Normal Is Overrated: Why Business Owners Don’t Fit the Mold

William Bissett will be the first to admit he sometimes struggles with normal. He doesn’t always know what it looks like, and he is not entirely sure he wants to.

It started with a health newsletter he read over the weekend. The topic was sleep, specifically how the way we sleep today may have nothing to do with how humans naturally slept before the industrial era.

Before artificial lighting, before television, before phones, the pattern looked completely different. People went to sleep when the sun went down, woke naturally around midnight, stayed awake for an hour or two, and then drifted back to sleep until sunrise. Some used that window to pray. Some wrote. Some ate or talked or stoked the fire. Then they fell back asleep naturally and woke with the sun.

Today we call that insomnia. We treat it. We medicate it. We spend enormous amounts of money trying to fix something that may not have been broken in the first place.

What Normal Actually Means

That realization sent William’s mind somewhere familiar. Business owners and the constant pressure to measure themselves against what everyone else is doing.

We are conditioned from every direction to ask whether what we are doing is normal. Whether our business structure is normal. Whether our financial decisions are normal. Whether the way we are building, growing, or planning to exit is the way everyone else is doing it. And the implied message is always the same. If it isn’t normal, something must be wrong.

But normal is a moving target. And for business owners, chasing it is almost always the wrong instinct.

Unique Problems Need Unique Solutions

The solutions that work for your business, your family, and your financial life are going to look different from the solutions that work for someone else. That’s not a flaw. It’s the reality of building something that is specific to you, your market, your team, your goals, and your circumstances.

Listening to a popular podcast and deciding you should do what they recommend because everyone else is doing it is the equivalent of reading that sleep article and deciding you need to fix your midnight wakefulness. Maybe you do. Maybe you don’t. The point is that the answer depends on you, not on what is considered normal.

You Were Never Normal to Begin With

William closes with a reminder that is worth holding onto. As a business owner, you already opted out of normal the moment you decided to build something of your own. You took a risk that most people around you chose not to take. You made decisions that didn’t fit the conventional playbook.

Now is not the time to start chasing normal. The path forward is the one that fits your situation, your values, and where you are actually trying to go. Not the one that looks like everyone else’s.

Stop trying to fit the mold. You never did in the first place.

 

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[00:00:00] I struggle sometimes with normal. I don’t necessarily always know and understand what normal is. And I was reading a, actually a, a health newsletter that I get, uh, this past weekend, and it was interesting. It started off talking about sleep and how the way we sleep today might not be the way that we slept in the pre-industrial era.

And I started reading it with some, with some interest because, um, anybody that knows me knows that I’ve struggled with sleep over the years. And, um, and so it started talking about how the natural path for sleeping, uh, uh, I guess hundreds of years ago, was that as the sun set and the, you know, it got dark out, our melatonin [00:01:00] levels picked up, we got tired, we went to sleep.

And so we didn’t stay up as late as we do now ’cause we didn’t have, you know, natural… We didn’t have lights, right? Uh, we didn’t, certainly didn’t have TV or phones or anything. And so as the day turned into night, we went to sleep. And, um, it turns out that, you know, according to this article, we’d go to sleep for, you know, three, four hours, and then we’d wake up.

We’d make a– wake up around midnight And we’d stay awake for an hour or two, and s- you know, some people, the r- religious folks called it, um, God’s hour. W- They’d, they’d wake up and they’d pray. Um, and, you know, philosophers woke up and wrote. Um, some people woke up and ate. Some people woke up and talked.

Some people woke up and did chores, right? They, they stoked the fire. They, uh, they did different things, and then, um, they’d naturally get tired again, and they’d fall back asleep, and they’d sleep for three or four more hours, and they’d wake up with the sun, right? And, um, it got me thinking. I was like, well, that used to be normal.

And, you know, nowadays, [00:02:00] what, uh, what used to be normal is now treated, right? We call that an insomnia. Um, there’s a… I can’t even begin to imagine how much money is out there to treat that, quote-unquote, issue and, and make it normal, right? To try to get you to sleep seven, eight hours in a row. Whereas prior to, you know, the, the lighting that we’re in now, that, that wasn’t the case.

And it really got me thinking always back to people and, and business owners and how we’re always conditioned to think, well, is this normal? And I go back and, and constantly say, doing normal isn’t necessarily always what’s right. Um, and so listening to a blog, listening to this blog and saying, “Well, I should do that,” I mean, that’s not the case, right?

Listening to, to popular talk people and say, “Well, everybody’s doing that, so that’s normal,” that’s, that’s not necessarily the [00:03:00] right way to go about doing the right things for you, the right things for your business, the right things for your family. Um, there are all kinds of ways to go about solving your problems that are unique to you, that have unique solutions, um, and combinations of solutions, right?

And so, you know, when, when you wake up tomorrow morning and you, and you wake up and you say, you know, “I wanna be normal,” remember, normal is, is not maybe what it used to be. Normal for you is, um, is different than it is for somebody else. So don’t go about trying to be normal. I mean, shoot, as, as you know, as a business owner in general you’re probably not normal in the first place.

So now is not the time to start trying to be normal on an everyday basis. So, um, keep that in the mind as, as, as you wake up and go about your day tomorrow.​ 

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ORIGINAL MEDIA SOURCE(S):

William Bissett: Normal Is Overrated: Business Owners Don’t Fit the Mold | Portus Perspectives

Originally Recorded on June 3, 2026

Portus Perspectives: Episode 21

By /Published On: June 15, 2026/