This is a hard post to write because I want to keep it simple. Which is the funny thing about simple…it’s easy to use and maintain but really really difficult (for me) to create. Is it the same for you?

Because I’ll get this perfect little idea that’s practically sparkling with simplicity on the empty plain of my mind…

…and then a trickle of other, smaller, lesser ideas will traipse in and latch onto the original. To add interest. To round it out. To make it complete. The one idea was great by itself, sooooo adding other ideas can only make it better…right?

Right?

Bullshit.

That kind of maximizer logic is why the newest Microsoft Word has 1800+ commands. (True story).

An extreme example, but it can be like that. All those extra ideas are great fun when we’re dreaming, but they’ll bury us (and everyone around us) when we bring our new-and-not-much-improved idea into The Real.

I am guilty of this. I know better. But how I am and what I know aren’t the story. The story starts in 2001 with a loaf of bread.

Bread. Paris. Then.

February 2001, Fast Company published Give Us This Day Our Global Bread, which was mostly about Poilâne, a Parisian baker who chose FedEx to extend his reach rather than open more shops. Good stuff, really, but what stuck with me was this:

“You can make thousands of products
with only three ingredients.”

Poilâne continued: “The water and flour can, of course, be very different. Then there are the conditions: the geography and the climate. There’s yeast, fermentation, time, oven, and shape. Manipulation is important too.”

For his world-renowned bread, the three ingredients are water, flour, and a starter (which works  like yeast).

At the time, I thought: I could make a thousand simple websites with just HTML, CSS, and Javascript. The content would change, the designs would differ, and every website would be unique despite having only three ingredients.

Years later, I thought: I could make a thousand useful web tools with just MySQL, PHP, and AJAX. All different on the surface, all the same at the core, all developed with just those three.

And today–many more years later–I was in the hugely popular Five Guys Burgers and Fries and realized they only make three things: hamburgers, hot dogs, and fries. You can add cheese. You can add bacon. You can add 15 other things. Or not. You make those choices and they’ll make their three things. And they’ll make them very, very well.

Ali Brown started getting stoopid rich by pushing just one thing (email newsletters) in just three ways: email, teleseminars, and ebooks. The level of information depended on the audience and (I’d guess) the production effort. The emails were always free, the teleseminars where sometimes free, but the ebooks never were.

So for one-woman shops or regional food franchises or web developers or bakers, it can be as simple as three things.

And it can be absurdly profitable.

Us. Here. Now.

You and I can do this, too. But maybe we will—

Hold teleseminars, webinars, and live shows

or

Sell Ads, a membership program, and affiliate stuff

or

Knit socks, hats, and purses

.

Simple is easier to master, easier to perfect, easier to produce, easier to market, easier to…everything.

We can work any three things. So simple.

Or we can work just one thing. So simpler.

It can be like that.

Can’t it?

Photo courtesy of Annia316