Leaving Something on the Table

As a person who walks the line of business and creative behavior, often this point of view is underrepresented. Enough is often plenty.

See the original: A blog article by Steven Pressfield

When Shawn Coyne and I were first brainstorming the business concept behind Black Irish Entertainment, our two-man company that publishes The War of Art and its cousins, we wondered just how ambitious we wanted to be.

We decided, Not all that ambitious.

We agreed it would be okay to leave some money on the table.

This may not be the smartest way to run a business. It’s certainly not the standard American model. By such a model, an entrepreneur would aim to milk every dollar they possibly could from their enterprise. They would scale it. They would max it out. They would take it to the moon.

Maybe I’m crazy but that concept had very little appeal to me.

As an example, if I wanted to take The War of Art “on the road,” I could do speaking gigs, I could produce courses, hold workshops, blah blah etc.

I have no interest in that whatsoever.

I’m happy with the books as books. I’m happy with the audios as audio.

I don’t want to drive myself crazy in order to vacuum up every possible dime.

Like I say, maybe I’m foolish. I feel the same way about “size of life” (if there is such a term.) It’s the American way, I know, when we hit a jackpot of any kind to immediately buy a fancy car, move to an upgraded neighborhood … in other words, to extend ourselves to the outer limits of our wherewithal.

I don’t believe in that either. I remember when Jerry Brown was governor of California—the first time—people used to make fun of him for driving around Sacramento in a state motor pool ’74 Plymouth Satellite. And his girlfriend at the time was Linda Ronstadt!

That’s the simple life. That’s living within your means. That’s my kind of governor.