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Zusammenfassung von Company of One

Name: Company of One
Rating: 4.5 (279 reviews)
Author: Paul Jarvis

Paul Jarvis

Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business

4.5 (279 Bewertungen)

30 Min.

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Company of One by Paul Jarvis is a refreshing take on entrepreneurship, suggesting you don't always need to grow, but can focus on staying small and profitable by prioritizing sustainability and creative independence.

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What’s in it for me? Discover an alternative strategy for business success.

When thinking about success in business, many people think big: big companies, big products and big CEOs – like Amazon, the iPhone and Bill Gates. Thinking about success this way can make it seem rather daunting. After all, your chances of starting the next industry-conquering giant, creating the next viral product sensation or becoming the next multibillion-dollar start-up founder are pretty slim.

But do you really want to be that big? Do you want your life to revolve around making money, finding new markets and managing large organizations on an ever-increasing scale? Or would you rather be able to enjoy the independence of owning your own company without having to sacrifice your life on the altar of the “bigger is better” definition of success? Would you rather be able to work a limited number of hours per year and spend the rest of them doing other things you care about, such as enjoying quality time with your family, traveling or pursuing hobbies?

If these questions leave you intrigued by the notion of thinking smaller about success, then these blinks are for you!

In them, you’ll learn

how to turn a side gig into a profitable, sustainable small-scale company;
how to find a sense of satisfaction with your work; and
how to do all of that without needing loads of money to get started.

Companies of one reject the philosophy of seeking growth for the sake of growth, adopting a more holistic view of life.

The ethos of modern capitalism can be summarized in a single word: “more.”

On one side of the economic equation, there’s the average consumer, who’s continually seeking to buy more products and services to consume.

On the other side, there’s the average business, which is continually seeking to sell more products and services to grow its profits. The moment it reaches one revenue goal, it sets the target even higher – $1 million, then $10 million and so forth.

In short, nothing is ever enough. Consumers and businesses alike are driven by an insatiable desire for evermore consumption and growth – generally speaking, at least. There are exceptions.

Joining the chorus of consumers who are trying to limit their consumption, some businesses are also starting to say “enough is enough.” In lieu of endless expansion, they’re seeking a more stable, satiable, and sustainable approach to growth.

By exercising self-restraint, these businesses can pursue a financial goal that turns the traditional corporate model on its head. That goal is simple: to earn just enough revenue to enable their owners and employees to secure the amount of comfort, autonomy and free time that they want their lives to have.

By turning that desire into the center of gravity around which their operations are focused, these businesses are able to revolve around the individuals who run them, rather than the other way around. Those individuals become the businesses’ unit of measure – a unit of one. Whether they consist of a single owner-operator, a team of a couple hundred employees or something in between, we can therefore call them companies of one.

Counterintuitively, whereas most businesses set ever-escalating growth targets, companies of one set firm growth limits to keep themselves small. For example, Sean D’Souza runs a company of one called Psychotactics, which provides consultancy services. His growth limit is $500,000 in profit per year. Even though he could make more money if he wanted to, he purposefully chose to restrict his company to this profit goal.

Why not more? Well, to borrow a famous line from rapper the Notorious B.I.G.: more money, more problems. Generally speaking, more profits require more production, sales and customers, which, in turn, require more employees, infrastructure and bureaucracy. That means more exhaustion, oversight and work time, which means less comfort, autonomy and free time. And that defeats the whole purpose of starting a company of one!

For his part, D’Souza would rather be playing with his kids and taking three-month vacations. If you feel a similar way, then a company of one might be the way for you to go as well!

Companies of one are different than traditional small businesses or freelance forms of self-employment.

A “company of one” might sound like a fancy way of calling oneself a small business or a freelancer – but there are important distinctions between these three forms of self-employment.

When a small business stays small, it’s usually considered a limited success. Some small businesses are OK with that, but many would like to expand their operations, grow their profits and be more successful, in the “bigger is better” definition of success. If given opportunities to become bigger, many small businesses would seize them in a heartbeat.

Don’t quit your job – develop your company of one out of a side gig.

From this point on, we’re going to examine the process of starting a company of one from beginning to end, step by step. Along the way, we’ll look at some of the distinguishing features, goals and strategies of a successful company of one.

The first step involves not doing something: namely, don’t quit your day job. Like many companies of one, your new business is probably going to grow out of a side gig. It needs to develop into a sustainable enterprise before you can turn it into a full-fledged company of one and devote yourself to it full-time.

Turn your work into a passion rather than the other way around.

Now that you’ve resisted the urge to quit your day job, what’s the next step in pursuing a side gig that can grow into a company of one?

Well, first you need to find the gig, if you don’t have one already. At this point, your initial inclination might be to listen to the standard advice of business writers and speakers: follow your passion.

Target a specific audience and find your niche.

In identifying and refining a marketable skill set, you might make a common assumption: the more people who want the product or service that your skill provides, the better. After all, the bigger the market, the bigger the number of potential customers.

But by trying to appeal to everyone, you can end up appealing to no one. That’s because aiming yourself at the lowest common denominator means making your product or service as broadly appealing and therefore as generic as possible, which diminishes your brand’s allure.

Embrace the power of simplicity and personality.

To tighten the focus of your product or service even further, there are two more strategies you can pursue.

The first is to adopt the virtue of simplicity. To see its power in action, consider the small company Casper, which sells mattresses online. Now, mattress companies are a dime-a-dozen – so what sets Casper apart?

Learn from your target audience and establish relationships with them.

Assuming you’ve identified your target audience and developed a marketable skill set, you’re now in a position to provide a product or service for which they would be willing to pay money. You just need to convince them to take advantage of your talents!

Of course, that’s easier said than done, and there’s a whole process involved in reaching that point. First, you need to connect with your audience and learn about their needs, so you can know how to fulfill them. One way to do that is to reach out to potential clients and offer them free, no-strings-attached consultancy.

Avoid large upfront investments, and seek to make a profit as quickly and inexpensively as possible.

Once you’ve established your reputation, authority and relationships with potential clients, you’ve reached the point where you can start doing “real” business and actually make some money. So now it’s time to put the pedal to the metal – quitting your job, renting an office, ordering fancy business cards and so forth, right?

Well, hold on. You should keep your job until your embryonic enterprise is more grown-up, and you should seriously reconsider making any large investments in it.

Allow your business to gradually grow through a snowball effect, and add investments as it grows.

Your initial product or service will probably be a pretty modest affair: just a few clients, projects or sales from a small-scale product run. But those few clients, projects or sales can lead to more clients, projects or sales, which can lead to even more of them, and so forth and so on, leading to a snowball effect.

That’s what happened for Alexandra Franzen, who left her career in radio broadcasting to become a professional writer about ten years ago. She didn’t succeed overnight; at the beginning, she landed only three projects. But each of those projects led to another and then another, as her initial clients hired her again or referred her to new clients. Fast-forward to the present, and she now has so many clients and projects that she has an almost year-long waiting list!

Focus on customer service and retention.

When you start off on the path of establishing a company of one, your main competitive edge is the extreme smallness of your enterprise, which allows you to be very personable with your clients and to focus on providing them with fantastic customer service.

As your company grows, you might be tempted to scale back on that personableness and service – but you do so at your peril. After all, your personableness is a large part of what makes your company likable – and it’ll be hard to convince people to keep sending money your way if they stop liking you!

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Worum geht es in Company of One?

Company of One (2019) presents an alternative philosophy of business success – one that turns conventional wisdom on its head by prizing less over more, small over large and niche over mass. In the course of laying out this philosophy, it also provides practical strategies for developing your own small-scale business enterprise – one that can provide you with enough free time, independence and income to live the life you want to live.

Wer Company of One lesen sollte

Workers seeking to escape the daily grind
Freelancers seeking to pivot into entrepreneurship
Businesspeople seeking to live a simpler life

Über den Autor

Paul Jarvis is a web designer, writer, educator and entrepreneur who has been working for himself for about 20 years. His past clients include Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz and Warner Music. His writing and ideas have been published and profiled in magazines and outlets such as WIRED, Vice, Fast Company and USA Today.

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