The Entrepreneurial Cycle (And What It Just Reminded Me Of)

I’ve been doing this in one form or another since 1998. Twenty-eight years now.

You’d think that after that long, I’d have it all figured out.

HAHAHAHAHAHA. No.

The thing about being a solopreneur is you’re the sole creator of everything. Everything runs through you. Whatever’s good has to be thought up by you and built by you. And if you don’t execute… nothing happens.

The good, the bad, and the ugly. All of it’s on you when you’re the one running the show.

I’ve got help these days. But even then, nothing moves unless I point at it and say “go.” So really, it’s still all on me.

Personally, I wouldn’t trade that for anything. But I did just catch myself doing something I have apparently always done. Let me explain.

The Entrepreneurial Cycle

Here’s the idea, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

A business isn’t something you create once and then switch into “managing” mode. At its healthiest, it’s one continuous stream of creation… from day one, for however long it lasts.

Think of it like an artist and a canvas. The business is the canvas. And as long as you keep flowing creative energy onto it… new ideas, new things you’re excited to build, the actual enjoyment of the act of creating… it grows. I don’t mean that as a cute metaphor, either. I think it’s a genuinely spiritual thing. People have a real need to create. Business just happens to be the canvas some of us picked.

As long as that energy keeps flowing in, the thing keeps growing.

The moment you stop, you go into survival mode.

And survival mode isn’t some neutral second stage every business is supposed to pass through eventually. It’s what happens when the flow stops. You’re not creating anymore. You’re just going through the motions.

Here’s the part that’s easy to miss: survival mode doesn’t mean things hold steady. It means the business starts to shrink. Slowly, at first. But there’s no creative energy going back in anymore, so there’s nothing sustaining it, let alone growing it.

Maybe you got sidetracked by something else entirely. Maybe you’re just not feeling it anymore. Sometimes, eventually, the owner sells it or shuts it down. But the shrinking usually starts long before any of that… the moment the creative energy stopped flowing in.

I’ve got a live example of this happening right now, actually.

Years ago, I started HappilyRV… a site for RV owners, born out of an actual hobby of mine (my wife, our kids, and I travel a lot in our motorhome). For a while I was actively creating it. Writing, building, paying attention.

These days? I’m barely touching it.

Nothing dramatic happened. No failure, no falling out. My creative energy just started flowing somewhere else, and the site’s been quietly shrinking on old momentum ever since. That’s the cycle, exactly as I just described it. Not a collapse… just the flow stopping, and the slow shrink that follows.

The “Oh Sh*t” Realization

Here’s the part I’m not thrilled to admit: this is basically a habit of mine.

I don’t decide to go into survival mode. It just happens, if I’m not paying attention. I get busy, or distracted, or the passion quietly fades on something, and next thing I know I’m coasting instead of creating. It’s happened with HappilyRV. It’s happened inside the Academy at various points too.

That’s the whole realization behind this post, honestly. I caught myself doing it again.

I have this habit of going back through my old plans every so often… goals, strategies I’d written down for myself… and comparing them to what I actually did.

It’s humbling. Every time.

What I usually find is that I put real thought into the plan, and then very little concerted effort into actually creating it. The stuff I wrote down as a priority is often still just… a thought. Sitting there, unexecuted, a year or five later.

What Active Creation Actually Requires

The fix isn’t complicated, even if it’s not easy.

You don’t get to just hope your way into a goal. You don’t get to picture it on a vision board and wait for the universe to deliver it.

You have to ask what the actual accomplishment looks like. Spot the gap between where you are and that picture. Then go actively create the specific things that close it.

That’s the whole trick. It’s just rarely the trick anybody wants to hear, because it means the boring, unglamorous work of showing up and doing the thing, repeatedly, on purpose.

So, What Are You Actively Creating?

I still ask myself this on a regular basis, not just once a year.

What am I actively creating right now, versus just… maintaining? Where has my own creative energy quietly stopped flowing into something, without me noticing?

Take a look at your own stuff. Your business, sure. But also the other things… your health, your relationships, whatever your version of HappilyRV is, sitting there quietly shrinking from neglect.

Creation isn’t the same as adapting, or making do, or just getting by. It’s an actual moment of intention, followed by the work of making that intention real, over and over.

So. What are you creating?