Jeremy Adams on the Hard Lessons of Building a Business

Most ambitious founders understand it takes a lot of work to launch a sustainable business. But there’s a difference between understanding the cost on the surface and experiencing it firsthand.

Jeremy Adams falls firmly in the camp of the latter. He spent the early years of his adulthood waiting tables and trying to pay his bills. He was ambitious, but that on its own wasn’t enough. Adams knew he had to put in the work if he wanted to get ahead — and he did.

Adams built multiple businesses in his 20s and even earned Forbes 30 Under 30 recognition. Today, he’s in his mid-30s and is the founder of Unicorn Marketers, a bespoke agency that connects companies with vetted growth marketers who specialize in paid advertising and customer acquisition.

Looking back on his entrepreneurial journey, Adams has found that he measures success much differently than he used to. Here are three takeaways from Adams’ experiences on what it takes to build a business — and why it’s still worthwhile.

1. Don’t Try to Shortcut What Hard Work Can Accomplish

We live in an era where there are financial success stories everywhere. According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. added 1,200 new millionaires per day in 2025. Stories of crypto millionaires and investors benefiting from rising markets can make rapid wealth creation seem increasingly attainable. Soaring markets are making everyone feel flush with cash.

Amid the excitement around making money in a hot market, though, Adams emphasizes that building long-term wealth through entrepreneurship requires sustained effort. No matter what your friend tells you about the latest meme coin or stock option, those short-term gains are nice, but they don’t replace what real work creates.

Adams learned about the power of compound effort early and decided that the traditional educational path probably wasn’t for him. By the time he reached his teens, Adams was already waiting tables — and not just for spending money. He was starting to calculate and understand the relationship between effort, performance, and income. This had a deep influence on his early work and shaped his entrepreneurial mindset as he started to think bigger.

“That gave me my first real taste of making money based on how hard I was willing to work,” Adams explained. It wasn’t just finding the quickest path to the biggest payoff. Adams connected the dots early on that hard work and strong performance could contribute to long-term financial success. Luck is always a factor. But founders who consistently put in the work may be better positioned to navigate challenges and build something that lasts.

2. Don’t Brag About Revenue When It’s a Paper Tiger

While Adams started tapping into his business potential in his 20s, one of the biggest transformations in the last decade has been how he measures that success in his businesses. One key metric that he has moved away from is obsessing over revenue.

“Revenue is important,” he said, “but it’s just one number. A big revenue number doesn’t automatically mean you built a great business.” On the contrary, impressive revenue figures can mask a business’s underlying financial weaknesses. But it takes experience to really understand the allure (and trap) that revenue can create.

Like many entrepreneurs, early in his career Adams loved watching revenue growth. He considered it the ultimate scoreboard. The bigger the number, the more successful the business appeared. But over time, he began to see how easily impressive sales figures could fail to translate into meaningful personal income — or even a satisfying experience running the company.

“In my 20s, I loved being able to tell people, ‘We did almost $10 million last year,’ even though my actual take-home was a tiny percentage of that,” Adams recalls. “Boy, was that an immature view of success.”

That realization came after years of navigating difficult partnerships, employee challenges, and leadership mistakes.. The truth is, there is a lot of constant pressure that comes with running a growing company, even if your take-home doesn’t reflect that stress. Adams believes more young entrepreneurs should understand this before chasing the impressive revenue figures — and the lavish lifestyles that are often celebrated alongside it on social media.

For Adams, the trap is how easily revenue growth can become the primary measure of success. If you set the goalposts as more revenue, you need to grow fast to get there. But the speed at which an enterprise expands doesn’t indicate long-term sustainability.

Rather than treating growth as an end in itself, Adams increasingly emphasizes the underlying economics of the business. Can a company generate consistent profits? Also, can it attract talented people? Can it support a leadership approach and lifestyle its founders actually enjoy? The disconnect between these healthy indicators and revenue forced Adams to reconsider what he was actually trying to build.

“Now I care much more about building businesses that we actually enjoy running,” he said. “We’re generating profitable cash flow, working with people we genuinely like, and creating something that can be successful for a long time.”

3. Expect Problems Even When Business Is Going Well

Revenue isn’t the only area where Adams’ early expectations about entrepreneurship differed from reality. Adams has found over the years that another key factor is the dichotomy between a hard day’s work and the fact that it doesn’t prevent problems from arising anyway.

Hard work can contribute to business growth, financial success, and professional recognition. But Adams says one of the most important lessons from his early entrepreneurial years had little to do with prestige or financial success. It was learning that building a business presents ongoing challenges, even when things are going well.

“There’s partner drama. Employees quit. Sometimes employees steal from you,” Adams recounts. “Things break. People disappoint you. You’re constantly dealing with problems you never expected to have.”

Some new founders approach entrepreneurship expecting periods of progress punctuated by occasional setbacks. Adams has come to understand that setbacks can occur frequently throughout an entrepreneur’s career. They change, but they don’t go away — and that’s not a bad thing.

For Adams, the answer wasn’t to try to eliminate problems altogether. It came from a perspective shift. Now, he sees setbacks as a positive and exciting exercise in solving problems. “If it were easy, everyone would do it,” he said. “I think a lot of people underestimate how much of entrepreneurship is simply being willing to deal with problems every single day without letting them knock you off course.”

At the same time, he emphasizes picking your battles. Today, he has learned to distinguish between problems worth solving and situations where moving on is the better decision. “My 20s were more about trying to make everything work,” he said. “My 30s have been more about recognizing that some things simply aren’t worth fixing.”

Great CEOs Don’t Have All the Answers

Jeremy Adams’ final leadership lesson centers on recognizing your own limitations. He summarized this in one statement: Great CEOs don’t have all the answers.

“I actually think the people around me appreciate and respect me more when I’m honest about how much I don’t know,” Adams concluded. “And I’ve realized I know very little, so I say ‘I don’t know’ all the time now.”

Putting in the hard work. Knowing the metrics that matter. Treating setbacks as an ongoing problem-solving practice. Exercising great leadership through empowerment and trust. These are lessons that can become more meaningful as leaders gain firsthand experience.

Adams’ experiences illustrate how an entrepreneur’s definition of success can evolve over time. His greatest takeaway? Building a business comes with challenges that don’t necessarily disappear as a company grows. But maintaining the right perspective, putting in the work, and approaching problems constructively can help entrepreneurs build businesses that offer more than financial rewards. It’s genuinely rewarding.