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Hi {{first_name}},
This one’s short, because the idea itself is short.
There are no silver bullets in business. There are 100 golden BBs. I’ve heard versions of that line from Alex Hormozi and a few others, and I think about it constantly when I look at companies.
Almost every operator I meet is hunting a silver bullet. The transformative hire. The rebrand. The new ERP. The one marketing channel that fixes growth. And the hunt feels productive, because big fixes make for big stories.
But look closely at any business that has quietly compounded for a decade and you’ll find almost no silver bullets in its history. You’ll find BBs. The phone answered one ring faster. A quote template that closes 2% better. One price raised 3% with zero churn. Receivables collected four days sooner. A job posting rewritten so the right people apply. Ten customer calls a quarter that surface problems while they’re still cheap.
Any one of those is too small to make a board slide. That’s exactly why they get skipped. But a hundred of them, stacked over a couple of years, is the difference between a business that grinds and a business that compounds. The needle doesn’t just move. It relocates.
Here’s the sneaky cost of the silver bullet hunt: it isn’t just that the big fix usually disappoints. It’s that while you’re searching, the hundred small improvements sit there unfired. Nobody owns them, because everyone is busy with the big thing.
The exercise this week: skip the strategy session. Instead, list ten BBs, improvements so small they feel almost embarrassing to write down. Fire two of them by Friday. Then do it again next week.
Talk soon,
Matt
P.S. When I’m not writing this, I’m buying and operating founder-led businesses for the long term at Eidolon Capital. If you’re a founder thinking about your next chapter, or you advise one who is, just hit reply. I read every note.