Personal, Professional, Practical: The Pollen Framework for Designing Your Business

There are plenty of reasons to pursue an independent path. You might be intrigued by the challenge of running a business. Or maybe you’ve found that corporate work doesn’t align with the lifestyle you want. Or you might suspect you can increase your earnings if you go solo. 

Whatever the reason, you’ve decided to pursue a path as an independent, and this means you’ve earned complete control over your professional life. This kind of autonomy can be a major perk—but it can also be disorienting. After all, to move in the right direction, you need to have some idea of where you’re going. 

At Pollen, we’ve built a framework to help independents find this kind of direction. It’s based on the fact that you are your business’s core asset. Every business sells something, and what you sell is you. Our framework is designed to help you preserve, protect, and learn about that core asset, setting you up for long-term business success. We call this framework the “Three Ps” of designing your business. It’s organized into three categories of consideration: professional, personal, and practical aspects of your business. 

We recommend reading through this article and noting your reactions. Which questions evoke immediate responses? Which need further consideration? Are there any that you didn’t realize you’d control as an independent? 

When you’re done, you can re-read the framework and take notes on the attached template. But remember, this is a reflective exercise—not a worksheet—so don’t force yourself to fill in every box. Instead, note what truly matters to you. You’ll use these observations to guide your decision-making as your business moves through the key stages of growth. 

Professional

The first of the three Ps—professional—investigates your workplace interests and career ambitions. As an independent, you have the chance to build a career path around a particular interest, niche, or type of work. Corporate ladders, team meetings, reporting structures, OKRs, roadmaps, and weekly stand-ups are also a thing of the past, and it’s your call whether or not they stay that way.

Use these questions to challenge any carry-over assumptions from your previous work and explore what a fulfilling professional life looks like for you. 

Interests

• What interests do you want to pursue? What areas of interest have you pursued in your career? Which have you not yet pursued? Are you interested in a particular market (like ed-tech or healthcare) or a specific product or service type (like mobile apps)? 
• What industry do you want to be in? What is your industry experience? What is your ideal industry? Do you want to pursue work in a specific industry (like clean energy) or through a specific format (like SEO)?
• What types of work will you offer? What types of work do you plan to sell, and how does this correspond with your previous experience? What are you not interested in offering?

Ambitions

• How do you define success? How will you measure success? By skills acquired? Amount of money earned? Notoriety in your field? Social impact? The ability to support yourself?
• Do you want to move up in seniority? Consider your most recent title and current level of seniority. Are you happy with where you are, or do you want to uplevel? For example, imagine that you’re a principal product consultant with 10 years of experience: Do you want to stay at that level, or do you want to build your skills and operate at the CPO level in the future?
• What skills do you want to gain? If you hope to uplevel your seniority, what skills will you need to build to reach the next level? Do you have existing skill sets you want to develop further?
• Where do you want to peak? What does the pinnacle of a successful career look like to you? Do you aspire to build a multi-million dollar company, or is your aim to pay the bills and save for retirement on a 20-hour workweek? Do you want to stay independent long-term or pursue full-time employment at a specific level of seniority?

Personal

If the professional category gets at the “what” of your business, you can think of the personal category as engaging with “why” and “how.” As an independent, you’re free to design a business around your values and lifestyle. Use these questions to clarify your priorities. 

Values

• What are your values? What defines a well-lived life for you? Is it creative innovation or achievement? Making discoveries that add to the body of human knowledge? Spending time with friends and family? Providing a nest egg for your kids and grandkids? Improving the lives of others? How do the various things that matter to you stack up in priority? 
• How do you want your values to be reflected in your work? Are you seeking mission-driven work? Will you prioritize social impact, profit, or both? Is it important to you to be at the leading edge of your industry? Is there an industry you won’t work for, or a type of work you won’t do?

Lifestyle

• How much do you want to work? Are you excited by the prospect of putting in long days to build something new, or does your ideal business free up more time for other pursuits? In an ideal world, how many hours are you working per week? How many weeks do you take off each year?
• How do you want to work? What are the characteristics and rhythms of your ideal work life? Would you rather work from home or from a shared space? Do you prefer fixed hours or a flexible schedule? Collaboration or going solo? Do you want to travel or stay put?
• What are your financial goals? How much money do you want to make? Do you aspire to earn as much as possible? Retire early and travel the world? Make a comfortable living on your own terms? 
• What kind of social connection do you want your work to provide? Do you seek social connection through work? If so, what makes you feel connected? Is it important to you to be on a team? Do meetings leave you feeling energized or drained? Do you thrive in an in-person setting, or are you happy working in the Zoom-iverse? If you plan to work remotely, how will you build your professional network?
• What is your relationship with risk? Do you thrive in uncertainty, or do high-risk environments wear you out (even if there’s the potential for high reward)? What degree of security and stability enables you to do your best work over the long term?

Practical 

Finally, consider your practical needs and limitations, including liabilities, responsibilities, and scheduling parameters:

Income and benefits

• What are your current income needs? How much money do you need to make to cover your monthly bills? How much fluctuation can you tolerate by month, quarter, or year?
• Will you need to obtain health insurance? Do you have access to state-sponsored health insurance or a partner’s employer-provided plan? How much would it cost you to self-insure? Will your plan need to cover anybody else?
• How will you plan for injury or illness? What will you do if you need to take time off for an extended illness or to recover from surgery? Does your state provide short-term disability insurance for self-employed individuals, or can you purchase a private plan? How would you handle commitments to clients in case you become unable to work for a period of time? 

Responsibilities 

• What are your family and caregiving responsibilities? Do you provide childcare or eldercare? Do you expect future caregiving needs to affect your availability?
• What other responsibilities affect your work schedule? Do you have pets, community obligations, or faith-based responsibilities that affect how, when, or where you work?
• How flexible is your location? Do you require the flexibility of full-time remote work, or are you willing to work from an office if a client requires it? Can you travel to meet clients? Is your at-home space conducive to full-time remote work?  

A template to help with reflection

Once you’ve spent some time with the questions in each category, you can use this template to explore what it looks like to design a business around your priorities. Under each subcategory, you can take notes about less-than-ideal, ideal, and amazing conditions. 

For example, you might determine that your ideal lifestyle involves working 20 hours a week from home and traveling quarterly to meet with clients, that you’d still be satisfied with 40-hour hybrid workweeks and monthly travel, and that you don’t want to work more than eight hours a day, travel weekly, or work full-time from an office. This process can help you clarify your priorities and create a more concrete representation of what you do (and don’t) want your business to look like. 

You can also refer back to this record of when making decisions in the future. Consult it to stay grounded in your priorities and accountable to your needs. 

Build your business around you

You should know that there is no perfect business—if you think there is, you'll just beat yourself up for missing the mark. The goal of this framework isn’t to make your business perfect—it’s to help you understand what it means to truly design a business around you.

At Pollen, we believe every decision you make has to be rooted in what works and what doesn’t work for you. This is core to our approach, and a perspective you’ll find reflected in all of our membership offerings—from our expert-led sprints to our foundational content.

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<<Learn more about the Pollen approach to transforming independent businesses.>>

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