Five counterintuitive rules for building fast-growth businesses

Executive overview

Most entrepreneurs copy conventional wisdom — and get conventional results. Fast growth often comes from doing the opposite of what feels safe or sensible.

Five rules drive this: invite conflict, embrace boredom, hire imperfect people, never work alone, and sell before you build.

The fastest path to growth is to stop optimising for comfort and start optimising for what actually works.

Invite conflict

• Teams default to agreement around founders — you can say something absurd and no one pushes back.
• Create explicit permission and code words (e.g. "can I lock antlers with you on that?") so people feel safe disagreeing.
• Conflict sharpens ideas the same way a steel sharpens a blade — friction is the mechanism, not the problem.
• The goal is to preserve the best idea, not the most harmonious conversation.

Embrace boredom

• Scaling is boring by design: repeat what works, then repeat it again.
• Entrepreneurs who love creativity often sabotage themselves by reinventing things that were already working.
• A working marketing campaign left unrun, a successful presentation delivered only once — these are common self-inflicted losses.
• Target outcome: a boring, repeatable week filled with boring, repeatable activities that compound.
• Even performing in front of 50,000 people is boring for touring bands — same songs, same jokes, same show, night after night.

Hire the wrong people

• The perfect candidate — experienced, cheap, available — doesn't exist at the small-business stage.
• Highly skilled operators typically have jobs at large companies; your business is too small to attract them.
• The best early hires often come from hospitality, small businesses slightly larger than yours, or people who need flexibility the corporate world won't give them.
• Low bar for early-stage hiring: willing, available, breathing — bring them in and see what they can do.
• Imperfect hires free up the founder to operate at the next level.

Never work alone

• No startup has been started solo; always use co-founders or early employees from day one.
• Military units never send one person on a mission — two-person scout teams, four-person fire teams, eight-person sections.
• Apply the same structure to business: every new territory, product, or customer segment gets two owners — one for sales, one for customer delight.
• Working with others is faster, more fun, and produces better outcomes.

Sell first, then build

• Standard approach: build in secret, then sell. This approach wastes time and resources on unvalidated ideas.
• Reverse it: sell from brochures, landing pages, or slide decks before anything exists.
• Only proceed to build once customers have signed an order form.
• Be upfront — tell customers the product is in development and they would be an early customer.
• Most people are willing; they just need honesty about what stage the product is at.
• If you don't build, they get their money back — set the rules clearly upfront.