“If you want something done, give it to a busy person. If you want something done right, give it to a lazy person (who will automate it).”

Adaption of Elbert Hubbard

You are working 14 hours a day. You tell your friends: “I’m just so busy right now.” You wear your burnout like a medal of honor.

I have bad news. “Busy” is not a badge of honor. “Busy” is a failure of leadership. If you are busy, it means you are doing work that you should have hired someone else to do 6 months ago.

The goal is not to be busy. The goal is to be Bored. The most successful CEOs I know are bored. They have built a machine that runs without them.

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The Passive Workforce Trap

I was working with a household-name brand. The kind that makes people nod in admiration just from hearing it.

Their team seemed stacked. Credentials? No one with less than 5 years experience. Headcount? Perfect for the project.

But spend one week behind the scenes, and it became painfully clear:

No one cared to learn anything new.

Not even out of curiosity.

It wasn’t laziness. It was something more insidious: they were clocking in. Good enough was good enough. Hit their KPIs, collect paycheck, tune out.

This is what happens when you hire Employees.

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Employees vs. Operators

Most founders hire Employees. An Employee asks: “What is my job?” They wait for orders. They drag their feet. If the instruction manual is missing a page, they stop working.

They think in boxes. They optimize what lives inside their box. They don’t question if the box is needed. They don’t notice when the box becomes irrelevant.

You don’t want Employees. You want Operators. An Operator asks: “What is the goal?” They don’t wait for orders. They rewrite the manual.

The Test: Give them a vague, messy task.

• Employee: “The instructions weren’t clear. I’m waiting for clarification.”
• Operator: “The instructions were trash, so I figured it out, fixed the filing system while I was there, and here is the result.”

The Rule: You manage Employees. You resource Operators.

How to Spot an Operator

Operators rarely look good on paper.

They’re career misfits. Jumpers. Wildcards. They’ve changed industries. Taught themselves new skills. They didn’t climb the ladder—they built a new one on the other side of the wall.

The Signal: Look for people who’ve shipped something without permission.

• They started a side business
• They ran a high-performing community
• They automated part of someone else’s job for fun
• They built a tool, process, or system that saved time or made money—and they liked it

Operators are driven by ownership. They’re not waiting to be told what to do. They want to figure out what needs doing.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Most leaders say they want operators.

But deep down, many don’t.

Because true operators will challenge your thinking. They’ll push back. Question priorities. Tell you when your strategy is flawed. They might even outshine you.

That’s not insubordination. That’s ownership.

If your ego can’t handle that, hire order-takers. Just don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

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Scale by Subtraction

There is a myth that to grow, you must “Add.” Add people. Add tools. Add meetings. This is how you build a bureaucracy that moves at the speed of government.

Scale by Subtraction. The fastest cars have the fewest parts.

The Feature-Driven Growth Myth

E-commerce brands often chase scale with a “more is more” mentality: more SKUs, more plug-ins, more features, more third-party tools.

But at some point, all that “more” becomes the bottleneck.

Everyone wants the Shopify store that feels like Apple.com. But almost no one is willing to simplify enough to get there.

What the big brands actually do:

The fastest-growing brands remove more than they add.

• Glossier killed off most 3rd-party scripts and focused on custom-built performance-first solutions.
• Allbirds prioritizes mobile load times over visual gimmicks.
• Fashion Nova keeps product pages minimal to reduce load and increase conversion.

They don’t just test for speed—they design for it. Every unnecessary request is questioned. Every animation has to earn its place.

The 3 Dimensions of Speed

Speed isn’t just site load time. It’s organizational.

1. Site Speed

Treat every extra kilobyte like it costs you money. Because it does.

If your site takes more than 3 seconds to load on 4G, you’re losing revenue. Period.

2. Operational Speed

Scaling brands don’t just automate fulfillment—they automate thinking.

• Dynamic pricing rules instead of manually tweaking discounts
• Dashboards that surface anomalies in real time
• AI-routed tickets so customer service doesn’t become a time sink

If your team is spending 10 hours a week manually exporting reports or double-checking inventory counts, that’s not “scaling”—that’s administrative quicksand.

3. Development Speed

The fastest dev teams don’t do more. They do less, better.

• Lock in design systems early to avoid “micro-debates”
• Batch experiments instead of shipping one-off tests
• Resist shiny tools that don’t integrate natively

Velocity is about focus, not frantic shipping.

The 3-Question Filter

Before adding anything new, ask:

1. Does this simplify the customer experience?
2. Will this help us move faster in the next 90 days, or slow us down?
3. Are we solving for the edge case, or the core revenue engine?

Speed is a competitive advantage. It doesn’t come from hustling harder. It comes from building leaner.

The brands winning in 2026? They’re not the ones with the most features. They’re the ones with the least friction.

The Quarterly Audit:

1. Kill 20% of your meetings. If everyone is in a meeting, no one is working.
2. Kill 10% of your software tools. If you delete a tool and no one screams, you were wasting money.
3. Remove one feature per quarter. If no one complains, it was bloat.

Automate Thinking

Don’t just automate shipping labels. Automate decisions. Every time a manager has to answer a question, you are losing money.

Scenario: Customer wants a refund.

• Manual Way: CS Rep asks Manager. Manager checks policy. Manager approves. (Cost: 30 minutes of salary).
• Automated Way: The Rule. “If LTV > $500, auto-refund without question.” (Cost: 0 minutes).

You didn’t just save time. You increased speed. Speed is currency.

The “A-Player” Job Ad

A-Players (Operators) do not apply to “Marketing Manager” roles with a list of requirements. They are bored by requirements. They are attracted to Challenges.

Don’t write a Job Description. Write a Problem Statement.

• Don’t say: “Must have 5 years experience in SEO.”
• Say: “We need to go from $1M to$5M in 12 months. It will be hard. You will be tired. But you will own the entire engine. If you want a 9-5, do not apply.”

This scares away the weak. It acts like catnip to lions.

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The Bottom Line

Don’t build a family. You can’t fire your family. Build a Sports Team. You are the Coach. Your job is to put the best players on the field and get out of their way.

Five things to do this week:

1. Interview for operators, not employees – Ask candidates what they’ve shipped without permission.
2. Kill 2 meetings – If people aren’t producing because they’re in meetings, you have a meeting problem.
3. Delete one software tool – If nobody screams, it was dead weight.
4. Automate one decision – Find a rule that a manager makes repeatedly. Codify it.
5. Ask the 3-question filter – Before adding anything new: Does it simplify? Does it speed us up? Is it core or edge?

This concludes Part IV: Sustainable Growth. We have secured the revenue, optimized the logistics, navigated the market, and built the team.

The machine is built. The engine is running. Now, we look to the horizon.

In Part V, we are going to look at the Future of Commerce.