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

by Paul Jarvis

Whether growth is truly beneficial to your business ■ How you could solve business problems without just adding “more” ■ Whether you really need funding or venture capital for your idea, or are simply thinking too big to start

■ Whether you are paying attention to your existing customers or to just your potential customers ■ Whether you could make your business better (however you define that) instead of just making it bigger ■ Whether your business really needs scale to succeed ■ Where the upper bound to that scale might be, the place where profit and enjoyment have diminishing returns ■ How you could turn envy of others into enjoying their successes and learning from them

How you could prioritize your existing customers or transform them into repeat customers ■ The smallest version of your business idea that you could start with now, with little to no investment ■ How you want to grow as a business, or as an employee who doesn’t require transitioning into work you don’t actually want to do

The gist is this: you can pursue any passion you want, but you shouldn’t feel entitled to make money off it.

The true purpose of your business and whether it shows up in your actions (not just in your marketing material) ■ What you are skilled at that is already in demand and where else that skill could be leveraged ■ Where you could test your leap into something in a small way first ■ How you could align your day/schedule to be focused on single-tasking

How you could infuse your own distinct and unique personality into your products and company image ■ Where you could lean on what makes your business or product quirky or different to garner attention in the market

■ What you could do to ensure that your existing customers feel both happy and acknowledged ■ Where you could exceed expectations with your customer service ■ How you could create opportunities for word of mouth and referrals ■ How you own and then fix mistakes ■ What you could do to ensure that your customers end up with wins

Where you could use automation and technology to scale so your business doesn’t have to

How you could add personalization and segmentation to your one-to-many communication channels

What you could begin to share with or teach your customers or audience ■ How you could focus more on executing ideas than on protecting them ■ What investments you could make in consumer education as a marketing channel ■ What you could share that would position you or your company as an authority in a niche

How you embed trust and honesty as a marketing strategy in your company of one ■ The relationships you could foster with your customers to incentivize them to share word of your business with others ■ How to ensure — whether through email, support, or social media — that you’re always honoring social contracts with your customers

■ A new business or product you could start right now by executing the smallest version of your idea ■ How to determine your MVPr, the steps that could be taken to achieve it as quickly as possible, and what could be scaled back to reach it faster ■ A product or service that would be the simplest solution to a problem your customers are having ■ Whether you could start your company of one without capital and what that would look like

How you could get to know your customers as real people with specific problems ■ Where the true north of your business lies and what actions you could take to stay aligned with it ■ How you could build relationship wealth by increasing your value and thus your social capital ■ The ways in which you could empathize with your current customer base

Your purpose or reasoning in starting your own company of one, and whether it will hold up over time ■ How you could start your own company of one right now, with some first version of what you want to do ■ What you need to do to set up your company of one correctly and responsibly, both legally and financially