Lee LeFever - Big Enough: Building a Business that Scales with Your Lifestyle

In Big Enough, Lee LeFever uses his finely honed explainer skills to provide a refreshing, personal guide to designing a business around the values that matter most to you. Big Enough offers plenty of tactics and tips, but more importantlyit gives readers a chance to rethink their definitions of success and adjust their working lives accordingly. As the sole proprietor of a Big Enough business myself, I found a lot to steal here, and I think you will, too.

Austin Kleon , New York Timesbestselling author of Steal Like An Artist

We often hear about how the internet has allowed companies to get big fast, but the same forces can provide great leverage for individuals or small partnerships to choose different success metrics, like freedom, health, or satisfaction. In Big Enough, Lee LeFever shares the approach he and his wife took in building their small online business, and the incredible flexibility its given them in how they live. As theowner of a tiny online business, I wish Id had this thoughtful and engaging book as a blueprint when I started out.

Jason Kottke

This book redefines sustainability for entrepreneurs. If youve ever wondered how much is enough, this book will guide you to your answer. Lee LeFever is gentle, helpful, optimistic, and kindexactly what youd never expect from a successful tech entrepreneur.

Jessica Hagy , author of How to Be Interesting

Big Enough sits at the intersection of creativity, entrepreneurship,and a high-quality, well-lived life. Read this book as a roadmap to turning your creative dreams into your career.

Chase Jarvis , photographer and founder of CreativeLive

Theres a massive gap between the fantasy of running your own company and the real-world experience required to start something that you can carry forth into being a company thats Big Enough to support your lifestyle without overtaking your entire universe. Lee LeFever shows you how to move from fantasy to reality.

Chris Brogan , founder of StoryLeader

A practical business autobiography, approachable and useful... Lee LeFever helps you understand the real difference between freelancing and entrepreneurship (and what to do about it).

Seth Godin , founder of Akimbo.com

Big Enough is not just another story about being a successfulentrepreneur; its a guide for how to design a successful business by focusing on your desired lifestyle and your values. I only wish Id read this book earlier.

Nicole Herzog , Swiss tech investor and entrepreneur

There is a growing movement of smart business owners whoare more concerned with enough than the typical more. Lee LeFever tells his story of letting personal values and freedom chart his course in business, to help others determinehow they want to define their own success.

Paul Jarvis , author of Company of One

Ive admired the work that Lee and Sachi LeFever have donewith Common Craft over the years. I loved reading the stories behind their success. They made it look easy... of course, reality is always a little trickier. This book was fun to read, incredibly open and honest, and came at such a perfect time for me! I learned so much from Lees insights into building a Big Enough business and it really inspired me to rethink a lot of what Im working on. If you are an entrepreneur with heart, youll love this book.

Tara Hunt , author, researcher, and founder, Phlywheel

Big Enough is a refreshing look at the types of businesses and lives we can build when we stop focusing on growth for growths sake. Lee and Sachi LeFever have built a great business in a way that has enabled a fulfilling and flourishing lifestyle. We can learn a lot from how they optimized their time and their projects, and relentlessly focused on theopportunities that align with their values.

Chris Savage , co-founder and CEO of Wistia

Lee LeFever takes you behind the scenes as he and his wifebuild a Big Enough business that defies the default, often destructive ambitions of going big or going home. This book is filled with honest, practical, and inspiring tips for building a business. Big Enough shows you how work can add meaning and fulfillment to your life instead of draining it away.

Buster Benson , author of Why Are We Yelling? and co-founder of 750words.com

Copyright 2020 by Lee LeFever

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For a copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

Cataloguing in publication information is available from Library and Archives Canada.

ISBN 978-1-989603-18-5 (paperback) ISBN 978-1-989603-19-2 (ebook)

Page Two
www.pagetwo.com

Edited by Amanda Lewis
Copyedited by Taisha Garby
Proofread by Alison Strobel
Cover design by Peter Cocking
Interior design by Fiona Lee
Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books Distributed in the US and internationally by Publishers Group West, a division of Ingram

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www.leelefever.com

For Dolores

I had been dreaming about this moment since the first time I visited the Pacific Northwest, in college. I was sitting in my truck, about to drive , miles from Charleston, South Carolina, to Seattle, Washington, where I would start a new life.

I had completed a masters in health administration and my goal was to find a job in healthcare technology. I had entrepreneurial dreams and knew that someday Id own my own company. But at age twenty-five, I also knew I needed to put in my time as an employee.

It was 1998 , and the rise of the internet made everything feel possible.

Seattle seemed like an innovation hub and I wanted to be in the middle of it. I knew that if I got my foot in the door, I could begin a new phase of my life, build connections, and eventually start my own business.

As I sat in the parking lot of my apartment building in Charleston, the enormity of the moment was not lost on me. The U-Haul trailer attached to my truck was full of nearly everything I owned. I took a deep breath, started the engine, and began backing out of the parking space. When I heard the wrenching sound of bending metal, I immediately knew what had happened. In my distracted state, I wasnt thinking about the trailer, which now sat perpendicular to the truck in jack-knife formation. I jumped out to see the damage my carelessness had wrought and found a bumper bent to a worrying degree. It was not an auspicious start to the journey.

A couple of days later, I was on my way to the west coast with a new bumper. After a few months of networking, I found a job as a data analyst at a healthcare data company and began to settle into life in Seattle. My career and path to being an entrepreneur started in a tiny cubicle on the eighth floor of a high-rise.

At the time, I was seduced by the stories of young entrepreneurs who founded businesses that grew to have thousands of employees, and offices around the world. I wanted, someday, to appear in the pages of a magazine like