A letter on running a business that doesn’t need you, and what to do with the time it gives back. Written from Yokohama, usually after a run. No sponsors, and nothing to sell most weeks.
You’re in. Welcome.
The enemy, named: what fragmentation costs, and how a life gets gathered back.
Minimal inputs, not minimal outcomes. The case for building small on purpose.
The model, plainly: locally delivered, remotely run, and the four systems that make it hold.
A writing assignment wearing a payroll costume. What to hand over first, and how to let go.
What a handstand knows about running a calm company.
How Think Maids began: a girlfriend in Japan, a final semester, seven hundred dollars.
The night half the teams didn’t turn up, and the week in Japan that followed.
Inova Local, and what eight years of other people’s offices taught me about delegation.
Why service businesses stall between $30k and $50k a month, and ninety days at a time out of it.
From answering questions on Reddit to the Local Business MBA, and what the students taught me.
Ōsōji, Japan’s December clean, as an annual review for a small business.
Ten years, one question asked at increasing depth, and where it leads: The Optional Owner.
How the businesses run: phone trees, hiring, the texture of operating across time zones.
Starting a service business: pricing, the first customer, the first hire.
Scaling without losing the texture: management layers, the second hire, the second city.
Preparing a business to be sellable, and what buyers look at.
Slower pieces on craft, attention, and running a business as a long discipline.
Books that changed how I run things. No round-ups.
Short, dated dispatches. What I’m sitting with, what I’ve changed my mind on.
You’re in. Welcome.