Before Entrenaut Had a Name
In March 2024, I wrote about something I called The Big 4 — four principles I kept noticing in businesses people genuinely love and advocate for.
I was trying to simplify. Running a business already has enough complexity. What if the difference between surviving and thriving came down to getting relentlessly better at four things almost anyone can understand?
Those four things were:
- Be worth more than you cost
- Engage with more people than you sell to
- Embody the high-five
- Consistently do what you say you’ll do
At the time, I framed them as brand-building habits. Useful, practical, the kind of thing you could audit yourself on Monday morning. I still stand behind every one of them.
What I didn’t fully see yet was that these were an operating system.
The mapping I see now
Re-reading that post a year later, the overlap with the Entrenaut framework is hard to miss:
| The Big 4 (2024) | Entrenaut principle |
|---|---|
| Be worth more than you cost | Create — maximize the value you deliver |
| Engage with more people than you sell to | Relate — build real relationships |
| Embody the high-five | Commit — every sale is a responsibility |
| Consistently do what you say you’ll do | Deliver — the floor of your work is what you’re proud of |
The words changed. The standard got sharper. The instinct was the same: businesses that people love are built by people who hold themselves to something.
What shifted
The Big 4 described what lovable businesses do. The Entrenaut framework describes how a certain kind of operator thinks — someone who inverts the priority stack and treats customer outcomes as the goal, with business sustainability as the constraint.
An Entrenaut asks a harder question first: what’s the most real value I can create based on the commitment I made?
I didn’t have that language in 2024. I had examples — favorite restaurants, brands I followed on social media even when I wasn’t buying, the feeling of a sale that lands like a high-five.
The examples came first. The framework came later.
Why I’m republishing the thread here
Entrenaut.org continues what I wrote on mikemisbach.com — same principles, tighter standard, a word that finally fits.
If you want the original version, read The Big 4 on mikemisbach.com. It’s where this started. What follows on this site is where it’s going.