Published February 8, 2025 · Updated August 31, 2026

Last night, I was thinking about how building my first company was radically different from what we’re doing now at Valley - and it’s not just because I was in high school the first time. One was built in the best of times, and one was built in the hardest.

Here’s what I learned about the difference between building organizations and building teams.

My favorite finds of the week.

• Warm intro template to grow your pipeline (link)

• Generate $440k with automated 2-touch warm outreach in 30 days (link)

• Alex Hormozi’s secret to building a $100m sales team (link)

• Key to a valuable lead magnet people can’t refuse (link)

• Tools to generate 200+ demo calls every month (link)

  
  

The Science vs. The Art

Organizations are a science - a structured machine that executes with remarkable focus and speed. 

Teams are an art - an expression of empathy, emotion, relationships, and leadership.

Here’s what I’ve learned about both after building and selling two companies before turning 22:

Good Times = Organization Building

In good times, everything feels easier:

• Money flows freely

• Hiring is straightforward

• Growth feels inevitable

• Processes seem to work perfectly

This is when most founders focus on building the organization - the systems, the processes, the scalable machine.

I did this with my first appointment-setting agency. We grew to over 100 people across the world, focused on scaling processes and systems.

But here’s what I learned: Organizations built in good times often crack under pressure.

Bad Times = Team Building

The real magic happens in the tough times:

• When you’re pivoting your entire business

• When the market turns against you

• When you have to make hard decisions fast

• When traditional playbooks stop working

This is when you discover who’s truly on your team. At Valley, we’ve built differently. We look for specific traits:

1. Give time to people with skill gaps, not behavior gaps

You can teach someone how to use a new tool or write better cold emails. You can’t teach someone to have work ethic or integrity. When I built my first appointment-setting agency, I spent months trying to “fix” people’s attitudes - it never worked, and it cost us valuable time, momentum, and morale.

2. A players only

A bird in hand isn’t always better than two in the bush (or however that phrase goes?) when it comes to people. If someone isn’t clearly an A player, move on immediately. Full disclosure, this one took me a while to learn and then put into practice. It is not easy.

3. Find creators first, let them hire executors

99/100 people are executors - find the 1/100 who are creators for early stage. In my early days, I made the mistake of hiring too many executors too quickly - people who could follow processes but couldn’t build them. What I’ve learned is that early-stage success depends entirely on finding those rare creators who can build something from nothing, then letting them build their own teams of executors around them.

► Reading is step one; step two is a free 7-day Valley trial. The research depth is visible in draft one.