April 4, 2025
I was joking with a friend recently about the three thoughts every business owner has at some point, and I said, “If you haven’t had these three thoughts, are you really a business owner?”
- “What the F*** am I doing? Everyone else is so successful, and I’m not at their level.”
- “Screw it. I’m just going to get a job because this is ridiculous. I don’t want to deal with all this stress anymore.”
- “I’m burning it all to the ground.“
We laughed, but there was truth there. If you haven’t experienced all three of those moments during your entrepreneurial journey, you’re either not trying hard enough, or you’ll get there eventually.
Entrepreneurship Isn’t All Plain Sailing
The entrepreneurial path is full of contradictions. We sign up for freedom and unlimited earning potential, then find ourselves working for what feels like minimum wage.
We create businesses to solve problems we’re passionate about, then get trapped in managing operations we never wanted to handle.
After years of working with successful business owners who feel stuck, burned out, or disconnected from their original vision, I’ve identified three essential mindset shifts that transform not just how you run your business, but how your business runs you.
Business Should Be Boring
This is perhaps the hardest pill for most entrepreneurs to swallow. We’re creative, idea-generating machines. We love complexity, innovation, and excitement.
But here’s the truth that trips up so many business owners: complexity doesn’t scale.
When your business operations are complex, you become indispensable—the only one who understands how everything fits together.
And being indispensable means you can never step away. The businesses that scale effectively are those with simple, repeatable processes that anyone can follow.
They’re predictable. They’re consistent. And yes, they’re a little boring—at least on the operational side.
This doesn’t mean your products or services can’t be innovative or that your vision can’t be exciting.
It means the machinery that powers your business should run like clockwork, without drama, without heroics, and without your constant intervention.
Be the Dumbest Person in the Room
Entrepreneurs are typically super confident and, let’s be honest, a bit egotistical.
It’s what helps us take risks and believe we can succeed where others have failed. But that same confidence can become our biggest limitation.
In my experience, the only way to build a truly sustainable, scalable, effective business is to be the dumbest person in the room and surround yourself with people smarter than you.
This doesn’t mean undervaluing your expertise or vision. It means acknowledging that you can’t be an expert in everything, and that’s okay.
Your job isn’t to know everything—it’s to bring together the people who collectively know everything your business needs.
When you can admit, “I don’t know,” and trust your team to fill in the gaps, you unlock growth potential that simply isn’t possible when you’re the bottleneck for every decision and solution.
Avoid Becoming a Seagull Leader
A seagull leader is someone with all these ideas who swoops in, dumps all over the team, and then flies away.
They often leave the team in a constant state of reaction and chaos because they don’t know what the priorities are.
This might be the most crucial mindset shift for visionary entrepreneurs. Your ideas are valuable, but the way you implement them matters tremendously.
When every new inspiration becomes an urgent directive that disrupts your team’s focus, you create organizational whiplash.
Instead of swooping in with each new idea, develop a system for vetting and integrating innovations that maintain operational stability.
Create clear priorities and stick with them long enough to see results. Trust your team to execute without constant course corrections.
The Payoff of Mindset Transformation
I’ve burned myself out to the point where I was crying at my desk and had to close my computer and not talk to a single person for the rest of the weekend.
It was a Friday afternoon I’ll never forget. I’ve felt all three of those classic entrepreneurial despair moments.
But these mindset shifts changed everything—not just for my clients, but for me too.
Conclusion
When you embrace that business should be boring, surround yourself with people smarter than you, and avoid being a seagull leader, you create the foundation for true business freedom.
These mindset shifts aren’t just theoretical—they’re transformative. They’ve changed everything for my clients and for me, too.
They’re the difference between a business that traps you and a business that truly serves your vision and your life.