# Thoughts on intentionally keeping your business small

Author: Flavio Copes | Published: 2021-10-17 | Canonical: https://flaviocopes.com/keeping-business-small/

For a long time I've been very intentional on one thing: I want to have a successful indie business.

Why do I want an indie business?

1. I do not want to ever have a boss
2. I want to live life on my own terms
3. No one can say when I have to work

What makes it a *successful* indie business?

Reaching all of the above.

And since I already reached that phase, keeping it successful means keeping it that way:

- I don't want it to grow more than I want.
- I don't want it to dictate another kind of life on me.
- I don't want it to say when I have to work

All while hopefully increasing the AR (annual revenue) that the business generates.

Note that I modified a term that's often used in the space, ARR (annual recurring revenue). That's another key point in my book: I do not want recurring revenue of any kind. I chased this kind of revenue for a long time, more than a decade, and sometimes it still gets me, but there's one thing that the `R` for recurring does to your solo indie business.

It removes flexibility. It means you have a growing base of customers that use whatever you set to be recurring, and demands attention. Is it a web app product? It requires constant uptime and customer care and support.

That to me is a business that is demanding. At some point you _need_ to get full time contractors or the thing will consume your life. Imagine doing the same thing over and over again for years.

That's also why I haven't actually made a SaaS app in the past and mostly focused on (failed) products. I want the freedom to say, one day, "I want to go into a totally different direction". The few times I tried the SaaS route I recognized the signs along the way.

If you're curious about the math side of recurring revenue, I built a free [SaaS MRR calculator](https://flaviocopes.com/tools/mrr-calculator/) that projects it over 24 months.

A lot of businesses are sold, which is great, and the founder(s) usually do nothing for a while, then jump on a new idea. But also not what I want to do.

Ideally I don't want to sell my business, ever.

One day my accountant asked me what were my plans for the future.

I told him that the plan was to do what I'm doing for the rest of my life.

Being free to have an idea, create something, work on it, ship it.

I discovered long ago that the moment I feel forced to do something I lose all the passion for it.

And without passion I might as well wash dishes like I did when I was 16 or 17, at least when I'm done with those, I'm finished for the day.

I don't want to create a business that eats me.

I want to look at the calendar and deliberately say "here's when I'll put 500% of my energy with full passion" and set my deadlines and work as hard as I can to create _something_, and bring it to life.

In the stage I'm now I've reached this goal with my cohort based online courses.

What I love the most about that is the fact that my work is helping people. I'm not just saving them time or making them save money or earn money, which are 3 great categories to get into if you create a product. Online courses can actually change lives.

This is also a big responsibility, and a privilege. I don't take it for granted that I can live creating online courses. That's the best mission I could find.