How I Started a Profitable Business By Ignoring It

Jeff Osborn
Aug 8, 2017 · 5 min read

In early 2016 I set out to start my fourth business. I wanted it to be truly — not just theoretically — liberating, as my other three attempts had been.

In April 2016, with the blessing of my loving and supportive wife, I started a consulting company. My only goal was to be happy with my work.

work/ethic, founded April, 2016

As with any business, I started work/ethic by crafting a plan. Just not the type of plan I normally launch businesses with.

I wasn’t prepared with a long-term vision or comprehensive business model. Instead, I started out with something that felt counter-intuitive.

Going against a decade of what business experience had taught me, I put my personal interests first.

Rather than aggressively researching market opportunities or fine-tuning my offering (though, those would come later, of course), I thought of what I wanted to get out of my new company.

I tried to answer the following questions:

  • What do I enjoy doing?
  • What kinds of people do I enjoy spending time with (after all, work is where we spend most of our time)?
  • How many hours a week do I want to work?
  • How much money would I like to make in a year?
  • Is there anything I’d like to learn to do or learn to do better?
  • Who have my favorite clients been and how do I get more like them?

I developed a clear picture what I wanted to gain from starting my business by first thinking about what I wanted and needed on a personal level.

After spending some time on the above questions and a few conversations with my wife, I came up with a few constraints for starting the business:

  • 3 month trial period
  • Trial period goal of $4k per month average
  • 40–50 hours a week
  • Work 4 days a week, with one day off for family time
  • 1–2 months off per year
  • Travel and work remotely
  • Following the 3 month trial period, second period of 6 months with $6k per month goal

I didn’t expect the business to last more than 3 months. I was doing cool client work and getting new business without really knowing what I was offering or who my target customers were. I figured it would all fall apart without a formal business strategy. But here I am, 16 months later.

Here I am working in Copenhagen, 4,900 miles from my clients, June 2016

It may have been a fluke, but my “me first” approach worked.

Here’s my initial framework, with the results:

  • 3 month trial period
    Success! I met every constraint and exceeded revenue goals. I set new 6 month goals in June.
  • Trial period goal of $4k per month average
    I averaged $5,000 per month in the first 3 months and had $10k slated for July (month 4).
  • 40–50 hours a week
    I can count the number of times I worked 40 hours+ on one hand.
  • Work 4 days a week, with one day off for family time
    I can count on one finger the number of weeks I worked more than four total 10 hour days.
  • 1–2 months off per year
    I took December off and had another cumulative month in vacation and travel.
  • Travel and work remotely
    I traveled nearly all June with my family in Iceland and Denmark. I worked with my clients without major issue. Everything went well and one of my clients set single month revenue records.
  • Following the 3 month trial period, second period of 6 months with $6k average per month
    Accounting for time off, I nailed it. I averaged $5,000 per month for the first 8 months. But I only worked for 6 of them when counting travel/vacation and taking December off. Accounting for two months off, I averaged $6,666 per working months. Taking all 8 months at face value, I was $1k under my goal on average. I brought in $40,000 in 8 months, putting me on track for an extrapolated 12 month revenue goal of $60,000.

Unexpectedly, clients and work came in organically, I was happy with my work, and my business model rounded itself out.

By putting constraints on my business before starting it, I created an empty space. A vacuum that filled itself.

The success of my “me first” approach was surprising. I thought developing the business couldn’t be done with a selfish, non-business centric outlook steering things.

As entrepreneurs, we sometimes focus too much on what’s inside the boxes we create rather than the walls that support them.

Photo by Diego PH

Following the success of my 3 and 6 month experiments, I started taking the same approach when advising clients. I don’t force it if it’s not right for them, but I do ask the question, “What would success look like from a personal perspective?”

When I start new projects with clients — a business, relationship, project, product, anything — we often set clear boundaries, or the walls of the box first.

Sometimes they’re personal, sometimes they’re professional, often they’re both. But we always create a defined box with exact dimensions first. Then we start working, with intention.

I’ve advised and started and ran plenty of businesses using a strict inward-focus as the guiding light. It’s not a wrong or broken method. But my experience over the past 16 months has made me wonder if there aren’t other ways to go about building businesses 🤔

Jeff Osborn

Written by

Small business advisor & advocate. Owner work/ethic. https://yourworkethic.com

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