Running a company the Simon Sinek way. Jacek Ciesielski of Onsen on business without sales targets
What would happen if a business owner stopped starting with the question "how much do we want to sell"?
Jacek Ciesielski, founder of the Toruń-based brand Onsen, decided to test it in practice. His inspiration was Simon Sinek and the "Start With Why" concept. The result? A company with no classic sales team, no quarterly targets and communication that, instead of pushing for a purchase, encourages customers to get to know the product and make their own decision.
This is a story about what can happen when "why" stops being a slogan on a website and starts shaping the way a business is run.
Watch the conversation (in Polish).
Full episode of the SUURowo o marketingu podcast.
From his first company to Onsen
After several years in the United States, Jacek Ciesielski returned to Poland and opened his first company in 1994. His approach to competition was completely different back then. In the conversation he even recalls overpaying customs officers for information about how competitors operated.
In 2014 he watched Simon Sinek's talk "How Great Leaders Inspire Action". That is when he became interested in the idea of building a company around the answer to the question "why?". A few years later, in 2020, Onsen was born.
It was not about adding another value to the brand strategy, but about testing whether a company could really be run according to this philosophy. As Jacek puts it:
"Money will come. It will be a side effect of hard, good, honest work."
"Why" has to show in your decisions
It is easy to turn "Why" into a slogan. A company can write on the wall that it wants to help customers, change the industry or build a better future. The problem starts when everyday decisions are still driven only by sales pressure.
Ciesielski puts it bluntly: "Whatever someone writes on the wall, it will still be an ordinary company."
That is why values only make sense when they shape the product, the way you sell, communication and the relationship with the customer. At Onsen, you can see this in the approach to the buying process itself.
What if the customer did not have to buy?
In most online shops the message is simple: get interested in the product, add it to the basket and buy. At Onsen the centre of gravity has shifted. As Jacek says:
"On our website the buttons don't say 'buy', they say 'get to know the product'. You don't have to buy it."
This fits the industry the brand operates in. After all, you cannot sensibly judge a mattress from a photo and a few specifications. The customer needs information, time and a chance to check whether the product really meets their needs.
"We will educate you, and you make the decision. You will judge the product's functionality yourselves - you have a hundred days to return it."
For Jacek, not every piece of content has to lead straight to a contact form. Sometimes the bigger role of marketing is to help the customer understand the problem, compare solutions and only then decide whether they want to start a conversation with the company.
A company without targets or a sales team?
This is where Ciesielski's model departs most from what business has taught us to expect.
"There is no such thing as quarterly reporting. It is unnecessary." As he goes on to say, he does not hold marketing to targets and has no sales team, only order handling. For many companies this would be hard to imagine. Sales has its goals, marketing has its KPIs, and every quarter is judged on results.
At Onsen the assumption is different: if a company creates a good product, talks about it honestly and helps the customer make a decision, sales can be a consequence of earlier work rather than the result of pressure. That does not mean the financial result does not matter. A company has to make money. The difference lies in what sits at the start of the whole process.
"I don't believe in personas and target groups"
This statement from Jacek may be of particular interest to marketers. He says he has his values and his product, and if a customer feels the same way, they can come to him. This is not an argument for marketers to stop analysing customers. It is rather a different order of thinking: instead of asking who will be easiest to persuade to buy, you can start with what the company really wants to offer and who will find this way of working attractive.
This is an important difference in B2B too. A well-prepared persona should not be a fictional "John, 45, company director", but an attempt to understand the customer's real decision-making process.
A loyal customer or a manipulated one?
One more statement in the conversation shows Ciesielski's approach to marketing well:
"We only have two kinds of customers: manipulated and loyal. It is hard to win a loyal customer. It is easy to manipulate one."
Marketing can make effective use of time pressure, promotions, scarcity or social proof. The problem is that a high conversion rate does not always mean a good relationship with the customer.
If someone buys because they understand the product and consider it right for them, there is a chance of loyalty. If they buy only because they were skilfully guided through a sales mechanism, the company may get a transaction, but not necessarily a long-term customer.
What would change if you really started with "why"?
After talking to Jacek Ciesielski, it is hard to reduce "Start With Why" to just another brand-building method. In his case, the idea became a starting point for testing how sales, marketing and customer relationships can be organised differently.
"Why" only matters when it starts to shape decisions.
The Onsen story is not a recipe to copy. It is a good reason to ask yourself a few uncomfortable questions.
If you want to hear how Jacek Ciesielski arrived at this model, listen to the full episode of "SUURowo o marketingu" (in Polish).
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