Company of One Summary

The Scoop

• Question the idea of growing at all cost

• Build your business to fit the lifestyle you want

• Set upper limits for growth

Start small, define growth and keep learning

Intro

Scaling is not the smartest solution to the most problems but most often the easiest

1. Defining a company of one

• Challenge the core assumption that growth is required for success

More is generally the easiest way but not the smartest

• More and more companies are starting to see this

• Build your business around your life

• You get to a point of diminishing returns when you always grow

• Most people think if you can't add "more", you are not successful enough yet, this is not true

Resilience, Autonomy, Speed and Simplicity are the four typical traits of a company of one

Resilience

• Resilient people have:
• An acceptance of reality
• A sense of purpose
• Ability to adapt

Autonomy and Control

Full autonomy but not a clue what you're doing is a recipe for disaster

• You have to have a skillset that's in demand but also know what places for growth make sense and which don't

• You want the freedom to not have to fill every minute of your life with work

• You need people that are good at a lot of things often at once (generalists)

Speed

• Work smarter not harder

• Prioritize ruthlessly

• The fewer staff and the less external funding involved the faster you can move

Simplicity

• Don't get distracted from your business's primary focus and aim

• Play the long game

• Always ask:

• Work on automations when it no longer makes sense to personalize your interactions

• Start out as simple as possible and always question new layers of complxity

Think about

• 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 thinking too big to start

2. Staying small as an End Goal

• Pay close attention to your existing customer base

Spend your time making products better for your existing users

• 74% of startups fail because they scale up too quickly (Startup Genome Study)

• 86% of startups that were successful in the long term did not take VC money

Sudden and large investments turn companies into "armies of employees who sit around having meetings"

• The question should always be: "What can I do to make my business better instead of what can I do to grow it larger"

• Never spend based on growth you like to see instead of where revenue is currently at

• You can always scale your prices to flatten demand so that you can handle it

• Another pro: Spend less on overhead

Constant growth often brings on stress and anxiety

Each year it becomes less risky to work for yourself

• Set some upper bounds for growth

If our goals were completely internaliezd at all times, we wouldn't chase growth as much as we do

Think about

• Whether you are paying attention to existing customers or just potential customers

• Whether you could make your business better instead of just bigger

• Whether you really need scale to succeed

• Where the upper bound of that scale might be

• How you can turn envy of others into enjoying their successes

3. What's required to lead

• Listen more than you talk

Servant leadership is very important

Introversion can be turned into a positive tool instea of an excuse for inaction

• Enable autonomy while poviding alignment setting processes

• It becomes increasingly valuable to know a little bit about a lot
 

Psychology

• Understand how others think

Communication

• Most of our day is spend communicating so you gotta be good at it

Resilience

Much of business is a guess

• Important to bounce back from failures

Focus

• Become an expert at saying "no"

Decisiveness

• Scale down large, stressful decisions into smaller, more digestible ones
• Chose a direction more quickly with less stress

• Turn down opportunities that are not a good fit

• Be self-aware and check-in on yourself regularely

• Be empathic, practice gratitude

Think about

• Where you could strike a balance between autonomy and guidance

• What areas you could learn more about that would benefig your business

• Steps you could take to strike a balance between hustlin and recuperation

4. Growing a company that doesn't grow

• Always balance growth with meaningful long-term strategies

• Think about the customer experience not how many customers you can acquire

• Focus on Retention

• Sacrificing Customer experience for acquisition doesn't work in the long term

• Most companies grow for one of the four reasons: inflation, investors, churn, ego

• Think small in the beginning

• Automation can happen later

Focus on where you can test with low effort and investment

• Increase your expenses based on profit

• There's no need to be noticed faster than you can handle

Grow when your revenue allows you to

Think about

• How you can prioritize your existing customers

• The smallest version of your business idea that you could start with now

• How you want to grow as a business

5. Determining the Right Mind-Set

• To succeed as a company of one you have to have a real purpose

More and more consumers make purchases based on shared values

• Doing business boils down to serving others in a mutually beneficial way

• Your purpose serves as a test for all your business decisions

A lack of focus = short term gains over long-term stability

• Purpose ≠ passion

• Simply work at getting good at something in demand and passion may follow

• Feelings of entitlement often lead to problems in teams

• Become adept at "Single-Tasking"

• Become adept at communicating your workload

It's a managers job to protect the teams time and attention

• Don't fall for busy-culture

What you should be bragging about is how to get your work done quicker and more productively

• Piling on work comes at the price of our health

Think about

• The true purpose of your business and if it shows in your actions

• What you are skilled at that is already in demand

• Where you could test your leap into something in a small way first

• How you can align your day/schedule to be focused on single-tasking

6. Personality Matters

• Your human characteristics are the way your brand speaks and behaves

• Build a brand personality based on personal contact and great service

• Attention is worth more than revenue or posessions

These days buyers dictate what they want

• Attention is instantly lost when trust is broken

Emotional connection holds attention

• Gain attention by using and featuring personality

• Start doing the kinds of unique and unusual things that attract attention

• Always take a stand

• A one size fits all approach rarely works and leads to mediocrity

• Draw your own niche market close by showing them your understanding and sympathy for how they see the world

Think about

• How you could infuse your own distinct personality in products and company image

• Where you could lean on what makes your product quirky or different to garner attention

7. The one customer

• Treating everyone as if they were your one and only customer drives value to your bottom line

• Good customer service turns your customers into an unpaid salesforce

70 percent of buying experiences are based on how customers feel treated rather than the product

83% or new business come through word of moth referrals

• Try to build reciprocity

• Take time to understand your customer and their needs

• Use empathy to drive real profit

• Small business can't compete on scale but on personal touches

Own you mistakes before someone else blames you for them

• We have to pay attention to our customers in the spaces they hang out

• Having a process in place to meet promises is required

Think about

• What you could do to ensure that your existing customers feel both happy and acknowledged

• Where you could exceed expectations with customer service

• How you can create opportunity for word of mouth referrals

• How you own and fix mistakes

• What you could do to ensure that your customers end up with wins

8. Scalable systems

• Use scalable systems and channels to increase profit

• James clear (atomic habits) has 2 rules:
1. Products need little to no management
2. One time fee for everything

• Email marketing is a valid model for scaling without scale

• Using personalization and segmentation in connection channels like email is key

• Segmented automation emails have 70% higher open rates

Think about

• Where you could use automation and tech to scale so your business doesn't have to

• How you could outsource tasks that require massive scale

• How you could add personalization and semgmentation to your one-to-many channels

9. Teach Everything you know

• Focus on what your audience needs to learn and then teach it to them

• Out-teach and outshare your competition

• This can only help build trust with your customers

• There is no downside to sharing

The fear of customers using what you tell them to not buy from you is a myth

• The more people trust your company the more loyalty they will develop

• Teaching builds authority

It can be as simple as sharing what you know with the people who are listening

Think about

• What you could begin to share with or teach your customers/audience

• How you could focus more on executing ideas rather than 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

10. Properly Utilizing Trust and Scale

• Trust highly correlates to a person's propensity to try your product

• Three aspects of trust
1. Confidence (I believe what you say)
2. Competence (I believe you have the skills)
3. Benevolence (I belive you're acting on my behalf)

• 92% of consumers trust friends and family recommendations

• 82% of consumers are willing to provide referrals but only 29% do

• E-Mail customers a week after purchase, if pleased to share with others

• Use segmented automation to facilitate word of mouth referrals

• Focus on existing loyal customers as brand advocates

Consider "Connecting" over "Collecting"

• Trust happens first, the commerce follows

• Suprising and delighting customers can go a long way

Think about

• How you embed trust and honesty as a marketing strategy

• The relationship you could foster with your customers to incentivize word of mouth sharing

• How to ensure that you're always honoring social contracts with customers

11. Launching and Iterating in Tiny Steps

• Be profitable as quickly as possible

• Be careful not to scale too quickly

• Profit only happens when the business is making enough money for the owner to cover salaries

• Exponential profits aren't core objective because profitability is usually enough

• Launch quickly and build from customer feedback

Finding a simple solution to a complicated problem is your biggest asset

• Launch should be simple in choice, messaging and hypertargeting one audience

Crowdfunding is more aligned with companies of one

Customers don't ask a business to grow or expand, they just want to be served

• Continue the loop of: launch, measure, adjust, repeat

Work at a single task an master it

• When to give up
• Is your initial assumption still correct?
• If you'd start today would you do the same project?

Think about

• A new business or product could start right now by executing the smallest version of your idea

• How to determine your MVPr, the steps that could be taken to reach it as quickly as possible

• A product or service that would be the simplest solution to a problem your customers are having

• Whether you could start your company without capital and what it would look like

12. The hidden value of relationships

• Build long-term relationships with people based on mutual interest

• Try to be seen as a trusted advisor by educating

Consumers trust smaller businesses over large corperations

• Call out customers by name or speak directly to them

• Connect with the community and make them feel a sense of reciprocity later

Churn and Burn doesn't foster personal connections

YOu can swap credibility for attention at any time

Insert human relationships into your financial system

• Three types of capital required
1. Financial capital
2. Human capital
3. Social capital

• Relationships are currency, make sure that you don't overdraw your balance

• Your social capital depends on what you can provide to your audience

• Devide your mass interactions with your audience in thirds
• 1/3 Business or content
• 1/3 sharing other people's content
• 1/3 interaction and building relationships

• Don't forget the people that buy from you

• Get customers admiration so that they celebrate your successes instead of resentment

• Work for yourself ≠ work by yourself → Full autonomy with the direction of the project lead can and does happen

• Mixing skills leads to a greater outcome

Think about

• How you can get to know customers as real people with specific problems

• Where the true north of your business lies and what actions you can take to stay aligned with it

• How you could build relationships wealth by increasing your value and social capital

• The ways in which you can empathize with your current customer base

13. Starting a company of one — My Story

• Run a business based on client relationships

Freedome of choice is my north star

• I started looking for folks that asked questions I had answers to

• Being helpful is a great lead generation funnel

I hit my MVPr offering services and then products

The setup

Money

• For companies of one expenses are as important as revenue

• Reduce overall costs or raise your rates

• Get an initial version to market quickly to start building revenue

• It can take a few years to transition fully from services to products

Legal

• Having legal systems in place right from the start is important

• Get a lawyer that's happy to work with a business of your size and knows your type of business

• Never a smart idea to be the biggest or the smallest client

Accounting

• Ask how to best structure your business to pay the least amount in taxes

• Audit your bookkeeping

Salary

• Base salary = Avg. Profit of last 12 months minus 25 to 30% for taxes

• The more money you take out the more it's taxed

• Build up a runway buffer of 3 to 6 months (savings that cover your ass)

Savings

• Consider something like a 401k

• Consider ETFs

Work your money in small steps

• Make your money grow over decades not the short term

Health Coverage

• Get it

Lifestyle

• Develop consitent monthly revenue to cover costs, runway buffer and investments

• Then → You're presented with choices

• Make more money or don't, you can make more time for friends and family etc.

Open yourself up to investing into enjoying your life

Think about

• Your purpose or reasoning in starting your company 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 responsible, legally and financially

Afterword: Never grow up

90% of business older than 100 years are japanese

• Most companies don't survive in spite of being small but because of it

Solving business problems by simply adding more is like putting a band-aid on a cut, it might stop the bleeding but not help you deal with why it happened

• There is satisfaction in reaching the point of enough in your business and then knowing that you don't have to explore every new potential opportunity

There is a point for everyone where having more won't affect your life

• Stay attentive to those opportunities that require growth and question them before taking them