The Entrepreneur’s Malaise: Always Thinking about Building Businesses

Guys, I have a real problem.

I’ve been an entrepreneur for a good portion of my life, building my own companies on two different continents. A few days ago, while listening to NPR’s “How I Built This” podcast about Edible Arrangements founder Tariq Farid building his $600M business, I had a realization: I never stop thinking about building businesses. And I don’t just mean mine. Other people’s businesses are ongoing fodder for my entrepreneurial imaginings.

For example, I work with a content strategist who often gets busy with an influx of work, and I can’t help thinking that if she’d just hire a couple of people, she could start a bona fide copywriting agency. I unintentionally ask my friends why their businesses aren’t on Google Maps, inadvertently giving them mini-lectures on how doing so will increase their visibility for local clients. When I recently booked a tour to Bryce Canyon, I immediately thought how difficult it was to find a family-friendly tour operator, and how that shouldn’t have to be a problem for people like me. Just create a simple website on Squarespace, spend a couple of days making submissions to relevant directories, buy a big SUV, get plenty of children’s car seats, and start selling. Easy? Maybe not, but I still think about it. I work with a sizable cleaning company that takes care of Distillery’s Santa Monica office, and I can’t help wondering why they don’t have a simple web panel where I can log in to my account and request additional services like window cleaning. That’s only going to increase their revenue, and most likely they’ll get a return on their investment in less than a year. Getting a reminder call from my dentist produces the following question to take form inside my head: why don’t you guys use software for appointment automation? It’s going to increase your client retention rate, reduce your costs, and save you a lot of time. I quite seriously can’t stop thinking about it.

I am sure this is a problem common to many entrepreneurs. But I’m also sure that, sometimes, there are good reasons why people don’t build their business the way I think they should be built. Frankly, however, even if their reasons are indeed good ones, I’m unlikely to be convinced. And maybe someday I’ll be telling you how I’ve expanded my purview into operating family-friendly tours of local sites.