Entrepreneurial Boredom

We entrepreneurs thrive on novelty. We see it mostly as a positive, and in many ways it is.?

Innovation is important, right? Likely, you wouldn’t have even started the business if it weren’t for the innovation that drives you.

But our love of novelty, more often than not, stunts the growth of the business.?

If you have even a mildly well-systemized business and a good team, you may have noticed a weird phenomenon. When you disconnect, go on holidays, or get stuck on a project that dominates your time and focus, you come back to a business that’s running even better than where you left it.

This can be jarring at first. After all, you are the linchpin that holds it all together, right? You are the founder. You have all the answers. THIS IS YOUR BABY, and it needs you.

Well, babies grow up…unless you stunt their growth.

The two most common ways I see entrepreneurs stunting the growth of their businesses are complexity and chaos.

Every time I’ve simplified my business, it’s made more money. I’ve seen this countless times in my clients' businesses, too. Complex problems, new products, and new ideas are fun!

But here’s the issue: great businesses are BORING as fuck. Once you have product-market fit, you sell the same thing to the same target market for a profit and just do it over and over and over again. Sure, you find small ways to be more efficient, have less churn, and make more profit. But it’s essentially Groundhog Day.

This is impossibly difficult for most amateur entrepreneurs to handle, and they can’t help but launch new products, new businesses or add unnecessary complexity. My advice here is to find the novelty you crave outside of your business. Go skydiving, mountain biking, or whatever, and let your business fund that lifestyle.

Trust me, complexity will come as a natural byproduct of your business scaling. You don’t need to purposely add it in. But this scale will never happen if you keep making things more complex than it needs to be.

The second way I see entrepreneurs stunting the growth of their business is by injecting chaos into their business.

I’ve been an entrepreneur for most of my working life, but for the short period of time that I did work for someone else, I remember an acronym we coined for times when the business owner was in the mood for chaos — BWI (boss with ideas).

Everything would be humming along smoothly then BWI would burst in and create chaos. Usually, it was some harebrained idea that had no hope of working. We’d try tactfully explaining some of the finer details, but BWI would have none of it. We’d have to divert time, money, and resources to a wild goose chase. It was soul-crushing.

The worst was when BWI came back from an industry trade show. “Right guys, we’re switching to XYZ database system - it’s amazing!” We’d all look at each other and know that the next few weeks were going to be a pain in the ass — until BWI got distracted with some other shiny new object.

There’s no place for drama in a business. It SHOULD be boring. It should be everyone getting along and getting shit done.

That doesn’t mean there is no place for innovation or change, but these should be carefully considered rather than a product of drive-by management and your personal need for novelty.

Ever since my experience on the other side of the table, I have tried to ensure that I’m not BWI. I’m sure I don’t always succeed, but it is top of mind.

Wishing you a BORING business.