Is it possible to be a lazy and successful entrepreneur?

We see entrepreneurs as active people, always prepared for new achievements, ready to travel for miles in order to reach their goal. It’s difficult to imagine a successful business person that doesn’t take certain amounts of risk or isn’t taking the initiative. Yet so many driven, creative people full of energy fail to see their ideas through, successfully.

In a world where competition grows by the hour and gets more ruthless, is it possible to have a successful enterprise as a lazy entrepreneur? Are there good sides to being lazy, and how could we use our laziness to reach our bliss?

Lazy people look for shortcuts

Finding the best way to handle any issue can sometimes take too much time. In return, the result might never be there on time, or cost too many resources. Michael Lewis, acclaimed author, says that being lazy allows him to focus only on what’s absolutely necessary. This way, the amount of time we spend on achieving a goal is way more less than it would be if we went on side-missions that weren’t essential to the task. He continues with the argument that “people waste years of their lives not being willing to waste hours of their lives.” In entrepreneurship, finding the easiest way is one of the key elements to success, as long as it fits in with all other components. That is why laziness could be a useful filter that could help a person decide if the job is important enough, or it could be skipped or passed to someone else.

Outsourcing to the rescue

Sometimes the task at hand might be just a little bit too much for us at that particular moment. If it happens that there is an approaching deadline included, there could be only two possible outcomes:

• Risk not reaching our deadline because the work was just too difficult for us to do it on our own.
• Find someone who can finish the task much faster and provide a respectable quality of execution.

The second outcome is something that a lazy person would opt for probably the same moment he or she realizes that the work is too much trouble, and it’s just easier to have someone else do the work for them. More than often, the results came even better than expected. It’s the same as when in college students resolve to professional essay writing services when the topic is beyond their grasp, or there was a hell of a party last night.

Lazy people don’t work just to stay busy

We all know or have heard of that person who always tries to stay active and doesn’t mind spending hours working on a single endeavor no matter the results. This might seem as a good thing for entrepreneurs, we should all try as hard as we can in order to pursue our dreams, but there’s a downside to this. While we bury ourselves in work, trying to untangle the untaggable, we might miss some better business opportunities, chances to seek inspiration elsewhere. This is the message that the author of “Moneyball”, Michael Lewis tried to convey when he was a keynote speaker at the 2017 Insight Summit.

Marketing benefits

Anyone who uses the internet on a daily basis has issues with aggressive marketing campaigns. Popup windows, banners, email newsletters and videos are the new way for many entrepreneurs to show their face to everyone. However, there is a substantial chance of aggressive campaign backfiring, which would eventually result with more harm than good. This is all the result of active marketing strategies that most startups use in order to gain more new customers. Active marketing demands meeting people, contacting with various partners, etc.

On the other hand, passive marketing is much more reliant on customer service and positioning. It allows customers to reach the brand through search engines or phonebooks. This means that you don’t need to perform any special activities in order to make yourself visible, those who need you will eventually find you. It is actually very anticipative strategy and with intelligent planning, it could scale up the revenue without a problem.

Could a lazy entrepreneur be a successful one?

As our story depicts, there are reasonable arguments to support the claim that lazy people could gain success in their business and creative enterprises. It appears that motivation is the key driver of our success, and the way we handle our path to the top is our own to shape it as we prefer. As long as we are rich in motivation, we will never be too lazy for giving our best. In the end, although it is said that a rolling stone gathers no moss, no matter how promising this proverb is, we should always keep in mind the story about the Ant and the Grasshopper as well.

Tom Jager is professional blogger. He works at Awriter.  He has degree in Law and English literature. Tom has written numerous articles/online journals. You can reach him at G+  or  Facebook.