Keep it Simple: Simplicity-Driven Entrepreneurship

In my post on March 8 entitled, “Equity, Lifestyle, and My Escape from Golden Handcuffs,” I wondered, “Do I want to be an equity entrepreneur, or a lifestyle entrepreneur?”
I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently, and I just found some more food for thought on Jonathan Fields’ great blog, “Awake at the Wheel.” In Scaling Talent: Simplicity-Driven Entrepreneurship (posted back in February), Fields questions the conventional wisdom that effective entrepreneurs grow their businesses by creating systems, delegating, and outsourcing. He’s coined a great phrase too: “Simplicity-Driven Entrepreneurship.”
I love that. If Tim Ferris-style “lifestyle design” is on one side of the work-as-passion coin, then “simplicity-driven entrepreneurship” should be on the other.
“You get hyper-creative and work … to leverage your assets and passion in a way that allows for a substantial bottom line income,” Fields explains, “but with far less stress and complexity than what normally comes with even a well-executed systems and people driven company.”
That appeals to me.
There are lots of great resources available for people with passions who want to learn how to start and run businesses. But do most of these people really want to learn all those business skills?
If you have dreams of building a big company, then the simplicity-driven approach is probably not for you. But it’s an interesting perspective that will appeal to creative people who want to make more money without fundamentally changing the nature of their work life.