I was recently asked what one piece of advice I could provide to startups. Though I responded with a half-baked answer, since then, the answer has become self-evident: delay your gratification.

Delayed gratification is a principle that every kid with a parent born before the 1960s is probably very familiar with. We’ve all heard the stories about walking 5 miles to school barefoot with a wagon wheel on your back.

Simply put, delayed gratification is putting off the things that aren’t truly needed today until tomorrow. It’s about the nice-to-haves versus the need-to-haves — an idea I continually try to instill in my children, and something I’ve been constantly reminded of during the last five years at my startup, InContext Solutions. There are plenty of times I haven’t delayed gratification when I should have.

Here are three things every aspiring founder or newly minted founder should keep in mind to help delay gratification:

Put Off Paying Yourself More

When we started InContext, my wife had just quit her R&D laboratory job to stay home with our two children. To calculate my salary, I added up my bills, food costs and family medical insurance expenses. Even into our second and third years, I challenged our management team to keep salaries flat. That extra dollar could be better spent hiring another developer or salesperson, or buying better hardware so we could work faster.

The great equalizer was our equity, which would dwarf any pay increase if we were going to be as successful as we thought we’d be. And if we went belly up, then we would be just a few months away from entering the workforce again at the six figures we all came from.

Your startup should not fund some extravagant lifestyle. Use the money you would spend on fancy clothes or cars to hire and take care of your employees. The ROI is much better. When you start returning value to shareholders, your board and management team should reward you with what’s appropriate. Then, it’s out of your hands.

Lifestyle businesses are not the stuff startup dreams are made of.

Don’t Tell Me How Well Your Business Is Doing

Entrepreneurs have egos. But do yourself a favor and show humility. It’s easy to overstate your progress or significance; it’s also very hard to overcome those claims when you don’t live up to them.

All entrepreneurs should be salespeople. As such, you are afforded some luxury to sound bigger than you really are. But I’ve found that sticking to the facts really pays dividends. When you start telling others how successful you are, it starts to go to your head. This can make you lose focus on what is important, which is building value through hard work.

Let others validate your success. If you truly are successful, a great leader and a great business builder, others will notice. This type of validation will provide much greater satisfaction. And it gives you much more credibility across the board.

Don’t Think It’s All About You

In my entire career, I’ve never met someone who isn’t replaceable, no matter how important they or others think they are — including founders.

After your first few customers are acquired, instead of focusing on your contributions and how well you’re doing, you need to be able to quickly focus on your team’s contributions and your role in leading them. Highlight their success and give them public credit. Motivating them will build your wealth. You’ll never build wealth by touting yourself as a one-man show. Rather, rally the troops for a chance to make a remarkable fortune on the backs of others.

Focus on building a team that you can give all the credit to, no matter what your contribution is. But be equally ready to take all the blame when things don’t go well.

Delaying gratification ends up being an empowering, if sobering, experience — just like your parents taught you it would be.