A playbook for Generating Business Ideas

11. Work
How enjoyable will the work be? How much time will it require? Quantity and
quality of work will affect your overall happiness.
Most opportunities will require significant time investments. Overall lifestyle is
an important factor to me, so I wouldn’t want to spend 100 hours a week doing
something I hate. This factor should likely be considered as a ratio to potential
upside (see above). For example, I would trade 24 hours of awfulness for $1M,
but I wouldn’t trade 10 years of 70-hour-per-week awfulness for half a million
dollars.
Key Takeaways
A company’s success is dependent upon a lot more than the quality of the idea.
The question is not just how strong is this opportunity; it’s what opportunity can

---

and should I pursue.
A lot of entrepreneurial advice encourages persistence, hard work, etc.: “If you
put your mind to it you can do whatever you want.” The reality is, there are
many challenges from starting to growing, and different factors that can make an
opportunity more or less likely to succeed.
It’s probably pretty rare for opportunities to meet all of these criteria perfectly.
You’ll likely have to accept what you can tolerate and go for it. If it was perfect
and easy, there would likely be a lot of others doing it, and therefore less upside.
There are plenty of opportunities out there, it’s just a matter of choosing which is
best. Everyone’s personal criteria and factors will probably be different
depending on their goals.

---

Case Study: How I Started 3 Businesses in
3 Months
Note: I wrote the following as a blog post in early 2014. It is written in present
tense, though it happened in the past. I’m sharing it here to give you an idea of
my experience and how I’ve applied some of what’s in this book.
The first three months of 2014 were a pretty crazy time for me. Before I dive
into the juicy details of how I started 3 businesses in 3 months, that are all
making money, without spending more than a couple thousand bucks and
without a technical co-founder, let me clarify something: “starting a company”
doesn’t actually mean anything.
Anyone can declare, “I’m starting a company,” or build a product or pay a
lawyer to get incorporated…or even just sell a product for more than it costs to
produce. “Starting a company” is a “vanity metric.” Revenue means something.
Profit means even more.
Although 2 of the businesses I started are profitable and the other is profitable if
you net out upfront/non-operating costs, I’m certainly not “rich,” so this is by no
means a “victory lap.”
I am making money and it is growing each month, so I’m happy with my
progress. I’m also quite diversified. I have multiple businesses, many different
customers, and one of the companies has multiple products, all of which have
made money. Compared to an employee, who is completely dependent on one
customer and one business, I’m extremely diversified. I also took on a couple
small consulting gigs…so that could technically be considered a 4th business.
I’m proud of my progress; however, I still have a long way to go. Hopefully this
progress update is entertaining and the lessons learned I share below are helpful
to you. With that, here are the juicy details of how I did it, and my best advice to
anyone looking to start a business:

---