Complexity kills your Business (don't do this...)

I can always tell a newbie entrepreneur from a grizzled vet by how complex their business is…

Up-sells, down-sells, cross-sells, subscriptions, high ticket, coaching, software stacks….

It’s the ol’ kitchen sink approach to entrepreneurship.

And usually, it adheres to whatever trend the current gurus are selling.

How do I know this side of entrepreneurship so well?

I’ve lived it.

Ha!

In the early years of my online basketball training business I was juggling more plates than that lady on the unicycle at the Clippers half time show.

It was frankly, a bloody mess.

→ I was constantly adding new revenue streams to the business without understanding that each one I added took away from something else…

→ I got flat out bored, and started to do random stuff to try and keep myself entertained in the business (much to the demise of our bottom line…)

→ I would look for stuff to buy or invest in, just to get a hit of dopamine and excitement (that would come crashing down faster than your favorite influencers new basement crypto coin…)

Geez.

I’m uncomfortable just thinking bout it...

Now, compare that with the grizzled vet approach?

Focuses on one thing and keeps it stupid simple.

(Stupid Simple - might have to TM that one…)

The reason this is so powerful is because it concentrates the energy of the business in one direction…

Kind of like when you turn the garden hose spray nozzle to ‘Jet’ and it shoots much farther…

Focus.

Focus.

Focus.

And more, Focus.

I vividly remember getting on a call with a business mentor of mine and explaining the elaborate sales funnel I had conceived over way too many cups of coffee…

(It looked like one of those web diagrams the cops make on the wall to catch the bad guys…)

“Why don’t you just ask people if they want to buy your thing and sell it to them?”

He grounded my spaceship faster than Will Smith in Independence Day.

But he was right.

And honestly, it’s taken years of f*xcking around (and millions of dollars in revenue) to really have that land for me...

Simple businesses have a much better chance at being profitable businesses.

The ones with all the upsells and cross-sells and down-sells are usually the ones with the garden hose on ‘Mist’ mode.

The ones with a rock-solid core offer that basically sells itself are the ones with the garden hose on ‘Jet’ mode.

Then, why do a lot of the business gurus have such complex operations?

Usually it’s because they are trying their damndest to come up with something ‘new’ to sell you…

Imagine if they just drew on a whiteboard:

“Create thing to solve problem → Sell thing”

*yawn*

Probably wouldn’t sell very well… right?

Humans LOVE to make things more complex than they need to be.

There are so many reasons for this, and I think I’ll get booted from this coffee shop I’m writing to you from before I can list them all…

But the point is…

Focus.

Focus.

Focus.

I’ve hired mentors who were worth their weight in gold simply for telling me:

“That’s a stupid idea…”

…when I was trying to make things more complicated than they needed to be.

Okay, I think I’ve gotten my point across here?

Focus.

Simple.

‘Jet’ Mode.

You get the point.

Have a good Monday.

- Adam