Company of One

Company of One

Metadata

Highlights

living in the woods on an island does something funny — it forces you to go deep within your own thoughts. — location: 175

at first, exploring your own thoughts is one of the scariest things in the world. (A study at the University of Virginia by Timothy Wilson found that people would rather get electric shocks than simply be alone with their thoughts.) — location: 176

What if you worked instead toward growing smaller, smarter, more efficient, and more resilient? — location: 215

the “company of one” model can be laid out in a similar fashion: “start small, define growth, and keep learning.” — location: 237

The word “intrapreneur” points to one example of a company of one within a larger organization. — location: 303

If you’re a company of one, your mind-set is to build your business around your life, not the other way around. — location: 324

As much as I enjoy growing my wealth, I also realize that there’s a point of diminishing returns if I don’t also take care of myself and my well-being. — location: 328

the four typical traits of all companies of one: resilience, autonomy, speed, and simplicity. — location: 338

you have to be good at your skill set before you can expect to achieve autonomy from using it. — location: 406

Start out as simple as possible, and always fervently question adding new layers of complexity. — location: 518

Sometimes finding and working with a single customer, then adding another, and then another, is a very useful and solid way to begin. — location: 651

the more you can lean on processes, systems, and reusable building blocks (from code to marketing language to visuals) in your leadership, the better and faster you’ll be with your work and the less you’ll require in terms of hours worked or people hired, even as you gain more in terms of revenue, finished processes, and paid customers. — location: 899

A lot of “growth-hacking” (a Silicon Valley term for the kind of exponential growth that tech folks salivate over) employs pushy and even sometimes shady tactics to keep growing in spite of the excessive churn that’s produced. — location: 1021

the more likely they are to want to stay on as customers. Customer success is the cornerstone of a profitable company of one. — location: 1092

Your purpose is your values put into action. — location: 1252

Defining your purpose has more to do with your personal values and ethics than with business plans or marketing strategies. You can’t fake your purpose. Your gut and your customers simply won’t let you. And really, why would you want to? You’ll get so much more enjoyment and satisfaction from running your business in alignment with your purpose. — location: 1254

Opportunities are just obligations wearing an appealing mask. — location: 1352

When you are a company of one without a team or employees, you have to generate your own momentum and motivation to get work done. — location: 1366

Personality — the authentic you that traditional business has taught you to suppress under the guise of “professionalism” — can be your biggest edge over the competition when you’re a company of one. — location: 1443

capital, but a popular theory put forth by Sam Milbrath of HootSuite is that you can begin by dividing your mass interactions with an audience into thirds. Sam suggests that one-third of your updates should be about your business or your content, one-third should be sharing content from others, and one-third should be personal interactions that build relationships with your audience. — location: 2690

business success does not lie in growing something quickly and massively, but rather in building something that’s both remarkable and resilient over the long term. — location: 3070