Business Complacency: The Entropy of “We’re Good”
Business complacency quietly weakened my company over four years. Here’s what entropy taught me about leadership, attention, and staying hungry.
The Power of Intention: How to Change What Happens Next
The week before, I had transferred another $10,000 of my own money into Apple Spice just to make ends meet.
I wasn’t doing it again.
I had been away from the daily operation of the business for a few years. In my absence, bad habits had taken root. Problems went unexamined. Standards slipped. Missing goals became something we explained instead of something we corrected.
The business had atrophied.
Returning felt like arriving at a rental property you hadn’t visited in years. The grass hasn’t been cut. The front door is open. You walk through the rooms wondering, How long has this been like this?
I could blame everyone who had been living there.
Or I could admit that I hadn’t been tending to it.
That is why I started going into the office every day again. I could see what I didn’t like. More importantly, I could see what needed to change if we wanted better outcomes consistently.
I wasn’t there to watch the business become a smaller version of itself.
I was there to rebuild it.
We Needed $8,000
On Monday, we had about $12,000 in sales for the week. We needed $20,000.
A few years ago, finding another $8,000 would have been a piece of cake. This year, it felt like a stretch.
“I don’t need sales next week or next month,” I told the team. “I need another $8,000 this week.”
We didn’t have open opportunities waiting to close. If we wanted those sales, we had to create them.
My energy was clear.
“This business will grow. We will reach our goals. We will earn our bonuses. Period.”
Then I told them:
This is going to happen, and you are going to help me make it real.
We launched a massive outreach campaign to customers we hadn’t heard from in at least 60 days. The list was long because we had been closed for a month while constructing our new store.
We checked in with old customers. We reminded them that we were open. We asked for their business.
Nothing fancy.
Just old-fashioned effort.
And by Friday, we had created $8,000 in sales.
The stretch goal was now sitting in front of us as a real number.
The Future Is Not Something That Just Happens
Looking at that number, I understood why intention has always felt so powerful to me.
On Monday, $20,000 was only an idea.
By Friday, it existed.
We made it real.
One of my favorite words is intention.
Rick Rubin wrote in The Creative Act:
“A completed project is only made-up of our intention and our experiments around it.”
That is exactly how this rebuild feels.
I can see the business I intend to create. Everything we are doing now—every sales campaign, meeting, conversation, mistake, and new process—is an experiment around that intention.
Intention didn’t magically create the $8,000. The team did that through calls, emails, follow-ups, and effort.
But the intention focused all of that effort in one direction.
Instead of seeing a slow week, we saw a gap that needed to be closed. Instead of accepting the number in front of us, we started looking for ways to change it.
We stopped waiting to see what kind of week would happen to us.
We decided what kind of week we were going to create.
That felt like more than a sales victory. It felt like proof that the future of the business had not already been decided.
Bad habits had shaped Apple Spice while I was away. But that meant new habits could reshape it now that I was back.
I Had Seen This Before
My son once spent nearly a year trying to hit his first home run over the fence.
That intention quietly shaped his choices. He used a heavier bat. He did more push-ups. He ate a little better. He strengthened his legs.
Then, during a cold, wet game in Washington, D.C., he drove a 2–0 pitch over the opposite-field fence.
Afterward, he said, “I can’t believe I hit a home run.”
I could.
I had seen the work.
I wrote about that moment in my story about youth sports, goal setting, and his first home run. The home run gave him evidence that he could imagine something, work toward it, and eventually make it real.
Now I had my own evidence.
Success leaves clues.
How to Set an Intention
I have written before about why everyone needs a North Star instead of relying only on goals.
A North Star gives you a direction. A goal measures your progress. Intention is the decision to start moving.
The process is simple:
- See the future you want.
- Name it clearly.
- Take the next useful action.
- Notice what works and what doesn’t.
- Adjust and keep moving.
The route will change. Your first solution may fail. Failure leaves clues too.
The intention remains.
Building the Future One Problem at a Time
That is how we are rebuilding Apple Spice now.
We find one problem, examine it, talk about it, and create a better process.
We recognize greatness every week because we intend to build a culture where great work gets noticed.
We ask who we helped grow because developing people cannot be something we remember only when it is convenient.
Consistency and process are everything in catering. Chaos hides around every corner. Orders change. Dietary restrictions get missed. Equipment breaks. Drivers get delayed.
If something can go wrong, eventually it will without a strong system.
My intention is to build a business that does not depend on people scrambling, remembering everything, or saving the day at the last minute.
One problem at a time. One person at a time. One week at a time.
The grass had grown high. The door had been left open. There was more to repair than I wanted to admit.
But standing there on Friday, looking at the $8,000 we had created, I no longer saw a neglected property.
I could see the business it could become.
And for the first time in a long time, I knew we were already building it.
“Know what’s enough. Build what matters.”
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