Paul Jarvis, Writer, Designer, Company of One
Paul Jarvis is a writer and designer who’s had his own company of one for the last two decades. He’s worked with professional athletes like Steve Nash and Shaquille O’Neal, corporate giants like Microsoft and Mercedes-Benz, and entrepreneurs with online empires like Danielle LaPorte and Marie Forleo. Currently he teaches popular online courses, hosts several podcasts and develops small but mighty software solutions.
AUTOMATED EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:01] You're listening to Scaling Up Services where we speak with entrepreneurs authors business experts and thought leaders to give you the knowledge and insights you need to scale your service based business faster and easier. And now here is your host Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt.
[00:00:21] Welcome everyone this is Scaling Up Services. I'm Bruce Eckfeldt. I'm your host our guest today is Paul Jarvis. And Paul is a writer and designer and as the author of Company of One. We're going to learn a little bit more about his background. We're going to learn about the book I'm excited about this conversation because you know when we look at helping people scale their businesses one of the first things we ask is should we really what is the motivation and is that really the best option and the strategy. And so we're gonna talk to Paul a little bit about his thoughts on that. I'm excited for it. Paul welcome to the program.
[00:00:49] Yeah thanks Bruce. Thanks for having me on the show.
[00:00:51] So what do we start with professional background just kind of understanding how you got to where you were what area did you come out of. I know you've been a writer and a designer for a while. Give us a sense of the path that you've been on.
[00:01:00] Yes. So I've worked for myself for 20 years now and I didn't actually want to work for myself. That was never the plan. Funny how that works. I was an accidental entrepreneur.
[00:01:11] And so I was in university and I didn't really like it. I had been building Web sites kind of on the side is when the Internet was just starting in the mid 90s and an agency figured that hey they could make money off of selling their print and media clients websites. So they found me at a Web site that was ridiculously popular at the time it was in Wired magazine and stuff. It was Urban Dictionary before Urban Dictionary existed. Got it. And so they started to talk to me and they were like Hey why don't you come work for us. So I did. But I liked the clients and the work that I was doing I didn't like the company so I was actually going to go find another job at another agency. But the day that I quit all of the clients from that agency started calling me and saying hey Paul where are you.
[00:01:54] I think they were more excited to work with me than I work with the rest of the agency so they're like Where are you going to go. Follow you. I think I got like four or those calls and then a light bulb went off and it's like maybe I don't want to wear it look up a resume.
[00:02:08] Yeah maybe I can just go start a business. And so yeah that's how I got started and it was all it was all design and online business consulting in the beginning because that was this was the 90s this is people didn't know all of that stuff so yeah that's kind of how I got started.
[00:02:23] Not the first time I've heard the story of accidental entrepreneur you know typically around this area where someone has a really you know an expertise a skill you know a capability that is well sought after and they like doing what they're doing but they really don't think about the business side as much you know. But they're kind of given enough of an opportunity they're willing to kind of risk it I guess what were some of the challenges that typically what I find in those cases is the actual kind of business side of that can be either daunting or kind of a pain for a lot of folks that really just want to do creative work or focus on their product. How did you navigate that that kind of challenge or that process.
[00:02:57] Yeah it was a challenge. To be perfectly honest because I was so good at the work that I did. I was really good at being a designer is really good at working with clients and doing the work that I was getting paid to do at an agency. But I didn't know all of the business they hadn't gone to school for I went to school for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. There's no business courses there's a lot of philosophy courses there's no business courses.
[00:03:21] So I was thrown into the deep end of like this is running a business this is managing accounts this is doing accounting this is dealing with legal this is dealing with late payments and that was top like that was really that may be almost stop a bunch of times in the beginning and I think I had this idea that because I was a creative person I didn't need to worry or think about all that stuff because it wasn't enjoyable I can just kind of hope the business runs on its own. And what I didn't realize was that if I setup like very specific systems very specific processes taught my clients how to be good clients that would free up my time to do the creative work that I wanted to do in the first place.
[00:03:59] So I really started to hammer in on what's the best process what's what can we do to make this the most efficient process. How can I replicate making one project good and make the next one even better than the next one even better. And I really started down the path of becoming actually more interested in the business side of things that the design side of things after a few years.
[00:04:18] That's what it sounds like you almost business became kind of a creative problem to solve. Exactly yeah. And the two things I found around that the one is how kind of how to set up the systems and kind of the steps and the templates and the Framers like kind of hard data systematized things. The other one I find is how to really kind of pick the right customers you know because it's kind of a you know a system a system works when the input to the system is consistent in the same and then process the same way. How did you go about finding kind of the right people to work with an end to the extent that you've got stories or cases of the wrong people making it into the process like how did you extricate them or what was the process of that kind of identifying and dealing with those things.
[00:04:58] Yeah. And that's been something that I have honestly thought about a whole lot because I think that a lot of times people are just so willing to oh there's somebody wants to work with me that's going to be money yes. Let's do it. And chasing money. Yeah yeah. And it's like I've even gotten flack from people because I've always been told people to be selective their clients and people have pushed back and said well that's okay for you because like you have a successful business. I'm like No that's why I have success. Exactly. What's the chicken and the egg. Exactly. So being selective in making sure is for me it was always I wanted to make sure that there could be a win on both sides of the equation.
[00:05:38] I wanted to make sure it was work that I really wanted to do with somebody who I was able to communicate with effectively and efficiently before money was involved. So having like onboarding calls I found a really important I really built an automated onboarding system. But there was definitely a person to person conversation before we move forward. But also just looking for what's the type of client that I can help the most. What's the type of client where the project can have the most impact or be set up for the most success. Because if your clients succeed then you're going to succeed off the tail end of that because you're going to be the person that helped them get where they are in their business and ended up working with quite a few clients and entrepreneurs who who ended up doing really really well.
[00:06:25] And I definitely saw a lot of business from that especially because what I was doing was helping them with the web stuff and at the bottom of all their sites and Web site design and development by Paul Jarvis and as they were getting like thousands and tens of thousands and millions of page views I had that little link at the bottom of the screen. So that was yeah that was supremely helpful to be picky.
[00:06:46] You know was this brilliant strategy on your part or you know kind of blind luck that happened to work out that way like what was your buy had a bunch of bad clients like in the beginning like when I struggled in the beginning not with the work but with the with the business side of things. I had clients that that didn't pay me I had one client who just continually didn't pay me. It was something like thirty thousand dollars over six months and it kept doing the work and because they didn't want to lose the client but then I realized I'm like I'm training this client that even if they don't pay me I'm still going to do the work for them. So this doesn't like this doesn't make sense.
[00:07:23] Yeah we always said that we will get the behavior we tolerate.
[00:07:26] Exactly.
[00:07:27] It's like if we don't have if we don't set boundaries if we don't communicate what will work and what will not work for. For the project at the onset then there's going to be a communication breakdown which can definitely lead to not getting paid.
[00:07:41] Yes. Look I think all of this is you know actually super applicable to any business. Not not just you know individuals creative you know technical individuals are looking to build their own practice but really any company you know needs to go through that process figure out what is the system for delivery what is our target customer what is our core customer how do we filter them in the prospecting and onboarding process. You mentioned that you had some kind of automated stuff. Any insights or things that you learned about how to like what questions to ask when and how to really make that efficient and effective in terms of a prospecting onboarding process for clients for sure.
[00:08:16] So when I was doing service based work I would put two things on my Web site that really was the a way to filter out and most people and just get the right people the first one was projects start at this price just so if they thought that they were going to spend five hundred dollars and I was charging five thousand dollars we don't need to have a conversation. If our budgets are so far out of sync. The other thing that I would put on my Web site is I'm currently booked for X amount of time and I'm booking new projects for like three months from now four months from now. So one that sets expectations too they're going to have homework to do before the projects start. So I really want them to be aware of it and three people want to hire people who are in demand. Pete it's just such a social signal that oh you mean you can start the project today.
[00:09:04] Why exactly why aren't you busy.
[00:09:08] And I think that in doing those three things it really just like a lot of times clients are okay to wait especially when they know like oh I have to get this this and this done before the projects start. So you have a on a welcome document that has all of the steps all the processes like OK this makes sense and it just really set projects up for success and it really filtered out if people couldn't follow directions in onboarding.
[00:09:33] I just always thought like they're not going to be able to follow the process that we that I have set in place that I know work and they do this over and over again whereas they may only hire a designer once or twice in their career or in their business and that's not a focus for them. This is what I do for a living so I need them to kind of understand that there is a process and the process is in place so we get the best results so both of us both parties get the best result in the best work product from that match.
[00:10:00] Like you need a good match. Yeah. Yeah I used to do make all of my prospects go to one of my like half day or one day workshops just because it was two things One is if they couldn't figure out how to organize their schedule to a workshop like if their schedule was so crazy they couldn't figure how to get to a workshop. That was a flag for me. The other one as I got to see how they interacted with other people so you know in a group said how do they communicate. How do they participate. And that gave me really good indicators on how they might be you know as a client. So yeah I think having some way of kind of filtering testing you know courting clients and evaluating both ways it's not just them evaluating you it's you evaluating them is smart.
[00:10:39] Like I said it's really smart for any business but particularly when you're dealing with service think things that are of somewhat personal nature where you're interacting with them one on one at some level is pretty critical. Yeah for sure. And you work with some pretty interesting people on the on the Web and Web strategy digital strategies. Give us a sense of some of the some of the people you had an opportunity to collaborate with.
[00:10:57] Yeah I started out working with pro athletes. So I did Web sites for people like Steve Nash Shaquille O'Neal Warren Sapp and that was fun. Except the problem is that you don't really work with the athletes very much you work with their agents and sports agents are the biggest jerks in the entire world because they want they need to be the jerks for the league was there.
[00:11:19] Exactly. So their job is to be awful for their client.
[00:11:24] So it was very difficult to deal with and then I kind of moved in to doing consulting for bigger companies like Microsoft and Mercedes Benz BMW Yahoo. That sort of thing. And that was that was kind of fun and that definitely looks good on like a like a business resumé. But you also become a cog in that huge machine where I want sign off for this one thing and they have to have a meeting about a meeting with other stakeholders and it just everything took so long even getting paid. Took so long. Small businesses don't need to get paid on net 120. That's just ridiculous. And then finally I moved in to because I kept thinking like I want to always compete at top of market bottom of market is just a race to the bottom in terms of like pricing carbon.
[00:12:09] Yeah I wanted to be the top the top of market. So I started to think like who values what I do the most and what I did was all online things so I figured OK. Online entrepreneurs are the ones who value the work and the skill set that I have the most and are willing to pay the most for it because their revenue is completely determined by that work. Yeah. So then I started to work with people like Marie for Leo Daniela poor Chris car and people who were kind of build that look at the forefront of building brands online and building services and building brands kind of around their personality and selling things that were based a lot on that. And so I ended up learning I learned so much about business from those women that I worked with. And that's really how I model my own business too.
[00:12:51] Yeah so. So get us to the book like tell us what inspired the book and the kind of focusing on the content side on the publishing side. You know it's a lot of people talk about writing books publishing those kind of things. Tell us about that when the idea first came up how you kind of selected your strategy how you found the people how you develop the content and I know you just launched a couple days ago and you know the podcast is always delayed a little bit in terms of release. But you know you're you're hot and heavy in this in this process right now.
[00:13:19] Yes. So it's funny because so the book is really about questioning growth when it makes sense for your business and when it doesn't. And for myself I'd always been like when I started my business even though I wasn't good at the business side of things in the beginning I was always busy and I was always seeing success with my work. And there's a social push in There's this kind of like idea that oh well you're doing well like why don't you hire somebody. Why don't hire another person why don't you build this anyway. Like your book six months in advance Paul like why don't you hire a team. And my thought was my my pushback to that was always Well I don't want to like I enjoy that I enjoy the work.
[00:13:55] And I also don't like managing people and that's not even a skill that I want to foster. Some people are brilliant managers and they're put on this planet to work in settings where they manage other people. That's not me. And I know that's not me. And I know that I never wanted to promote myself out of a job I actually like doing. So I like doing design I like doing writing. I want to keep doing those things. And so that's kind of how I've always run my business. And then I started to write about them but I figured I was the only one. Like I figured I was the business weirdo who just wanted to have like a small business that was very successful but but stayed very small intentionally. But then I started to write about it to my newsletter. I think I think the articles called something like why you don't care about growth. And I usually get one hundred and fifty two hundred fifty replies to my weekly newsletter and I sent this and I was just like this is just gonna be something that people like.
[00:14:43] Okay good for you. Yeah. I like twelve hundred replies to that email. Some people being like nerd I was the only one. Yeah exactly.
[00:14:51] I thought I was the only one who didn't want to grow like a big empire a massive business and I had written I think for self published books at that point. But I figured let's see what traditional publishing is like actually knew zero about traditional publishing. I actually asked my mailing list. I'm like I want to see if I can traditionally publish this does anybody know an agent. And I just I asked my mailing with this I think it the first e-mail of the year I think three years ago and a few people did. And they were like I can make an introduction. So I talked to a few agents. The agents wanted to work with me so I picked the best one kind of I'm kind of on the other side of things where I was the client and they were the service based business.
[00:15:31] So I was like How do I evaluate this the other. Why not just get even for all those times that I did. Exactly.
[00:15:39] So I found an agent who I thought we had the best communication with the one that really understood the book and really she wanted to work with me and the other agents wanted to work with me because they knew that they could sell this idea to publishers because that's what agents do as a. So I worked on a book proposal with her and we shopped it around couple of publishers were interested and then I picked I picked the publisher that had the editor who wanted to work on my book because he edited Cal Newport's book.
[00:16:03] Yeah I'm a huge fan of Calma love. KELLEY Yeah yeah. I love deep work and so good.
[00:16:08] So I was like if this guy's good enough for Cal he ended up being a he ended up being a great great editor and just really made the book keep my voice because I definitely have a very unique and odd writing style but really hammered home the points he worked with me to really get the points to be as clear as possible. And so yeah it's probably been about three years from me saying I want to do this book to it being published.
[00:16:37] So it's definitely been.
[00:16:39] Oh yeah well tell me Tell me about the content process for you. I mean what I mean I was you know I find creative folks you know typically have a process right they have a flow they have ways of kind of getting into the into the mindset into the state of being able to write in those ways. How did you set it up given that you were just I mean you're still you're still working with clients you were still doing work. How did you integrate that.
[00:17:01] Yes. So I basically keep all of my income streams for what I do separate. And so the writing over the last few years has been making a decent amount of money and I was like OK well now I'm a client basically I'm hiring myself as a client to do writing. And so I blocked off I think it was 3 AM I took me three months start to finish to write the first draft and that was just me every day sitting like that was my job every day. I sat down I typically were like I basically did a chapter a week or so so I would start the first day with writing the outline these are the points I want to make. I would spend probably three days doing research and interviews and looking for looking for the right studies to that either made the point for me or that showed me that that point wasn't valid to make. It was just a point that I thought worked for me and an end of one data set is way too small. So I needed to find either other stories or data to support each of the points. And then I spent two days writing the chapter and then the next week and then I would share that with Rick my editor and then I would do the next chapter and then I would. And so it just basically like I turned it into a process pretty much exactly the same as the way that I used to do client work is. OK what's the best process to get the best work product and be the most efficient with our time. I just basically turned that around on its head to focus on on the writing.
[00:18:21] Yeah well like did you became your own client. I mean you sort of treat yourself like a client. Okay well how would I structure a project for a client and then I would just do it that way. And I mean other than the kind of the potential schizophrenic outcome of it you know I'd like that ideas. And the other thing is like what's the benefit like why are you doing this like it ends up creating a nice idea of a customer that I'm serving that I can use to help make decisions and drive focus and prioritize and things like that.
[00:18:48] Any big surprises takeaways learnings from from going through that process versus the other the other books that you've written or the other writing work that you've done. How was it. Yes yes.
[00:18:59] It takes a lot more time. Like I can write another book like if I was self publishing this it would have come out a year and a half ago. But because there's a lot more people working on it and I always try to find people who I feel are smarter than me like I want to work with somebody if I don't feel like they can bring as much or more to the table as me which I mean in my case it's not hard to find people smarter than me. But I'm always looking for the people who are like the best at what they do. Like if I if I'm going to work with an editor I want it to be Cal Newport's editor because they know he is like going to be a phenomenal editor. So it just there was just a lot more that went into it.
[00:19:33] And it's funny. So I finished writing the manuscript last September and I was like there's so much time there's so much down the book doesn't come out for so long.
[00:19:42] And then as I got into it I'm like as it got like November December I was like Oh there's not enough time time where I don't go too fast. Yeah.
[00:19:52] Because there's so much work that goes into getting the book out. Like I started doing interviews and publicity in November for the January mid Jan release and I started working on like additional resources that go along with the book like the podcast that I have this called company of one the course that I have that goes with the community that I'm building.
[00:20:11] So there's all of these other little pieces even the probably one of the biggest pieces too was the preorder campaign where if somebody preordered the book if they ordered one copy they got this amount of stuff if they ordered five. They got this if they were to 25. They got that because they wanted to drive sales because all of the price if somebody isn't an author they might not know this. All of the pre-sales that happened prior to launch date count as a sale on day one.
[00:20:34] Yeah. So if I can sell 10000 preorders then that counts as 10000 sales on the first day which makes a difference on Amazon it makes a difference on on the best seller lists. Like it makes a huge difference. So that was really the drive for me was. OK. How can I get the most preorders as possible and what am I willing to give people to to drive those sales because the people are paying money for something they're not going to get for a while.
[00:21:01] And so I need to sweeten the deal a delayed gratification is tough. People don't like that typically.
[00:21:07] So let's talk about the book a little bit. I think the you know there's always this question or there's a I think an assumption at some level that you mentioned it before it's like oh you're successful in some field and some capability technologies design writer you know packaging expert you whatever you are. It's like oh well you know build a business around it and make a big business around it. So I think there is this often assumption and I often get people coming to me with like oh I want to but I want to scale this thing. And I think there's that assumption is not always correct or at least needs to be questioned at some level. How. Like what do you think or the questions or what's your checklist or what are the things that you think people really need to consider before they kind of endeavor on trying to sort of quote unquote scale through adding people and creating a big organization around this versus really focusing on how to optimize and you know scale your impact without actually scaling the people behind it. What are some of the questions that you ask are things that you encourage people to think about.
[00:22:08] Yes. So I think a lot of it comes down to like the purpose in at the onset. Like for myself I started working for myself because I was like oh I can have more freedom doing this.
[00:22:19] So no business decision that I make should impact should negatively impact the freedom that I want to have in my life. So I don't want the responsibility of having to manage or have having manage or have employees. So that's a decision that I always make. So I kind of use purpose as my filter for decisions. So it becomes the lens that I make decisions through. And then I also think about things like enough and I think enough is kind of the biggest point in the book. And I feel like that is the counterbalance or the antithesis to unchecked growth because I agree we need growth and we all need to start with a growth mindset because we all need to go from zero to one we only to go from zero to profitability zero to having customers but then there comes a point where growth might not make sense. And I mean it's so dependent on the business you run. So for example Air B and B if they had two properties that you could rent like their business probably would not do well. They need a critical mass. But for a business like mine that does like courses and software I don't need that many if my expenses are really low. If I can run a very lean operation I only need hundreds or thousands of not hundreds of thousands hundreds or thousands of customers for my business to generate enough money and I think especially for owner operator businesses. A business is only profitable if it has margins but also if it makes enough money to make that owner operator comfortable in their lives like a business isn't really profitable if it's just you unless it's also paying for like your rent or mortgage or all of that separately of course you need to keep those things separate.
[00:23:54] So I'm always looking at that like what do I need in my life. And like is my business generating enough income to do that. Do I have enough customers where I can focus on retention over acquisition because retention is cheaper faster and easier than going out and finding new people. And so I think unless we think like is this more in whatever the question it is in our business like is this more actually better. Sometimes it isn't then it makes sense sometimes it might not be. And I think a lot of times we don't consider the I guess the maintenance costs or the obligation debt of doing things or making things bigger where if I added more to my business or if I added more people to my business or added like an office or some bigger expense to my business would it be better. Because there might be maintenance costs that I don't want to maintain there might be obligations that I now have that I don't want. Like I think a lot of it comes down to especially for myself personally is like how does this growth affect my happiness or my purpose or how I actually want to spend my day working because I know the things that I like doing in my business I know the things the daily things that I like to do that one makes my business money because you need to have profit but to makes me actually enjoy the work.
[00:25:05] Yeah I think that's hard. I mean I think one of the things that I find is for folks that are in professions doing work that is a creative or or they have sort of an IT GIVES THEM intrinsic value in some way this ends up being this critical question or critical issue as they ponder actually kicking a business and growing a business around this your focus becomes around the business and will not about doing the work. Typically I find it in technology I work with a lot of kind of tech startups and stuff where you know you are an entrepreneur or a founder who is a brilliant technologist you know in some security or analytics or A.I. or something and they they get to know 50 100 people and also they find that they're spending all their time going out and raising money or managing people or meeting with. It's like they have no connection. You kind of have to ask the question well what do you really want to do and do you want to stay. Do you want to be focused on building a business or you and we focus on being an expert and excelling at this domain. And it's kind of an existential question for a lot of folks. And it's sometimes I've gotten so far down that we've got to make some pretty big changes to get them back to it. But I think that's one of the areas I think folks that kind of get into business because they love doing business and they really don't they're not into it for the actual product and the service per say. Then it's less of an issue. I don't know. I don't know if that fits with kind of what you've seen or kind of the the world that you've interacted with.
[00:26:20] Yeah no I think it totally does and I think there's so many different and I think that's really what the book is about. It's that there isn't this single track there isn't. The book has no answers.
[00:26:30] I'd like to tell people it's not a blueprint or a formula for anything it's more a way to think about your business to come to the best decisions for your business. Because I don't know your business. I know what's right for me and my business but I don't know what's right for everybody because if we're kind of sold this idea that business success looks like this one thing or a business leader looks like this one type of person or growth looks like this one thing then we're kind of shuttering the doors to other people who may be really good entrepreneurs and maybe really good at running a business but they're like I don't see like I don't think I want to run a business because the way that business looks doesn't fit what I want and I'm like it can be run in so many different ways. There's so many different ways to have a successful profitable durable business that is not just that you don't have to be Elon Musk to do things working 80 hour plus a week sleeping on a couch being afraid to go on vacation he doesn't need to be light like it honestly it doesn't need to be like that.
[00:27:25] Yeah I agree I think there is. I had a tech company for many years and we were very disciplined on you know no more than 50 hour weeks. You know I don't think I think it worked more than three or four weekends over 10 years just because it was that you know in fact I think it made me a better CEO and a better leader by doing that. I mean it wasn't that oh well I have to give all these things up I think it actually made us better doing that. But yeah but it's hard. It's a mindset and I think there's a lot of things in the kind of business world not a world that I don't think are necessarily great patterns or expectations behaviors. I'm glad I'm glad to see people trying to undo those or at least bring on counterpoints. So we talked about some big things around the book. I think one topic that I found really interesting that I wanted to kind of dive in on or talk about briefly was this idea of following your passion because I think that you know that's this kind of common wisdom or this thing piece of advice with a lot of people give while just you know pick something you're passionate about and you know and don't worry about anything else as long as you're following your passion you're gonna be successful. I always have problems with that. I guess why is this kind of a topic that you cover and give us a sense of why you cover it.
[00:28:25] Yeah I think I think we have it in our I think experts have it in reverse. I think that we get passion from the work we do once we've been doing it and once we master it. So I think that passion is the side effect of mastery not the other way round.
[00:28:40] I also think it's really stressful so many people I talked to you don't know what their passion is and they're like I'm supposed to follow my passion I don't know what my passion is in this or the opportunity I've got to get 50 things exactly like I'm super passionate about watching Marvel series is on Netflix like that's not going to make me any money I suck at reviewing TV shows. And so but then like when I think about my life like I didn't want to be a writer like I had no aspirations for a child to be a writer or designer or even own a business.
[00:29:08] But as I started to see like OK this is something that's in demand like this is a skill that I have it's in demand like why don't I just do this thing and why don't I just see if I like it or not. I mean I've started businesses where I've realized after I started them on the business for me and then sold the business which is fine but I feel like I have become passionate about the work that I do after I've done it for a while after I've really gotten into it. And I think that in doing that it also release so much stress I kind of have to follow my passion I just have to do work that like I know I'm going to get paid for I know that makes some kind of difference whether it's one person or a thousand people like doing what you love is such a tricky thing because there's so many negative side effects to trying to just do that like oh I didn't love my work today like I'm not doing what I love sucks sometimes I hate my work somedays I'm stressed out some day I want to fire every single one of my clients but in general I really enjoy it in general I feel like it's giving me meaning and purpose and in general the more I do it the more I get excited about it. So I feel like I feel like we have to work in reverse to that like follow your passion tired advice. We have to do work and then see what we're passionate as we're doing it. And then we can move closer to that and more in alignment with that. Whereas if somebody told me to follow my passion I'd probably be out on a surfboard.
[00:30:28] Yeah. Yes. Did he say that enough.
[00:30:31] What's the name of that idea of kind of re reframing it as mastery. I mean it's something developed developing mastery on something is is what will give you passion and kind of inverting you know that ordered pair a little bit because I think you're right. I think a lot of people either don't know what their passion is or have a lot of potential passions. And it is kind of this choice and you kind of look at where there is demand is. I like that. Think about it is like where can I create impact like how can I not the world how can I impact other people positively by by taking something that I have no capability around your aptitude and develop it as a master and then and then increase the impact that I'm gonna have through mastery as opposed to just OK. Well it's fun you know fun is good. But I don't think fun is really satisfying. You know from a hour bigger picture long term you're not going to you're not gonna focus on that for 10 15 20 years and those kind of passions I think are just fickle flames.
[00:31:23] I like the hobbies that I have no different than five years ago 10 years ago and it's like the work that I do hasn't changed that much in 20 years. But the passions that I have have shifted so many times.
[00:31:35] I've got a storage unit full of cheer from various sports but I've gotten into four periods. So the book covers a lot of really interesting things so I encourage people to go check that out and I will say this.
[00:31:46] I think you know that the idea of company of although we're focused on company of one in terms of the idea how does an individual really kind of you know scale their impact without scaling business. I think this is the ideas are super applicable to anyone even particularly you know people that are you know in small business situations are looking to grow the business. The concepts are really important so I would encourage everyone to check it out. Powerful people want to get more information about you about the book. What's the best way to get a hold of that.
[00:32:08] Yes so the book Company of One, My saying small is the next big thing for business is on Amazon and in most you should be able to find it in most bookstores. The Web site is ofone.co and then I have mentioned my newsletter my newsletter is at pjrvs.com or if you google Paul Jarvis and I share weekly articles about the things that I'm thinking about and working on and and book ideas three years before the book actually comes out.
[00:32:31] Also I'll make sure that all of those links and information on the show notes. Paul this is a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me.
[00:32:38] Yeah. Appreciate it thanks so much Bruce.
[00:32:42] You've been listening to Scaling up Services with Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt. To find a full is a podcast episodes. Download the tools and worksheets and access other great content. This is a Web site that scaling up services dot com and toll free to sign up for the free newsletter scalingupservices/newsletter.