Company of One

by Paul Jarvis

  As a company of one, Wakefield Brunswick could be limited in the size and scope of the projects it takes on, but by building connections to other independent contractors, the company can pool its expertise and skills with these other businesses and take on much bigger contracts. Remember, Wakefield Brunswick only partners with other businesses when a project requires it; otherwise, they are free to work on whatever they want. Business at every level is built on who we know and who knows us.

  Similarly, Ghostly Ferns, a “family of designers,” works on agency-sized projects while remaining a loose group of independent workers who all offer different design services, from illustration to branding to web application design. The team grows and shrinks as projects demand, and individual members also take on their own projects as needed. This flexibility has allowed them to work with big clients like Lincoln Motor Company, compete with and win bids from larger clients, and earn prestigious awards as well. Meg Lewis, the founder of Ghostly Ferns, believes that mixing their skills together, serving as a sounding board for each other, and generally supporting each other has led to a greater outcome than the sum of their individual skills could have achieved.

  James Niehues has hand-painted more than 240 ski maps. If you’ve ever hit the slopes, you’ve probably seen his work. When Niehues was forty, he was unemployed but keenly interested in painting landscapes. So he reached out to Bill Brown, who had a monopoly on ski maps at the time, to see if he needed help. Turned out he did, and was actually about to retire. So after they did a few projects together and developed a deep connection, Brown passed all his commissions to Niehues — who has now made a living painting ski maps for thirty years.

  Especially if you’re working for yourself, the tendency can be to believe and then act like your company of one is in this struggle all alone and that your business needs to be just you, with no outside interaction or involvement. But in connecting with peers and fostering relationships with them, as well as with other people in our industry and even similar industries, we gain access to new ideas and a way to build valuable connections that can lead to new customers — or to simply vent. We want to retain our autonomy and independence, sure, but we also need to run with a pack from time to time, as there’s strength in numbers.

  BEGIN TO THINK ABOUT:

  ■ 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

  13

  Starting a Company of One — My Story

  So far this book has covered a lot of stories, data, and studies on why growth should be questioned in the quest to run and maintain a company of one (or really, any business you’d like to sustain long-term). Now we can move our attention to the final piece of the puzzle — what exactly we can do to go from zero to start for a company of one.

  For this chapter, we’re going to focus on what it looks like to start something on your own, even though we now know that a company of one can flourish within a larger organization. I hope that the material presented in this book has shown you that this counterintuitive approach to work can benefit both your wallet and your overall enjoyment of work, and that working for yourself can make a lot of sense. Now let’s see how to put it into practice — how to build something that’s too small and resilient to fail. I’ll start with my own origin story.

  In the mid-1990s, I was at the University of Toronto, studying computer science and artificial intelligence — which, given the current trends, seems like it would have been really useful to stick with. But I hated it. I would finish studying and completing school assignments as quickly as possible so I could focus my efforts on what I was really curious about: this new thing called the internet, and building web pages on it with design and code.

  One site I created, a dictionary for slang words (words that otherwise wouldn’t be in “real” dictionaries), began to get a lot of press and notice. The attention came not just from publications that found the internet interesting and exciting, but also from design agencies that figured their clients could benefit from having websites — and they could benefit from being paid to build them.

  As a result, I dropped out of school and went to work full-time at an agency in Toronto, designing and building websites. That work went well for a while, but eventually I wasn’t happy with the “love ’em and leave ’em” attitude at the agency, which focused on the quantity of work more than the quality of relationships. After a year and a half of seeing that the agency wasn’t keeping clients for multiple engagements, I figured the job wasn’t right for me and quit to find a job at some other agency where my purpose would be more aligned with theirs.

  Then a funny thing happened the day after I quit. I was all set to go to the library to figure out how to write a résumé (since I hadn’t ever written one and the internet wasn’t the vast resource it is now) when the phone began to ring. Clients from the agency I had just left were calling because they had heard I was no longer working there. It turns out that they had noticed my desire to deliver more value to each project and wanted to bring their business to whichever company I landed at.

  I then had a thought I’d never had before — perhaps I could work for myself and build the exact type of business I wanted to run, matching my purpose with the work I was doing. Instead of going to the library to write a résumé, I went to the library to figure out how to start a business. And so began my work of almost twenty years, working for myself.

  I didn’t call it a company of one at the time, but in effect, that’s exactly what I was doing.

  In the beginning, I made far more mistakes than progress, so by telling my story, I hope I can save you a bit of heartache and the kind of real financial loss I incurred early on.

  BUT FIRST, SOME CAVEATS

  It seems as though every article on the internet about working for yourself extols the virtues of casting off the shackles of full-time employment to become free and happy working on your own from various beaches across the globe, with a laptop on your lap and a mai tai in your hand.

  We’re constantly getting the message that working for ourselves is the answer to all our problems and the only surefire way to get ahead. In fact, even though I’ve worked for myself longer than most people, I still don’t think it’s the best option for everyone. Not because some people aren’t talented enough to start their own company of one, but because it just doesn’t make sense for everyone. It all depends on what you want to do and how you want to do it.

  When you’re the boss of you, there’s no HR department to handle payroll, benefits, and training. There’s no accounting department to handle payables and receivables or to chase after folks who haven’t paid you yet. There’s no sales and marketing team drumming up new business leads for you. On top of the main skill you use to make money, you’ve got to do all the other jobs as well. Some folks are fine with doing this kind of work, but it may not be how others want to spend their days. The people I know with their own company of one spend approximately half of their time, or less, doing their core skill (writing, designing, programming, etc.). They spend the rest of their time on the business — chasing leads, doing their books, communicating with clients or customers, marketing, and so forth.

  With all this “Work for yourself! It’s better than whatever you’re doing now!” messaging out there, people often end up falling in love with the idea of working for themselves without understanding the actual day-to-day work required to be their own boss. Or as Austin Kleon cleverly puts it, “People want to be the noun without doing the verb.” They want the job title of founder or CEO, or a business card and a fancy website with a new logo, but they forget or overlook the daily rigors of running a business of their own. Having a brilliant idea or a pa
ssion to build a successful business is not enough. Ideas and dreams are nice, but they’re also cheap and meaningless if you don’t take action and do the work to make them happen.

  The harder — much harder — part is making the dream happen every day. Some days you’re buried in accounting spreadsheets; other days, you’re on the third round of revisions from a client, or dealing with an irate customer. The daily slog is what separates wannabe business owners from those who make it a reality.

  Working for yourself requires ego and purpose in equal measure. I started working for myself because I figured I could foster client relationships better than the agency where I worked. That became my purpose — not to be the best designer (which I’m not even sure is possible), but to run a business focused on client relationships. So ego is involved, not in a bad way but in a “I know I can do this better” sort of way. If you don’t think it’s possible to do better, or you don’t care if it is, there’s no point doing your own thing. In that case, it’s fine to work for someone else — they’re already established and have people handling the jobs you probably don’t want to be doing anyway.

  Purpose is required in that you have to have a north star that will drive you long-term without blinking out. A desire to get rich quick or achieve business fame isn’t going to motivate you for long, since neither is quickly possible, regardless of who you are. There are much easier ways to make money or become famous in the world. Why do you want to work for yourself? What will drive you to keep going when things get rough or take longer than you hoped they would? What will make it worth it when you’re stuck in the day-to-day minutiae of running a business?

  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. I like that I can pick what I work on next, rather than have work handed down to me. I like that I can work on Saturday if I want, and go hiking on Wednesday. This freedom of choice is my north star. Yes, it’s taken some time to get here, and I had to be okay with not having nearly as much freedom in the beginning as I do now. After all, bills need to be paid and sometimes the best client isn’t the best fit but he’s the one who’s here right now and willing to pay you this month. Still, even in the rough patches, my purpose — my freedom of choice — is what’s driven me forward.

  I don’t mean to give you a downer of a message — only to challenge your idea of wanting to work for yourself, just as you should challenge the notion that all growth is beneficial. If you’re like “Yes, I’m in,” then that’s awesome — I hope this book gives you a bit of a roadmap to building your own company of one. But if it doesn’t make sense for you right now (or ever), that’s okay too. Perhaps your path is becoming a company of one at the organization you’re part of and building a brilliant and resilient career there. I would never say that there’s one singular path to business success and enjoyment for everyone to take.

  THE BUILD

  Let’s say I had to start my business tomorrow from scratch, with no existing clients or following. How would I build an audience? How would I attract customers?

  This is how lots of people start businesses every day: knowing how to do something well (their craft), but without an existing group of people eager to work with them. Where do you begin?

  With my skill set, I’d start by listening to people who are looking to hire web designers or have already hired web designers, since that’s the most marketable skill I’ve got. How are these potential clients conducting their search for a designer? Where are they searching? What questions do they have about the process? If they’ve had a bad experience with a web designer, what went wrong? What do they wish they’d known before starting a web design project?

  Then I’d offer to help with their questions. Is there anything in particular they want to know? Do they want a second set of eyes to look at something? Do they want to brainstorm on what to do next? Do they want a second opinion? Is there anything they want to know about the industry? I would add small bits of helpful advice without offering my own services or charging them. More important, I wouldn’t be pushy about it — I’d just look for folks who have questions I have answers to.

  This free help I offer wouldn’t be a month of work or a redesign of their whole website, but rather emails and chats, either in person or by phone or Skype. Basically, I would offer a free consult or a project roadmapping session. In this way, I’d learn the key factors involved when people are thinking about hiring a web designer and gain insight into why and how they end up choosing to hire one.

  Just like Alex Franzen in Chapter 4, I’d start by finding a single person to offer my knowledge to. Then another. And another. I’d talk to as many people as possible, until I start to notice definite trends where people are having issues or not understanding things. And I’d do all of this without pitching or selling myself once. I’d simply offer help or advice to anyone who wants it.

  Talking to people this way would do two things. First, it gives me be an opportunity to share my knowledge with the type of people I want to work with (without asking for anything in return). Second, I’d learn what my future audience is looking for, where they’re getting hung up in projects in my field, and how I can communicate with them effectively to help solve those problems.

  Long before I’d start selling anyone anything, I’d be building relationships with the people I’ve helped in some way. I wouldn’t build this following so I could “promote” or sell to them later. I’d build and foster relationships with these people so I could continue learning from them. And these would be mutually beneficial relationships: they’d receive my help and I’d receive their knowledge.

  Most important, I’d do this fact-finding/mini-consulting while I was working somewhere else, probably at a full-time job. I wouldn’t dive headfirst into building my own company from the ground up, because I wouldn’t know yet if it was an idea that I could execute well enough to make into a sustainable living.

  From there the path could go several ways. Through a blog, I could write publicly about what I learned and eventually compile my posts into a book — full of insight into common client issues and how they can be resolved (as I did in writing a previous book). Or I could use my newly acquired knowledge to create my own services, since I’d know where my potential audience needed the most help. I’d probably do both things, with confidence that the people I’d been helping would promote what I came up with, and with no need on my part to constantly promote/sell at them.

  And this is the key — the people I’d helped would help me precisely because I had helped them (although I would never expect it of them). In my own company of one, every single business I consulted with or roadmapped for wanted to hire me to execute the plan I’d helped them come up with. Even when I was charging good money for consulting, I’d still be at the top of each client’s list to hire. Being helpful proved to be a great lead-generation funnel.

  My new business would be based on helping others first, with a contract for web design or design consulting coming later. I’d do it this way not because I frown on capitalism and want to sit around a Skype video-call singing “Kumbaya,” but because I know this is how you build a loyal client base and following.

  Many people would view this approach as advice for building a charity or aiming a business only at your close friends — it couldn’t possibly be applied to a business that makes enough money to put clothes on the children, keep food on the table, and pay the rent. But this is precisely how I built a business that, for over a decade, has had a waiting list of four to five months. It’s how I released books that have sold tens of thousands of copies. It’s how I’ve approached my entrepreneurial work for years. I’ve simply used my skills to help others, because I enjoy doing it. And I’ve offered this help for free, in small doses at first, and then later for good money in
larger doses.

  This approach mirrors the mind-set of a company of one, in that you can start right away, without investing a ton of money in resources, tools, or automation software. You can hit your MVPr quickly by offering services first, then products as demand increases for those services. To get started, you need a computer and an internet connection, and that’s it.

  The best thing about gearing your business to make money now rather than spending money now to maybe make more money later is that profit happens faster. You don’t need investors, or investment on your part, or investments from venture capitalists. There’s no need for a certain hardware or software, and no need to use secret tactics or strategies. All you need is to be a decent human being with a valued skill set and a willingness to share what you know with people who’ll listen.

  My own company started this way, after I decided not to find another agency job. At the time I was still a teenager, living at home and working in my parents’ basement on a computer I had built myself out of cheap parts. I focused on the work I could do immediately in order to make enough money to cover living expenses once I moved out (which I did quickly, heading west) and then to not only make a living but save as much as I could.

  The traditional way to establish a business is to start by getting an investment (from the bank, from a rich relative, from a VC), then work hard for a long time to create a perfect product. This way of working, however, has a lot of drawbacks. You have to make a ton of assumptions about the market, your positioning, and your customers, and then, before launching, you have to spend a lot of money and then just wait for the results to come in.