10 years of WOBS (Part 1)

Ten years ago, WOBS was born.

WOBS LLC is the name of my company. The first blog post on bernoff.com (which at that time was called withoutbullshit.com) was ten years ago.

Today I’ll talk about how I went from a senior executive at a respected research company to to a 56-year-old freelancer with dreams to change the world.

An opportunistic exit

By the start of 2015, I had been working for Forrester (at that time called Forrester Research) for nearly 20 years. For my first 11 years at Forrester, 1995-2006, I was an analyst, focused mostly on the world of television and media, with a little sidestep to invent Technographics, Forrester’s consumer survey product. In 2006, I attempted to quit to write a book, but the CEO, George Colony, persuaded me to stay and write the book at Forrester instead, with my fellow analyst Charlene Li as coauthor. That book, Groundswell, was published in 2008.

Everything changed after that. Soon after Groundswell became a bestseller, Charlene left, and I became the one remaining social media expert. I gave hundreds of speeches and did heaps of consulting days for the biggest companies in the world. I negotiated a new title: senior vice-president, idea development. After two years of that, I turned the social media coverage over to other analysts and focused on three things. First, more books — I cowrote two more and edited two written by other analysts. Second, building an intranet for Forrester to help people work together more effectively. And third, supporting high-profile research pieces. I worked with the analysts that had the most promising and influential reports — in fact, we held a contest once a quarter to select which reports should get special attention.

But by 2015, Forrester’s interest in books had waned and I’d delegated the now completed intranet project. Forrester also was changing its focus on what research it created and how it packaged that research, and it was clear that my role working on high-profile reports was no longer a good fit. I’d reinvented myself at least five times in my career there, but it seemed there was no longer a place for me.

Because my boss was the head of research, I became aware that there would be small layoff happening. I checked HR info on our intranet and learned that as an SVP with 20 years tenure, if I were to be let go, I’d get nearly a year’s severance including health insurance. So I told my boss that he should include me in the layoff. He was actually grateful — my usefulness had waned, and if he let me go, he could retain some other analyst with the payroll money he saved. So I leapt into the void.

My plan of action

Anyone at risk of losing their job should be asking the question, “What would I do if I had to leave my job tomorrow?” I had had the luxury of thinking the question over for months. Many other analysts leave research companies and become independent thought leaders, but I was subject to a noncompete agreement and in any case, I’d sort of gotten all the fulfillment I could out of being an analyst.

But what I had learned was that I loved working on books, and I had quite a few insights on better ways to do writing in a business context. The words “Writing Without Bullshit” came to me in a flash, and I decided to dedicate myself to that for the next part of my career. I assumed I’d give a lot speeches and run workshops on the topic as I did when I was an analyst.

So the day after I left Forrester, I quickly began to work on building a new profile for myself. Within a month I:

• Filed to create a business with the IRS, called WOBS LLC. (I’m sure you can figure out what WOBS stands for.)
• Opened a business bank account.
• Purchased the domain withoutbullshit.com with the intent of setting up shop there.
• Hired a consultant to build a wordpress.com site for me on that domain.

And on March 22, 2015, approximately one month after leaving Forrester, I made a post called “I hate bullshit” that included the following text:

My name is Josh Bernoff and I hate bullshit. So do you. But the difference between us is: I intend to do something about it.

After 40 years in academia and the corporate world, I’ve had my fill. I’ve seen it all. Articles from respectable publications full of generalizations and filler. Spurious statistics. Consultants’ reports replete with buzzwords but lacking in evidence. Endless reams of press releases about nothing. Email that rambles on and won’t get to the point. Enough.

Writing without bullshit is three things. It’s clear, it’s brief, and it’s not boring. It’s also valuable and rare. I want us all to understand how to create it and how to value it. I know how to write this way, and I know how to help you, too.

Writing filled with bullshit, on the other hand, is ubiquitous. Anyone can write — the tools are free, and the distribution channels are open to all. Anyone can send you an email, post on Facebook, blog, write for Huffington Post. Even professional writers of various kinds overwhelmingly create bullshit. On campus, their professors praised them for bullshit-filled papers. At work, they observed the bullshit their colleagues created and learned to create more of the same. We’re all hip deep in it. We know something’s wrong, but we just ignore the stink.

This is no joke for me. It’s my mission. Here’s what I am going to do:

• I will make a serious, analytical study of the various forms of bullshit in the world and how and why it got there.
• I will reveal how, once you remove the bullshit, writing becomes simple, powerful, and true.
• I will work toward a theory of bullshit and great writing, which I will then lay out in a nice neat package for all: a book called Writing Without Bullshit. (This is not an idle threat — writing books is what I do.)

Along the way I’ll call out both the crap and the powerful, direct writing on this blog. I will not play favorites — I’ll skewer and praise people on all sides of the political spectrum, in the corporate world, or wherever. I promise you right now it will be both enlightening and entertaining.

I need your help, too. I need you to send me bullshit. Just click on the submit bullshit link on my site. I’ll wade through it and showcase what you sent, and explain how they should have written it. You’ll see, if you get out of your own way and just write plainly, it’s not that hard. You just need to unlearn the bad habits.

I’m going to spend the next year on this. Are you with me?

The plan was not to blog every day. But I did post on March 28, about a week later, and again on March 29 and March 30. I decided to see how long of a streak of daily posts I could keep up. I have maintained a streak of posting every weekday from then until now, with the exception of a short hiatus around the end of my father’s life.

Those blog posts were my introduction to the world. They served two purposes.

First, I debuted much of the material that would end up in the book Writing Without Bullshit.

And second, I built an audience. One post, 10 top writing tips and the psychology behind them, went viral and generated more than a million views.

I sold the book to Harper Business that fall. That book advance, combined with the severance from Forrester, gave me a very long runway, nearly two years worth of revenue. I began to build a business based on three pillars:

• Corporate writing workshops
• Speeches
• Advice and editorial services for authors

Things did not go according to plan

The plan to give speeches was a bust. There were a lot fewer people interested in speeches about business writing than there had been who were interested in speeches about social media strategy.

The corporate writing workshops generated a steady stream of income, but not enough to live comfortably on.

But I knew a lot of people working on books, and made more and more connections all the time. That business began to pick up. Combined with the writing workshops, it grew enough that that it looked like it would support me and my family when the severance and the advance ran out.

I was happy

I did learn a few things.

I learned that I loved the freelancer’s schedule, where I could work the hours and days that I wanted.

I learned that consulting income is uneven, so I needed to plan for lean times.

I learned that there are some awesome accounting and tax breaks available to freelancers that make dollars go far further, even when you need to pay for your own health insurance and self-employment tax.

I also learned that blogging every day was a great way to keep myself intellectually active and interacting with the world.

Most importantly, I learned that I loved writing and editing, so the more of that I did, the more enjoyable life would be.

Once I got the business up and running, I heard from Forrester CEO George Colony, to whom I will always be grateful for the opportunities he gave me. He had two pieces of advice:

1. Don’t blog every day. It’s too much.
2. Don’t brand yourself with a curse word. Some parts of the business world will find it offensive.

As much as I love George, I ignored both of those pieces of advice, and in the end that was the right choice. Daily blogging and a brand built around the word “bullshit” were authentically me. They were tied up with who I was.

I have not regretted any of that. And it’s been a good ride so far.

Tomorrow: how WOBS LLC and I have grown and transformed over a decade.