I do have to say that he's talking about learning the ropes of your business, not 'time-wasters'. An example for me would be that we have one area of business

I do have to say that he's talking about learning the ropes of your business, not 'time-wasters'. An example for me would be that we have one area of business where we organize events. In order to attract attendees, we tried Google Ads, Facebook ads, email blasts, flyers in popular locations/stores, newsletter ads. None of it worked, or it barely worked. By year two we figured out that for our market, postal mailers worked like crazy. Sending a letter to the prospects home gave us super ROI. Do I wish I'd known that at the beginning? Yes. But it took going through all of those other methods to hit on the one that worked, which gave our company domain knowledge. This is really just a version of the business axiom 'Fail faster.'