Simple scales. Complex kills.

The biggest distraction is opportunity.

You know those “entrepreneurs” who don’t ever make any progress because they’re looking for the biggest, largest, most profitable opportunity?

Yeah… They rarely make any progress. But we all suffer (at least a little) from the same syndrome.

I was on a call with a founder who was in the “research phase” for the last few months.

“I want to see which service offering is going to work best."

In the nicest way possible, I explained he was trying to solve the wrong problem.

The truth? All of his options could work.

How do I know? Because I see endless examples.

Instead of being driven by a single target market, offer, and service, he was focused on the “size of the opportunity”.

Had he launched a single service he would have had a lot more traction by now.

I’m sharing this because at some point we all become victims of “opportunity”, and it’s important to be mindful you can’t win that game.

There will always be a “bigger opportunity”, the chase will be endless, and complexity will kill you.

The size of your market or opportunity is not a bottleneck for your business. The only bottleneck is your ability to focus and go deep.

That’s sometimes a tough pill to swallow because it means you’re responsible for the amount of success you’ve had, not other external factors.

The same syndrome causes us to expand our services or products. Offering more disguises it self as the easiest way to capture more revenue. But again, you’re chasing opportunity instead of mastering the service or product you actually love and can deliver well.

The result? A much more complex business that is a lot harder to scale.

Unless you can’t find examples of others doing it better, bigger, or simpler than you, opportunity size is just an excuse and distraction.

Learning to say no to these shiny objects is key.

Trust me, I know. I used to help launch companies after natural disasters. Wildfire = restoration biz. A constant chase of opportunity.

This was exciting and the money was decent, but it never allowed me to build anything substantial or long-term. Something that could compound over time.

Maybe this is one of those things that you need to live through to understand. But I’m writing this so you can learn from my experience and hopefully save you 10 or more years of trial and error.

Staying focused and simple will create the most opportunity in the long run and more importantly, a life you love.

So, the next time you consider expanding your services, just think of all the businesses you know that are offering your services but doing 100x the revenue. They’re out there, and there’s lots.

Keep it simple.

See you all next Thursday 👋

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