Most players in the digital business world are proudly anti-establishment.

We all got into this because we didn’t want to spend our lives sitting in cubicles, punching in at 9 o’clock every morning, and hoarding PTO for winter vacation.

But in our enthusiasm to “redefine business,” we’ve gone too far.

→ We hate email…so we manage our teams with a strange (and grossly inefficient) blend of Voxer, Slack, and Facebook Messenger.

→ We hate cubicles and clock-in times…so we work from bed at 10pm, with The Office reruns playing in the background.

→ We hate politics…so we hold back from building industry-disrupting empires that would require a full-fledged team.

→ We hate red tape…so we refuse to create basic SOPs, job descriptions, and business plans.

→ We hate management…so we hire pricey consultants and high-overhead agencies instead of hiring and training for a few key roles.

→ We hate corporate speak…so we bash, swear at, and make fun of our clients—and call it “personality marketing.”

I think it’s time we take back the middle ground.

I think it’s time we leverage our perspective, and distill lessons from corporate giants, lean startups, and modern digital businesses.

Look, this isn’t a trendy message.

It’s not gonna gain traction from any wannabe entrepreneurs, I can promise you that.

No one’s going viral for yelling “let’s take a more balanced approach to business development.”

No one.

But learning from a variety of business models, structures, and philosophies is the fastest path to sustainable growth.

And sustainability is my not-so-secret obsession.

• I want to still own a business in ten years.
• I want to maintain a 4-day work week, year-round.
• I want to make more money next year than I’m making today.
• I want to pay for my kids’ college.
• I want to take my wife to Hawaii for our 20th anniversary (and our 50th!).
• I want to enjoy my life, next year and next decade.

And that means, for me, that I’m optimizing for sustainability and peace of mind.

Not growth. Not agility. Not even scalability.

My two core values drive every business decision.

• $20K mastermind? Nope. I’d have to work 45-hour weeks next month to recoup the investment.
• 16 new clients? Nope. I’d be stressed about fulfillment, and I want to enjoy the holiday season.
• $5K/month marketing agency? Nope. I can get the same results if I train a $20/hour employee for a few months.

If I was optimizing for the fastest, sexiest, scalable-est growth, those investments might make sense.

But they don’t make sense for me.

I want to open my inbox to zero client messages. I want to spend two days a week writing, reading, and recording my podcast. I want to sell an offer I actually care about, and deliver it profitably—without stress. I want to take Fridays off.

That’s success to me.

And I’m letting my choices guide me there.

My name is Justin, and I’m optimizing for sustainability and peace of mind.

What about you?

When you want something new, you have to choose to DO something new.

And to DO something new, you have to BELIEVE something new…about yourself.

The Belief Is: I DO NEW THINGS EVEN WHEN IT IS SCARY.

The choice is scary.
Nerve-wracking.
Weighty.

But don’t confuse the fear you feel as a reason for inaction.

When a car speeds towards you as you cross the street, the fear you feel is natural when it shows no signs of slowing down.

Normal. Biological. Reflexive.

But to say, “I feel afraid so I guess that means I should just stay put,” quite literally, means death.

The fear is telling you to move.

So you move.

And you live.

If you’re a true entrepreneur, you’re not made to do the work.

You’re the visionary.

And it’s impossible to be both the visionary and the tactician—they work against each other when one person is trying to fill both roles.

In fact, if you’re doing 50% or more of the fulfillment work in your business, you’re in a dangerous place…

…and if you don’t course correct, one of three things will happen (I’ve seen this a million times):

1.) You fall for the “just one more month” myth.

You tell yourself to keep pushing, keep grinding, keep pounding for just a little bit longer…and nothing ever changes.

Next year, you’ll still be getting up every Monday morning with a pit in your stomach, dreading client emails, endless deadline cycles, and constant “technician” work.

No amount of time management hacks are gonna fix this issue. Unless you simplify your offer and rebuild it for scale, you’ll always be stuck.

2.) You fall into “desperate delegation” mode.

You reach the point of burnout and throw together a team, in desperation, so that you can GET OUT of fulfillment mode.

The only problem?

You haven’t built the foundation. You don’t have fulfillment processes, onboarding automation, support SOPs, troubleshooting sequences, culture guidelines, or communication pipelines set up.

So, your default team culture is chaos, and your clients take the hit. Big time.

(I know someone who fell into this trap. Nine months later, they’ve fired their entire team, and they’re building their business and reputation from scratch, all over again.)

3.) You fall into a reactivity pattern.

You’re so DONE with fulfillment work and technician tasks that you start to make rash decisions. You kill offers, fire clients, and launch random new products.

You say things like: “I’m never taking on another done-for-you client again.” “I want to quit.” “I hate my business.” “This isn’t worth it anymore.”

The entrepreneurs that reach this stage almost always end up burning their business to the ground. They’re just too exhausted to keep going, and they no longer have the bandwidth for profit-focused rebuilding, intentional restructuring, or team development.

…

I’m guessing many of you fit the psychographics of a “true entrepreneur”—you’re strategic, creative, impulsive, self-directed, growth-obsessed, innovative, and idea-fueled.

I’m also guessing that many of you spend most of your days on technician-level work: responding to emails, working on client projects, meeting deadlines, tweaking your marketing funnel, messaging prospects, or managing team members.

And, honestly, for just a moment—I hope that you FEEL the pain of that misalignment gap.

Because if you don’t feel it (if you “suck it up” for so long that you go numb), nothing will ever change for you.

You’ll live out your days as a “good service provider” and that will be all.

Which, to me is a tragedy.

Especially when you could be:

• dreaming up the next big innovation in your field
• writing a book that rocks your industry norms
• scaling your business to serve 10x the clients (and impact 100x more lives)
• leveraging your creative energy to change the world
• challenging accepted mediocrity in your niche
• spending more time with your family
• spending more time feeling HAPPY

If that resonates with you…

…what are you going to do about it?

How are you going to make short-term HARD decisions in order to free up your time, your energy, and your creativity for the long haul?

How are you going to release your technician identity so you can step into your true calling as a leader, and entrepreneur, and a visionary?

How are you going to rebuild your business so that it doesn’t rely on your checking your email every 2 hours?

Send me a note and let me know.

I’d love to give you some from-the-trenches advice.

Because I’ve been the technician, and I’ve fallen into all the traps before.

But I’ve also gotten through to the other side.

And if you’d like one-on-one support to make BIG changes in your business, we should talk.

Imagine you’re dying of thirst. You need water, badly. It just has to be wet, and you’d drink it.

The great irony is that water is all around you. Constantly. It’s in the air, in the ground, in the plants you walk by. But if you’re thirsty —even dying of thirst— none of that will help.

The water isn’t accessible to you. So it’s worthless.

For it to be useful the water needs to be in a glass or bowl…even cupped in your hands.

Then you could drink it.
Then you’d be fine.

Vision works the same way. Your vision doesn’t help anyone if it’s “trapped” in your head, on a napkin, or even sketched out on a whiteboard or in some Evernote file.

It needs a structure to live in for it to ultimately be useful.

Otherwise it’s just swimming around in who-knows-what.

No vessel = no water.

No structure = no vision.