Invisible Rules, Part 1: Killing a $5 Million Business That Worked
Series note:
This March, I’m doing something different.
I’m taking one book – Invisible Rules: How to Outsmart the Entrepreneurial Game by Ujwal Arkalgud – and, over four Sundays, pulling out lessons that founders and senior operators can use to run their companies and lives better.
This is part 1.
My friend Ujwal and his co-founder Jason were sitting at a rooftop bar in Minneapolis. Wine in hand. The Mayo Clinic building lit up against the darkening sky.
They were about to make a decision most people would call insane.
They were going to deliberately kill their $5 million business.
Not a failing business. Not a struggling startup. A business running at 90% margins, with a client roster most consulting firms would envy.
They were going to walk away from all of it — on purpose.
Three years earlier, they had started MotivBase as a consulting firm.
It wasn’t their dream. It was their bridge.
They wanted to build a technology platform — a research tool powered by cultural anthropology and AI — that would transform how large companies understand human behavior.
But they had no venture capital. No wealthy network. No safety net.
So they did the only thing they could: they sold their thinking.
Every workshop, every consulting engagement, every strategic recommendation had a dual purpose: serve the client, and fund the technology.
It worked. The services business grew fast. It became profitable.
And then it became the trap.
Because here’s the invisible rule that almost swallowed them whole:
“If your business is working, you scale it. You don’t stop it.”
That rule isn’t written anywhere. No investor tells you this. No business school teaches it explicitly. But you absorb it from startup culture. From the way we celebrate revenue. From every story we tell about success.
And the rule has real consequences.
As long as the consulting business was generating cash, the technology platform would remain a side project.
The immediate rewards would always win.
Clients needed things. Staff needed direction. Margins were excellent.
Why would you ever stop?
But Ujwal could see what the rule was hiding.
They were building equity for their clients, not for themselves.
They were trading time for money in the most sophisticated way possible — and calling it a company.
The technology they actually wanted to build kept getting pushed to next quarter.
Then next year.
Then “once we land this big client.”
That night on the rooftop, they named the rule for what it was.
Not wisdom. Not prudence.
An invisible constraint dressed up as common sense.
And then they did the uncomfortable thing. They chose to reset. They wound down the services business.
Moved everyone onto the technology platform.
Started from scratch — smaller team, less revenue, more uncertainty.
Four years later, they sold the company for an undiscloses high eight figures (a little bird told me it was between $70-$100 million)
Bootstrapped. Zero venture capital.
The acquirer paid for the technology.
For the client relationships.
For the IP they had spent years quietly building while everyone else was busy admiring their consulting margins.
The exit wasn’t what surprised Ujwal most.
It was the moment — sitting at that rooftop bar, looking at a business any rational advisor would have told them to protect — when he realized what the invisible rule had almost cost.
Not money.
Not the exit.
The permission to build what he actually came here to build.
Lessons:
A “working” business can be a trap. Profit and praise are not proof you’re building the right thing; sometimes they’re proof you’ve built a very comfortable cage.
Trade time for equity, not just money. High-margin services feel like progress, but if they don’t create durable assets, you’re renting your future out by the hour.
Name the invisible rules that run you. Until you can say, “The rule I’m following is X,” you can’t choose whether it deserves to be followed.
Rig the game in favour of the long term. If you don’t design your week around building the thing you ultimately want, the “working” thing will keep winning by default.
On Monday, Do This
Write down whether your main revenue stream is your destination or your bridge, and set a date when it stops being the main act if it’s just a bridge.
List the assets your current work is creating that would survive if you stopped tomorrow; commit to building one new asset and schedule time for it this week.
Write three “rules” you feel compelled to follow in your business and ask, for each: “Who said this, and what would I do if it were optional?”
Block a recurring weekly calendar slot dedicated only to building the thing you want to own in five years, and treat it as immovable as a board meeting.
One last thing about the book
I’ll share three more stories from Invisible Rules this month.
Ujwal is a dear friend. Seeing him succeed has been a joy to watch. Now that he is sharing his secrets, I am trying to help by getting him 50 honest reviews. Would you like to be one of the 50?
Between March 23–27, Ujwal is making the ebook free on Amazon. If you decide to grab it and it helps you, a short Amazon review for him during that window would go a long way.
I’ll send the link closer to the date.
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I’m Harsh. I build, sell, and invest in businesses. I’m helping grow Ideals Virtual Data Rooms and Happy Ratio, and I invest through Marcellus Investment Managers. I read books and steal from my own experience, then send one story each Sunday for founders and senior operators who want useful ideas to win in business and life. If that’s you, you can join the newsletter here. Connect with me on LinkedIn here.