Are You Making Business Harder Than It Needs to Be?

Every entrepreneur I know — myself included — has had those moments where we suddenly realize we are making something in our business a whole lot harder than it needs to be.

It’s almost a rite of passage in business. We learn, we overcomplicate, we peel it back, and eventually we find the path of ease. Not laziness. Not avoidance. Just alignment.

And one of the biggest culprits behind unnecessary struggle is trying to run your business in ways that don’t match your temperament.

In this article, I’m walking you through five places where business owners commonly choose the hard way and what shifts actually make things easier.

Understanding Your Temperament Before You Fix Anything

There are a lot of sorters out there: Keirsey-Bates, MBTI, Enneagram, DISC, and many more. I don’t really care which one you use. I care that you understand how you work.

For simplicity, I’m going to talk about four broad work-style temperaments.

The first is the structured worker. This person thrives on routines, predictability, and order. The second is the spontaneous worker, who needs flexibility, variety, and a sense of freedom in how they show up to work. The third is the meaning-driven worker, who is guided by intuition, purpose, resonance, and the big picture. The fourth is the strategic worker, an analytical, systems-oriented problem solver who wants competency and clarity.

Keep these four in mind as we walk through the five areas where entrepreneurs love to create friction.

Time Management: The Myth of the “One Right System”

Time management is probably the single most overcomplicated topic in entrepreneurship. Walk into any conference and you’ll see standing-room-only sessions on it.

Here’s the secret: time management systems only work when they match your wiring.

If you’re a structured worker, you usually thrive with tools like time blocking, a simple “rule of three” for your day, and structured deep work sessions. Predictability soothes your nervous system and helps you settle into flow.

If you’re a spontaneous worker, rigid systems probably burn you out. You may even have a graveyard of half-used planners and programs. Short sprints, flexible batching, and a bit of gamification tend to work better for you. You need engagement and movement, not a rigid schedule that locks you down.

If you’re a meaning-driven worker, capacity-based planning can be life-changing. You and I both know that the plan you write on Sunday night rarely survives contact with Monday morning. Instead, ask yourself each day: “What is my capacity today? Where is my energy actually available?” Then choose what matters most from that place.

And if you’re a strategic worker, you usually do well with deep work sprints and data-driven systems that let you analyze and refine. You like solving problems and improving processes. Just be careful not to spend so long analyzing that you never actually execute.

The bottom line here is that there is no universal “right” time management system. There is only the system that respects your temperament.

Follow-Up: Where Millions Are Lost

Most entrepreneurs don’t fail because they can’t get leads. They fail because they don’t follow up.

This is an area where I lean on technology heavily. As a meaning-driven worker with a dash of spontaneous, I am not naturally wired for meticulous detail tracking. If it relies on my memory alone, it’s probably not going to happen consistently.

That’s why I love automation. It supports every temperament. Structured workers can build systems that run like clockwork. Spontaneous and meaning-driven workers can rely on automated processes to catch the things their brains don’t want to sit still for. Strategic workers can design elegant follow-up sequences and then let them run.

Anything you do repeatedly should be automated. Follow-up emails, reminders, check-ins, nurture sequences—these are all beautiful places to let the machines help.

Follow-up is where the opportunities live. It’s where clients say yes after everyone else forgot to circle back. When you automate your follow-up, you stop making this part of business harder than it needs to be.

Marketing: Stop Turning It Into a Monster

Marketing is deeply emotional. It asks us to be visible, consistent, and intentional—three words that touch every insecurity an entrepreneur has.

Different temperaments bump into different walls here.

Structured workers often get stuck in perfection. The copy has to be perfect, the graphics perfect, the timing perfect, the offer perfectly tuned. The shift that helps is to aim for excellence instead of perfection. Excellence is achievable today. Perfection is a moving target that never actually arrives.

Spontaneous workers tend to struggle with consistency. When you only post “when you feel like it,” the gaps get bigger and the results get smaller. You don’t have to force yourself into a rigid daily discipline to fix that. Instead, create marketing in sprints and schedule it out. Your audience experiences steady consistency, but you created it in a way that honored your energy.

Meaning-driven workers often get tangled in the emotions of marketing. It can feel heavy, or manipulative, or just “icky.” Reframing it can make a huge difference. Marketing is not the monster. It’s the vehicle that gets your work to the people who need it. If you care about your impact, you have to let marketing do its job.

Strategic workers tend to over-strategize and overanalyze. They have brilliant plans, detailed funnels, and ten optimized versions of the landing page — all still sitting in drafts. Publishing imperfectly is better than planning perfectly and never hitting “publish.” Action is the missing piece, not intelligence.

Marketing becomes easier when you stop trying to do it in a way that fights your wiring and start doing it in a way that works with it.

Networking: Not Just for Extroverts

Networking is another place where temperament plays a big role, especially around introversion and extroversion.

Introverts often assume they’re “not good” at networking, but I don’t buy that. I know many deeply introverted people who are outstanding networkers. They just had to design networking in a way that felt humane and spacious for them. When they do, they tend to have deeper, more meaningful conversations and build very solid long-term relationships.

Extroverts, on the other hand, usually love networking events. They’ll talk to everyone in the room. The trap is that they talk when they should be listening. It’s easy to bounce from person to person, have lots of surface-level conversations, and still not create any real opportunities.

For networking to become easier and more productive, you have to understand your wiring and adjust accordingly. Introverts may need fewer events, more one-on-one conversations, and better recovery time afterwards. Extroverts may need to slow down, listen more, and go for depth instead of volume.

Networking works best when it’s done in a way that respects your nervous system instead of fighting it.

Self-Care: The First Thing to Go and the Last Thing That Should

Entrepreneurs tend to treat self-care like a luxury. It’s not a luxury. It’s infrastructure.

When you’re running a business, your mind and body are the core operating system. If you neglect them, everything else glitches out.

Self-care doesn’t have to be elaborate. In fact, it works best when it’s simple and woven into your day in small, repeatable ways.

Structured workers usually do well with a predictable daily pause. Put it on your calendar. Make it part of the routine. Your nervous system loves knowing that moment of rest is coming.

Spontaneous workers often benefit from quick sensory resets between tasks. A breath of fresh air, a short walk, a brief movement break, or simply taking a moment to stretch can reset your energy without locking you into a fixed schedule.

Meaning-driven workers are helped by emotional check-ins. A 60-second pause to ask, “What am I feeling? What do I need right now?” can be enough to shift the entire tone of your day.

Strategic workers may need to mentally declutter. A short moment to notice what problems you’re still carrying in your head, set them aside, and bring your awareness back to the present can sharpen your focus again.

The thread that runs through all of this is simple: stop trying to care for yourself using someone else’s toolkit. Build a self-care rhythm that actually matches you.

Ease Is Not Laziness — It’s Wisdom

Entrepreneurs often wear struggle like a badge of honor. We tell stories about the grind, the hustle, and the long hours, as if suffering is proof of seriousness.

Struggle is not a requirement for success. Alignment is.

Honoring your temperament isn’t a cop-out. It’s smart business design. It’s sustainable entrepreneurship. It’s choosing the road that actually leads somewhere instead of fighting your way up a hill just because someone else said it was the “right” path.

If you’ve been making things harder than they need to be, you’re in good company. Every entrepreneur does this at some point. But you don’t have to stay there.

Here’s to choosing ease, alignment, and systems that support the life you want to live.