A teenage job as a courier with vague instructions and no GPS taught the host to problem-solve without escalating every issue. This directly mirrors the founder's reality of needing to make progress without perfect clarity, treating it as a feature, not a bug, of the role.
Turn your day job into a free MBA by seeking out colleagues in functions like finance, operations, and support. Asking how their jobs work—from purchase orders to customer collections—provides a holistic business understanding that makes you a more prepared and less intimidated founder.
While driving as a courier, the host listened to audiobooks on management and finance long before needing those skills. This early, broad "just-in-case" learning—as opposed to "just-in-time"—installs critical mental models that provide a foundation for future, more specific challenges.
Intentionally raising your hand to join the hiring process at your day job provides critical "reps" in evaluating, hiring, and firing. This is a founder's superpower that's difficult to learn without direct experience, and a corporate role provides a safe environment to build this muscle.
Working as a developer reveals the spectrum between sloppy work and over-engineered "gold plating." Learning to judge the appropriate level of quality based on context (e.g., five internal users vs. 10,000 public users) is a vital skill for founders operating with finite time and resources.
Before being involved in interviews, you can learn to hire by observing which coworkers you collaborate with best. This trains you to value traits like coachability and desire to improve over raw skill, honing your ability to evaluate candidates before you're responsible for building a team.