The Turtle and the Entrepreneur
There’s a certain kind of exhaustion that is unique to small business owners. It’s not just the physical tiredness from the long hours. It's a deep, soul-level weariness that comes from constantly pushing. Pushing for a sale, pushing a deadline, pushing a new idea, pushing your team, pushing yourself. We live in a world that screams at us to go faster, scale quicker, hustle harder. We feel this immense pressure to control every outcome, to bend the world to our will through sheer force of effort.
I have lived in that state of perpetual pushing for years. It's a place of high adrenaline and even higher anxiety. A few years ago, I found myself standing on a dark beach at Mon Repos, near Bundaberg, and had an experience that completely rewired my understanding of effort, patience, and success. It was one of the most profound small business life lessons I’ve ever had, and it didn’t come from a business book or a guru. It came from a 100-kilo green sea turtle.
We were there to see the turtles nest. And we waited. And waited. We weren’t allowed phones or bright lights. There was no refreshing an app to see when the turtles would arrive. There was only darkness, the sound of the waves, and the quiet patience of the park rangers. We were on turtle time. The rangers explained that you can’t rush a turtle. She will come ashore when she is ready. She will dig her nest when the conditions are right. She will lay her eggs on her own schedule. You cannot force it. All you can do is wait, and create the right conditions for her to do her work.
In that moment, standing in the quiet dark, a wave of recognition washed over me. This is it. This is the secret. Every small business owner is a turtle, trying to build something that will last. And we are also the impatient tourist, wanting it to happen now. The greatest lesson we can learn is to stop being the tourist and start understanding the turtle.
Lesson 1: You Can't Rush the Nesting (Trusting Your Timeline)
In the world of startups, we celebrate the "overnight success." But that's a dangerous myth. Every business that looks like an overnight success has a long, hidden story of hard yakka, quiet moments of doubt, and slow, incremental progress.
Watching that mother turtle was a masterclass in this. She moved with a slow, ancient deliberation. She spent hours digging a chamber with her flippers, flinging sand everywhere in a way that looked almost comically inefficient. She wasn't rushing. She wasn't checking her watch. She was engaged in a deep, instinctual process, and it would take as long as it took.
This is one of the hardest small business life lessons to absorb. We want to rush the process. We want to get to the launch, to the profit, to the "we made it" moment. But you cannot rush the building of a reputation. You cannot rush the earning of trust. You cannot rush the development of a truly great product or the creation of a strong team culture.
These things are like digging the nest. They require patient, consistent, and sometimes monotonous effort. They require you to show up day after day and just fling the sand, even when it feels like you're getting nowhere.
The Turtle's Lesson for Your Business:
Where are you trying to rush the nesting? Are you launching a product before it's truly ready? Are you pushing your team to hit a sales target without giving them the time to build genuine customer relationships? Take a breath. Look at your business and ask, "What is the slow, important work I need to do today?" Focus on the patient flinging of sand. The results will come, but they will come on their own timeline, not yours.
Lesson 2: Be the Ranger, Not the Star (A New Model for Leadership)
As we stood on that beach, the heroes of the night were not the turtles. They were the rangers. They were quiet, knowledgeable, and almost invisible. Their role was not to do the work. They didn't dig the nest or lay the eggs. Their role was to create and protect the environment where the turtle could do her best work.
They kept the noisy tourists at a distance. They used special low-light torches to guide the way without disturbing the ancient process. They were there to gently clear obstacles, to educate, and to serve the real star of the show.
This was a lightbulb moment for me about small business leadership. So many founders, myself included, start out thinking we have to be the star. We have to be the best salesperson, the most innovative marketer, the one with all the answers. But as you grow, your role must change. You have to stop being the turtle and start being the ranger.
Your job as a leader is to create the conditions for your team to succeed.
- You protect them from distractions (the 'noisy tourists') so they can do deep, focused work.
- You provide the right tools and guidance (the 'special torches') without blinding them with the harsh light of micromanagement.
- You clear the path of obstacles—the bureaucratic red tape, the internal politics, the lack of resources.
A ranger doesn't seek the spotlight. Their satisfaction comes from seeing the process unfold successfully. This is a profound lesson in servant leadership. Your success as a leader is no longer measured by your own output, but by the success of your team. Are you creating an environment where they feel safe enough to do their best work?
The Turtle's Lesson for Your Business:
Are you still trying to be the turtle in every part of your business? Or have you embraced your role as the ranger? Identify one area this week where you can stop 'doing' and start 'guiding'. How can you better protect your team's focus and clear obstacles from their path?
Lesson 3: The Eighty-Percent Rule (Embracing Imperfection to Get Things Done)
Watching that turtle dig was fascinating. She was not a perfectionist. She flung sand everywhere. There was no precise blueprint. It wasn't neat. But it was incredibly effective. She wasn't aiming for the perfect nest. She was focused on creating a nest that was good enough to protect her eggs. She was a master of the 80% rule.
As small business owners, we can be crippled by perfectionism. We spend weeks agonising over the exact shade of blue for our website, we rewrite an email 15 times, we delay launching a new service because it's not "100% ready." This 'analysis paralysis' is a business killer.
The turtle taught me that sometimes, you just have to get on with it. Done is often better than perfect. Getting a B-minus version of your idea out into the world and getting real customer feedback is infinitely more valuable than keeping an A-plus version locked away in your head.
This isn't an excuse for sloppy work. It's about understanding that perfection is the enemy of progress. It's a small business life lesson that gives you permission to be human, to be imperfect, and to be in motion.
The Turtle's Lesson for Your Business:
Where is perfectionism holding you back? What project, idea, or post have you been sitting on because it’s not "quite right"? Challenge yourself this week to apply the turtle's 80% rule. Get it to "good enough" and ship it. Then learn from the result and iterate.
Lesson 4: The Unseen Journey (Appreciating the Long Game)
The most mind-boggling part of the turtle story is what happens after. The mother turtle returns to the ocean, exhausted, and begins a journey that can span thousands of kilometres. The tiny hatchlings, when they emerge, will face a perilous dash to the sea, and only a fraction will survive. Those that do will spend decades maturing in the open ocean before, somehow, instinct guides them back to the very same beach to start the cycle anew.
Most of that journey is completely unseen. It’s a story of incredible resilience, perseverance, and navigating a vast, unknown ocean.
This is the reality of the small business journey. The world loves to celebrate the launch day, the big contract win, the successful exit. They see the tiny turtle making it to the water. But they don't see the years of unseen struggle that came before. They don't see the rejections, the failed prototypes, the late nights filled with self-doubt, the lonely 'ocean' you had to navigate to get there.
This lesson is about falling in love with the process, not just the outcome. It's about finding satisfaction in the daily navigation, not just the arrival at a destination. It’s about having the resilience to keep swimming when you’re in the deep, dark water and land is nowhere in sight.
The Turtle's Lesson for Your Business:
Are you only celebrating the big, public wins? Start acknowledging the unseen journey. Celebrate paying your bills on time for a year. Celebrate fixing a difficult bug in your software. Celebrate the loyalty of your first employee. These are the true markers of resilience on your long, unseen journey.
The Final Lesson: Finding Your Own Rhythm
The most profound small business life lesson from that night on the beach was a feeling, not a thought. It was the feeling of surrendering to a different kind of time. A natural, ancient rhythm that had nothing to do with my overflowing inbox or my quarterly targets.
We live in a digital world that demands an instant response. But our creativity, our strategic thinking, our relationships, and our wellbeing do not operate on a digital timeline. They operate on a human timeline. They, like the turtles, have their own seasons. There are seasons for intense work (nesting) and seasons for rest and recovery (swimming in the ocean).
You cannot nest 365 days a year. You will burn out. The ultimate challenge is to have the wisdom to know what season you are in and the courage to honour it. To know when to push, and when to patiently wait in the dark.
That night on the beach, I learned that the world doesn’t fall apart when you switch off your phone. I learned that some things are worth waiting for. And I learned that the most powerful force in the universe is not hustle, but the patient, persistent, and quiet unfolding of a natural process.
Your business is a natural process. Your life is a natural process. Stop fighting it. Start listening to it. That is the secret to building a business, and a life, that can truly endure.