meaningful.
what you have becomes more than enough to build something meaningful.
🤜🤛 Don't be a stranger. Let's drink a 15-minute virtual hot beverage - no strings attached. ☕