Launching A $290K/Year Consulting Business After Closing Down My Previous Venture
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
I’m Heather ONeill and I’m the founder of Pixels for Humans. At Pixels, I work with SaaS startups and other product-based tech companies to build intentional businesses that care – about their impact on individuals, society, and the world. That often looks like a mix of business consulting, leadership coaching, and design services, always with a focus on embodying their values.
After 9 years, I’m proud to say I have a company that supports my life and the lives of my team – we choose to be picky about the projects we take on, and we maintain a 4-day work week; it’s important to me that the “For Humans” in our name includes our people too, not just our clients and their end users.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
I got started in tech in 1999 when I took a course on HTML and CSS. I built the most 90s website imaginable, complete with animated gifs and a scrolling marquee.
Serendipity led me into a web administrator position and eventually into co-owning and running my first business, a web and UX services company called Above the Fold.
From 2008–2014, I was the COO and President, alongside a business partner who held the CEO role, as we grew from 3 to 9 people and $1M in ARR.
After closing down Above the Fold in 2014 when my business partner and I went separate ways, I started Pixels for Humans, and I’ve been running it ever since.
I started Pixels just 9 days after closing down Above the Fold and at first, I replicated a lot of what I had done at ATF. A very savvy coach I worked with made the mind-blowing suggestion that instead of just doing the same thing I’d done before, I could build Pixels around my interests, skills, and values. I was off and running from that point on.
Once I made that shift, I started building out offers and working with clients that cared about more than the bottom line. I’ve always been driven to make a better world for everyone and Pixels is an extension of that mantra.
My business is about so much more than profits and everything from our 4-day work week to our selectivity with clients reflects these values.
As I did this, I also moved away from pure UX into designing the business, not just the product.
I had seen the rise and fall of many different kinds of tech companies and had developed a lot of firsthand insight into what factors went into building a business that changes the world for the better.
I saw many founders struggle with the tradeoffs offered to them by traditional business advice; indeed much of this advice causes active harm so the profit keeps growing. The founders and teams I work with want more than that - they want to do good as they scale.
So that’s what I do - help people create socially responsible, thoughtful, intentional businesses that make money — and have a purpose on this planet.
Take us through the process of building the first version of your product.
Moving from my first business into Pixels, I started with the same service models: Fixed Fee (and fixed scope) or Time & Materials.
Fixed Fee projects were great, when they happened, as it was alignment and predictability all around - we knew the cost, the timeline, and the work. However, it was hard for many of my clients to fully define the project scope, so we often ended up with T&M contracts.
As the business matured, I realized that the fluctuation of revenue with a T&M model didn’t suit me, so I developed a set of hours-based retainers that I set up with many clients. This gave clients the flexibility for scope changes and business pivots while helping me keep my revenue more predictable.
In 2020 I decided to do a bit more experimenting with my business offerings on the UX services side and created more productized services i.e. standardized services that are sold like products. These include:
- UX Audit - where we audit the UX of two workflows in your product and identify the next key things to take action on
- UX in a Day - where you get a fast turnaround day of UX (A LOT can get done in a day)
- Interactive Prototype - where you get a clickable figma prototype of a specific workflow, perfect for investor pitches, sales calls, and research
I’m still experimenting with new productized services that best support my clients and the ever-changing landscape of building products.
I also developed a new retainer model in 2022, that fits better with how I work with my clients. It has two tiers - Fractional VP of Product, where I support an existing product and UX team, and UX Services, where we are also the UX team. The biggest change for these retainers is that they’re no longer tied to hours.
In a traditional retainer or T&M model, I’m always at odds with my clients - they want the least hours used and I want the most (financially speaking). By removing the hours counting and just being available as the needs come up, we all feel good about the work we’re doing (and no one has to watch the clock or justify why things take the time they take).
This works because all our client relationships are built on transparency and trust. I have yet to have a client say they don’t feel like they’re getting the value, but if I did hear that, we’d talk about it and come up with a solution together.
For business consulting and coaching, I latched onto values pretty early on, as the key factor that was falling by the wayside for a lot of founders in the rush to launch the next Uber or Airbnb. But getting folks to make the connection between their values and their business isn’t always easy.
And along the way, of course, it helped to get intentional about my values, and how they were reflected in the decisions I made and the way I ran my business. This helped me develop a coaching framework that allows me to support my clients in every aspect of my business
My coaching framework and fixed cost package have been fairly consistent since its inception in 2019. It’s a fairly common business model of weekly calls and a fixed monthly cost over 6+ months that allows my clients to leverage my expertise without a full UX services commitment.
My business coaching focuses on aligning your values to your decisions, so you create the business you want, rather than death by 1000 compromises.
No matter where you are selling, it’s to people, so being able to develop trust and care in your interactions has a huge impact.
Describe the process of launching the business.
The launch of Pixels for Humans came on the heels of closing down my first business, so it lacked fanfare or announcement of any kind. Closing down Above the Fold was deeply emotional and challenging for me, and left me bereft of energy or enthusiasm towards announcing or promoting this new venture, especially because initially, I wasn’t even sure what I was going to do with Pixels.
I started Pixels that quickly because I had a client who was adamant about working with me, and point blank suggested I start a new company when I shared about Above the Fold’s closing. Financially, I wasn’t in a great position, so I said “ok” and filed the paperwork, signed a contract, and got to work.
I was in a fortunate position in the sense that I was able to carry over a lot of reputational value from the hard work I’d put in during my years at Above the Fold; word-of-mouth referrals are a huge factor in services businesses, and I was able to leverage that as I figured out what I wanted from Pixels.
Name-recognition-wise, of course, I was starting from scratch – and I focused in that early period on building deeper relationships that would lead to great referrals and open new doors. So much so, that for 6 years of running Pixels, our website was just a white page with our logo & tagline in the middle and an email link.
Eventually, that became a liability – someone would hear about us from a mutual connection, go to the web to check us out, and find nothing – so we did launch a full-featured website in 2020. But that relationship-based focus at the beginning worked well for us and still does.
I’ve never once regretted the time and energy I spent building a relationship, even if it never turned into a client or referral.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
All my customers come from relationships, and caring about people as full humans. So many people see their network as prospects or connections to prospects, and if they aren’t, why bother? This is fully the wrong way to think of your network.
No matter where you are selling, it’s to people, so being able to develop trust and care in your interactions has a huge impact. Often it’s the difference between having an advocate or champion and a neutral party, which can be the difference between a closed deal and a ghosting prospect.
My clients and my network at large know I’m in it for them to succeed, whether or not they’re currently paying (or have ever paid) me money. One of my superpowers is giving really good gifts and I love doing it - if we know each other, I’ll probably ask for your address and send you cool things in the mail.
And yes, we all have limited time and it’s a lot of work to maintain relationships with people indefinitely. I’m not confused about that. At the same time, I’ve never once regretted the time and energy I spent building a relationship, even if it never turned into a client or referral.
This is also why I have 90% repeat clients - I’m always thinking about my clients and network and finding ways to reconnect with them.
On the marketing side, this is where I fall the most. I have a newsletter I write and I post on LinkedIn with some level of consistency - that said, none of these efforts have ever had the impact my relationship building has had.
It’s not because they don’t work and more because they don’t work for me. I’ve gone viral twice this year on LinkedIn with over 30K views on one post and 60K views on another, and it hasn’t translated into leads or prospects yet.
My best marketing efforts are speaking and connecting at conferences and events, and participating in community-based slack groups. Again, since I approach these with a human-focused mentality, I’m not just hunting for people to buy from me.
We’ve all experienced someone who has no ties in a group but shows up to pitch - it’s the fastest way to ensure you get no business.
Being genuinely interested in people? That’s the best way to impact your sales and growth.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
Pixels has been profitable every year of business, which is a nice byproduct of having a service-based business, as our COGS is very close to 0. While the pandemic has not been a high-growth business environment for us, I’m pleased with where we are today.
One of the biggest efforts I’ve made as a business owner is to make sure my business supports my life, rather than the other way around.
Pixels for Humans is a 4-day work week company and we don’t take every opportunity that comes our way. In 2022 alone, I said no to over $200,000 in client work that didn’t align. Our values and our lives come first.
Operationally, it’s still very much a 2-person show. One of my goals for q4 of 2023 is to hire an operations manager and start standardizing our processes more thoroughly than I’ve been able to do.
I’m also continuing to expand our offers and build up my network. I hope to get better at more 1-to-many marketing and biz dev activities and find the ones that work for my business. Most of all, I’m excited to continue expanding my coaching roster; I love working 1-on-1 with founders, and I’m looking forward to expanding that capability even further.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
I’ve learned that being a business owner is a constant lesson in how “who you think you are” and “who you are” don’t always align. It’s humbling and requires so much tenacity. You have to reckon with some of the worst parts of yourself on the road to success and grapple with the challenges of experimenting and failing.
It’s hard not to get invested in your business as part of your identity, so its failures can feel like your personal failures.
For example, I’ve always been “the smart one.” It’s a belief I’ve rarely had to poke at or question. But that identity-based belief also made me struggle when I chose to close down my first business. “If I’m so smart”, I thought, “Why is my business failing? Why did I not succeed here?”.
I had to grapple with that part of my identity, to understand how both might be true and how I could keep going.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
We use a few key tools:
- QuickBooks, for managing finances
- Airtable for CRM, relationship management, lead tracking, and social media tracking
- Harvest, for tracking time, when we need to
- Figma, for all our UX design & prototyping work
- Loom, for recording quick videos to explain a concept or walk through a set of designs, asynchronously
- Slack, both for internal team communications and for networking via interest-based groups
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
The biggest one that’s been influencing me in the past 6-months is Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey. It may seem counter-intuitive for a business owner to be thinking about rest, but I’m firmly anti-capitalist and this book (and Tricia’s whole platform at the Nap Ministry) is an essential part of how I make decisions for my business and my life.
Because while I enjoy business, it’s not the only thing or even the most important thing I enjoy or care about. I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t benefit from reading this book.
One of my other recent favorite books is Forget the Funnel by Claire Suellentrop and Georgiana Laudi. It’s a masterclass in customer-led growth and marketing and every founder should read it to understand exactly how to get and use customer feedback for marketing their product. Gia and Claire have even created a workbook so you can execute as you read. It’s exceptionally practical and exceptionally valuable.
Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my own book, “Before You Code.” Despite the name, it's not a coding book. Rather it’s a crash course in UX for founders and leaders who want to create a product that stands out but isn’t sure where to start. I reference it for myself on a fairly regular basis, especially when I’m explaining concepts to founders I work with.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
It should be no surprise that I want to advise entrepreneurs to consider their values. People – your team, your customers – want to be part of something, especially something that isn’t just extractive (e.g. profits overall).
They care and they want the companies they buy from and work for to care too. No one wants to feel like they’re only good for what you can take from them, so your values need to be front and center.
And the thing is, your values are already there, even if you never state them explicitly. Because every decision you make reflects what you value. So even when you do state them explicitly, it’s clear when they don’t align with your actions.
At Pixels, our values are the core of how we operate: Justice, Honesty, Humanity, and Integrity.
In 2022, I turned down over $200,000 worth of contracts – where people were ready to sign on with me – because there wasn’t value alignment. I don’t work with companies that cause harm without care or concern, that employ or cover for racist, anti-LGBTQ+, or sexist behaviors or that treat me and my team like peons.
This is not to say that every client I have is perfect. But I can tell when a company’s sincere in their effort or when they’ve just stated “diversity matters to us” on their website because they believe it’s popular now.
I can’t change everyone but I can raise the bar on what it means to be a business owner and tech founder for me and my sphere of influence, so that’s what I do. It’s never just money.
Where can we go to learn more?
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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