As entrepreneurs, we have a low tolerance for boredom and a high drive for opportunity seeking. It’s how we got here in the first place. The problem is it can also get us in a lot of trouble.
The last few years, I’ve gotten into flying airplanes. It’s something I always wanted to do, but now I have the ability to actually do it.
Landing the plane is the most challenging part of the process, as you may have guessed. You are going fast, low to the ground, and sinking. It’s a time where a lot happens in a very short space of time, and there is the least amount of room for error.
As a result, there is a very well-established routine for pulling off a landing, and it starts miles away from the runway. At various points, you are slowing down, changing settings, adding various degrees of flaps, achieving specified speeds and altitudes at various points along the route, and hitting the proper angles of descent. If you do all these things right, then the landing itself is (relatively) easy. If you botch one or more of these steps, the landing becomes difficult or impossible, and you have to climb up and reset.
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After you’ve done it 672 times (as of this morning, but who’s counting!), it definitely becomes routine and almost boring, in a way. At least compared to how spicy it was when you’re first learning.
But here’s the thing. Boring is good. Boring means it’s working and there is no drama and no chance of a big miss. It means everything is working the way it should. In landing a plane, you WANT boring.
In your business, it’s not that different! You want to build reliable routines that work every time. You want a system for taking in new customers, for taking care of them, and for keeping them. You want systems for hiring and managing, for your accounting, for paying the bills, etc. You want it all set up so it works well and produces reliable results every time.
If you get to this point, it means several important things. It means you can delegate it to people who can follow the same system. It means you can grow by just adding more of what’s already working instead of having to keep trying new things. And it means you can get your drama from other places and not have to deal with it at work!
I see entrepreneurs all the time who make a good start but then get bored too soon, before the systems are in place, and things can really run without them. They go and start something else. And then another thing, and another. Pretty soon, none of them are working, none of them are getting enough attention, and at best, the whole thing is barely functional.
Before you decide you are bored, make sure you have a reliable system that works, even if it is boring. Take the time to build your business systems to be able to work over and over successfully without you. Boring in business is good if it’s working and repeatable. If you’re not at boring and repeatable yet, keep working on it until you get there before you try something new. Otherwise, just like with landing a plane, the chances go way up of a bad ending!