Building High Rise Influence: The Business Lessons School Missed
When people ask what I’ve learned from building High Rise Influence (HRI), I don’t think about a class or a book. I think about the last few months of doing the work and getting real feedback from real clients.
I’ve learned more about business and communication in these past few months than I did in the years before—because this time the learning came with real stakes.
Here’s what’s stood out most, with examples straight from our experience.
Team Communication Is Learned on the Job
One of the best early lessons came from Jack Wendt. He told us how, when he was new to team email threads, he kept hitting “Reply” instead of “Reply All.” So only one person saw his response while everyone else waited for an update that never came.
It’s a simple mistake, but it shows what school doesn’t cover:
- How to communicate inside a fast-moving team.
- How small slip-ups slow everyone down.
- How quickly you have to adapt when other people depend on you.
You don’t get good at teamwork by reading about it. You get good at it by working with people who need you to be reliable.
School Zoom Calls Aren’t Client Calls
I mentioned in the video that we had Zoom during quarantine. But that was basically practice for showing up, not for leading.
On school calls:
- Cameras were off.
- Nobody was driving a result.
- You could be half-present and still “attend.”
Client calls in LSS and HRI are the opposite. We’re meeting with business owners who trust us with their online reputation. We’re helping them claim and improve their Google Knowledge Panels, clean up search results, and make sure their brand shows up the right way.
That has forced me to learn, fast:
- How to lead a call with a clear objective.
- How to ask the right questions instead of guessing.
- How to explain actions in plain language.
- How to follow up without being chased.
Setting Up a Company Teaches Business at a Real Level
While we’ve been building HRI, we’ve also been building the structure behind it. That meant learning things we’d never touched before.
We’ve had to work through:
- Equity splits.
- Vesting schedules.
- How many shares to issue.
- How to think about investors and long‑term incentives.
Talking about equity in a classroom is one thing. Making decisions that affect the future of the company is another.
Client Relations: Trust + Ownership + Delivery
Clients don’t just hire us for tasks. They hire us to protect and grow their reputation. That changes your mindset.
What client work has taught me:
- Trust is earned through delivery, not promises.
- Speed matters because clients hate silence.
- Ownership matters because excuses don’t help anyone.
- Results matter because clients care about ROI.
We’ve seen this up close. People pay us because they believe we’ll take care of them. If something goes wrong, we fix it. If we miss something, we own it. That responsibility sharpens you.
Getting Paid to Learn Business Beats Paying to Learn Business
This is one of the biggest advantages of what we’re doing.
When you’re building in real time:
- Feedback comes immediately.
- Mistakes cost something, so you stop repeating them.
- Wins show you what to double down on.
That’s why the learning curve is so steep.
Real Work Brings Real Rooms
A few weeks ago, Sam and I were on a call with a billionaire helping him claim and strengthen his Knowledge Panel.
That moment hit me because it wasn’t about age or titles. It was about whether we could help.
What I took from that:
- If you can solve a real problem, you belong on the call.
- Competence travels faster than credentials.
- Opportunities show up when you’re already producing value.
Teamwork Also Means Knowing When to Do It Yourself
We talked about this in the video: working on a team doesn’t always mean pushing work to someone else. Sometimes the best move is to take something from start to finish yourself because it’s cleaner and faster.
That’s the same thinking behind Do, Delegate, Delete.
When a task comes in, you make a call:
- Do it now.
- Delegate it to the right person.
- Delete it if it doesn’t matter.
What we don’t do is park tasks in “later” forever. Keeping projects moving is part of being dependable to your team and your clients.
Mentorship Compresses the Learning Curve
We’ve had Dennis Yu mentoring us through all of this. Having someone who’s already operated at a high level point out what matters, what doesn’t, and why saves you years.
It also sets the tone for how we want to lead: learn something, apply it in real work, then teach it forward.
Where This Leaves Me
Being part HRI has made business feel less like a concept and more like a skill set you build daily. Communication, accountability, client care, equity, execution—it all gets learned in the same way: by doing the work and being responsible for the outcome.
Want to Learn These Skills Through Real Work?
If you want to build the same skill stack we’re talking about—through real projects, real clients, and real mentorship—check out High Rise Academy.
It’s designed to help young adults (and anyone hungry to grow) turn real work and real reviews into campaigns that convert.
