The Troublemaker
My sister-in-law recently bought me a bottle of wine called “Troublemaker.”
It was clearly a statement about her opinion of me, which is totally ok, because I’ve always been a rule breaker. To be clear, I am a troublemaker not a law breaker. There is an enormous difference. I am the former, except maybe just that once. No further details were available at press time.
Going through life with the little edge of a troublemaker is empowering. You are always poised and ready to break the status quo. You never ever say, “that is the way it has always been done.” You understand there is always and will forever be a better way to do everything. You may not have found it yet, but you keep looking. You trip and fall over and over again (I lived my childhood with perpetual skinned knees) but you dust off, jump up and push forward. This is the best feeling ever.
I inherited my “troublemakerness” from my mother who was the OG of troublemaking. If she was told, "it has never been done that way," it just drove her harder and faster. She was not a patient person. She wanted what she wanted and went after it, breaking traditional rules that were assigned to her at every turn.
She was the first ever female paper carrier for the Brooklyn Eagle, the first female lifeguard on Long Island, the first female member of the Long Island Public Relations Association and the first ever female physical director of a YMCA, in the country.
This is the core tenant of being a troublemaker: not being afraid to break the status quo. It doesn’t mean you have to be first, or the best. But it does mean that you need to, and should, have the confidence and courage to ignore the way things are “supposed” to be, and shake things up a bit.
As entrepreneurs, we hear the word innovation all the time. The reality is, it can’t happen every day. Breakthroughs are rare and they take time, but they’re also what drive us forward. Along the way, it’s often the troublemaking—the questioning, the pushing, the refusal to accept limitations—that keeps the momentum going. We can be troublemakers every day.
Troublemaking can take form at any scale.
Here’s an example from just last week: Instead of your standard out-of-office automated email, our COO signed his, “Yours in rivers, Carter.” Maybe that doesn’t seem like a lot, but it certainly gave me a chuckle, and more importantly, it let a little of his personality shine through an email that would otherwise be forgettable. Sometimes it’s just small moments like that—breaking routine, bending expectations—that keep things fresh and remind us that troublemaking doesn’t always have to be grand to make an impact.
There are a few common sense guidelines to being a good troublemaker.
1. Don’t make trouble for the sake of being troublesome. Being a troublemaker is good, being troublesome is not.
2. Be respectful and ethical. Don’t lie, cheat or steal. This is the obvious difference between rule breaker and law breaker. You can make trouble and be totally ethical, respectful and kind. Shake it up. Jump in. Push hard. But don’t break the law.
3. Be confident in yourself. You are the only one in charge of your destiny. Challenge and break the rules. Rules impact our ability to create and innovate. Do rules make decisions easier? Of course they do. But what’s the fun in that?
4. Don’t let anything or anyone or anything stand in your way. Go all in, all the time. Don’t do anything halfway.
Are you ready to be a troublemaker today? Just take a breath and remember who you are. Believe in yourself. You solve challenges every single day and you are fearless.
What is a status quo that drives you a little nuts? Change it. There is always a better way. Go find it and stir things up a bit. You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.