The Boring Path to Wins

There’s a dirty little secret in startup life that no one talks about enough: repetition is king. Not sexy iteration, not pivoting every three weeks, but relentless, sometimes soul-crushing repetition. You find the one thing that works, and you do it again and again and again until it’s dry—or until you’re convinced your brain is turning into mashed potatoes.

But here’s the thing: it works. And that’s what matters.

As a founder, the temptation to chase the next big idea is real. You get a taste of success in one area—maybe a marketing channel that’s finally hitting, a feature that customers love, or a new content strategy that’s getting traction—and your brain starts itching. You're thinking: Alright, what’s next? You want to shift gears, expand, build on that tiny bit of momentum and push into something new. After all, you're an entrepreneur—you thrive on the shiny, the innovative, the unexplored. The new and untested is what got you here in the first place, right?

But here’s the brutal reality: the thing that got you here is exactly what you need to keep doing. Over and over. Until you hate it. Until your team is sick of hearing about it. Until you can do it in your sleep, upside down, with a blindfold on.

Why? Because the first signs of traction don’t mean you’ve made it. They just mean you’ve unlocked a door. And instead of sprinting off to find the next one, you need to march through that door and set up camp.

The Danger of the Next Big Thing Trap

When you’re running a scrappy startup, chasing the next big thing is more than just a distraction—it’s dangerous. Especially when you finally get something right.

Here’s what usually happens:

1. You grind for months, tweaking, testing, and hunting for that spark.
2. One day, boom. You see traction. The lead-gen funnel’s working, your MRR ticks up, maybe that one marketing campaign or feature starts clicking.
3. You get excited, celebrate, and immediately start thinking, Awesome, what else can we do?

This, right here, is the trap. You’ve been scrappy for so long that when you finally see a win, you think the real game is in trying something new again. But no. The game is milking that win for every single ounce of value until it’s dry.

If you’ve got a content strategy working? Make more of it. A single product feature bringing in 80% of your revenue? Double down. Ad campaign hitting a sweet CAC? Squeeze that ROI like it owes you money.

You need to live and breathe the thing that is making you money. Ride that wave as long as you can, as long as it's sustainable, and as long as it fits your growth trajectory.

Grinding Isn’t Sexy, But It’s the Difference Between Startups That Fail and Startups That Scale

It’s easy to get lured into the idea that constant innovation is what grows companies. But the truth is, the successful ones aren't just innovating—they’re optimizing the thing that works. They grind the gold mine until it’s tapped out.

Take Facebook back in the day. What did they do? They didn’t roll out fifty different new features overnight. They perfected the feed. They scaled one thing into oblivion. You think Zuckerberg was enjoying that? Probably not. But he knew that as long as it worked, he had to keep going until he dominated.

As much as we’d all love to be the mad scientist founders, testing wild ideas every week, the truth is you have to force yourself to stick with what’s working until it’s second nature. It’s not glamorous. In fact, it’s boring, repetitive, and sometimes makes you want to pull your hair out. But it’s the only way to grow in a sustainable way.

And here’s the dirty truth: the next big idea? It’s probably not going to save you. What’s already working will.

This doesn’t mean never pivot. Startups thrive on agility, and part of being scrappy is knowing when to cut your losses and shift direction. But there’s a big difference between abandoning a dry well and pivoting prematurely. The challenge is knowing when you’ve truly exhausted an opportunity versus when you’re just getting antsy for the next shiny thing.

So When Can You Move On?

Of course, you can’t stick with one thing forever. You need to know when to evolve, and that's where metrics come into play. Monitor your KPIs, keep a close eye on diminishing returns, and make sure you’re still heading toward your growth goals. But don’t jump ship too early. If something's still delivering results, the worst thing you can do is abandon it for the thrill of something new.

Shameless plug: using a tool like Pluvo to monitor what activities are having the biggest impact on your bottom line can be a game changer when it comes time to evaluating what your next strategic move should be.

Dumpster Find of the Week: LifeAt

So, I’ve been feeling the pressure lately. You know, that scrappy founder pressure where you’ve got a million things on your plate, and every Slack notification or random email is pulling your attention in 14 different directions? I realized I was starting the day with good intentions, but by lunchtime, I was in some deep rabbit hole of emails, meeting requests, and "quick fixes."

Then I stumbled on LifeAt.io, and holy crap, it was exactly what I didn’t know I needed.

I’ll be honest, I’m usually skeptical of these kinds of tools. They often look pretty but don’t really do much. This was different. I found myself wanting to go back to work in my little virtual office, partly because it made the grind feel a little less grindy and more like an adventure - you can also invite teammates to your space for a nice little accountability boost.

And the best part? A generous free tier. For a scrappy startup founder, that’s music to my ears. I can stay focused without shelling out for yet ANOTHER subscription.

As always, this is not sponsored in any way.

This week’s takeaway? Stick with what works, even when it’s boring, and leverage your current resources (especially the free ones) as long as possible. As much as we love chasing the next big idea, sometimes the real win is grinding it out and squeezing the most out of what’s right in front of you.

Until next time,

Stay scrappy,

Seb