Balance Your Plate With Entrepreneurial Antioxidants

For better or worse, I'm a boundary man. I've done enough self-reflection (including using AI) to know that I feel the most comfortable when I know where boundaries lie, the freedom within them, and the consequences for stepping over them. Like many people, I enjoy control and dislike not having it.

When I started my business, one of the first things I did was lay out boundaries:

• How much money I wanted to earn and how
• How my day's schedule would look
• What I would and wouldn't do for marketing, sales, service delivery

And I was so wrong.

• I barely earned 10% of what I wanted to earn and it wasn't from where I expected
• Some of my scheduled time blocks stuck but most didn't, especially when real business started to happen
• I ended up chasing 18 different marketing strategies, I still feel like I'm learning sales, and when you don't have many clients the service delivery boundaries don't really matter

Being strategic about what I would and wouldn't do may have given me structure and comfort, but many of my hypothetical boundaries either did little for my business or inhibited its ability to seriously grow.

When I meditate on those misconceived boundaries, I flirt with nihilism. If I was wrong about boundaries in the past, why would I believe that I know anything about boundary setting for the future? How firm should my opinions be if I've been wrong so many times? Why try at all? What if everything I do is meaningless?

(This is how entreprenurial night terrors start)

I began rethinking this and came to the conclusion that boundaries are like broccoli.

First off, nobody is going to tell you that broccoli/boundaries are bad for you. Your mom, LinkedIn-fluencers, your mom's friend, AI, etc: it's unlikely that they'll fault you for getting a healthy dose of antioxidants and valuing work/life balance.

It's also always a good recommendation because the benefits are high and the risks are low for eating broccoli/holding boundaries:

Benefits of eating broccoli/having boundaries:

• Good at regulating blood pressure
• Supports brain function and memory
• May improve skin health
• Keeps you from consuming too many unhealthy things

Risks of eating broccoli/having boundaries:

• Imagine that one week you worked late for three nights: DID YOU DIE? No, and you got work done. Your mental health probably eroded a little bit, but you'll survive.
• Perhaps on those three nights you got takeout instead of broccoli: still did not die.

Long term, though, if you skip the broccoli and keep breaking your boundaries, you WILL die. It could be from stress, cholesterol, or your friends and family abandoning their workaholic entrepreneur who dies alone.

So the question remains: How do you set healthy boundaries, knowing that they are potentially wrong?

My answer: That's how you learn, dum dum.

How else would you learn that your assumptions are false?

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Looking back at those early assumptions in my entrepreneurial life, let me share a few Broccoli Moments:

• How much money I wanted to earn and how
  • Making money as an entrepreneur is a lot harder than expected. And by the time you can do some reliable financial forecasting, you'll have learned a million ways that won't make you money 😎
• How my day's schedule would look
  • I've learned so much about when I'm productive & where I'm productive. See also: #cafelyfe​
• What I would and wouldn't do for marketing, sales, service delivery
  • I've learned that Challenge Campaigns are a lot of work, that outbound lead gen is exhausting, and don't trust that the flaky guy in Israel will actually pay his invoice in a few months (he won't)

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Whatever your Broccoli moment/boundary/side vegetable is this week: keep playing the long game.

Side note: Everything doesn't have to include broccoli/boundaries. In fact, life is probably better with a little variety. Slather on some gochujang sauce. Attend a networking event without a particular goal in mind. See how it tastes. See where you end up.

A TL;DR from the CRO

Rough paws are a sign that you need more broccoli in your diet...or at least better boundaries to stay off the ice and snow.

-Roman Noodles, Chief Ruff Officer

Our Articles On Other People's Websites

• ​Navigating the Chaos: Cultural and Operational Challenges in Rapidly Growing Marketing Agencies Brainz Magazine
• ​The Agency Owner’s Guide to Building Scalable SOPs Without Sacrificing Creativity Webbiquity

ROCK TUMBLING UPDATE

The sodalite has finished tumbling and finally out of Rock Hudson.

I had really doubted that it would come out well, but I'm told it's gorgeous. Wasn't super duper shiny, but since it wore down so much I didn't want to run it for longer.

There's some howlite in the other tumbling barrel, Rock Lobster. According to the Woo-Woo Web, it can help mop up bad vibes and connect your etheric energy(?). It's a white stone, something I don't have much of in my collection.

Replacing the finished sodalite from Rock Hudson is going to be some red quartzite. Raw earth energy. Seemed appropriate for the cold weather here in Boston.

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Steaming broccoli boundaries for dinner,

Dan from Learn to Scale​

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​PS. Besides broccoli, being vulnerable is a great way of grappling with failed boundaries.​