Shitting Outside the Box
When Dysfunction Pretends to Be Innovation
They said they were “thinking outside the box.”
But what I saw was a dying animal, shitting in the hallway.
Not a metaphor — a truth.
Marc Maron told it like it was: his sick cat, delusional and fading, refusing the box.
It wasn’t rebellion. It was pain.
And that’s exactly what most founders are doing.
They step out of the system, call it innovation, and think the mess means they’re different.
They confuse breakdown for breakthrough.
Here’s the rot:
Most “outside the box” moves aren’t strategic.
They’re the byproduct of unresolved tension, masked as creativity.
You burned out. You ghosted structure. You declared war on the old way.
But you never built the new one.
Let’s make it plain:
You didn’t disrupt.
You imploded.
And instead of healing, you branded the damage and tried to sell it.
You made a mess, added motion, and called it scale.
You added trauma to timelines and called it “authentic.”
You posted your pain, thinking visibility would fix what clarity couldn’t.
The system wasn’t broken.
You were.
Innovation doesn’t come from drift.
It comes after you clean the blood off the floor.
After you sit in the pain, see the system, and rebuild without flinching.
Breakthrough isn’t creative play.
It’s surgical discipline.
It’s saying: “I see the box. I understand the box. Now I will build a better one.”
Not out of impulse.
Out of architecture.
The lie?
That rebelling against the old way automatically makes you better.
That burning down the process makes you a leader.
That being broken means you’re wise.
The truth?
If you haven’t healed, you’re not building.
You’re escaping.
And escape doesn’t scale.
It just drags your pain into other people’s lives.
Into your product.
Into your pitch.
Into your team.
This matters because drift looks like freedom — right up until revenue disappears.
Because if your whole brand is built on rebellion, you’ll have no foundation when it's time to lead.
And if you shat outside the box thinking it was art, you’ll spend years explaining the smell.
So here’s the trigger:
Before your next launch, next pivot, next post:
Ask yourself — is this a breakthrough?
Or is it just the result of not cleaning up what hurt me last time?
Because the market can smell it.
Your team already knows.
And if you’re honest — so do you.
Deployable Action:
- Audit your last three moves. Were they built from vision — or escape?
- Find one system you left. Re-enter. Clean it. Extract the truth.
- Stop glamorizing collapse. Start building compression.
This isn’t cruelty. It’s correction.
Take the cat to the vet. Clean up the mess.
Ready to rebuild? I’ll help.
But only if you’re done lying to yourself.
This is what I’m working on. Tell me what you think, I enjoy the conversation! Subscribe and follow the work in real time.
Thanks!
B
Shitting outside the box.
And calling it a breakthrough.
The system isn’t broken. You are.
Fix that first.
PS -