Hey, I’m Chris. For the past ten years I’ve been building and running service businesses in America from a desk in Japan, which forced me to answer a very difficult question early on: how much of a business actually needs its owner? Less than you would think. Let me show you.
Read my story →I built Think Maids, the first fully remote cleaning company based in Washington, D.C., moved to Japan, and ran it for eight years without ever meeting a customer. Most of what I know came from not being there. Alongside it I built Inova Local, the first virtual staffing agency dedicated to home services. Together they became what is now known as the remote local model, run by thousands of operators worldwide; in 2018 I launched the Local Business MBA to publicly teach it.
Four exits later, the question had changed: not how big a business can get, but how little it can need its owner. The Optional Owner is my answer: a letter from Yokohama, and a small-group programme designed to remove yourself from your own business. Along the way my work has been featured in TIME, Side Hustle School, Side Hustle Nation, and other publications.
Everything I have built or written sits somewhere in here. Most of it started as a problem inside a company, usually before six in the morning, and got written down later, once it had stopped being urgent.
How to make something economically useful in the first place, without a business degree or a rich uncle.
How to make the thing work without eating its owner. The part I know best.
What the business is for, and what kind of life it makes room for. This is where the sitting comes in.
The Optional Owner lives in the second pile, and keeps wandering into the third.
Most owners build a job that owns them back. It happens by degrees. Customers learn to ask for you. Your team waits for your approval. The useful knowledge stays in your head, because writing it down never feels as urgent as the next small fire. Revenue may rise while your life gets narrower.
An Optional Owner moves knowledge, decisions and execution out of their own head and into systems and people, progressively, until their presence becomes a choice rather than a requirement.
It grew out of the remote local model: first a way to run a cleaning company from another country, then, once Inova Local made the delegation layer available to any owner, a question about any business at all. It has broadened since, into more business models, more paths and more philosophy, with the practical work still underneath.
The goal is not to escape work. I like work. The goal is to stop being the bottleneck in your own life.
Think Maids, a cleaning company in Washington, D.C., started with $700 in my final semester and no industry experience, which turned out to be the right amount.
Moved to Japan, and built Inova Local alongside Think Maids: the first virtual staffing agency dedicated to home services. The delegation layer that made the remote local model work for everyone, not just me.
The Local Business MBA: what if business school ended with a business you owned instead of a debt you did?
After eight years operated from abroad, acquired by an industry buyer. I never met a customer. The buyer did not seem to mind.
Acquired by private equity after eight years. The fourth exit, and like the other three, none of it needed me in the building.
Our son arrived. The question moved from how much can I build to what is the business actually for. He has not answered yet.
Distilling ten years of operating into a philosophy, a small cohort, and a letter. Mostly on dog walks.
“I mention your story all the time.”
A small-group programme for owners who have built something that works and want it to work without them: the day to day handed over, the business run remotely if you like. The capstone.
How it works →For people building a remotely operated service business from nothing: the agency model I built, ran for eight years and sold, taught as a path. Small group, defined start and finish.
What you build →Start a local service business the way I did, in the right order: five stages from first customer to a company that runs without you. Self-paced, bought directly, running since 2018.
Start at localbusinessmba.com →Private one-to-one work is closed for now. The letter is free and needs no application.
Every year I choose a single word as an intention and let it sort my decisions. This year’s:
Fewer tasks, fewer goals, fewer possessions.
One useful idea per letter about business, ownership, and building a life around the things that matter. Written from Yokohama, usually after a run. Free, easy to leave, and it does not sell you anything most weeks.
You’re in. Welcome.
Written from the other side of the world · Yokohama, Japan