Hello World

TL;DR Backstory:

My current company did just north of $5.8M in revenue last year and was ranked among the top 100 fastest growing companies on the Inc 5000.

My last two companies were acquired (the first was a VC backed software company, second was a self funded eComm business).

I’ve decided to start a side hustle as a creative outlet leveraging all of my prior learnings, mistakes etc.

All revenue will be Stripe verified.

My Backstory:

Before jumping into the world of entrepreneurship, I waited tables and was a struggling artist in LA. After reading the four hour work week, I decided it was time for some change in my life.

To this day, I attribute much of my success in business to the lessons learned waiting tables and cold calling folks to fundraise for my art projects.

This new side hustle will be going back to my Four Hour Work Week roots. LFG.

My plan & approach:

I’m committed to spending 3h/week working to grow my new side hustle: NBD (NoBoringDesign).

One hour on growth initiatives, one hour taking sales calls, and one hour on all the misc brainstorming and automation work that takes time to design and implement. That’s it.

I recognize that I’m in the unique position of not having to rush the process. I still own and am growing my primary business, which means I don’t have to rely on the revenue (or lack thereof) from NBD to put food on the table. This means I can say no to work that doesn’t align with our vision, and produce work that pushes boundaries. This means I don’t have to be interested in quickly growing a customer-base doing templatized work. I’m not interested in burning the midnight oil, or grinding my team to the bone. There are enough folks out there trying to build DesignJoy 2.0. And frankly that model is awesome for folks who want to do their solo thing and make $500k/yr. Total respect to them and that model. But that’s not for me.

I’m an impatient guy who likes to win. So today begins the sprint to hit $100k/mo on the stripe dashboard. And by the end of 2024, $200k/mo+

Some of you might be reading this and thinking - hey - $100k/mo with this model means you’re going to have to pay a team and won’t really be taking home $100k/mo.

And you’d be completely correct. But for me, taking down half of that without having to ever take a single customer call is well worth giving up 50-75% + of the revenue. Also, working with a team gives me energy. Grinding by myself, after a while, is a lonely venture. Making money loses it’s luster if you do it in a dark closet by yourself, and lose yourself in the process.

So here we go, another wild adventure ahead. I hope you’ll join me and share in the high’s and low’s together.

Below you’ll find the internal brainstorm document that outlines my thought model for NBD in practical form.

Guiding principles I will follow:

• Produce a “product” people find tremendous value in
• Produce brave work that pushes the industry forward
• Do ZERO “work” personally (defined as customer facing work)
• Have non-referral channels drive more business than referral channels
• ABP (always be profitable)
• Over-compensate team members via geographic arbitrage
• Have fun

The feelings this business will reinforce daily (for me):

• Valued
• Fun
• Creative
• Hustle
• Diversified

My measures:

• Near Term: 10 ecstatic customers
• Mid Term: full team structure solidified, SOPs clearly defined
• Long Term: close 1 new customer per week

A note on work / life balance:

• Many entrepreneurs struggle with work life balance. I don’t. In fact, one of my greatest skills is operationalizing my companies so I can maintain incredible work / life balance.
• With the goal of helping others achieve this balance, I will also share openly about my journey and learnings in creating space for life outside of work.