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A startup does not have to be designed for maximum growth, a big exit, or outside recognition. In a 2020 excerpt from Big Enough: Building a Business that Scales with Your Lifestyle, Common Craft co-founder Lee LeFever argues that founders can instead shape a company around the work, time, and independence that make life satisfying to them.
Why growth can change the life you wanted
LeFever moved to Seattle in 1998 with a familiar picture of success: start a company, become recognized, build wealth, and gain freedom. But as he observed among friends pursuing high-growth startups, building a larger business could also mean long hours and new responsibilities as a manager, bookkeeper, or salesperson. He recalls some friends working more than 80 hours a week; this is his anecdotal observation, not a survey or estimate of founders generally.
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Growth can also bring obligations to clients, employees, investors, and boards. Those demands may be worthwhile, but they can consume the time and flexibility a founder hoped entrepreneurship would provide. LeFever’s point is not that growth is inherently bad. It is that a founder should consider what success will require day to day, not only what it might pay off with eventually.
Choose a measure of success that fits your life
LeFever and his wife, Sachi, found “satisfaction” more useful than momentary happiness as a way to think about the lasting success of a life. The excerpt paraphrases Daniel Kahneman on the distinction between fleeting happiness and satisfaction accumulated over time; it does not give a direct quotation from Kahneman.
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That distinction makes the business question more concrete: What kind of work do you want to do, how much control over your time matters to you, and what tradeoffs are you willing to accept? LeFever writes, “By connecting your values to your business, you can create the lifestyle and level of satisfaction that works for you.”
How Common Craft put that idea into practice
In 2008, LeFever says he and Sachi committed to operating Common Craft as a two-person, home-based business. They focused on scalable approaches such as licensing and distribution partnerships rather than building a larger staff. He presents those choices as a fit for their lives, not as a formula every founder should follow. The account describes the company at that point and does not establish its current structure.
The example shows that “scale” can mean expanding the reach of a product or business model without necessarily expanding the organization. A founder’s preferred size depends on the kind of work, customer relationships, and responsibilities they want—not on a universal rule that smaller is better.
Questions to ask before taking an opportunity
- What if it works? LeFever recommends asking this before accepting an opportunity. Consider not only the upside but also the lasting commitments success could create.
- Does the work matter to you? Choose a business whose work and customers align with what you value, rather than relying only on an attractive market or projected financial outcome.
- How will you spend your time? Decide deliberately which work and obligations belong in your life. Saying no to a promising opportunity can protect those priorities.
- Can the business adapt? Keep enough flexibility to pivot if the model falters instead of treating the original plan as irreversible.
- What counts as shareholder value? Profit may matter alongside quality of life, control of time, or independence. Make those priorities explicit when deciding what the company should optimize for.
LeFever’s alternative is not a tested ranking of business models or a claim that founders should avoid ambition. It is a way to weigh financial upside and external validation against the time, autonomy, and type of work a business can support.
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A free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11About the excerpt and book
This excerpt by Lee LeFever was published by GeekWire on September 26, 2020. It comes from Big Enough: Building a Business that Scales with Your Lifestyle, published by Page Two Books and described in the excerpt as available in paperback and e-book formats.
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