If you're an entrepreneur or somebody who wants to be an entrepreneur, I want you to think about this: which two things do you want most out of your business?

If you're like most entrepreneurs, you want some sort of creative excitement. You want some to feel like you're in control of your destiny, and like you’re creating something and making something happen that hasn't been done before. But at the same time, you want a source of income that gives you the freedom to be creative: something that's automatic.

But if you look at these two things, they're almost exact opposites, and this is why we're going to need to have some necessary boredom in the work we do. Let me show you why.

Creativity Vs Steady Income

Novelty

Creative excitement comes from doing new things: things we've never done before, or things that are exciting.

Automatic income comes from doing something that we've done before and we know it works. Anybody who has started a new business before or started multiple projects within a business knows that your old, reliable product might get boring after a while, but it pays the bills and keeps the lights on.

Meanwhile that new product that could hit a home run, might or might not be as steady. It's exciting, it's a great ride, but it might turn into nothing. It might even lose you money.

Risk

Creative excitement usually increases your risk, whereas automatic income reduces risk, as you’re working with clients, suppliers, or products you already know.

Free Time

Creative excitement usually reduces your free time because you've got to invest a lot of energy into creating this new thing. This can be very fun, but it’s not always sustainable for a long time.

Automatic income, on the other hand, usually increases your free time because as you get better at it, it requires less time to get the same result.

Creativity

Creative excitement is your creation, which again can be really fun. Automatic income is more about optimizing what's already been created, and taking something good and making it great.

Creative excitement is exciting and yes, automatic income in and of itself can be extremely boring. It can make you want to poke your eyes out unless you understand what it affords and why it's so necessary.

Losses

With creative excitement, big losses are extremely possible, whereas with automatic income, a steady income is much more likely. You have steady growth, and maybe it's not explosive growth, but it's a lot more likely to be steady for you. And again, this can be a platform. This can be a stabilizing piece that allows you to go into new ventures.

Why We Need a Little Boredom

Necessary entrepreneur boredom is important, and the ability to manage and tolerate some sense of boredom without losing focus is a critical skill. It’s just part of having a successful business.

Say you owned a restaurant, and people come back having had a certain dish. They bring their friends and say, “Wow, this dish was so awesome, let's have it again.” They want a similar result: that's what they're actually paying for. They don't want it to be so creative that it's changing every moment. They want some sort of predictability.

Often, today's creation is tomorrow's repeat product and tomorrow's automatic income. Predictability can be boring, but it helps us build high dollar, and high impact businesses and careers that become the foundations upon which again, we create. The things that work become part of our automatic income. Those that perhaps don't work, we change them or abandon them. But it's the interplay of the two that allows us to be successful in the long run as an entrepreneur.

Very often you'll hear people say, “What do you do?” “I'm a serial entrepreneur.” And that's always an interesting conversation, because usually what they mean is, “I've tried a lot of things and they keep failing. So, I just keep jumping from thing to thing.”

That concept of just jumping from thing to thing without having anything that works means you’re always stuck in the position of creative excitement. But at some point, you want to have something that works and just creates that automatic income. You need that steadiness that allows you to have the balance to still be able to go on vacation for a month or two at a time, and pay your bills, and still have the time to do creative projects, knowing that your income is covered.

In my career right now, I have businesses that I've been involved in for 20 years that are some of my more automatic income. I constantly do my best to infuse my passion and my enthusiasm into these businesses as much as I can. They're kind of a sacred work for me in that they help me to afford to do some of my newer projects.

And yet, at the same time, they're just as important, and my clients are just as important. I do everything I can to make sure I'm serving my existing clients as much as I'm also building new things.

Finding a Balance

I hope you find this distinction helpful, whether you're starting a business, or whether you're continuing to grow your business. One of the biggest and most common mistakes of long-term business owners is neglecting their repeat business and getting too excited over the new business. It’s all about keeping a balance.

If you have any questions or comments on this, please get in touch with me. If you want to go deeper into this, and you want to start looking at how you can create your 4-Day Game Plan, go to 4daygameplan.com and look at how you can start creating a plan to balance making the income you want and affording the lifestyle and the time off in order to enjoy it.

Whether you're an entrepreneur, an employee, somebody who wants to be an entrepreneur, or a student in school, just being able to understand these nuances is critical. As I've mentioned before, it took me 22 years to do this. Having a game plan certainly would have shortened my curve by about 15 years. I've got that game plan for you there as an outline and a structure for you to start with.

As always, I look forward to helping you make more money in less time, doing what you do best so you can enjoy your friends, your family, and your life.