Lifestyle Designer

Entrepreneurship is getting paid to solve problems. If you don't like solving problems, then you aren't going to enjoy starting a company. We are in the 8th year of Simple Modern, and I believe I can continue to operate for at least another 10-20 years. The reason for my longevity? I love solving problems. I crave having a new challenge each day. It has been transformative for me intellectually and emotionally. As our company has expanded, I've grown into leading others and helping them learn to solve sticky issues. But not all problems are enjoyable. There are "good" problems and "bad" problems. "Good" problems are things like: We are selling through our inventory too fast. We don't have enough people; we need to hire more. We have more expansion opportunities than capacity. Where should we invest our profits? "Bad" problems include things like: We can't retain our best people. We are running out of money. We are losing market share to a competitor. Why is our new project launch flopping? The reward for successful entrepreneurship isn't just money. It's the privilege of working on interesting and stimulating "good" problems. I love my job because I have something interesting and meaningful to work on every day. As an immature entrepreneur, I wanted to eliminate all the problems in our business. I envisioned a day when everything would run smoothly. Now I know that idea was silly. When you operate a business well it increases the scope of the business. That means there will be more challenges, not less. Even if I could build a company without problems, I wouldn't enjoy the experience. In entrepreneurship, the process is more important than the destination. I talked about this and more in the most recent episode of my podcast "Scaling for Good" that is linked in my profile.