Is business rocket science? (Spoiler: nope)
4 Simple steps to make the complex simple.
One of the main reasons people shy away from entrepreneurship is the belief that it’s just too hard.
On the flip side, an even larger group of people think it’s a piece of cake.
Anyone can do it.
The first group imagines business as massive corporations with factories and thousands of employees.
Anything smaller? Child’s play.
These folks are often experienced professionals who’ve climbed the corporate ladder. They’ve seen the inner workings and complexity of big business up close.
The second group, usually younger, only sees the glamorous facade.
What could be so hard, huh?
Traveling to exotic places, signing million-dollar contracts, looking sharp—it’s a dream, not a job.
Sometimes, even people well past their teenage years enthusiastically describe how they’d do it better and already be millionaires by now.
But funny how they’re not…
Neither is right.
Entrepreneurship spans everything from small shop owners to sprawling global enterprises.
Side note:
I’m skipping over corporations and public companies on purpose.
Sadly, most of them have very little left of true entrepreneurship. Instead, they’re filled with bureaucracy, politics, corruption, careerism, monopolies, and, let’s be honest, crime.
Still, there’s simplicity there, too—either you eat, or you get eaten.
When I say neither group is right, I’m not joking.
Every business is a system and a set of processes.
Even a hot dog vendor operates within a system, even if they don’t realize it.
From the moment they wake up to the moment they go to bed, it’s all processes:
- Sourcing ingredients (choosing suppliers, paying, delivering, storing, prepping)
- Cooking (recipes, quality control, cost management)
- Selling (customer interactions, marketing, after-sales)
- Planning (calculating profit, expenses, stock, and needs)
And that’s just a quick sketch.
You can break down any business like this—even ones making reactors or spacecraft.
So, business isn’t rocket science.
Quantum physicists definitely have it harder.
But this is just the technical part.
It’s crucial because it forms the backbone of business—your “value delivery chain.”
The thing people pay you for.
But here’s where it gets tricky.
Breaking a business into systems and processes isn’t rocket science either.
It’s tedious, especially for large businesses, but not impossible.
That’s a topic for another day.
The real challenge comes when you implement the system in practice.
This is what most fans of “simple solutions” fail to consider.
To succeed, an entrepreneur needs more than enthusiasm. They need knowledge.
Not Nobel-level knowledge, but definitely more than “it’s simple.”
- Designing
- Producing
- Marketing
- Logistics
- Finance
- Sales
- Hiring
And so much more.
Plus…
Entrepreneurship is risk.
It’s about making decisions under uncertainty when nothing is 100% clear.
It takes courage to face the unknown and embrace risk.
The ability to:
- plan,
- assess,
- analyze,
- and predict
is one of the most vital entrepreneurial skills.
And that’s where things stop being simple.
Intuition, imagination, and the ability to “see” outcomes.
Connecting different dots of a process into an efficient system, finding creative solutions, and bypassing obstacles.
These skills only come with experience.
It’s a tough, multifaceted intellectual challenge.
Simple solutions can be dangerous if they ignore important nuances.
True simplicity—sometimes even brilliance—hides a long, painful path of experience.
The real question is: are people ready to start a business or just talk about it?
Do they understand that what seems simple is often anything but?
And… vice versa.
That’s the paradox of entrepreneurship.
Starting with this post, I’ll share practical advice from my entrepreneurial journey.
Tips you can implement right away for tangible results in your business.
With one caveat: the classic “disclaimer.”
Every business has its nuances, and every founder has their unique context and resources. Whether or not my advice applies depends on your situation, experience, and needs. But one thing is universal—use your brain.
Think about how to apply the advice in your context before acting.
Your way.
And one more thing.
It’s really quite simple.
There’s Light.
There’s Darkness.
One can’t exist without the other. Funny, isn’t it?
And it makes everything so damn complicated.
No one is perfect.
Everyone has both Light and Darkness.
Look in the mirror, Nyx.
Who are you?
From Nyx Thorne’s Journal
- Eugene
Join the “most offbeat” Businessletter on entrepreneurship.
Hi, I’m Eugene.
Over the past 20+ years, I’ve grown an international agency from one-person freelance to a multimillion-dollar business. I’ve led teams, scaled systems, burned out, rebuilt, and learned (the hard way) what it really takes to run a business that doesn’t consume your life.
I help them make sense of complexity, design simple systems, and create the kind of business they actually want to run.
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