Why Businesses Aren't Like Roller Coasters
Coming home from Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, I was in sheer bliss.
I had just fulfilled a lifelong dream of going to the roller coaster capital of the world.
As the towering masses of steel shrank into the flat horizon of the Ohio landscape, I could still feel the ups, downs, twists, and turns. I closed my eyes wanting to hang on to the feeling as long as I could.
That feeling.
The feeling you get after riding a roller coaster is why they’re so often compared to the journey of entrepreneurship. The highs and lows. The intensity of the ride.
My mind drifted away from reliving my ride on Steel Vengeance - hands down the best I’ve ever ridden - to all the times I’ve described my own experiences in business as a roller coaster ride.
The past year and a half in particular made Steel Vengeance feel like a child’s ride in comparison. I couldn’t help but think the comparison would make for an interesting blog article.
Fulfilling my childhood dream of visiting Cedar Point
The most intense ride of my life, I mused to myself as a potential working title.
And as the sun set in the rearview mirror, chasing the Cedar Point skyline below the horizon behind us, my attention drifted to my childhood.
Roller Coaster Dreams Crash Into Reality
When I was a kid, I wanted to become a roller coaster designer.
I loved riding them. I loved playing roller coaster tycoon. I even did a high school research project on the linear induction and synchronous motors that power launch roller coasters.
I was in deep.
That passion is what ultimately tipped the scales and pushed me to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering instead of business when I went to college at the University of Maryland.
Spoiler alert, I never became a roller coaster designer. Turns out the industry is incredibly small, and despite my best efforts, I couldn’t find a single resource at UMD that could lay out a path to get me there.
Gradually, as I studied my way through physics, structural mechanics, and thermodynamics, my interest in engineering waned. But thanks to a multidisciplinary program between the business and engineering schools, my interest in business grew stronger.
By the end of college, I had launched my first company, been bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, and never looked back.
Engineering Identity Crisis
For years after graduating with my degree in mechanical engineering, I eschewed any notion that I was an engineer. Every time my grandma told her friends that her grandson was an engineer, I corrected her.
“I’m an entrepreneur!” I tried in vain to explain to her.
In hindsight, my love for entrepreneurship at the time was very much in it’s honeymoon phase. I had become totally enamored with the glorified image of the successful entrepreneur. It was my ego that deeply desired to be viewed as one of that tribe.
But by the time I started BE Lean, I had spent a decade learning from the successes and failures of two companies. I had a much clearer understanding of who I was. Of who I am.
I am an engineer.
It just so happens that my passion and skills are in the practice of engineering businesses.
The Ride of Entrepreneurship
The vertical drop on Steel Vengeance
As I reflected on this story during my drive home from Cedar Point, a thought popped into my head.
If businesses are like roller coasters, and I’m a “business engineer,” perhaps that means I am a roller coaster designer!
Woo hoo! I fulfilled my childhood dream after all!
And that’s the moment when my realization fell apart…
Because businesses are not like roller coasters.
See, that feeling you get from a roller coaster as you crest the lift hill and plummet over the first drop - that’s by design. From the moment a roller coaster becomes a twinkle in the eye of a designer, its intention is to give you a thrill. And that thrill comes with an important promise. No matter how intense it gets, you will be safely delivered back to where you started.
The reverse is true with entrepreneurship. Sure we love the highs, but we certainly don’t ask for the lows. The intention of most businesses is stable, consistent, and perhaps at times accelerated growth. When the ups, downs, twists and turns inevitably happen, they don’t come by design. And more importantly, they don’t come with the promise of a safe return.
I thought about what it might look like if the work I did for my clients was manifested as a roller coaster design.
Lift hill on Millennium Force
Man, would it be a boring roller coaster.
The drops, turns, and inversions would be eliminated and replaced with smooth track. The rickety creek of the wooden supports would be replaced with strong and reliable steel littered with safety sensors. And the nostalgic clack of the lift chain would be replaced with a fast and efficient motor.
In the end, the ride might end up looking like a lift hill that never ends. Sure, steady and continuous growth is good for business, but it wouldn’t make a great amusement attraction.
There’s no Comparison
Of course in reality, none of these analogies are completely true. The promise of a roller coaster to deliver a safe and predictable thrill can’t be kept in the world of entrepreneurship. And you can’t design your way to a perfectly smooth ride.
Business is neither an entirely passive experience nor can it be completely controlled.
Sometimes we’re laying the track. And sometimes we’re just riding the ride. A lot of times, we’re doing both at the same time.
And that’s precisely what’s so uniquely challenging and exciting about engineering a business. You get the thrill that comes with the ride and the agency to chart your own course as you go.
That ability to do both - to appreciate the journey you’re on while working to create your own future - is unlike any ride I’ve ever been on or ever will.
