My “criteria roadmap” filter (setting rules so that your business works for YOU)

I am only interested in business under these criteria...

Mar 18, 2024

Hello friends!

A few days ago I shared with you that after a long hiatus (after selling my companies) that I’m gettin’ back in the game. (CLICK HERE if you missed that one)

One of the things I’m gonna be doing is sharing with you a lot of the inner workings of launching this new business from $0.

I also shared that I'm launching a new business, but this time doing it on my terms.

At this point in my career, I'm fortunate to have a lot of freedom to set my own rules and not worry about how well things go right away. But the truth is we all have the freedom to set our own rules.

Sometimes we just get so caught up in everything that we can't see the better path. We lose sight of our ability to make choices and design our businesses and lives so that they serve us, not the other way around. The honest truth is that most people in business are servants to the business and to their work.

I've developed what I call a "Criteria Roadmap" filter, which is a fancy way of setting guidelines for your work. Something I learned a long time ago is that when it comes to marketing, creating brandable names for things has a powerful impact.

Your "Criteria Roadmap" could be whatever you want it to be.

So my criteria and non-negotiables for starting a business this time around….

It can’t be much more than a few hours a week of my time. (Of course getting started is a lot more than that, but once the machine is up and running then we’re good.)
It has to allow me to just be myself. (I used to get exhausted doing webinars and hype. It's tiring to constantly have a persona. But does not having a persona, become the persona? We'll see.)
It has to be fun. (If it’s just boring business stuff all the time it's honestly not fun.)
I want it to be small. I don’t want a bunch of employees. I don’t want to spend time on “management” or admin stuff any more than necessary.
It has to be completely on my terms. I can’t be beholden to a model, or care about losing clients, or watch what I say, or any of that stuff that you kinda have to care about when you’re trying to grow a big company.
It has to be something that if it fails, I don’t care that much…that way we can just try things and if it doesn’t work oh well.
And of course it has to make money. Given my other criteria above, I’m shooting for about $200-400k annual revenue. That makes it worth spending a few hours a week.

In my past businesses, I couldn’t do any of this. By design. We were trying to grow bigger companies and that effort never stopped.

When you’re building a big brand, you have things like “brand personas” and “mission statements” and all that stuff. You kinda have to stay on message and just hammer away at the same message over and over. You kinda have to put on a costume and act a certain way when you are the face of the company both to employees and customers. So you really can’t just be yourself all the time. After a while that gets old.

I used to do a lot of webinars, sales videos, etc. As somebody who tends to be a bit introverted, that shit was exhausting. It was worth doing, was the right thing to do, and was necessary for building that kind of company. But I don’t have to do it anymore which is huge for me.

I’m actually excited about it. Genuinely. Not just marketer hypey “excited.”

The biggest thing that allowed me to see how I could make this all a reality, is that a couple of my favorite people became available and I talked them into helping me. I don't think it's possible to create a great business without some great people to help. No matter what size business.

So I get to do some work with a couple great buddies. I keep telling them I don't want to do this unless we are having fun. I'm not sure they believe me, but they seem cautiously optimistic.

Over the coming weeks I'll be peeling back the onion to tell you more about what we're up to.