Listen to your customers. I was doing stuff I found interesting even though it wasn't what my customers were asking for, and in doing so I've left a lot of mon

Listen to your customers. I was doing stuff I found interesting even though it wasn't what my customers were asking for, and in doing so I've left a lot of money on the table. This is being corrected now, my users have been screaming for me to add advertising for a while (strange, huh) and I'd been against it because I didn't think it was important and because I thought I had more pressing things to do (adding new features). But in the area I'm in (highly loyal niche community) most of the users are involved in cottage industries of their own and want the advertising to not only help ensure the sustainability of the community but also to give their products exposure and a springboard. Likewise users of the site have been asking for adverts so that they have a kind of slow beacon showing what new stuff has emerged that they might've missed in the ebb and flow of fast moving conversation. So the lesson I've learned is to quit holding an anti-advert bias and to listen to the users more. They really want adverts and they really want to give me money, and I should really let them do the latter ASAP. Another one would be to make larger pivots faster. I started the company to own the pet project and to use that to fund what I feel are larger more complex things. However, the pet project has £3k revenue per month with almost no effort (maybe a couple of hours per week), clearly it's the one with traction and I should be behind that 100% instead of mostly ignoring it. There's so much I could still do with the pet project and haven't been doing because I've been researching more complex things... this is dumb of me in the short term as I could be building the pet project into the main entity and sustaining a proper income from it. Both of these lessons lead to the same thing: Quit being blind about your realities. Stubbornness to only do the things you want to do, without listening to your users and customers, may be stopping you from actually do what you can do.