The entrepreneur’s equation

Every entrepreneur faces the same fundamental challenge: how to grow sustainably while maintaining quality and meaning. Last week, while Jarrod and I worked through our “coordination problem,” I realized this tension could be represented mathematically—and that clarity might help us build better businesses—ours and our clients’—as well as a better app.

Wittgenstein taught us that how we frame problems shapes our reality. We also know that each variable is imbued with context, meaning, and perceptions that radically differ from person to person. By defining business challenges as mathematical relationships, we might gain new insights into the levers we can actually pull.

Here are the core variables I defined:

• X = Deliverable (podcast, strategy, website)
• Y = Quality components (research depth, thumbnails, hooks, newsletters)
• Q = Quantity delivered (volume, frequency, scale)
• E = Effort required (costs, human creativity, time, attention)
• P = Price (what clients pay)
• G = Growth (leads/revenue for clients)
• R = Redemptive factor (meaning, craftsmanship, culture)

Yet some of the stakeholders in this equation can compete with one another.

• Clients want: max(Y × Q × G) / min(P)
• Craftsmen want: max(P × R) / min(E)
• Sustainable business requires: max(P/E × G × R)

In other words, the entrepreneur’s job is finding the sustainable equilibrium where sufficient quality, quantity, and meaning intersect at a reasonable margin: P/E is your efficiency ratio, G is your value, and R is your purpose.

But here’s where it gets philosophically interesting: In Wittgenstein’s terms, how we define “sufficient” shapes our entire language game, each of which elevates one variable over another. Are we playing the capitalist game (max(P/E)), the craft game (max(R)), the growth hack game (max(G)), or something else entirely?

What’s more interesting is how the Redemptive factor (R) acts as a multiplier throughout the system. The Redemptive Frame from Praxis helps us optimize this equation for intangible but significant outcomes. Meaningful work increases efficiency, reduces turnover, and creates better long-term growth. Yet questions arise.

How do we optimize our business and our clients’ businesses without falling into the Marxist critique of alienating ourselves from our labor, or what David Brooks might call the technocratic fallacy of being “overly quantified,” where a “materialistic bent leads to all sorts of bad judgments”? How do we retain what Wendell Berry calls “the work of local culture”—sustainable practices that compound over time rather than burn out in pursuit of infinite growth?

I’m still working through the mathematics of this. The goal isn’t to solve for maximum efficiency per se but for optimal sufficiency, what economist-theologian Bob Goudzwaard called the “economics of enough”—the point where excellent work, fair compensation, sustainable growth, and meaningful craft intersect.

So, to create a mathematically elegant equation, I think the goal for us is to maximize (P/E × R × G) while maintaining R above some threshold. Of course, we think there is work to do on Q and Y to build the right X that achieves G.

How do you balance these variables in your business? What would you optimize for—and what would you add to this equation?

As always, we’re grateful to serve.