Our biggest problem as entrepreneurs is wanting to move at 100 mph while the world spins at 10 mph. This mismatch creates vertigo, causing us to stumble from one “idea” to the next.
Ironically, it’s the guy focusing on "big picture stuff" that is ridiculed, until that person changes the course of a company with a single meeting.
The U.S. Navy SEALs have a saying: "Slow is smooth, smooth is fast." It sounds like something a union safety supervisor would say. In combat, though, it's a survival rule. If you rush through the key steps of a mission, you die. Whereas success is found when you move with intention, through a well-thought plan.
And hey, if it’s good enough for the SEALs, it’s probably good enough for your “high stakes” desk job where you forward emails to your subordinates with the codeword “plz finish by EOD”.
Founders don’t just move fast, we will cling to whatever happens to stick. You say yes to the wrong client because they’re ready to sign this week. You green‑light the half‑baked partnership because “it might lead to something.” You make the hire not because they’re the best, but because they can start on Monday and their parole officer swears they’ve changed.
You are moving fast. You are not moving smooth.
The difference shows up in subtle ways.
A rushed founder’s calendar is full of reactive calls, last‑minute “can you jump on a quick Zoom?” firefighting, and half-baked experiments that only cause burn-out. The days feel full, but progress is flat.
When you read about great entrepreneurs, they give themselves time to think. Often, they think in decades, not weeks. Going DEEP on an idea requires a smooth thought process.
This is the hard part to accept when you're ambitious and impatient:
Deliberate slowness at the front of a decision is what allows speed on the back end.
Spend an extra week clarifying your ideal customer profile and your outbound suddenly works without 100 script variations.
Take the time to write a clear playbook for a new hire and you stop "training" them through a thousand random Looms.
Pause to define what "success" looks like for a project and you avoid the four-month zombie initiative nobody remembers asking for.
Talking to people who have solved the same problem will save you months of work on a task that was doomed from the start.
Most founders only slow down when the business is on the brink. The panic finally forces reflection, and suddenly the abyss offers more clarity than the last twelve months of the “grind”.
You will still have sprints when building a company. That is unavoidable. But if every day feels like an emergency, the problem is not the business, it is your operating system.
“Slow is smooth, smooth is fast” is the energizer to build something worth sprinting decades for.
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idea of the week 💡
credit: ideabrowser.com
Problem: You recorded a great webinar. Now you need 20 LinkedIn posts, 5 blog outlines, 10 Twitter threads, and 15 Instagram stories. Doing it manually takes weeks. Your team burns out. Half the clips never get posted. The ROI on that content tanks because nobody has time to slice it up. So you try an AI tool. It's fast. It's also soulless. Generic captions, wrong tone, context gaps that make your brand sound like everyone else. Pure automation doesn't work. Pure human doesn't scale.
Idea: Atomize — a content repurposing engine that combines AI speed with human polish. Run content through AI first (transcription, initial cuts, platform formatting), then route everything to human editors who make it sound like the brand wrote it. Upload a webinar, podcast, or keynote. A few days later, a full content library ready to schedule. Fifty pieces that sound like the brand on its best day, each reviewed by a human before it ships.
How it makes money: $99 starter pack turns one podcast into 10 social posts. $500/month gets the full suite with ongoing repurposing and human QA on everything that ships. Marketing teams pay it because the alternative is hiring another content person or watching great content die on a hard drive.
Why it might fail: Balancing AI automation with human quality at scale is tricky. If the human editors become a bottleneck, margins compress and delivery slows. Solve this by identifying patterns early, automating the repeatable stuff, and letting editors focus on what machines still can't do: taste.
friday fitness
at-home workout
Complete 4 rounds:
15 burpees
20 air squats
15 push-ups
20 mountain climbers (each leg)
30-second plank hold
Goal: Move with purpose. Rest 45–60 seconds between rounds.
gym workout
Strength focus — complete 4 sets:
8 barbell back squats
10 barbell bench press
12 bent-over barbell rows
15 dumbbell shoulder press
20 kettlebell swings
Goal: Focus on form and control. Rest 90 seconds between sets.
outdoor workout
For time (complete 3 rounds):
400m run
20 jump squats
30 walking lunges (total)
15 push-ups (use a bench if needed)
200m sprint
Rest 2 minutes between rounds.
tweet of the week
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