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

For companies of one, the question is always what can I do to make my business better?, instead of what can I do to grow my business larger?

The Kauffman Foundation study also illustrated that almost 86 percent of companies that succeeded in the long term did not take VC money.

we should create products that make specifically identified groups of people very happy and ignore everyone else.

A company of one is a collective mind-set and model that can be used by anyone, from a small business owner to a corporate leader, to take ownership and responsibility for what they do to become a valuable asset in any marketplace — in terms of both mental practices and business applications.

While it may seem counterintuitive to focus your marketing and trust-building efforts on a small and specific group of people, there are benefits to doing so. The more specific you are with who your products or services are for, the more you can build trust with that particular audience. The paradox of focusing on a niche is that the more specific

By using stories and metaphors, high expectations, and even facial expressions, anyone can employ and gain charisma to inspire others.

Researcher John Pencavel from Stanford University says that if you start to define your productivity in physical terms, you can see that your ability to focus drastically diminishes after fifty-five hours a week.

Passion and courage are almost impossible to control and can easily leave you feeling bad about yourself. It’s far easier to simply work at getting really good at something in demand, discovering how those skills can be applied to something else, and then testing your idea in a small way to see if it will pay.

For myself, I happen to like choices. I like that I can choose to make less money by saying no to a project or a client or a customer I don’t think is a good fit for me. I like that I can choose to unplug for three months at a time and go on camping road trips across American deserts with my wife.