Company of One: Why Staying Small is the Next Big Thing for Business

Product Information

It will not be embarrassing to talk about your product to people who genuinely care for you and your journey. Sharing what you know builds a following around your product as well as around your company’s core values. Contrary to what you might deduce from the title, this is not a book about freelancers, nor is it a book about successful small businesses that want to find ways to grow. Now, you’re building a company of one: you have the luxury of focusing on smaller and more specific target audience. In Company of One Paul Jarvis challenges the mainstream belief that for a company to be successful it has to grow and keep growing.

As a corporate tech designer and internet consultant, Paul Jarvis spent years working with professional athletes like Warren Sapp, Steve Nash and Shaquille O'Neal with their online presence, and with large companies like Yahoo, Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz and Warner Music. Ultimately, this focus on developing scalable systems facilitates growth without the need for additional employees, and promotes long-term satisfaction. The autonomy and control you get in a company of one also require to actually be competent at what you do.A leader in a company of one needs to provide clear direction, set up rules, tools and processes, and then get out of the way. By sharing knowledge freely, you position yourself as a thought leader in your industry, and you foster the humane process behind every relationship: reciprocity. Want to keep the first product/service as simple as possible to launch quickly and gather real data and user feedback as early as possible, and then iterate. A small organization, or a single guy, not tempted by the traditional way of thinking – that more is always better.

Instead, start a side gig while you’re working—something you’re passionate about, something you’re good at, something that will keep your mind off your exhaustive 9-to-5 job.

The longer you take to make your first income, the more revenue you will need to break even and start making a profit. Put simply, he started with sketching out the optimal life he wanted to lead (“complete with taking a three-month vacation each year with his wife and spending hours walking, cooking, and teaching and tutoring his two young nieces each day”), and then built his company around this goal. If given an opportunity to grow, a small business would accept it, no questions asked; a real company of one would decline it—because it thinks of growth in much the same manner it thinks of decline. A key advantage of a company of one is agility: the ability to build products quickly, launch, and iterate with speed and intention.