What does running a successful business mean?
Does it mean growing revenue at 1000% annually, or raising millions of money in Venture Capital? How about having hundreds of employees and clients who are the biggest businesses in the world?
And would you rather have a business which makes you happy, or one which causes you stress?
Paul Jarvis shares his unique views from his upcoming book Company of One on how it is possible to stay small and still be a successful business which is highly profitable and makes you fulfilled.
Topics covered in today’s episode:
- [01:15] – Paul’s story to building a successful one-person company over the past 20 years. People didn’t understand what it meant to “work for yourself”
- [03:30] – How a business can be successful without growing
- [05:00] – A study showed that companies on the INC 5000 list (of fastest growing companies) had 2/3 of them going out of business within 5-8 years, because they grew too fast
- [06:30] – The importance of defining what “enough” means to be successful
- [08:45] – The danger of ego that drives the desire for growth for the sake of looking better
- [11:15] – It is up to each of us to define what success is
- [12:30] – The link between income and happiness, up to a certain point
- [13:00] – Success to him is how he spends his day and feeling fulfilled
- [14:30] – The dangers of listening to a lot of the advice online about building a lifestyle business, working on the beach from your laptop
- [19:00] – What helps people achieve their best creative output, and preventing creative burnout
Links mentioned in the episode:
* Paul’s website: https://pjrvs.com/
* His upcoming book – Company of one: https://ofone.co/
Bonus:
This episode was made possible by our premium innovation and creativity training. Take your innovation and creativity capabilities to the next level by investing in yourself now, at https://www.ideatovalue.com/
* Subscribe on iTunes to the Idea to Value Podcast: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/idea-to-value-creativity-innovation/id1199964981?mt=2
* Subscribe on Stitcher to the Idea to Value Podcast: http://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=129437&refid=stpr
Nick Skillicorn
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