Author: John Hill

The national festival was three days away, and I had a problem. I had a stack of beautiful, freshly printed books from my new publishing house. I also had zero customers, zero marketing budget, and zero online presence. This was thirteen years ago, in 2012—a time before Instagram influencers were a big deal and when most small businesses still didn’t know how to use Facebook ads. My entire business depended on what I did in the next 72 hours. I felt a familiar knot of panic tighten in my stomach. Was this whole venture a massive mistake? That festival became…

Many founders believe that starting a business with a friend is the ultimate advantage. I did too—until it cost me both my company and my closest relationship. The hardest conversation of my life wasn’t with an angry client or a tough investor. It was with my friend, across a small table at the same café where, just a year earlier, we’d sketched our business plan on a napkin. “I can’t do this anymore,” he said, not meeting my eyes. “This isn’t what we agreed on.” My heart sank. He was my first business partner and one of my closest friends.…

It’s strange how something so fragile—your reputation—can take years to build, yet vanish in minutes. I learned this the hard way while running my independent bookstore and publishing imprint Wardoh Books. What follows isn’t theory. It’s what I lived through, and what I now hold as non-negotiable. Why Your Reputation Is Everything Think of someone you deeply trust—a mentor, a local shopkeeper, a creator whose work you rely on. Their credibility didn’t appear overnight. It was earned, one honest interaction at a time. The same is true for your business. Warren Buffett put it plainly: “It takes 20 years to…

Starting a business feels overwhelming, doesn’t it? I get it. When I first thought about launching my own venture, I kept waiting for the “perfect moment”—more money, better skills, the right connections. Spoiler alert: that moment never came. My first real “business move” wasn’t a grand launch or a brilliant pitch. It was a single, poorly designed flyer I created on a borrowed, slow laptop. This all happened back in 2010, while I was still working at the print shop, dreaming of one day starting Wardoh Books. This is the story of that flyer. The Decision: Starting Where I Was…

I can still picture the corner of my first office. In it sat a stack of books, gathering dust. They were my first published titles, and they weren’t selling. Across the room, our old printing machine was making a grinding sound again, a sure sign it was about to break down for the third time that month. By most traditional metrics, my new publishing house looked like a failure. I felt it in my gut every single day. The slow sales, the constant technical problems, and the cheap-looking book covers that I knew weren’t good enough. It would have been…

It was the worst week of my career. A major client, who accounted for nearly 40% of our revenue, had just pulled their contract in a cold, two-sentence email. I spent the night staring at spreadsheets, my heart pounding, trying to figure out how we would survive. I was panicking, convinced my business was about to collapse. And in the quiet of my apartment, in the middle of my 1 AM spiral, I found myself watching my cat, Hulury. She wasn’t panicking. She wasn’t staring at spreadsheets. She was just… being a cat. She stretched, chased a dust bunny, and…

So there I was at like 2:30 in the morning, lying under this ancient Xerox machine that we bought off Craigslist for $200, and I’m pretty sure I was crying. Or maybe laughing? Honestly, at that point, I couldn’t tell the difference anymore. My business partner had already bailed three months in. Said he “needed stability.” Can’t blame him—we hadn’t paid ourselves a dime. My girlfriend (now wife, somehow) was working double shifts at the hospital to cover our rent. And I was six months into what I thought would be this cool independent publishing company, with exactly $83 in…

The day I quit my steady job at the bookstore, I was terrified. For years, I had a reliable paycheck, a clear career path, and the support of my family and friends. But deep down, I always felt restless—a quiet voice kept saying, “You’re meant to build something of your own.” Walking away from that security felt like stepping off a cliff. I didn’t have a list of “entrepreneur traits” to reassure me. All I had was a gut feeling—and a lot of self-doubt. Looking back now, I see the signs were there all along. They weren’t in a textbook.…

The email landed in my inbox like a grenade. It was from a business partner—and a friend I’d launched a small publishing venture with. His words were sharp: “You’re changing everything we agreed on. This isn’t the company I signed up for.” He was right. I was changing things. Our initial plan—to publish a wide range of books, from fiction to cookbooks—was failing miserably. Our resources were stretched thin, our brand was confusing, and we were bleeding money. The data made it clear: we needed to pivot and focus on just one niche—classics and educational books. In his eyes, I…

I can still feel the sting of the email. It was from my very first client, As part of my new publishing services, I was also offering marketing help to local authors and businesses, like this small bakery. The email was short. “We’re just not seeing the results,” she wrote. “I think we’ll go back to the old way. Thanks for your effort.” My heart sank. It wasn’t just a rejection; it felt like a verdict. I felt like a total fraud. All the voices of the doubters I’d tried so hard to ignore came roaring back. “You’re crazy,” my…