Clarity is overrated

Almost everybody who's walked into our house these past few weeks has stopped dead in their tracks and said, "Holy shit."

My wife has the place completely decked out for Christmas. And I mean completely.

She's insanely crafty and creative, and one of the many benefits we get from that is that come Christmas time, we have a badass, fully custom holiday setup.

She doesn't just go to the store and buy decorations. She buys individual wreaths, individual ornaments, individual strands of lights—then builds everything from scratch.

Every year it gets bigger. Every year it's different. Every room has its own theme.

The other day, I asked her: "How much of this do you know what it's going to look like before you get started? How clear is the vision of a room before you begin?"

Her answer? "None of it."

I was shocked. "Really?!? After all these years?"

"Yeah," she said.

"I usually know the color theme I'm starting with and just go from there. Once I get going, I realize, 'I need to change this' or 'It’d look better with that.’ And I steal stuff from other rooms or figure out what to make."

She continued: "It's never perfect. But at some point, I've got to go to the next room. I’m happy with it enough to move on—even though I know there's still more I could do."

Listening to her explain this, two things hit me.

First, she just loves it.

You can hear it in her voice. She loves doing this. It gives her energy.

Even though there's a ton of frustration—strands of lights going out, having to undo zip ties when something doesn't work, ornaments breaking—overall, she loves the process.

Second, the metaphor for business building could not be clearer.

The Bezos Myth vs. The Jobs Reality

We glorify the idea of having a crystal-clear vision—whether we're just launching or deciding where to take the business next.

And you know what? I did too. For a long time, I thought you needed absolute clarity because that vision would pull you forward.

I subscribed to the Bezos approach—having prophecy-like clarity that maps out the future from day one, as he did in his first shareholder letter in 1997.

When you have that clarity as a North Star, it makes everything easier. Decision-making. Filtering out bad ideas. All of it.

But what I've learned through my own experience and that of friends and mentors: building a business is more art than science.

It's more of a canvas to build on as you go, not paint-by-numbers.

The vast majority of wildly successful entrepreneurs and business builders will tell you: "I kind of knew what I was doing when I got going, but this thing took on a life of its own."

And the ones who've been at it for decades? They'll tell you the same thing about what they're building right now.

Like my wife with the decorations. She has a general sense, then gets going.

Through the process of going, new options open up that she couldn't have forecasted or predicted.

New choices lead to more choices. There's no way to see where it's all heading. So there's no sense trying to figure it all out before she starts.

In reality, it's far more an experience like what Steve Jobs explained:

You sit down with a general theme. You make some choices. You go through the process. You adjust as you go.

And by the way, just like any other form of art, it's never done. It's never perfect. You can keep going infinitely.

And that's actually part of the fun.

If You Don't Have Clarity, Love the Process

If you have that Bezos-like clarity of what you want to build and where you need to go next, great. Leverage that clarity as a decision-making filter.

If not—or if you had it once and somewhere along the way it got foggy again—don't sweat it. You're in good company. Because like my wife working her magic on Christmas decor, most of us are figuring it out as we go. At every stage.

But word of warning: if you’re building without a clear vision, you will need to love the process.

Because figuring it out as you go can be really damn frustrating—whether it's your first year or your fifteenth.

You're operating under uncertainty, learning through experience, making mistakes, and periodically taking four steps backwards in order to take ten forward.

If you love the process of building, your tolerance for shit like this will be high enough to keep going. If not, you'll quit.

Perfect example? Our Christmas decorations.

The first time I spent 2 hours zip-tying multiple strands of lights together and one went out, forcing me to redo the whole thing, the jig would be up. We'd be sufficing with a popup Christmas tree from there on out.

Because I don't have an inherent love for that form of art like my wife does.

Flip it around: when she hears about the 30th iteration of a new offer or hiring strategy in my business, she thinks, "Not in a million years would I keep doing what you're doing."

But the love I have for my own form of art pulls me through all the shit that comes with business building—customer issues, technical issues, employee issues, and more.

The Question You're Probably Asking Yourself

If you're years into running a business and still don't have crystal clarity on where it's all heading—welcome to the club.

I used to think I'd eventually "arrive" at some point where the fog lifted and I could see the full picture. Five years of building. Six. Now closer to seven.

Still waiting.

What I've stopped doing is treating that as a problem.

Because here's what I've noticed: the entrepreneurs I respect most—the ones running $10M, $50M, $100M+ businesses—aren't operating with some master blueprint the rest of us are missing.

They're making the next best decision with the information they have, adjusting as they go, and trusting the process to reveal what's next.

The Only Real Question

So if you're sitting there wondering, "Shouldn't I have more figured out by now?"—ask yourself a different question:

Am I still energized by the process of building this thing?

If yes, keep going. The clarity you're looking for is downstream of action, not upstream of it.

If no, that's worth paying attention to. Because the absence of a clear destination is tolerable when you love the journey. Without that? It's just grinding.

My wife will probably tweak those decorations three more times before Christmas. Not because she has to. Because she wants to.

That's the difference.

Adios,

Ray