Jarvis - Company of one why staying small is the next big thing for business

Paul Jarvis

---

Company of One

Why Staying Small is the Next Big Thing for Business

UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia

India | New Zealand | South Africa

Penguin Business is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

First published in the United States of America by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2019

First published in Great Britain by Penguin Business 2019

Copyright Paul Jarvis, 2019

The moral right of the author has been asserted

ISBN: 978-0-241-38023-9

For Luna

Beginning as a corporate web designer and internet consultant, Paul Jarvis first spent years working with top professional athletes like Warren Sapp, Steve Nash and Shaquille ONeal with their online presence, and with large companies like Yahoo, Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz and Warner Music. He then migrated to working with online entrepreneurs such as Marie Forleo, Danielle LaPorte and Kris Carr to help build their online brands.

These days, Paul Jarvis spends his time writing, creating software, podcasting and teaching online courses with his own company of one, which is called Mighty Small Ventures. His writing and ideas have been featured around the internet in places like Wired, Fast Company, USA Today, Vice News, and by MailChimp and Adobe.

When not working, Paul enjoys gardening, driving fast cars, sarcasm and hiking. He lives on an island off the coast of British Columbia with his wife Lisa.

Paul writes a weekly newsletter called The Sunday Dispatches, where he shares his latest writing and ideas. Its free and you can sign up at www.pjrvs.com/signup/. You can also find him on Twitter @pjrvs.

To learn more about how to start your own company of one, join the Co1 community, listen to the Companies of One podcast, and get other free resources related to the book, visit the website: www.ofone.co.

Growth has been hacked to simply mean more. More revenue, more customers, more employees, more products, more, more, more. Thats a tragically myopic view of growth. Paul Jarvis will help you open your eyes to a broader, wiser definition of growth. One of learning, one of betterment, one of contentment. Theres never been a more opportune time to launch or run companies that embrace having and being enough. The most important ingredient is a new world view. Company of One can give you just that David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails and founder of Basecamp

Your business can thrive with less! Company of One is a riveting, lucidly written guide to run a successful minimalist business Joshua Fields Millburn, host of The Minimalists podcast

The default equation of more = better in business isnt working any more. If you want to build something that matters, make a difference for your family and the world, and actually enjoy what you do, Company of One offers the inspiration and step-by-step actions that will change the way you do business, and the way you do life Courtney Carver, bestselling author of Soulful Simplicity

Paul Jarvis beautifully illustrates that Small is the new big. Its true. Its not about how many employees you have (or how many customers you serve). It is about who you are working with. This is a revolutionary idea for our times: build your business based on your values. Theres nothing small about that. This book is a treasure Mitch Joel, founder, Six Pixels Group, and author of Six Pixels of Separation and Ctrl Alt Delete

Ever since starting MailChimp eighteen years ago, Ive always been told that my way was wrong. My way has never been to be big. My way was always to be useful. My company has become a global brand with millions of customers, over $525 million in annual revenue and almost 1,000 employees united by a single mission to empower companies of one. Go figure. Theres not one, right way. Only your way. Pauls book can help you find your way Ben Chestnut, CEO and founder of MailChimp

Company of One will give you invaluable insights to focus on the purposeful, interesting and impactful work you actually love doing, right alongside permission to stop blindly chasing growth by defining success on your own terms. This book is great for freelancers, side-hustlers and small-business owners who are looking to bring autonomy, self-reliance and creativity to their work without becoming total workaholics Kathleen Shannon and Emily Thompson, authors/hosts of Being Boss Paul Jarvis is the savviest sole proprietor I know. This book is a permission slip to reject tired corporate business advice in favour of a smaller, slower, more personal approach. Amen Jocelyn K. Glei, host of Hurry Slowly

A bright, useful entry in the small-is-beautiful genre Kirkus Reviews

You are not alone with Company of One. If, like so many others, youre setting out to take on the world by yourself, then welcome to the best company there is, your own Sam Conniff Allende, author of Be More Pirate

Company of One is the next frontier for less is more Richard Koch, bestselling author of The 80/20 Principle and Simplify

Theres no such thing as perpetual growth. Yet thats what traditional business people crave. But what is growth meant to achieve? If Oxford University is so successful, then why isnt there a branch in Washington, D.C.? If a symphony is successful with 120 musicians, why not even more so with 600? To grow bigger is not much of an effective business strategy at all.

RICARDO SEMLER, CEO OF SEMCO PARTNERS

On February 28, 2010 the final day of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver I found myself driving a tiny cube-van with my wife, Lisa, heading to a ferry terminal. We had just closed on the sale of our condo, a small glass box in the sky located right in the heart of downtown Vancouver. We had also sold or donated almost all of our possessions, and we were moving to a town in the middle of nowhere, literally at the end of the road on Vancouver Island.

Our new town Tofino was proudly billed as life on the edge. As in truly the edge of nowhere. This island is the setting for the reality TV show Alone, where the actors grapple with living and surviving in complete isolation; its filmed a few hours north of town. Fewer than 2,000 people live in Tofino mostly surfers, old draft dodgers, and other assorted hippies who are still very happy living in the twentieth century.

At the time before, after, and even during the move I was working entirely online as a designer and online business consultant to everyone from Mercedes-Benz to Microsoft to Marie Forleo. My work and life depended on being hyperconnected. But now I was trading all of that for a town with zero other people involved in tech and, even worse, a really awful internet connection.

In short, for someone like myself who was coming from the tech world, this move was going to be a bit of a massive adjustment.

The main reason I was hell-bent on leaving civilization was that I had simply had enough of business as usual city life and the constant push from others to grow my successful business into something bigger. My wife, Lisa, too, was sick of her daily career demands. We were both done with the constant stimulus and stress of our urban existence the lights, sounds, and distractions, the constant and incessant buzzing. To save our sanity, we made our escape as quickly as we possibly could. And living on Vancouver Island seemed like the perfect tonic.