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

Product Information

Company of one ideology in a few words: "start small, define growth, and keep learning." I. Begin 1. Defining a Company of One Your idea can be scaled down to the basics: How can I help one guy? How can you satisfy one type of customer? Offer to help with their questions for free to gain insights into why and how they end up choosing to hire professionals like him. In other words, if you want to earn more money, you’ve got to brace yourself for more problems: more profits mean more customers which means more employees which means more bureaucracy, etc. etc. When you find yourself thinking you need more capital to do something, ask yourself what it could look like if more capital just isn't an option. 12. The Hidden Value of Relationships

This point may seem counterintuitive at first. After all, how are you supposed to build an entire business while you’re working? The traditional model of running a personal business is focused on endless growth and, thus, marked with endless stress and overwhelm for the owner. That’s why there’s a whole industry built around books like The E-Myth to help alleviate founder burnout. Working for yourself will require you to experience less freedom in the beginning. Consistency is key and you will have to develop strong habits to succeed.You can scale up revenue, enjoyment, loyal customers, focus, and autonomy while resisting the urge to blindly scale up employee payroll, expenses, and stress levels. Defining a Company of One

Fishburne is an obvious success story. He and his wife have run their company of one, Marketoonist, since day one. Today, he reports that he makes more from Marketoonist than in his corporate VP role. StoryShot #4: Passion Isn’t Enough When Choosing Your Product Idea Envy is dangerous in running a company of one because it causes the businessman to take his focus off of his path and growth, and onto other people’s businesses. A company of one doesn’t grow progressively larger or require constant work. But this isn’t necessarily on principle. Instead, rejecting traditional growth mechanisms can get you the following benefits: Rather than growing, automate. By implementing automatic systems for most of your processes you can have access to the resource that’s more sacred and important than money, and time. If you do things the right way, you’ll have more spare time which you can then devote to other things: supporting causes, world exploration, and your family. All things that are much more important than money. Actionable Notes:

So, you quit your job and are on your way to growing your company of one without getting bigger. How do you get started? Developing these relationships requires three types of capital: financial capital, human capital, and social capital.

You make sure your customers know how to make the most of your product/service and become happy long terms customers. What he discovered was pretty staggering: most of the students were most passionate about one of these three things: arts, music, and sports. So, look for a niche. The more specific your audience is, the easier it will be to connect and build trust with them. And, the more diverse your needs are, the easier it will become to learn how to satisfy them. You have to strictly protect your own schedule and workload. The only way you can do this is by setting a “enough” number. Enough working hours, enough customers, enough market share, enough money. bq] "If we try to appeal to everyone, we won't appeal to anyone in particular, muddying our message."If you want to do this as a "solopreneur", you need to keep your company small and limit its growth. "Solopreneur" is someone who decides to risk alone as an entrepreneur, that is, a single person is responsible for creating the business, tracing strategies and doing all the necessary management; To succeed as a company of one, you have to have a real underlying purpose. You can’t fake your purpose. It’s how your business acts and represents itself and your values put into action. They are not the same. Evolve Your Side Gig into a Company of One (Works If You’re a Freelancer as Well) Why should you do this? Because when you launch your product as early as possible, you can start earning money immediately. However, since you’re not aiming high—and don’t want to build a big million-dollar company—you’re freer to find precisely the right people to be your customers.